The Legend of Broken

by Caleb Carr

  “If you mean your lordship’s lodge below the mountain,” Isadora comments, “it was indeed a lovely spot, particularly in comparison to so much of this district.”

  “And yet you choose to live here still?” Baster-kin queries.

  “Like me, my husband was born here,” Isadora answers. “And wished, as he wishes, to remain.” Now it is her turn to glance outside, with an air of some slight despair that Baster-kin finds oddly encouraging. “I do not know that I could have lived my entire life in this part of the district, which was my home until I met him.”

  “I cannot pretend to comprehend how dismal a place it must have been for a child,” Baster-kin says slowly. “Nor why you and your husband would have chosen to stay—particularly now, when the sentek has been promoted to the leadership of the whole of the Broken army, and you could live in any part of or residence in the city that you might choose to request of the God-King.”

  “Look about yourself once more, my lord,” Isadora says. “Many of these people are victims of their own perfidy and vice, but many others are merely unfortunate victims of circumstances that made this district an inevitable home. Citizens, for example, whose ill fortune is not the result of dissolution or of ill intent, but of the loss, many years ago, of the head of their family to war, or of a limb of that family elder to those same conflicts. It is a cruel and unjust truth, my lord, that many Broken soldiers, having left the army and returned to the district, are unable to find work that would allow them to leave, while some cannot even afford shelter, here, and so haunt these streets night and day, begging and stealing, many of them, and forming a new sort of army: an army of ghostly reminders of the occasionally cruel ingratitude of kings.”

  Baster-kin holds up a mildly warning hand. “Be careful, my lady, with the words you choose,” he advises earnestly.

  “All right, then—of the ingratitude of governments,” Isadora says, with an impatient nod of her head. “Then, as well, there are workmen—masons, builders—who have suffered crippling injury during the continual construction of this city’s and its kingdom’s houses of government, worship, and wealthy residency, and who are similarly left with no choice but to bring their families here, to the Fifth. You shall meet some such men when we reach our destination—but I ask you now, do not such people deserve at least one capable and honest healer to assist them, and does that not justify my staying and trying to help?”

  “They deserve more than that, Lady Arnem,” Baster-kin replies. “And the worst residents of this district deserve certain things, as well—and, before long, all shall receive them, you have my word.” Despite the apparent charity and condescension embodied in these statements, it occurs to Isadora that there ought to be a sharp difference in quality between Lord Baster-kin’s first and second uses of the word “deserve.” She has no time to dwell upon the subject, however, as Baster-kin suddenly draws the curtains of his litter wider apart. “By Kafra, where can we be? A place of rare evil, if even the stars offer little light.”

  “We approach the southwest wall, the shadow of which grows ever longer,” Isadora replies. “Deeper into the district than even I will venture, any longer—although I did as a child. It was my happy habit, then, to investigate most such neighborhoods, sometimes at foolish risk. But I learned much …”

  “No doubt.” Lord Baster-kin looks to Lady Arnem and studies her face for a moment. And that, he muses, is what will make you such a superb judge of what this city and this kingdom will require, in the months and years to come …

  “And one thing I learned, above all,” Isadora says, completing her thought. “There are at least some citizens in this district who recognize that the original planners of the city—”

  “ ‘Planners’?” Baster-kin interrupts, a little less enthusiastically than he has sounded, to this moment: “You mean the planner, don’t you? For there was but one—Oxmontrot.”

  Isadora deflects the man’s critical tone with a charming smile. “Forgive me, my lord,” she says; and Baster-kin, of course, cannot help but do so. “My husband has told me of your great dislike for the founder of the kingdom, and I did not wish to tread upon your sensibilities. But, yes, Oxmontrot, whatever his other faults, preached habits of personal and public cleanliness—if you will remember, my mistress and tutor was wont to speak of them, during our time together, by the name the Mad King originally gave them: heigenkeit. Yet how could the Mad King”—and here Isadora ventures to actually touch Baster-kin’s gloved hand and laugh lightly for effect, seeing that she is drawing her companion in—“particularly as he was, for all his wisdom, apparently going mad even then—how could he have known that what were, in his time, necessary and rigorous policies, such as the creation of the Fifth District for his ag and injured soldiers and laborers, would one day become of far less concern to his heirs? Heirs who, having become divine and removed to the inviolable safety and sanctity of the Inner City, were forced to depend all the more on advisors, too many of whom—unlike yourself—were district officials and citizens with less than sound or honest ends in mind, and who thereby helped to create, unintentionally, of course, this—this disgrace that we see about us now?”

