The Broken House

by Tom La Farge

  Soon guns opened fire from the Inner Curtain. Cannon on the ramparts, small arms inside them had been turned inward and blazed into the City from every point around the ring of walls. Before long Drytung made out wedges of footsoldiers, mounted squadrons, and clanking armored battlewagons converging, driving rioters and citizens into the center, toward the Grand Basilica, while Protectorate siege-guns tore gaps in the ancient walls.

  “We’ll pen them like sheep,” said Shandimus with satisfaction. “Any reports yet, Adnomiast?” But Drytung’s earphones were dead. “Well, that’s that,” said Shandimus and shrugged off his dress tunic and the radio pack with it. Then in his shirtsleeves he leaned on the basket’s rim, like a man proposing to enjoy a quiet pipe and a dogfight in the street. “Take us down, Drytung. I want to see this.”

  Drytung steered over to the Palace, where there were fewer troublesome updrafts. The Palace precincts were deserted, but torches were working up the slope. The balloon sank over the ministerial quarter, and dignified streets opened to view. Down one a cluster of bearded popes came pelting with an indigo-clad mob close behind them, machetes raised. A blade swept down and a gowned body sprawled. Then they were over the park where bureaucrats came to eat their lunch in the shade of old trees. Lengthened bodies dangled from the branches now. In front of the Grand Basilica figures danced around a bonfire. A woman was being pulled towards the flames by her hair, arms flailing. “The beasts!” exclaimed Shandimus, seeing the Old Variety Theater in flames, gilding melting in fat drops from the figures on its pediment.

  Then he sighed. “Twice, now, I have made the mistake of linking my fortune with one whose destiny is low, unhappy. Yet she was my woman, Drytung. She loved me dearly, I saw it in her eyes. Then she left me on the Hook. I forgave her for that; indeed I blessed her for it. Her fortune was low, child as she was of most degraded types. I feared she would hold me back. It does not do to mix with unlucky folk, Drytung.”

  “You told me so on the Hook.”

  “Did I? Well, I believe it more strongly now. I thought I’d been wrong when she began to rise. ’Nna rising! I had never known that she was ambitious, but I could hardly condemn her for that. I’m ambitious myself, Drytung. I even wondered if our courses might not converge and bring us together again.

  “But you see I was right the first time. It is ’Nna’s destiny to be a curse—to bring destruction upon,” he swept his hand through an inclusive arc, “all this! The very haven she escaped the war to find. She has betrayed it, us all, me, herself.” Shandimus shook his head. “She really is Dunya,” he said. “I should have heeded the warning.”

  He took Drytung’s field-glasses and began to sweep the battlefield. Was he right? A plot, surely, there must have been, or how else would the enemy have known just when to blow the dam and extinguish the pharos at Rhem and all their own fires? They must have known about the secret missile. Could ’Nna have passed the secret to them? Why would she? To complete her revenge on Shandimus? Drytung considered the deep well of hatred that words such as Shandimus had spoken on the Hook would fill in the heart of someone like ’Nna. But would she wish to destroy everything she had built? Would she plot the ruin of her children? The ruin would leave her once more alone, back in the night, the forest, unseen, naked to the attacks of shame. But shame is the only real thing that shame knows, he thought. A fulfillment. But, he suddenly told himself, I know her to be good. ’Nna had used him for her own purposes, true, but he could not question this conviction: that ’Nna was good. The Protectorate must have bought someone else. Miyano?

  The balloon floated calmly above the shooting and screaming. Shandimus still hung over the basket’s rim, muttering orders that no one could hear. Drytung, his heart full and his mind clear, fell to thinking further. Dunya. He and Root had watched the first half of it; that might have been the last time he’d ever see Root. His heart contracted at the thought. No one knew him, read him as well as Root, upon whose boldness he had often drawn for courage. Was it possible that the last word he would ever hear from his friend was “Coo-coo”?

  What had he meant by it? There were cuckoos at the farm. Root had been amused by them, by their behaviors. “Just like birds in a fable,” he’d said, and then Drytung saw it. The cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird’s nest. The Despina had never been with child! She had bought Lhool’s newborn. The Infanta Anna was Root’s daughter! Had she been killed?

