The Legend of Broken (20 page)

Whatever the reasons behind the momentary and relative quiet in her district, Isadora is forced, on this unseasonably warm afternoon, to hold her breath against the stench of the gutters outside her garden wall, and to hurry along the stretch of the Path of Shame between her house and the district wall. Affairs in this least squalid portion of the Fifth are declining, without doubt, just as matters are growing worse every day in the district as a whole. Granted, they were none too good even during Isadora’s childhood, when poverty had been but the first of her troubles. Her parents had been murdered by a thief in the district when Isadora was but six years old: the couple were rag- and rubbish-pickers, gleaning an existence from the enormous, redolent mounds of trash assembled by the nightly practice of running enormous wooden ramps out atop the southwestern wall of the city and dumping the populace’s garbage out onto the steep face on that side of Broken’s mountain. Whatever usable goods Isadora’s parents could wrest from these vast piles they bartered in a small stall that they operated in one of the less fashionable streets of the Third District; but despite the distasteful, backbreaking nature of this existence, the couple were devout Kafrans, convinced that, if they kept faith with the golden god, he would one day reward them with riches enough to grow old in peace—and that, whatever the case, it was better to worship a god who offered such hope in this life, rather than one who asked them to wait until the next reality for pleasure and satisfaction of all kinds.

Instead of such rewards, however, their sole blessing for devotion to Kafra was murder: they were stabbed to death by a drunkard as they returned to their home and daughter one evening, after what (for people of their desperate station) had been a particularly good day of trading. Following this tragedy, the woman who had long occupied the house next to theirs—the remarkably knowledgeable yet often disagreeable old healer called Gisa
†
—decided that she would take in the dead couple’s spritely little daughter. The girl had often been a visitor to the crone’s small, startlingly clean house, the walls of which were lined by seemingly endless numbers of vials, jars, and bottles, each of which contained some magical substance Gisa called
medicines,
medicines that nearly every citizen in the Fifth District (and a great many outside it) knew to be far more effective than the treatments of the Kafran healers.

Gisa offered to make of little Isadora both a ward and a student; and in time, as the child progressed from mere assistant to apprentice, she also came to understand that her mistress’s insistence on remaining in Broken’s seamiest district was no simple matter of poverty. Her work among the poor of the Fifth was not lucrative, but the secret cases she undertook in the dead of night in other districts (cases in which the Kafran healers revealed the extent of their ignorance) certainly were. Yet a spirit of mercy, as well as a refusal to abandon the old gods of the region that Oxmontrot forged into Broken, all meant that Gisa would never leave the Fifth District. In time, her ward had come to adopt similar sentiments and beliefs, in part because she determined to carry on Gisa’s medical practice after the crone’s eventual death, but also because of the manner in which her parents’ murders had been treated by the God-King’s servants.

Or, rather, because of the manner in which those killings had been assiduously
ignored
by those same officials. The poverty and disheveled appearance of the victims, their lack of pride and ambition, had marked their deaths, to every Broken priest, as religiously and legally—to say nothing of morally—irrelevant, no matter the extent of their devotion to the golden god in life. In time, Isadora bitterly accepted this fact, enough so that she began to make plans to carry on not only Gisa’s work but her ancient faith; and when, as an adult, she further emulated her teacher by periodically answering calls to save the life or ease the suffering of some worthy personage in the wealthier parts of the city, she, too, was very well paid for her efforts—but only, like Gisa, secretly. Finally, the most unqualifiedly happy events of her adult life—her encounters with and eventual marriage to Sixt Arnem, and the subsequent births of their children—were also a result of her decision to forgo Kafran celebrity and beliefs, and to remain in the streets of her childhood: her loyalty to the Fifth District was, through all these events, sealed.

