The Legend of Broken

that you, like your former acolyte, have somehow found it in your soul to forgive my participation in your torture and intended abandonment to death?”

“You may assume nothing, Sentek,” Caliphestros replies. “For it is not I who have called for truce.”

“No?” Arnem asks. “Well, it cannot have been the member of your party who was presiding over the game of knucklebones as I approached, surely.”

“No,” Caliphestros says, leaning over, stroking the white panther’s neck, in a motion both vague and clearly threatening toward his opponents, and glancing at the now-fearful Heldo-Bah with a deep anger. “It would be neither my place nor his to assert such authority within the Bane tribe, nearly all of whom were as ignorant or uncertain of my continued existence as were you and your people, until a matter of days ago. You must address yourself to the Groba Father and his Elders, who alone speak for the Bane. Were it up to me …” And at this instant both the old man and the panther look up as one, Caliphestros’s slate grey eyes and Stasi’s brilliant green orbs seeming to contain an inscrutable sentiment: “Were it up to me, I might well have allowed every soldier in the Broken army to enter Davon Wood, to share in the fate already met, and so richly deserved, by the khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard.” But then Caliphestros’s manner softens. “Although that is likely my half-legs, and not my mind, speaking.”

Arnem nods knowingly. “I believe so,” he says, his tone contrite. “For of all people, I suspect that you know that to speak of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard and the true soldiers of Broken, especially the Talons that face you now, as if they were in any way similar, does neither my men nor your wisdom justice.”

“True,” Caliphestros replies. “And that is the only reason why I am here …”

Still attempting practicality, Arnem nods and states, “Your attention to protocol is wisely worded, and I shall heed it.” He then looks at the man who, by his slightly superior appearance and bearing, he takes to be the Bane leader. “You are the Groba Father, then?”

The Father, who more than makes up in courage what he lacks in height, takes one or two steps forward. “I am, Sentek,” he says with great courage, earning him respect among members of both lines of the truce. “And perhaps it would, as my friend Lord Caliphestros intimates, be the most honest way to begin this discussion by telling you that the Merchant Lord might have sent emissaries, rather than his personal Guard, to us, and together we might have addressed the terrible ailments that we now know afflict your people as well as, at least in the case of what Lord Caliphestros calls the rose fever, our own. But instead, he chose our moment of weakness to attempt to achieve the long-cherished, inexplicable desire of your God-King and the Kafran priests to destroy our tribe.” Taking one deep, steadying breath, the Father finishes: “Which, I gather, was your original reason for leaving the walls of your foul city, as well.”

“Not our reason, Father,” Arnem says grimly. “Our orders. But know this — that same order cost me both my teacher and my oldest friend—”

The Groba Father nods. “Yantek Korsar.”

“As well as Gerolf Gledgesa,” Caliphestros adds solemnly.

Surprised, Arnem looks for a moment to Caliphestros, and then at Visimar. “Well — whatever ‘science’ you two practice, I continue to learn why it terrified the priests of Kafra so. For this is not knowledge I expected you to possess.”

Caliphestros shrugs. “In the first instance, simply an accident of discovery, Sentek,” he says. “In the second, a communication from Visimar. There was no great mystery in either case. But please — proceed …”

Arnem resumes, still a little unnerved by Visimar’s and now Caliphestros’s ability to state matters of fact before the sentek himself can reveal them, “That order not only cost myself and my kingdom such men, but was issued long before we knew of any diseases at large throughout either your or our own people, or of any attempt to remake the city of Broken itself by use of violent force. Had these facts been known to me in advance … I can say that I should not have been willing to play a part in them.”

“Some would say that you ought to have questioned such orders, nevertheless,” Caliphestros declares flatly. “Yantek Korsar certainly did — and I have seen his body hanging along the banks of the Cat’s Paw, as a result.”

Arnem blanches considerably, before murmuring, “Have you, indeed …?” Then he uses his commander’s discipline to try to recover his composure, and looks to the Groba Father. “And would you, sir, also have expected me to thus disregard orders? It is well and good for exiles and men of the shadows to talk thus—” He glances at Caliphestros. “But could you forgive such impertinence from the man I now suspect to be at once one of our most formidable and most honorable opponents, over the years — Yantek Ashkatar?” Arnem lifts a respectful finger to indicate the stout Bane commander with the coiled whip, who, in his turn, draws himself up more proudly.

Considering the question momentarily, the Groba Father replies, “No, Sentek Arnem. We likely could not. Very well, then. We shall accept your answer in the spirit of this truce and this … negotiation. But the Groba will ask you an equally direct and crucial question, in return, one that I hope you can answer in the same manner—” Now stepping further to the nearly precise midway point between the two lines of negotiators and the spot where stands the Ox, with his rider sitting high above, and earning still more respect among the officers of the Talons for doing so, the Groba Father locks gazes with Arnem fully before asking:

“Will you, Sentek, agree to having your eyes and hands bound, and in that condition, to accompanying our party to Okot, there to observe the full effects that the fever with which your people have poisoned the Cat’s Paw have wrought, and to discuss what our forces may do together to bring a halt to the crisis, both for your people’s sake and for our own? Lord Caliphestros seems to think that you will — but I confess to my own doubts. You see, as a younger trader, I once spent a very long night beneath the Merchants’ Hall in Broken …”

Arnem sits back in his saddle: plainly, this not a question that he has anticipated.

“It is the simplest way in which to demonstrate to you how at least the one disease — the rose fever — is spread,” says Caliphestros. “As well as how and where both it and the Ignis Sacer—the Holy Fire — may be originating within the city and kingdom of Broken: which, I believe I have determined, is indeed their source — a determination that your own wife, I suspect, has made, which is part of the reason she is now so persecuted.”

“My wife?” Arnem echoes. “You have been in communication with my wife? And you know where the fever originates, Caliphestros?” Arnem says, shock following upon shock. “For we have already determined, with Visimar’s and, I suspect, your aid, that the rose fever taints the waters of the Cat’s Paw. How can you know its origin more exactly?”

“In good time,” Caliphestros responds. “Finally, the journey to Okot will also give me a chance to show you how the fabled walls of Broken may at last be breached and the Merchant Lord defeated, should you deem it right — or, more to the point, necessary — to do so. For you see, after many years of study, I have at last discovered the meaning of, and the solution to, the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone.”

Arnem’s face betrays shock, once more, and this time it is a shock shared by the Broken commanders behind him. “Truly, old man? Then that riddle was not merely one more fancy of our founding king, Oxmontrot — whom men such as Lord Baster-kin insist on calling ‘mad’—in the years before his death?”

“The longer I live, Sentek,” Caliphestros replies, “the less I believe that any of Oxmontrot’s thoughts were ‘fancies’—or that he was mad, at all.” The old man sits back on Stasi’s shoulders. “Well, Sixt Arnem — will you agree to the Father’s proposition, and come to the place your superstitious citizens call the center of all that is malevolent?”

“Sentek — no, you cannot!” Niksar whispers urgently, and the other officers of the Talons murmur like warnings.

“Don’t listen to that man, Sentek,” Heldo-Bah quickly interjects. “He still owes me money!”

“I have told you, forager,” Niksar replies angrily, “the money is in my tent—”

“I shall of course stay within the Talons’ camp,” announces Ashkatar, taking a step forward of his own and attempting to quash this momentary, foolish squabble. “As a guarantee of Sentek Arnem’s safety. So shall the foragers who brought Lord Caliphestros to us, in the first place.”

Heldo-Bah’s eyes suddenly look as if they will burst. “What?” he fairly screams. “I