The Legend of Broken (54 page)

“Be at your ease, soldier,” Veloc attempts, joining the group and leaving Stasi and Caliphestros just a few steps behind, so that they are both partially hidden and shielded by his own and Heldo-Bah’s bodies. “You have nothing to fear from any of us, as I’m sure my sister has told you.”

“Sister?” the lad repeats. “So you, then, are Veloc, the final member of the party. I am honored—”

“You need to put aside all this being honored and tell us what’s happening, little hero in swaddling clothes,” Heldo-Bah says, still merrily, but also insultingly enough, now, to make the soldier a bit indignant, despite his fear.

“Pay my friend no mind,” Keera says, wondering just how many times she has
had
to say such things, as she claps the pallin’s shoulder hard to bring him back to the point. “Rudeness comes to him as does breathing to most.” She looks to her fellow foragers with familiar irritation. “The pallin was part of a small scouting party, when I found him—his linnet and another pallin have gone back to fetch Ashkatar, but it will likely take a few moments, as the yantek is moving up and down the line. Apparently, he does indeed intend the attack that Lord Caliphestros envisioned. It seems we have arrived only just in time to prevent a terrible error.”

Very soon, Ashkatar, even more heavily armed than is his usual custom, whip firmly in hand, comes running into the small clearing into which the foragers and their guests have moved with the pallin, another foot soldier and an equally young linnet trailing close behind him.

“Ah—so it’s true, then,” he says through the bristling black beard, his voice rumbling from deep in his chest despite his lowered volume. “The three of you have returned.” Looking over Veloc’s and Heldo-Bah’s shoulders, however, even the powerful and angry Ashkatar pales a bit. “And have succeeded in your mission—or so it would seem,” he adds, his voice losing a good deal of its certainty and confidence.

Both Stasi and Caliphestros draw themselves up proudly, at the appearance of this small but impressive man, for whom authority is an obvious and hard-earned habit, and begin to move slowly forward. The young Bane soldiers move backward in a matching manner, but Ashkatar stands his ground admirably, and even takes a step or two forward to greet the newcomers. “You are welcome among us, Lord Caliphestros. Should I—would it be customary to address your great companion, the noble white panther?” Ashkatar continues uncertainly, yet also with great respect. “Keera informs us that she understands human communications very well.”

This statement clearly impresses and pleases the old man, although he stops short of smiling. “Thank you, Yantek Ashkatar. Your manner does you credit. No, you need not offer any particular address to my friend, although she will be able to sense both your own and your men’s intentions and attitudes instantly. They would do well to remember that fact, and to spread the word quickly, so that there are no unhappy misunderstandings as we make for your camp and then for Okot.”

“Well, you lot?” Ashkatar barks at his men. “You heard Lord Caliphestros. Return to my camp, quickly, and tell all troops you encounter to make it known up and down the line just who has arrived, and how they are to conduct themselves.” Half-turning to see the soldiers too awed to comply, he growls. “Go on, then! And have my staff prepare food in my tent. We shall follow quickly behind.” As the young soldiers vanish into the forest undergrowth, the great black beard turns to Caliphestros again. “I should, perhaps, have said that we will return however quickly it is your pleasure to travel, my lord. You will find my men nervous, at your arrival, as you have seen, but you will also find our leaders grateful for your willingness to come to our aid in this time of crisis.”

“Just how much aid I shall be, Yantek,” Caliphestros replies, still aware of the need for appearances, “is yet to be seen. I must judge the worthiness and intentions of your tribe, although I have never been given cause to doubt either.”

Ashkatar nods, clearly impressed by and appreciative of this statement. “Shall we proceed, then, my lord?” he asks, holding his whip out in the direction that the soldiers took to return to their lines, and where Caliphestros can now see a rough trail barely marked out. He senses that Ashkatar expects him to move up and walk by his side, as the highest Bane authority present, and the old man indicates to Stasi to do so. She shows no hesitation in complying, for she has truly taken the measure of this rugged yet proud and impressive man, and found him to her liking. As he passes Keera by, however, Caliphestros brings Stasi to a halt, and says to Ashkatar, with reciprocal respect:

“I should like the tracker Keera to walk alongside us, as well, Yantek Ashkatar. She has already proved most invaluable, both to me, to the discovery of information invaluable to our shared goals of learning who and what lies behind the terrible illness—if single illness it be—that so afflicts the Wood and your tribe, and in the cause of keeping the great being upon whose back I am privileged enough to travel calm and reassured.”

