The Legend of Broken

base of a house just a few feet from him, with force enough to kill. As he looks up he sees Niksar searching the area, his short-sword drawn; and then they glimpse a thickly made, unkempt man standing in the alleyway. The man grins and lets out an idiot’s laugh.

“Off to lick royal arse, are you, Tall?” the drunkard cries. “May you choke on it!” The man vanishes back through the alleyway in the direction of the Fifth District, Niksar moving to pursue him; but Arnem grasps the younger man’s arm.

“We’ve far more important business, Reyne,” the sentek says; yet he pauses long enough to consider the drunkard’s words. “Tall?” he says in wonderment, as Niksar sheathes his sword. “That man was too big to be a Bane — I thought only they used that term for our people.”

Arnem is answered by yet another voice, this one disembodied, disturbingly serene and floating out of the shadowy rear doorway of the nearby house:

“The Bane aren’t the only people who resent your kind, Sentek …”

Arnem and Niksar watch in some confusion as the shadows produce an ancient, bearded man. His hair is no more than a mist surrounding his head, while his robe, once an elegant design in black and silver, is now a faded testament to years of hard luck. The man steadies himself on a staff as he limps painfully forward. “Have you visited the Fifth District of late?” the old man asks.

For the second time tonight, Arnem must prevent apprehension from manifesting in his demeanor. “Indeed,” he says, approaching the man calmly. “It’s where I was born, as were my family. We live there still.”

“You? Then you are …?” The old man stares at Arnem with recognition that makes the sentek ever more uneasy. “You are Sixt Arnem …” Milky eyes stare first at the stars and the ascendant Moon, and then at the beacons outside the High Temple, until at last the old man murmurs, “But am I ready …?”

“‘Ready’?” Arnem echoes. “Ready for what?”

“For what is likely beginning,” the man says calmly. “You go to the Sacristy, Sentek — I suspect …”

Unlike Arnem, Niksar is unable to master his wariness of the aged specter, and approaches his commander. “Come, Sentek. He is mad—”

Arnem holds a hand up to silence his aid, then says, “So, we’re bound for the Sacristy?”

The old man smiles. “And if so, you will hear lies there, Sentek — though not all who speak them will be liars.”

Arnem frowns, growing less patient and more relaxed. “Ah. Riddles. For a moment, I thought we might actually avoid them.”

“Mad or taunting, his words are treasonous,” Niksar says; then he scolds, “Be careful what you say, old fool, or we must arrest you.”

“The Bane are the cause of your summons.” The old man raises his staff from the ground. “This, I believe, can be stated with certainty.”

“There’s no prescience in that,” Arnem says, affecting carefree laughter. “You’ve likely heard the screaming on the Plain.” The sentek resumes his march. “Why Kafra should have chosen to number those wretched little beings among his creations, I’ll never—”

Arnem and Niksar have not gone a dozen paces before the old man declares, “It was not any god who created the Bane, Sixt Arnem — we of Broken bear that responsibility!”

The two officers quickly retrace several of their steps. “Stop it,” Arnem tells the old man urgently. “Now. Whatever your madness, we are soldiers of the Talons, and there are things that we cannot hear—”

Arnem suddenly ceases to speak, as his eyes go wider. The old man’s face is still nothing but a strange mask of misfortune — but his robe … Something about the faded silver and black, and the fine cut — something about the robe looks disturbingly yet inexplicably familiar.

“You do not remember me — do you, Sentek?” the old man asks.

“Should I?” Arnem asks.

His mouth curling, the old man replies, “No longer. And not yet …”

Arnem tries to smile. “More riddles? Well, if that’s all you offer—”

“I have given you what I have to offer, Sentek,” the old man says, raising his staff a few inches higher. “If you go to the Sacristy tonight, you shall hear lies; but not all who speak them will be liars. And it will be your task to determine who disgraces that allegedly exalted chamber.”

Rage flushing his cheeks, Niksar can no longer contain himself: “We should kill you here,” he declares, a hand to his sword. “You speak one heresy after another!”

The old man only smiles again, looking at Niksar. “That has been said,” he replies, raising the hem of his robe with his free arm. “Before …”

In the dimness of the avenue, with Moonlight playing off water that flows quietly in the gutter, Arnem and Niksar can see that the old man’s left leg is far darker than his right; but it is only when the aged arm taps the staff against that left limb, producing a hollow knock, that the two men guess the truth. The old man smiles at their horror, and continues to tap the wood strapped to the stump of his thigh.

“The Denep-stahla!”† Niksar whispers.

“The young linnet knows his rituals,” the old man answers, dropping the hem of his robe. He continues to tap his staff against the makeshift lower leg, producing a sound that is more muted, but no less dreadful, than that which preceded it.

Arnem’s gaze does not leave that leg: for the sight has brought with it understanding of his earlier uneasiness, as well as memories of his own days as a linnet, when he was part of more than a few escort parties that accompanied the priests of Broken to the Cat’s Paw river, where they performed, where they still perform, their sacred, bloody rites of punishment and exile. Although a post of honor, it was not a commission to which Arnem was suited, and he did not hold it long — long enough, however, to plant the seeds of his doubts about the faith of Kafra.

At length, he looks the old man in the eye again. “Have we met before?”

“You will remember my name at the appropriate time, Sentek,” the cripple answers.

“And how did you escape the Wood?”

Again the aged lips curl grimly. “The unholy are often cunning. But should you not be concerned about something else?” The old man pauses, but Arnem says nothing. “I am here, Sentek — is it not against the laws of Broken for exiles to return to the city without permission? Have I been granted such?”

With the old man’s words making ever less sense, and his infernal tapping growing ever more relentless, Arnem approaches him one last time. “If you have endured the Denep-stahla, friend, then you have been given trouble enough for one lifetime — and ample reason for your madness. Leave the city — we will forget this encounter.”

But the old man only shakes his head slowly. “You will try, Sentek. But do not trust my word alone. Wait for another voice to sound, this night — to sound more times than it ever has before …”

Arnem tries to dismiss this latest riddle by lifting a stern finger; the movement is awkward and ineffective, however, and becomes instead a simple signal to Niksar. The two men move speedily down the Celestial Way once more. In the distance, however, they can still hear the steady tap of the old man’s staff against his makeshift wooden leg, prompting Niksar to say, a bit nervously, “Well — an attempt at murder and an insane heretic. Not the best of omens for this council, Sentek.”

“Have any officers been attacked in this area?” Arnem asks, wanting to forget the old man and, above all, hoping Niksar will not ask why the peculiar character believed Arnem might remember him.

“There have been a few incidents, but most have occurred within the Fifth District itself. It’s the newcomers — young people from the villages along the Meloderna, for the most part — who continue to pose the problem. They’re coming in increasing numbers, and when they arrive …”

“And when they arrive, they find no priests of Kafra handing out gold on the streets. They find they have to work, just as they did at home.”

“But most know nothing of the kinds of work to be found here,” Niksar says, nodding. “And so they pass their days begging, and their nights in taverns. Or at the Stadium.”

“They ought to pass them in the barracks,” Arnem declares. “A few years of campaigning would take the