  “Admirably expressed, Lady Arnem,” Baster-kin says, turning to look again on the street about him, so that his true enthusiasm for both the thoughts and their speaker will not become obvious in his face. “I doubt if I could have put the matter any better, myself.” At that, he searches their immediate surroundings again, as if suddenly more surprised by their appearance than he is by Lady Arnem’s thoughts. “By Kafra,” he murmurs, “I do believe that this neighborhood is actually taking on an even more dismal aspect …”

  Dissatisfied to see and hear that her brief outburst of opinion and feeling has apparently had so little effect, Isadora also looks outside: Is it possible, she thinks, that he truly has lost the deep, the consuming affection that he had for me, however childish, when he was but a youth? For, ironically, much as she had once feared that boyish and diseased form of devotion—a sickness that Gisa had called obsese—she had been depending upon some part of it still being alive, in order for her plan of this evening to succeed. But she remains calm, knowing that she has another stratagem in mind with which to achieve the same goal.

  {viii:}

  THE TWO LITTERS STOP before what is undoubtedly the worst of several abominable houses on a block of the street lying in closest proximity to the southwest wall. Baster-kin’s imperious bearing upon stepping out and into the midst of the human traffic that fills the neighborhood about them cannot help but suffer some small diminishment, as soot-encrusted groups of residents and indigents immediately begin to gather about his own and Lady Arnem’s litters; but the quick drawing of no less than eight well-oiled blades, ranging from the shortest (Dagobert’s marauder blade) to the imposing length of Radelfer’s raider sword, soon persuade these crowds to, if not disappear, at least move farther off. It is with some sense of quickened purpose that Isadora, Dagobert, Lord Baster-kin, and Radelfer’s guards head toward the miserable hovel that can scarcely be called a house, while the bulger guards remain behind to protect the litters.

  So strange has been, first, the ghostly gathering round of the neighborhood’s residents, and then their sudden dispersal, that those in the visiting party who have not yet been to the neighborhood are visibly shocked when a ravenous, maddened hound bursts forth from behind a large piece of half-burnt, unidentifiable wooden furniture that had simply been flung from the house into the yard before it at some past date. The beast bares its enormous teeth while hurtling toward one of the shorter of Radelfer’s men, its bestial and unending threats, along with its scarred but pronounced muscles, momentarily creating the impression that the chain by which he is secured will give way; an impression that causes more than one guard to raise his blade.

  “Do not!” comes Baster-kin’s sharp order; but this stay is ordered only when it has become clear that the chain will not in fact break, strong as the animal may be. “Ar
e you children, that you need a good Broken short-sword to fend off a chained dog?” Baster-kin angrily asks Radelfer’s men, and Isadora is gratified to see that the question is not posed to impress her, but is in fact a genuine sentiment. The scarred beast retreats and grows calmer when Isadora tosses him a bit of dried beef she has brought for the purpose; and she then urges the men behind her through the front doorway of the house, after having taken hold of the table that blocks it.

  “Spare yourself, my lady,” Radelfer says, deftly stepping in front of her. A hint of his youthful strength, which must have been considerable, is offered by the manner in which he effortlessly picks the heavy, unwieldy slab of wood from the ground and quickly shifts it to one side. “I meant no insult,” Radelfer adds with a smile, remembering that the young Isadora was always loath to have men perform tasks for her that she was capable of undertaking, herself. “But I must precede my master into this dwelling, as it is, so why not make one task of two?”