“Of course, my lord,” Ashkatar says. “Although I fear the other two must follow behind. Veloc and Heldo-Bah are not held in the respect that Keera enjoys, among our tribe, and it would be inappropriate to offer them such honor, whatever their service in the last few days.”

Caliphestros lifts his nose in mock haughtiness as he moves forward past the two male foragers, murmuring to Heldo-Bah in particular, “How refreshingly accurate and honest an assessment, Yantek …”

“Well, Heldo-Bah,” Veloc says, making sure he cannot be overheard by those in front of him. “It’s the servants’ place for us. As usual …”

“Speak for yourself, Veloc,” Heldo-Bah replies bitterly. “There will be time enough for us to claim our proper position and respect, once our story becomes known.”

“Oh, certainly,” Veloc replies, his voice the essence of sarcasm. “But for now—try not to trod upon any panther droppings …”

So numerous and rapt in wonder are the Bane soldiers that appear on both sides of the route that the remarkable lead party take south (a path which leaves the course of the river behind altogether) that no one at first thinks to comment on Caliphestros’s peculiar request for Ashkatar’s small but tough, game troops to begin digging holes in the ground every one or two hundred paces. The old man quickly becomes immersed in their efforts, and seems satisfied with the results only when the troops’ shovels reach water beneath the forest floor. He is especially fascinated when the water thus discovered bears a particular odor, an odor reminiscent, to Keera (whose memory of what she has perceived through her senses is as sharp as those senses themselves), of the dying pool that she visited in the aging scholar’s and Stasi’s company only hours before. Most of the troops doing the digging cannot help but wonder further at Caliphestros’s insistence that all men and women who come into contact with such fluids instantly bathe their hands with strong lye soap, and above all do not drink of their discoveries. His inscrutable behavior in this regard seems only to match both his reputation and overall manner, however, and one thing that is clear is that Caliphestros is not a man to see such efforts as the soldiers expend go wasted. Yet not until the group goes before the Groba will the full significance of these strange investigative activities become startlingly clear …

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The warm, gentle breeze that blows across the city of Broken from the west on this late spring night might be expected to offer some comfort to the greatly admired yet even more feared chief of the kingdom’s most powerful trading clan, Rendulic Baster-kin. Such soft, sensual waves of air, particularly when they occur at night, are known as “Kafra’s Breath,” for the welcome effect that they have on the citizens of the city, who are just emerging from beneath winter’s hard-soled boot. This widespread sense of joyous release is perhaps best embodied in the scattered pairs of trysting young lovers that the Lord of the Merchants’ Council can even now spy on the rooftops of their various houses in the First District from his vantage point on one of the two highest points in the city: the terrace that surrounds the central tower of the magnificent
Kastelgerd
Baster-kin. Both the terrace (once a parapet) and the tower were originally intended as defensive military positions, from which threats to the family and the city itself could be spied long before they became deadly; but for generations, that function has been unnecessary, and the tower as well as the terrace have served as the private sanctum of the Merchant Lord, a place to which the supreme secular official of Broken may summon any subject—nearly all of whom dread such invitations.

Far below the tower lies the foundation of the
Kastelgerd,
completely concealed from public view and composed of another section of the city’s remarkable series of vaulted storage chambers, which, like all the others, is filled to overflowing with weapons and provisions. Above the foundation, the visible wings of the great residence are on a scale, it has often been said (not always with respect or admiration) to match the palace of the God-King. But because the
Kastelgerd
sits hard by the eastern wall of the city, and was first intended to serve the same genuine military purpose as the tower, it is stouter in overall appearance than the sacred ruler’s paradise: a forbidding exterior that further cows those who are required to attend audiences within.

Yet throughout Broken’s history it has been the tower that has remained the most unnerving part of the
Kastelgerd.
If the Sacristy of the High Temple is Broken’s greatest wonder, and the royal palace the kingdom’s most beauteous enigma, then the tower is the clearest and plainest statement of raw power within the city’s walls. The Merchant Lord may have no religious title, as such, but his might is in no way diminished by the suggestion that it is not governed by sacred codes: quite the contrary. Thus, while most citizens would rather forgo a command to appear in either the Sacristy of the Temple
or
Baster-kin’s tower, they would far rather receive a summons to the holier of the two chambers—a fact from which Rendulic Baster-kin cannot help but derive a deeply personal satisfaction. A location that inspires so much fear in others is the only sort of place where this man, whose deepest soul is a strange blend of worldly severity and almost boyish enthusiasms and fears, can feel truly safe.