  ’Nna had said that the second half of Dunya would be very long. Was he, were they all living through it now? History — not what the historiographer writes down in his book, but all the events and causations, too many to be known—that was what was sweeping them along, away. He had stayed in the Roohaneeya when the others left. There had been no characters, no script, nothing to see in the dark well of the Roohaneeya; only supple drumming. But all the stations had been lit, and he had wandered through them all. Dream-chambers; but no, he could not call them that. Dreams, however strange, are built from familiar materials, whereas what he saw was new. It slipped past recognition and sank to an unreachable depth, from which it would return when he knew more. Images from the world larger than a garden, larger even than the field that eats at gardens. That’s what dunya is, he guessed and wanted to be there and not trapped in a cramped balloon-basket with Shandimus, who had begun to comment on what he could see through his glasses, as the balloon sank down the lower slopes. This district was in Blue control. The hunters and hunted were men and women; creatures whose world was growing smaller by the minute.

  “That man is trying a tortoise’s trick,” Shandimus said pointing. “He’s trying to squeeze into that ashcan, but he needs another hand outside to close the lid.” Some Blue Women found the man and flushed him out. “There’s a group coming out of that mansion. They’re wearing blue cloaks to blend with the mob, but one just turned and locked the door. Here come real Blues, look how they crouch. One from the house has taken off down that street. Oh, look, her scarf’s off, she’s showing her long hair, and she’s limping, I’ve seen plovers do that. She’s luring them, and they’re taking the bait. Now she’s turned a corner; now she’s covered her hair, she’s stooping over a corpse, rummaging. The Blues have run right by her. Now she doubles back.

  “Those down there are hunting in a pack. Two, look, have broken in the door of that house. There’s a Blue all by himself, stalking that family. Look how he makes himself small, uses cover to creep up on them. Now he’s making a dogleg behind that house; trying to get ahead of them. Now he flings himself at the father. He’s got them all! Women are scavenging among the bodies, the way the cattle egrets on my father’s farm used to follow the harrow, pecking at what it turned up.”

  Thus they sank to the flats and drifted east till they reached the zone where Shandimus’ troopers were predators and Blues prey. The army was driving toward the center. The uprising would be crushed; but now the balloon was being fired on, and they tossed out weight and from their greater height saw the second wave of predators, Protectorate commandos now, chasing on the heels of Shandimus’ soldiers still intent on chasing the Blues, ignoring the damage being done them.

  “Animals have no paradise,” was all that Shandimus said.

  “Creatures follow their nature,” said Drytung.

  “Yes,” Shandimus agreed. “They do that.”

  Then they were over Mole Place. It looked empty, a calm place to land, but the breeze off the river came in catspaws wild enough to keep Drytung’s mind on his piloting, till a burst of machinegun fire ripped through the bag above them and let out the gas. They dropped fast into one of the hornbeams that made a screen between Mole Place and the Mother of Gardens. The basket smashed, Drytung fell hard against a branch that struck his right arm a vicious blow. Heavy silk dropped on him; he clung with his legs till Shandimus found him and settled him in a crook. Then, grateful, he passed out.

  He came to at daybreak, lying on a piece of wicker basket wedged between two branches. The silk had been cut awa
y and his broken arm set in strips of it. Above his head pale light came filtering; the hornbeam’s branches spread limitlessly; neither could he see the ground beneath the tree. It was all a swimming green down there, and he wondered if he’d knocked his head and hurt his eyes. But an oblong drifted into view, of familiar shape and color, and so near, his eyes had no trouble reading LETTER FROM THE FIELD No. 5 printed on it in the typeface favored by Wassillis, his bookseller.

  “Mole Place is flooded!” he exclaimed.