  Isadora does no more than nod proudly to this logic, casting his action in a different light: “You at least speed our visit, Radelfer—in a neighborhood such as this, to be remarked upon is unremarkable: the silence now surrounding us shows that many are waiting to discover our purpose, and if we can achieve it and be away before they have gathered again, all the better.” The group forms four parties—Radelfer and two of his household guard to the fore, Isadora, Lord Baster-kin, and a proud Dagobert next, and finally, Radelfer’s last two men, their eyes ever on what and who follows behind.

  The squalor within is no great shock to Isadora, who long ago grew used to such sights, during her childhood with her parents and Gisa. The hovel’s floor is granite strewn with Earth and dust; a sack filled with hay evidently does for a bed for some five terrified children across the chamber, while the sack before the fire is occupied by their ailing father, with the oldest of the children using a filthy, moistened cloth to wipe at his forehead. The woman who lives there, Berthe, quickly rushes to Isadora, terrified by the sight of the men around her, and most especially by the gaze of Lord Baster-kin, which has gone harder, not softer, at the unpleasant sight of these impoverished surroundings.

  “Apologies, my lady,” Berthe whispers. “I had intended to try to order affairs here at least somewhat less offensively—”

  “Lady Arnem—what is it that you have brought me here to see?” Baster-kin asks imperiously. “For I am acquainted with failure and disgrace, in nearly all their forms.”

  Isadora gives Berthe a sympathetic smile and clutch of one arm, then urges her back to her husband’s side. As the woman goes, Isadora turns a gaze to match Rendulic Baster-kin’s own on him. “Such harshness is hardly necessary, my lord, given the circumstances that are plain enough, here.”

  Berthe has returned to the duty of wiping her husband Emalrec’s feverish brow. He gives off the powerful stenches of rotted teeth and food, human waste, and sweat; but none of this slows Isadora, who urges the Merchant Lord on. “Come then, in the interest of the kingdom, if no other,” she says, at which Baster-kin covers the lower portion of his face once more with the edge of his cloak, and watches as Isadora pulls away the light, filthy shirt that covers the groaning Emalrec’s neck and trunk, just enough to reveal his chest. “It is all right, Berthe,” Isadora says, seeing that the woman’s terror has only grown. “These men will do him no harm, I promise you …” Picking up the barest end of a candle that is seated in a shard of pottery nearby, Isadora indicates the patient’s exposed skin to Lord Baster-kin—

  And he need see no more. Not wishing to spread his concern about the house or the neighborhood, he urges Isadora toward the back of the next room, and even manages a smile for the huddled, filthy children, as he passes them by to a rear entryway. Further along, there is a small square outside, a long-lifeless patch of Earth shared by three houses. A latrine—its walls long since fallen away, and its four-holed granite bench concealed, now, only by near-useless curtains suspended from similarly degraded ropes and poles—stands in the center of this yard, the holes in the bench leading directly down to the city’s sewer system.

  Dismal as this picture is, however, Lord Baster-kin’s mind is still fixed on what he saw in the room. “I do not pretend to be an expert such as yourself, Lady Arnem,” he says quietly, not even wishing his household guards to hear the words. “But, unless I am badly mistaken, that man is stricken with the rose fever.”

  “You are remarkably well informed,” Isadora answers. “Not many could detect its markings so accurately—or so quickly.”

  “Thank you; but returning to the illness—” Baster-kin’s face is now a mask of pure responsibility. “It spreads among people, particularly in areas lived in by such large numbers of people, as fast as the Death, even if more survive it than do that worst of all illnesses.”

  “Quite true,” Isadora answers, now becoming a little coy: a dangerous game to play, at a moment such as this.

  “And am I right in suspecting that you have some insight into the method of its spread, on this occasion, my lady?” Baster-kin asks.

  Isadora continues her bit of playacting, praying that her fear does not bleed through it: “There are theories, of course, but there are always theories, from healers. All we can be certain of is, if that man is stricken by it, it will soon appear in many, perhaps most, houses in this neighborhood: quite possibly in this district. And from there …”

  “But what of your theory?” Baster-kin asks, in considerably less pleasant or patient a tone.

