The Legend of Broken (62 page)

Isadora is genuinely mollified by all these assurances, believing, for the moment, that Rendulic Baster-kin’s boyhood romantic preoccupation with her has transformed into a deep sense of adult gratitude, something she had not expected; but Radelfer, as he walks beside the litter, is growing increasingly uneasy, a feeling that began when his master and Isadora met in the
Kastelgerd;
for the extent of Rendulic’s disingenuousness has gone far beyond playacting during this meeting, and smacks more of a man who believes he can use the present difficulties to some advantage. But what “advantage” that might be, Radelfer has yet to determine.

The party’s journey into the worst part of the city begins when they pass through the gateway in the stone wall that separates the Fifth District from the other, more respectable parts of Broken; and their further trip toward what is certainly the most terrible neighborhood in that already vile district begins as well as any such undertaking can be expected to, primarily because the mere sight of Lord Baster-kin’s litter—common enough in the other districts of the city, but remarkable here—followed by Isadora’s well-known conveyance, signals to even the most addled minds and depraved citizens along the Path of Shame the beginning of momentous events in the Fifth. The presence of so many armed guards, meanwhile, provides a seemingly absolute check against the inclination to mischief that is always rife among the more enterprising, if criminal, souls who lurk in the darkest recesses of the district, particularly as one moves away from its stone boundary and toward the dark shadows cast by the city walls. This inclination toward thievery and murder is one that runs as deep in such minds as does their fellow residents’ appetite for dissipation, fornication, and the production of filth, all amply revealed in the gutters and sewer grates of the Fifth’s every street. These sickening rivulets are the source of a stench that every minute grows ever more offensive, and the pieces of refuse that block those streams and prevent their serving their purpose become steadily larger and more hideous. Among these terrible sights one can find objects so sickening and foolish as to seem remarkable: sacks of vegetables and grains, rotted and worm-ridden enough that not even starving souls will touch them; enormous piles of every form of human refuse and waste, bodily and otherwise; and, most horrifying of all, the occasional cloth-bound package that bears the unmistakable, bloody shape of a human infant, either miscarried close to its time or disposed of in the simplest manner possible, and perhaps mercifully so: for it will be spared, first, the privations of the Fifth District, and later, entry (by no choice of its own) into the increasingly mysterious service of the God-King in the Inner City, where, even among the residents of the Fifth, the seemingly inexhaustible need for young boys and girls is the subject of steadily greater, if quiet, speculation …

“It seems strange to me,” Lord Baster-kin says, glancing through the break in the curtain on his side of the litter as he holds the edge of his cloak to his face, blocking as much as possible the stench rising from the gutters close beneath the litter, “that, after all we went through in a very different sort of place than this—”

“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 agèd 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.

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viii
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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 to 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. “Are 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.