by Caleb Carr
“If you bring what I ask, and the city’s builders do as I ask, I can control the plague here; and then, in time, it will die at its source—wherever that might be.”
“Yet you know full well where it is,” Baster-kin says.
“Do I? Perhaps.” As Isadora continues, her boldness returns: “One thing is clear: for all your theatrical torturing of that Bane, you are not certain. Yet I shall not speak of it: there will be no need, if the priests do as I say.”
“And if they do not?”
“If they do not, my lord …” Isadora lifts an arm, indicating the whole of the city. “There are forces within these walls that have ever wanted only direction and leadership, to put their plight to the ears of power. And they have that ability. Some among the kingdom’s powerful may have thought they were eliminating such a capacity by way of this plague; but they have, in fact, only given it greater force …”
{x:}
LORD BASTER-KIN HOLDS his ground in the face of this confident threat: threat, a variety of behavior that he has never before seen Isadora Arnem exhibit. Of course, that particular part of his mind that has always been prepared for threat from any quarter had said she might turn to it, this night. And so he feels no danger in admiring her strength for a moment, for he believes there is no reason to fear her demands and warnings—he has already calculated his response, which he now elaborates in statements that are perhaps even more shocking than were hers:
“Are you sure, Lady Arnem, that such men as these”—he indicates the streets about him—“can hope to defend this district against my Guard, whatever the shortcomings of that latter organization?”
“I never said as much,” Isadora replies. “But I have sent dispatches to my husband that indicate the state of affairs in this city, and, when he returns to us, not only the Talons, but the whole of the Broken army—of which you have placed him in charge—will be more than enough to rescue the fate of the Fifth District.”
“It would be,” the Merchant Lord agrees. “It is perhaps unfortunate, therefore, that by the time he returns, the Fifth District will no longer exist, at least in its present form, while its residents will either have fled the city or have been killed.” Baster-kin pulls his gauntlets from his hands with deceptive lack of concern. “That is, of course, assuming that your husband ever does return to the mountaintop.”
Isadora’s face goes helplessly pale; for she has known for most of her life that this is not a man who gives voice to idle threats. “Ever does return …?” she echoes, before she has had time to select her words more carefully. “Has my lord heard of some misfortune that has befallen the Talons in the field?”
“I may have,” Baster-kin replies, moving closer to her as he senses his ploy is succeeding. “But first, consider this: without your husband—who may, for all any of us know, be dead already—the Talons will not act against the God-King and his city; and without the Talons, the regular army will make no attempt to similarly intervene against the destruction of any part of their homeland. Then, failing any such intervention, the Fifth District will be cleansed by fire, and remade as a fit home for truly loyal citizens of Broken, citizens willing to give their wholehearted devotion to the God-King.”
Isadora’s sudden uncertainty consumes her for a long moment; but then she almost forces her confidence to return, in just the manner that her former mistress, Gisa, would have exhorted her to do: “My lord—you know full well the nature of plague. Whether it comes from a god or from man’s poison, from the Bane or from the mountain itself—for who knows what other cracks in its stone summit have appeared or shifted, over the years?—such pestilence can and must spread, if treated only through ignorance and superstition, as it will be, should you leave it attended to by Kafran healers alone.”
“Any other healers, particularly in the Fifth District, being somehow beholden to you,” Baster-kin replies. “There is no reason to deny it, Lady Arnem, my own inquiries have proved as much, over these last many weeks. But this is no reason for you to concern yourself.” To Isadora’s repeated look of silent consternation, the Merchant Lord delightedly takes a few steps forward, and places her hand upon his own. “You and your children need feel in no danger. I shall personally take you out of the district, and offer you shelter in the Kastelgerd Baster-kin. As time passes, the memory of this place, like your memory of your husband and your children’s memory of their father, will fade, and you shall envision a new future, a future devoid of squalor, poverty, and all the other ills of this place.”