  Shandimus grunted. He seemed to be packing a bag stitched from another piece of balloon-silk; he now took off his shoes and stuffed them in it. “They blew up the dam, didn’t they?” His feet were very white, and long brown hairs curled from the toes. Drytung had never seen feet so naked. “The wave came in while you were unconscious. It is a good thing the City is so far from the escarpment. The farmers along the Mother’s banks will have a fine crop next year, if any of them got out in time. And now,” he said, “I am going to leave you, Syr Drytung. I must see what’s left of my force and what direction my war is taking. I’ll likely have more falling-back to do.” He hung a tin flask from a branch in Drytung’s reach. “This is for you. Wait till the water drops, then you can climb down and wade. I’m off.”

  “Can you swim?”

  “No, but I can kick.” Shandimus yanked on a cable, and a second piece of the basket floated up beneath them. He lowered his bag onto it and jumped, vanished, sprang back, brown head sleek as an otter’s. Grasping the makeshift raft, he turned it and was gone, the last of him a pair of large white feet beating up a froth.

  38.

  Good-bye

  When the moon rose over the volcano, Piptiyya was in the garden, nursing the twins and thinking she might soon wean them. She turned and saw the plume, a pillar of white in the sky, and then heard feet tramping in the lane. Mules were marching past in their ranks; they were moving at a jogtrot. She said nothing to these grim men, and their profiles never turned. But a mounted officer who knew her stopped to drink from the glass she handed him, and he told her: dam blown, electricity cut, City in flames, the Despot and Despina killed. The Protectorate force had pulled back from the Nahloon; the Mules posted there had been summoned to the defense of the City.

  “And Shandimus?”

  “He has escaped in a balloon with your husband. He has ordered an attack into the City. That was the last we heard before we lost contact.”

  That was hopeful. Drytung had flown balloons. She went inside to make some order before leaving to find him. The twins, set down in the kitchen, had fallen asleep on the dog, who looked at her. She could not take them with her. She could fetch a neighbor’s daughter, but that would take time, and she must hurry. If she left now, Mules would clear her way. Fugitives must be pouring from the City. Would they break in here?

  “Guard them, Mshi,” she ordered and then went about locking things up, securing anything a child could use to hurt itself, packing some food and water. She put on Drytung’s cracked old leather tunic, a helmet and goggles, and went out, locking the door. At the shed she filled the motorcycle’s tank and pumped up its tires before wheeling it out into the lane. She had driven it two or three times and hoped she would remember how to brake and how to change gears.

  Two hours later she entered the City by the Postern Gate, riding on the heels of the Mules and relieved to have met not a single soul going the other way. The Mules loped off their own way, and she sped off along the canal and through empty streets. As she turned around the deserted traffic circle, she saw the glow of fires, large ones, down two of the boulevards that converged there, but nothing was burning along the way she now took to the Fondooq gate.

  She prayed that Drytung would be waiting at the Animal School, that they could go straight back home, but there was no one, only the donkey. So she ran to the garden pavilion and found it locked. She followed the path that Drytung took to ’Nna’s and came to the stair, the terrace, the diningroom windows, which were shut. But there was someone inside, leaning on the table, so Piptiyya smashed a pane and turned the handle.

  A woman in a stained, torn gown slouched forward, shivering in rhythmic tremors. Her hair was caked with blood, and her right hand, mangled, hung limp by her side, while the left, a sapphire ring on its fourth finger, braced her on the tabletop. A baby lay there, weeks old, swaddled in blood-stained purple silks. The woman did not stir at the smashing of the glass, but when Piptiyya shook her, she looked up. She was Annag.

  The baby was asleep and unhurt. Piptiyya took off her jacket and tore her shirt into strips. She tossed some iris out of a vase and used the water to swab dirt from her sister’s wounds, then bound them up in the strips. Then gave Annag water from her flask and made her lie on a couch, feet higher than her head, and covered her with a curtain yanked from its rings. When she’d stopped shaking, Annag said, “Thanks.” And, after a pause, “Take off your goggles.”

  When Drytung found them they were both on the couch, one sitting, half-naked with a baby at her breast, the other lying bandaged and laughing. He pulled another couch near them, too tired to speak, and Piptiyya examined the setting of his arm.

  “Shandimus?” Annag exclaimed. “He escaped?”

  Drytung told his story. Then he pointed to the baby.

  “That,” said Annag, “is the Infanta Anna.”