Small wonder, then, that—even as the mother of five children who would be safer elsewhere—Isadora continues to insist on maintaining her family’s residence in this place. Certainly, that decision has joined neatly with her husband’s similar desire to remain in the neighborhoods of his youth; yet Isadora knows that Sixt would ultimately move the family to whatever part of the city she might choose, if she firmly insisted. But no; for Sixt, but above all for Isadora, who knew love and safety as a girl and a young woman only from persons scorned by Broken’s rulers and most powerful citizens, and who rejected all of the fundamentals of Kafran faith and society as a result, the assiduous continuance of her own and her family’s lives well out of the view of Kafran priests and their agents has continued to be a primary motivation:
particularly as she now happens to be a healer, one who is secretly what the Kafran priests and priestesses would call a heretic, just as they would have her teacher, had they known the full truth of her beliefs …

Isadora’s thoughts having remained fixed on her husband, her faith, and her children and home, during this walk, the sharp tug at the hem of her cloak is a shock, when it comes. She stops, to find in the dirt of the street a drunkard, much like the many who lie snoring in similar spots up and down the Path; but this fellow is awake, and his bony, filthy hand is capable of a firm grip. He grins, then drops his jaw to release the stench of cheap wine; and when he begins to laugh, the shaking of his body wafts the foul odor of his clothing far enough to reach Isadora’s nostrils.

“Please, lady,” the man chortles. “A few pieces of silver?”

Isadora does not hesitate to answer: the situation is not new to her. “I have little enough silver. If you seek work, come to my door, or to any good citizen’s, and ask for it. But I’d bathe, first.” She tries to move on—but also takes the precaution of unsheathing a small knife that she keeps hidden inside the sleeve of her cloak at all times.

It is well that she does so: for the man refuses to release her. “
Work,
lady?” he says bitterly. “And what work do you do for your silver, eh? This is a rich enough city to meet the needs of one lost soul!”

“Release my cloak, or lose your fingers.”

The man ignores the threat. “Too fine a lady to be wandering in the Fifth District all alone,” he says, attempting to pull her down with real force. “Maybe I don’t need silver, after all. Not so much as I need—”

Isadora would indeed slice a finger from the offending hand, were it not for the fact that the butt end of a spear catches the drunkard squarely in the chest, knocking him flat on the street and leaving him gasping hard for air. Isadora, surprised, turns to find Linnet Niksar, spear in hand.

Niksar kicks at the drunkard, hard enough to get him to his feet. “Go on, now—don’t make me use the other end!” he calls after the fleeing man. Then he softens his voice. “Your pardon, my lady,” he says, bowing quickly but gracefully. “I hope I didn’t startle you. Your husband dispatched me to escort you, as the hour grows late—”

“Thank you, Niksar,” Isadora says, “But I assure you, I was perfectly capable of handling the situation.” She returns her knife to its hidden sheath. “He was only a drunkard who wanted a lesson.” Niksar bows once again in deference, and Isadora’s aspect softens. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Reyne. I confess that I’m not in the best of spirits, at the moment.”

Niksar smiles, making sure the drunkard is retreating. “I’m afraid there are many more of them,” he says. “And they grow more restive every day. They seem to have it in their heads that silver grows in this city. We ought to let them have a term in the army …”

Isadora smiles. “You sound remarkably like my husband, Reyne. Speaking of whom, we’d best hurry along.”

“Yes, my lady,” Niksar replies, matching Isadora’s impressive pace.

Within moments Isadora and Niksar have entered the Fourth District, which is alive with action: two full
khotors
of regular army troops have been brought in from their camp on the mountainside, to defend the city in the absence of the
khotor
of the Talons. Hundreds of soldiers are milling about on the training and parade grounds, some slinging packs onto their broad backs, some undoing them and smiling, happy to be able to spend some time in the city barracks, rather than sleeping on the ground outside the walls. Spearheads and swords are sharpened, horses are made ready, and everywhere there is the laughter and shouting of men preparing for duty, at home as well as in the field.