Isadora nods slowly. “A future much like the one you imagined for us long ago, when I attended to your megrem in your family’s lodge at the base of the mountain; but now your father is no longer alive to object to the scheme, nor has Radelfer the power to prevent it.”
“Do not think me so entirely selfish, my lady,” Baster-kin replies; and there is a note of genuineness in his voice that even Isadora cannot deny. He places his second hand atop the one of hers that rests on his first. “I know how information travels among communities of healers in this city; I know that you must be aware of the … shortcomings of my own sons, and of their origins. Do not deny it, I beg you. But neither you nor I are past the age of bearing new children. Children who could take the name of Baster-kin, and bear it into another generation—a generation during which they could ensure the continued greatness of my clan, by assuming the leadership of this city and kingdom.”
Isadora shakes her head slowly, then finally whispers, “You are mad, my lord …”
Remarkably, Baster-kin only smiles. “Yes. I anticipated such a response from you, initially; but when the fires begin to blaze in the district, and when word comes of spreading disease among the Talons, and the citizens of these neighborhoods begin to either die or flee—will I seem so mad, then? When the safety of your children is at terrible risk, and you have but one way to save them—will this plan seem like such lunacy to you?”
Instinctively drawing her hand back in a sudden tug, Isadora looks at the man who, she suddenly realizes, is indeed still very much the boy she once treated for a crippling, maddening illness; and she shakes with the realization, not that his mind may be disordered, but that his power and his strange logic may make him frighteningly correct. “Your entire premise proceeds from two assumptions, my lord,” she says, not so haughtily as she would like to. “First, that my husband will, in fact, die—”
“Or may be dead already,” Baster-kin replies.
“And second,” Isadora continues, a deep shudder making itself visible in her body, much to the Merchant Lord’s satisfaction, “that the disease that is making itself manifest in the strangely recurrent stream of water at the base of the southwestern wall will suddenly and simply disappear.”
“As it will,” Baster-kin answers confidently. “For you yourself have told me that you know the secret to making it thus disappear. And make it vanish you shall—shall, that is, if you wish your children and yourself to escape the inferno that will soon engulf this district.”
And with another shudder of recognition, Isadora realizes that she has been, at least for the moment, outwitted, and that Rendulic Baster-kin has at long last gained the upper hand he longed for as a youth.
“None of these are propositions or notions that you can attempt to address now, my lady,” Baster-kin says, turning to signal the very curious Radelfer, and ordering him to bring the litter they arrived in to the spot where he stands. “And so, wait. We have both, it seems, cast our dice on gambits of extraordinary stakes—results over the next few days, or even weeks, alone will allow us, and particularly you, to come to any heartfelt decisions. Bearing that in mind”—as his litter bearers and his seneschal rush to where he stands, Baster-kin notices a new, stronger element of doubt creeping into Isadora’s features—“we shall, indeed, wait …” Pulling back the curtains of his litter, Rendulic smiles in a manner that Isadora has not seen since he was a youth. “But as you wait, think of this—your husband is a great soldier, who w
as perhaps always destined to die in the field, one day, campaigning against Broken’s enemies. And, should that death have already come, or were it to come now, would you truly have wished or wish now that your children perish amid what is a necessary and unstoppable change within this city? Is your loyalty to the squalor where you spent your own childhood really so extreme that you would allow that? I leave you with those questions, my lady—and with a quick demonstration, soon to come, of the God-King’s deep commitment to not only remaking Davon Wood, but to restructuring the Fifth District. My thanks for your guidance, and for your explanation of what is, I have no doubt, causing the deaths within the city walls.” He turns to his seneschal, who had expected that, by now, his master would be overcome by frustration, rather than strangely calm, even serene. “We go,” Baster-kin declares. “And Radelfer will maintain contact with you, my lady, in the event that you should require anything during the days to come—although that contact will have to be initiated, of course, by way of the city walls.”
“The city walls …?” Isadora says, increasingly confused.