With his own security, as well as his family’s, nearly as well protected as the God-King’s, then, it seems odd indeed that Baster-kin—even and perhaps especially as he stands upon the parapet of his tower, this night—cannot allow himself to take any solace in the voluptuous brush of Kafra’s Breath. Indeed, the warm air only seems to make the uneasiness that is plain in his features more apparent.

His concern has been caused, first, by the latest in a series of reports that began to arrive during the winter, detailing the particulars of northern raiders bringing cheap grain up the Meloderna and the Cat’s Paw to trade illegally with undiscovered partners. Such a story would not, ordinarily, cause Rendulic Baster-kin undue anxiety: disgruntled farmers and traders in some quarter or another of the kingdom are a constant, given the sacred laws and secular codes that govern such activities in Broken. But dispatches over the last several days from Sentek Arnem have reported that more than one trading village has crossed over from unhappiness into open rebellion; and their violence has been unknowingly fueled, Arnem’s reports say, by spoilt grain, several kernels of which he has included for Baster-kin’s perusal, along with a warning that the Merchant Lord wash his hands carefully after inspecting them. Yet even this combination of provincial reports and those of the new commander of Broken’s army would not be enough to alarm Baster-kin, at any other time. But there is a final thread that does stitch these seemingly manageable problems into what may become a tapestry of serious worry: the samples of dangerous grain that Arnem has sent to the Merchant Lord resemble all too closely kernels that the ever-watchful master of Broken’s mightiest
Kastelgerd
has, within the last day and night, found in one of the hidden stores beneath the city.

Rendulic Baster-kin’s commitment and sacrifices to his kingdom and his office have always been great: far greater, he would rightly contend, than those of not only the other members of the Merchants’ Council and previous Merchant Lords, but even of his own father, the most infamously ruthless Baster-kin of all. Certainly, Rendulic believes that he has little in common with the earliest man in his family to be declared Merchant Lord, who had been the most cunning of the mercenary adventurers who accompanied Oxmontrot on his travels about the world in the service of the Western and Eastern halves of the vast yet strangely fragile empire of
Lumun-jan,
and who had brought the creed of Kafra back to Broken. Yet despite these shared adventures, according to rumors too well founded to die, it was not loyalty to Oxmontrot that secured the first Lord Baster-kin a place of prominence in Broken politics and society, but treachery. For his elevation in rank, along with the gift of resources sufficient to build the first wings of the
Kastelgerd
around the family’s original tower, had come not from the Mad King, but from Oxmontrot’s son, Thedric; and it had been said then, and has been said ever since, that the origins of both the Baster-kins’ renown and their wealth could be traced to complicity in the murder of the Mad King. Not many who had known Thedric, after all, had credited him with enough intelligence (or his mother, Justanza, with enough sanity) to have planned and carried out the scheme on their own; and construction of the
Kastelgerd
Baster-kin had indeed begun on the very day that Thedric had been crowned and declared semi-divine. Since then, additions to both the
Kastelgerd
and the elaborate, terraced gardens that wind about it have been almost constant—constant, that is, until the ascension of Rendulic Baster-kin, who has been determined to wipe away all smears upon his family’s name through his devotion, faith, and hard work.

In addition, if there have been more than a few unworthy men among his ancestors, Rendulic knows, there have also been several wise enough to merit respect. First among these were the Lords Baster-kin who—indignant at frequent abuses of power by the Merchants’ Council, which periodically sought to take advantage of the royal family’s isolation from secular affairs—created and strengthened an instrument of force with which to serve Thedric’s heirs: the Personal Guard of the Lord of the Merchants’ Council (or, more commonly, Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, as no other clan chief, after one or two early and disastrous challenges, has ever held the office). For many generations, the strict mandate of these not-quite-military units was simply to maintain the quiet, secure, and legal conduct of trade within the city. But eventually, being an instrument of secular power, the Guard had been corrupted, not only by rivals to the Baster-kins, but even (or so some voices said) by certain royal representatives, who wished their peculiar yet sacred activities to remain discreet. The Guard also widened its activities to include keeping the peace, a task that became ever more violent and even lethal, as the prevention of thievery and plots within the city expanded to include the authority to arrest, beat, torture, and even execute whatever persons, within or without the walls, the linnets of the Guard found objectionable. True, the head of the Baster-kin clan always retained command of the increasingly unpopular Guard; but command and control have ever been very different qualities. Then, too, while the clan Baster-kin may have been losing its effective grip on the Guard, the fact that its “soldiers” continued to keep careful watch over the great
Kastelgerd
lent to that residence and to its lords something like a regal air, one sufficient to allow the Lords Baster-kin to deny even well-founded charges of degeneracy, corruption, and effective tyranny: abuses, all three of which Rendulic’s father had managed to practice within one lifetime.