  The Women had carried the bleeding Despina to a chamber beneath the Throne, a washroom where she had expired. Then Lhool had entered with the Infanta and a revolver. “Which will you have?” she had asked, and Annag took the child while Lhool took her jewels, the Despina’s jewels, all the jewels in the room and strung them round her neck or stuffed them in her bosom. Then she had raised an iron plate in the floor and stepped into the hole. “You’d better take care of that one, V’Detsiniya,” she had said to Annag before climbing down.

  Then someone knocked on the door. Kaliskopa peered through the crack and, announcing that it was an officer, opened the door before anyone could protest. “Ladies, I have come to take you to safety.” He was saluting, dressed in the uniform of Stables, but Annag saw that he wore the wrong boots. While the others were herded out, she slipped down the manhole with the Infanta and found herself in the sewers. She had wandered there all night but met only two Blues, women, who jumped at her. She’d been wounded protecting the baby; it was the baby they were trying to kill, but Annag had wrested their machete from them, and they’d run. By and by she’d climbed a staircase and found the way out.

  They all looked at the baby. Drytung explained what he had reasoned out. Piptiyya studied the child’s features and nodded.

  “’Nna’s sister, then,” she said. “The twins’ aunt.”

  “But,” he said, “look at that purple! If Blues see her—”

  “Where’s the machete?” Piptiyya asked. She sliced a large sky-blue square from another curtain and wrapped the baby in that. “We’d better go,” she said, putting on her jacket, pulling down her goggles.

  “‘Piptiyya,’ eh?” Annag laughed. “I’m liking this Piptiyya.”

  “Will you come with us?”

  “No. I have to find Shandimus, since he’s planning to fight. But you are going to get out, as far as you can.”

  “I don’t know,” said Piptiyya.

  “No choice. She’s your reason,” Annag said, pointing at the baby. “Go to Mdenneq. As far east as you can go. Take money for supplies, you’ll be skirting the desert. There are veterans in Mdenneq, men sent out to garrison the town when the tribes were up in arms. They got land, found wives; they’re loyal. Build a network, Drytung, and wait to hear from me. They’ll listen to a Proximus! Good-bye, Kiki-now-Umm’-Piptiyya! I’m glad I’ve found you and glad you’ve found each other.”

  “Good-bye,” said Piptiyya.

  At the Animal School they found the donkey gone. A bunch of mint had been slipped into the ringbolt to which it had been tied.

  “You’ll have to ride behind me. Hold the
baby.”

  “Wait,” said Drytung. “I must go see about Root.”

  “Hurry!” Piptiyya said. “Ash is falling.”

  He climbed the stair, but there was no one. “Coo-coo,” he said and searched till he found the box marked NOTES FOR D. Many loose papers in it; on the cover of one thick wad was scrawled: THE ANATOMY OF HUNGER.

  Ash was falling faster as they left. The track was deserted, and soon they were at the farm, where the twins looked up a moment from their play with Mshi. They remembered they hadn’t eaten yet and then forgot, as they studied the new baby.

  Drytung first filled his pockets with all the cash he could find and stuffed his manuscript of The Answer into Root’s box. Then he went out to look at ash falling on his roses. From the figtree above ’Nna’s plot he looked across the valley. He could not see what lay beyond the further ridge.

  Piptiyya had bolted on the sidecar, stowed books, music, clothes, and food into its small trunk, tied on the spare tire. Drytung climbed in and received a pillow on his lap, then the twins, one on each leg, and the newborn in a basket at his feet. Piptiyya lashed the box of papers down behind her, then climbed in the saddle and kicked.

  Then they went, with Mshi lolloping ahead on his three legs, down into the Nahloon and then, laboring, up the other side, along lanes they had often walked, but never so far as the crest where, as they crossed it, the dog barked at the sight of so much unknown territory.

  The Broken House

  copyright ©2015 Tom La Farge

  ISBN

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data for the Print Edition:

  LaFarge, Tom, 1947-

  The broken house / Tom La Farge.

  pages ; cm. -- (The enchantments ; Book 1)

  ISBN 978-1-941550-25-0