“My meaning will become clear very soon,” the Merchant Lord replies. “Good night, my lady.” Baster-kin then vanishes into his litter, leaving Isadora none of the defiant—almost naely defiant, it seems now—satisfaction that she had thought the statements with which she had first presented her onetime patient would bring.
Radelfer turns to Isadora briefly, as confounded as she that he finds no expression of quiet triumph upon her face. Although he cannot say the words aloud, being too close to his lordly master, Radelfer would ask Isadora why this is so: why do her features not reflect the same expression that he had already perceived in Kriksex’s, the silent pledge that, When next we meet, we shall be on the same side of the storm that rises …?
Given this strange aspect upon Lady Arnem’s face, when Radelfer turns and sees Kriksex offering a final and distant salute of comradeship, the seneschal, suspecting that the kind of devious manipulation of which he knows Rendulic Baster-kin to be a master is at work, can only return the gesture half-heartedly. Then he suddenly begins to bark harsh orders at his household guards, who move at a near-run in order to get their master safely back out of the squalor of the Fifth District. But the seneschal does not move so quickly that he fails to notice that Kriksex’s men keep their blades drawn, as the Merchant Lord’s party passes: suspicion yet reigns—indeed, has been heightened—between the two groups of veterans, although neither can say why …
“And so, my lord,” Radelfer murmurs quietly, attempting a gambit of his own, “did my Lady Isadora fulfill your expectations?”
“Not yet,” comes Baster-kin’s surprisingly friendly reply. “But she is close.”
“Indeed, my lord?” Radelfer answers quickly. “Close to abandoning both the district of her birth and the husband of her children?”
“I realize that you may have thought as much impossible, Radelfer,” his lordship says. “But here is a fact that life has never taught you: set any obstacle between a mother and the safety of her young, and you will always gain an advantage—even if that obstacle be her own husband’s fate.” He glances briefly outside the curtains of the litter. “Are we passing back through the district wall at the head of the Path of Shame?”
“Aye, lord,” Radelfer says, suddenly less confused than he is worried.
“And all the elements that I called for are in place?”
“The crews and their masters are assembled, along with detachments of your Guard to oversee their labor; which, I presumed, was to take place in the Fifth—”
“I know what you presumed, Radelfer. But now know my order: they are to close and seal the gateway.”
“My Lord? I do not understand—”
“Nor need you, Seneschal. For my part, I must go to the High Temple at once, and assure the Grand Layzin that what was planned begins to take shape.” Baster-kin sighs heavily: with weariness, to be sure, but to an even greater extent with satisfaction …
At the base of the southwestern wall, meanwhile, as soon as Basterkin’s litter has disappeared, Isadora feels her legs go a bit weak; and from somewhere in the alleyway, her eldest son rapidly appears to support her. “Mother!” he calls. “Are you unwell?”
His mother makes no reply, at first, but takes a few silent moments to control the rate of her breathing, knowing that if it races as quickly as her heart, she will likely faint. In this state does Kriksex find her, as he rejoins mother and son; and his face, too, fills with concern. “Lady Arnem!” he calls out, struggling with his crutch as quickly as he can. “What has taken place? All seemed to go just as you had planned!”
“Just so, Kriksex—it seemed to,” Isadora gasps. “But I have ever been able to sense the soul of that man, and the conclusion was too abrupt, his departure too swift and sure—no, he has not done with us, this night …”
The woman Berthe, having observed her ladyship’s distress, has rushed to fetch a small, well-worn chair from a friend’s nearby house. “My lady!” she calls, as she stumbles out the doorway of the house with the stick of furniture; she also exhibits the self-possession to immediately dispatch her eldest daughter with a pitcher to the wells at the head of the Path of Shame, where the girl can fetch clean water for the brave woman who seems to have brought the beginnings of dignity to the Fifth District.