A few of the men take note of Isadora’s arrival, and soon word is spreading about the camp, producing a healthy effect. If Amalberta Korsar had been beloved as the mother of the Broken army, Isadora Arnem is adored as the object of its collective amorous (but always respectful) sentiments. By the time she has reached the steps to her husband’s quarters, on the far side of the southernmost drill ground, crowds of men from a wide variety of units have begun to assemble before the pine log structure, the differing colors of their tunics and trousers—blue for the regular army, wine red for the Talons—for once causing no competition. They have come together for the happy work of sending off the men who are being readied to march—Broken’s five hundred finest soldiers (and luckiest, say the men who must stay behind); and each man hopes to get a glimpse of Isadora, as well as a chance to hear Arnem’s words of encouragement for the coming campaign. To the west, the sun is just beginning to set, sending the warm light of a spring afternoon to break through the dust kicked up by all the busy preparations: no one could ask for a better setting from which to begin the hard work ahead.

Above the Talons’ quadrangle and drilling ground, Isadora finds her husband in close council with the leaders of his
khotor
and their staffs, some ten men, in all, gathered around a rough-hewn table upon which sit half a dozen maps. Each of these men snaps to glad attention when their commander’s wife enters, busily saluting and bowing, laughing, rolling maps to be slipped into leather cases, and thanking Isadora for once again making the trip to their district, as well as assuring her of how much it will mean to their men.

As his aide delivers Arnem’s wife to him, the sentek calls out: “Thank you, Niksar. And now, gentlemen, if you will all join your units, I need a few moments with my wife, who wishes to remind me, I’ve no doubt, of how an officer in the field ought to conduct himself.”

Well-meaning mumbling to the effect of, “Aye, Sentek, we’re
certain
that’s how you’ll pass the time,” goes around the group of departing officers, causing a ripple of equally good-hearted laughter to pass through the small crowd. Arnem scolds the men as he follows them to the door and closes it tight. He then pauses as he turns to his wife, raising his brow and widening his eyes, as if to say,
What’s to be done, they are good soldiers, and good men, at heart …

“You are as popular as ever, as you can see,” Sixt says aloud, moving over to embrace his wife, who leans back against the table. “And they’re right—it means an enormous amount to the men.”

“So long as I serve a purpose of
some
kind,” Isadora answers.

Arnem tightens his arms around her, putting his lips close to her cheek. “Do you feel your life has no purpose, wife?”

“A purpose for children,” she answers softly, turning her head so that her lips meet his. “And I suppose that will have to do. For now …”

What man can truly know the heart of a woman who allows her lover or husband to pursue his destiny, even unto death? And what woman can understand the passion that such trust builds in men? To be sure, there is neither any woman, nor any man, whose heart achieves such mutual trust more flawlessly than does the honest soldier’s and his equally selfless wife’s; and no more instructive instance of their mutual generosity than these times of departure, when the full reality and weight of what may transpire during the days to come, in the home as well as in the field—when just what sacrifices each will incur for the honor and safety of the other—are brought home with a terrible yet magnificent poignancy. And, in the few minutes they have to themselves, both Arnem and Isadora indulge those passions, without removing all or even most of their clothing: for they know the maps of each other’s bodies as well as Arnem knows those more traditional charts that were laid out on his table but moments ago. Indeed, they now know them so well, and can satisfy their mutual desire so greatly and knowingly, that they forget, if only for a time, the admiring groups of soldiers who guard their privacy with ferocious loyalty—even as those men continue to make respectful yet enviously ribald remarks to one another, in the most discreet and hushed voices …

But in the wake of these transcendently private moments, more immediate and devilish questions intrude, as they must, on the sentek and his wife:

“You’ve had no word from the Grand Layzin?” Isadora whispers; and it need not be said of what “word” she speaks.

“No,” Arnem says, keeping his head at rest on her shoulder. Their gentle intimacy has drawn a soft moistness to the surface of her flushed skin, which makes the more delicate and deliberate fragrances of both her body and the wildflower extracts with which she scents herself more potent; and he breathes all the aromas in deeply, knowing how long these last exposures will have to sustain him. “But I assume the ritual took place,” Sixt continues. “Some sort of word would have come, if it had not.”