  Isadora urges Baster-kin farther back, into the small, dusty yard. “My lord,” she begins, “you knew my mistress Gisa and, unless I am very much mistaken, you knew her to be, whatever her private beliefs on the subjects of the spirit and religion, a healer without equal in this city.”

  “You are not wrong,” Baster-kin answers. “Gisa knew her place in this kingdom, and never sought to advance herself past it, nor to betray its fundamental laws.”

  “So, then,” Isadora continues, drawing a deep breath. “You would be inclined to believe suggestions that originated with her?”

  “You were a wise and kind minister of her cures,” Rendulic Baster-kin says. “But I was ever aware that the cures were hers. And so, yes, I would be inclined to believe her, and now, you, above nearly every other pretender to the office of ‘healer.’ But what has any of this to do with matters in this house, and this district?”

  “First”—Isadora works hard to still the tremor in her voice—“allow me to show you an extraordinary display of patriotism further from this house and these Plumpskeles …”

  “Lady Arnem!” Rendulic Baster-kin calls, as she begins to walk even further from the house, down a narrow pathway that his lordship, his eyes having grown accustomed to the darkness, can now see leads to an only slightly wider alleyway beyond. “I would rather you remember yourself, as I am sure your husband would, than to revert to the behavior and language of this—place …!”

  “Why, Lord Baster-kin,” Isadora says without turning, and now smiling just a bit: for she has rattled this supremely confident man. “Do not tell me that this situation unnerves you? But come …” Then, in a supreme bit of theater, Lady Isadora holds her own arm out, to wait for the now-familiar resting perch of his lordship’s own. “Time and plague bear down upon us …”

  Baster-kin obliges without answer; and as he does, Isadora’s steps become easier.

  The alleyway into which Isadora leads her “guest” eventually terminates in the mighty edifice of the city’s southwest wall, which looms over everything beneath it. Confronted by the dark mass before him, the Merchant Lord pauses at the alleyway’s head, and says, “You pile mystery upon mystery, my lady—and to what end? I have already said, I would be inclined to believe you in this matter.”

  “To believe is hardly to witness,” Isadora calls. “Come, my lord. You need not wait for your men—for we shall have guards enough, upon our brief journey …”

  Before it can reach the great edifice nea
r its terminus, the narrow alleyway down which the pair walk leads into that broad military path that runs about the entire base of all the walls of Broken, and is kept constantly free of any form of congestion so that the soldiers of the city may always move freely to and along that critical route to their positions. Thus, the alleyways adjoining it must be kept as dark and clear as the greater path itself. These highly secluded spots in a very questionable neighborhood, when used by persons not of the army, are places where transactions of an illegal nature take place: the buying and selling of stolen goods, unlicensed whoring, or, as ever and perhaps most common of all, robberies and murders.

  How strange then, that each doorway of this particular alley leading to the imposing southwest wall of the city—a wall which is easily twice or three times as high as the largest of any of the shacks below, and still bears the clear marks of enormous, long-handled chisels and wedges—is apparently guarded, by two long lines of sentry-like men on either side of the passageway: not particularly young or healthy men, but men, most of whom are wan with age, sometimes supported by canes or crutches, yet all still possessing an essential military demeanor that cannot be manufactured; and, oddest of all—to Lord Baster-kin’s eyes, at any rate—it is the single most ag and crippled of these figures, a thin, balding wisp of a man with a crutch, who is at the head of the alley, and in apparent control of the rest. He holds a Broken short-sword in his free hand, while staring at the Merchant Lord with a peculiar smile.

  Blows and wounds seem entirely possible, although it is not clear between whom—instead, however, the ancient man on the crutch sheathes his blade, and hobbles toward Isadora and Lord Baster-kin.

  “Lady Arnem,” Baster-kin murmurs quietly, to Isadora’s further satisfaction, “what, in the name of all that is holy, have you led me into …?”