Meanwhile, as Lady Arnem waits for this relief, Kriksex stands over one of her shoulders, having guessed that negotiations with Lord Basterkin will be protracted and producing a rough map of the manner in which he intends to deploy the main body of their veterans during the coming interval. Dagobert looks over his mother’s other shoulder at the scrap of parchment, while the rest of the men who have guarded Lady Arnem’s party hold their torches aloft in a semicircle, to illuminate the study and the subsequent discussion that takes place—
And then the moment that had seemed, to all save Isadora, to offer some kind of hope, is shattered by a child’s voice: it is Berthe’s daughter, who screams in alarm …
Down the alleyway the girl comes, followed, strangely, by the bulger guards, Bohemer and Jerej, whose expressions are not altogether devoid of the horror that fills the young girl’s face; and as the three draw closer to the group beneath the wall, the child’s words become distinct, although they seem to make little sense:
“Mother!” she cries. “Men are at the wall—they are closing it! We will be trapped!”
Weeping, and spilling water from the pitcher she so nobly attempted to fill, the girl throws herself into Berthe’s arms, handing what little water remains in the vessel to Dagobert.
“It’s true, my lady,” Jerej says, catching his breath. “Masons lay stone as fast as it can be brought to them, protected all the while by the Merchant Lord’s Guard.”
“The good Lord Baster-kin,” Bohemer adds, bitter sarcasm in his voice. “He must have had most of the city’s masons assembling, even as we were distracted here.”
Dagobert looks down in alarm. “Mother …?”
But his mother is already murmuring in reply: “So that was his meaning—‘by way of the city walls …’ ” Then, never one to allow a moment of crisis to stun her for long, Isadora looks up, encouragement in her features. “But it must make no difference. It must be treated as a sign that we have struck close to the hearts of those who have committed the various outrages within this district.”
Having done what she can to embolden those around her, Isadora takes a few steps off on her own, and is allowed to do so by her comrades, who sense her exhaustion. Looking up at the city wall once more, she whispers:
“Forgive me, Sixt. But we who have remained in our homes must see this business through to its end—just as you, belov husband, must safely navigate the dangers you face on your campaign …”
She is about to issue more commands aloud to those who stand about her; but then sounds still more alarming than the screaming of Berthe’s child echo through the streets: it is the hard pounding of leathe
r-soled boots against the granite of the walkway atop the walls, and then the voices of soldiers calling out orders to their men. Moving back from the wall, Isadora and the others look up, their men with torches spreading out so as to cast light in a wider upward arc—
And they are there. Not men of the Merchant Lord’s Guard, this time, but soldiers of the regular army, their cloaks of rich blue and their numbers forming a near-continuous line atop the wall. In addition (and most frighteningly, for the residents below), they bear regular-issue Broken bows. Before long, an almost ritual wail begins to rise from many men and women in the streets and houses below—but not from the local children, who flock to aging, stoical veterans, rather than to their near-panicked parents, and who try as best their young hearts will allow to adopt the old soldiers’ dispassionate demeanor.
“You men above!” Isadora calls to the soldiers, with real authority and effect. “You know who I am, I daresay?”
“Aye, Lady,” says one particularly wide, bearded sentek, who needs not shout to be heard. His face is well lit by the torches his own men carry, and it is vaguely familiar to Isadora. “You are the wife of Sentek—or rather, Yantek—Arnem, our new commander.”
“And you are Sentek—”
“Gerfrehd,” the man replies. “Although I can understand your unfamiliarity with it. For as my cloak indicates, I serve in the regular army. But rest assured: you are well known to me, my lady.”
“Good,” Isadora calls back. “And, while I do not expect you to disobey orders that doubtless bear the Grand Layzin’s seal, I do think you owe me, as wife of your commander, an explanation of your appointed task.”
“Certainly, Lady Arnem,” replies Sentek Gerfrehd. “We have been told of insurrection in the Fifth District—but we do not come to engage in any precipitate action.”