me have one last moment alone with Dalin. I think I shall be safe.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it, Mother,” Gelie calls, as Anje drags her from the hallway into the sitting room nearby. “He’s dangerous, truly — I may be killed, after you leave!” As Anje pulls the little one along, Gelie adds, “Although, if I am, I’m sure no one in this family will care!”
Isadora chuckles, and for an instant light comes into her eyes, which are so deeply blue as to appear almost black, at moments. “That’s nonsense, Gelie, and you know it,” she replies.
Gelie forces Anje to pause. “It is?” she says brightly.
“Yes,” says Isadora simply, without turning to the girl. “You know perfectly well that your father would be devastated. So would the cats.”
Gelie turns, stamping her feet hard for effect as she enters the sitting room. “That’s cruel, Mother — just cruel!”
Laughing lightly at this declaration, Isadora looks to the doorway through which Gelie has disappeared, and murmurs, “I honestly think that we will have to find a king for that one to marry …” Turning to find Dalin still unamused, Isadora approaches a table by the entryway, taking from it a silver clasp. Her son knows the object: it depicts the face of a furious, bearded man, one of whose eyes is covered by a patch, and on whose shoulders sit two large, crow-like birds.† Glancing at the clasp and wondering (not for the first time) why it is not Kafra’s face that smiles out from its surface, Dalin senses an opening, which he seizes as his mother fixes the clasp to her gown beneath her cloak:
“Mother — is it true what they say about you?”
Isadora’s blood stirs. “People say many things about your father and me, Dalin. Do you listen to gossip?”
“It’s not gossip — it doesn’t sound like gossip, at any rate.”
There will be no avoiding yet another subject that Isadora hopes to avoid, it seems: “And what is it that people say?” she asks.
“That you — they say—” The boy can scarcely form the words. “They say that you were raised by a witch!”
Her annoyance and anger deepening, but still scarcely detectable, Isadora says evenly, “She wasn’t a witch, Dalin. Just a wise, odd woman, of whom silly people were afraid. But she was the most learned healer in Broken, and she was kind to me — she was all I had, remember, after my own parents were murdered.” She faces the boy, filling her words with weight: “Besides, I’d like to think that you are wise enough not to listen to stories like that. You know that empty-headed people say all manner of malicious things about us, because your father is so important, but wasn’t born wealthy. Many in this city resent his success. But far more think him a great man — so, when you hear people talking about your parents, have the nerve to dismiss them for the worthless souls they are, and walk away. And now—” Isadora walks to the doorway at last. “I must go. Run inside, and if you don’t want to play with the others, then have cook make you something special to eat. Or, why not ask Nuen† to tell you marauder stories, while you practice swordsmanship?”
Isadora refers to the strong, cheerful woman of eastern marauder stock who has lived with the family as nurse, governess, and household servant for some thirteen years: ever since Arnem discovered her, along with several other women of her kind, during a brief campaign along the southeastern portion of the Meloderna valley, being used as slaves (and worse) in the fields and homes of grain merchants, in plain violation of Broken’s ban against such absolute servitude.
“All right,” Dalin replies, moving dejectedly away from her. “But I
As he disappears up the house’s central stairway, Isadora watches him go with a smile, the resemblance to his father occurring to her once again.
Finally, Isadora steps onto the stone terrace outside the doorway, and moves through the family’s spacious garden, which is surrounded by a ten-foot wall, on her way to a gate in the farthest side of that protective barrier, a wooden portal within a stone archway that gives out onto the Path of Shame.
The Arnem family’s garden is unique: the statuary, carefully tended plantings, and orderly pathways that fill the courtyards of the great houses in the First and Second districts are absent, and disorder by design reigns. Some years earlier, before Dalin developed his troublesome preoccupation with the Kafran church, it had been the desire of all the children to create, within the safety of their garden’s walls, a space much like the dangerous but fascinating wilderness that covers the slopes of Broken’s mountain below the walled summit. In particular, the Arnem brood took adventurous pleasure from the scenery that surrounds the noisy course of Killen’s Run, the rivulet that emerges from beneath the southern walls of the city to make its way to the base of the mountain and join the Cat’s Paw, before that mighty river storms its way along the northern edge of Davon Wood.
Sixt Arnem was both amused and impressed by his children’s notion: for, as we have seen, he was and is not a man who shares the taste of the kingdom’s most important citizens for excessive fineries; and he saw in his children’s idea a chance for them to learn about the Natural world outside the city without being exposed to the dangers of panthers, bears, and wolves, to say nothing of those malignant creatures who hunt children whilst walking upright: those troubling citizens of Broken who let their Kafran belief in purity and physical perfection bleed into unnatural lust for the bodies and souls of the very young.
And so, Arnem proudly put the family servants at the disposal of his three sons and two daughters for several days, and the project was undertaken. Cartloads of large, mossy stones, along with smaller rocks worn smooth by the waters of Killen’s Run, had been brought into the Fifth District from their original resting places, to the consternation of most of that district’s inhabitants. So, too, were imported, in not inconsiderable numbers, those creatures — fish and frogs, newts and salamanders — whose natural home was the waters of the Run, where they sought safe remove in which to breed beneath its larger configurations of stones. The safety of these delicate beings would be increased by the children’s plan, although the initial experience of being transported proved to terrify at least a few past their ability to survive the trip; most, however, were safely deposited in the artificial streambed that was cut into the Earth through the whole length of the Arnems’ garden. Ferns, wildflowers, rushes, grasses, and young trees were carefully transplanted along the banks and hillocks that lined the new waterway; while, in the greatest offense to those few persons of fashion from the Arnems’ class who were aware of the doings in their garden, a very old and, some said, important piece of statuary — a fountain that depicted Oxmontrot’s son, the God-King Thedric, vanquishing a forest demon that spat water from its pursed lips — was smashed to bits by the family’s two strongest servants, who, like the rest of the Arnems’ staff, proved enthusiastic in assisting the children in realizing their vision of a wild mountain stream. Where the statue had once stood, the children oversaw the construction of a waterfall, with the fountain’s spring-fed waters tumbling over a group of large, piled stones and into a deep, cold pool.
From out of this lovely and calming collection point flows the garden’s artificial breck† (as Isadora often refers to the thing, using what she had been told, as a child, was the language of her ancestors); and the
As she walks through this unfashionable but lovely setting, Isadora allows the peace of the garden to give her a moment of calm pause, for she knows that, having left the ever-loud and sometimes (in Dalin’s case) hurtful activities of her own children behind, she must soon enter the Fifth District, and its busiest thoroughfare, the Path of Shame. Fortunately, it is the quietest time of the day, in the district: the hours when drunkards sleep off their revelries of the previous night, or half-wittedly prepare for their next round. As she steps through the arched door in the thick garden wall, Isadora pauses, attempting to savor the moment. Yet there can be such a thing as too much quiet, even in the Fifth District. for, along with the sounds of adult debauchery and corruption, the comforting sound of children at play — children of an age that would make them suited to enter the royal and divine service — is also noticeably muted. But the diminution of this sound is not a change that varies from day to day; it has been steadily declining for months and even years, although Isadora tries to put meaningless explanations to the change, such as the citizens of her district having become so concerned with intoxication of various kinds that even fornication is losing its place in their schedule of daily activities—