And so it would be for the man who now paces the terrace of his tower to reassert both his family’s honor and its devotion to Kafran ideals, a task that Rendulic has undertaken not only through public pronouncements and rulings, but by way of private methods more extreme than any citizen has ever known of or appreciated. Yet these steps have not brought him peace of mind: no, for one as alert to danger as is Rendulic Baster-kin, even those threats that come in so seemingly inconsequential a form as a few misshapen and discolored kernels of grain must push the pleasure of a mild spring evening from his mind—particularly now.
Now,
at the outset of what will be the most fateful period in Broken’s history: a time when the kingdom’s ongoing pursuit of the sacred Kafran goals of perfecting all aspects of individual and collective strength must, of necessity, regain primacy. Any lingering doubts or hesitancy among the leaders of Broken concerning both the annexation of the daunting wilderness of Davon Wood and the destruction of the tribe of outcasts who inhabit that cursed but treasure-laden forest should have been put to rest, Baster-kin believes, first by the attempt on the life of the God-King, and then by the mutilation and death of Herwald Korsar. And yet, despite the city’s proud, joyous dispatch of the Talons upon their twin missions of conquest, only three people truly know, with any kind of certainty, what actually determined the momentous decision to move against the Wood and the Bane now. The first two of these—the God-King and the Grand Layzin—remain, tonight as all nights, inaccessible to the people of the city and the kingdom, and free to enjoy their particular pleasures. The third, Baster-kin himself, is the only man who is not only aware of but entirely consumed by every consideration that has gone into the decision to dispatch the kingdom’s most elite soldiers against the Bane; and so the Merchant Lord stands alone, peerless and friendless, upon his parapet, tonight, brooding over a single kernel of spoilt grain that lies hidden in one of his hands.

Damn Arnem,
Baster-kin muses;
a soldier should be concerned solely with unrest in the kingdom, rather than confirming my fears about this strange grain.
Yet the Merchant Lord knows that the problem represented by what he holds in his hand is not so easily dismissed as he would like; Sentek Arnem, in fact, has only done his true duty by making his report.
A pity he will have to pay such a high price for it,
Baster-kin concludes. And yet, is it not Kafran doctrine that one man’s loss is another’s gain? And, thinking of this possibility—that Arnem’s loss might be his own gain—Baster-kin becomes aware, for the first time, of the gentle caress of Kafra’s Breath. But he cannot indulge the instant of pleasure; for he must be certain of his next moves, as certain as he has been of all arrangements that have been made this week. Such attention to detail quickly drives him out of the comfort of a spring night’s warm breeze and back inside his tower, there to attend himself to the details of his plans: plans that, to the untrained mind, might all too closely resemble scheming …

Baster-kin reenters the octagonal tower without ever taking notice that the room’s gaping stone fireplace—which is set into its southern wall, with a massive mantle supported by granite sculptures of two rampant Broken brown bears who have been frozen in eternal submission and service—is empty of flame, due to the warmth of the evening. His attention is immediately and wholly fixed upon a large, heavy table at the room’s center, its shape the same as the tower itself, and its size large enough to permit meetings of the most important members of the Merchants Council. Tonight, however, it is covered by maps of the kingdom, over which lie the dispatches of Sentek Arnem, detailing the state of the towns and villages between Broken and Daurawah—as well as the conditions of their grain stores.

But most importantly, atop all these sheets of parchment lies a note from Isadora Arnem, which she left with the second-most-powerful man in the
Kastelgerd,
the Baster-kin family’s greying yet remarkably vigorous seneschal, Radelfer.
†
A veteran of the Talons, and possessed of all the highest traits of loyalty, courage, and honor associated with that
khotor,
Radelfer was once the guardian of the youthful Rendulic Baster-kin: plucked from the ranks of the kingdom’s finest legion by Rendulic’s father, he had spent almost twenty years playing a role that the elder Baster-kin ought by rights to have filled himself. Now, the aging but still powerful Radelfer oversees affairs in his former charge’s home; and when Lady Arnem first appeared at the
Kastelgerd
’s entrance just two evenings after her husband’s departure from the city, only to find Lord Baster-kin himself not at home, she had asked to see Radelfer, with whom she apparently had past acquaintance. Happy to see the seneschal, and hinting at some urgent business with the Merchant Lord, Isadora had announced her intention to return the following evening, leaving behind a note that said as much. And it is this note that, to judge from its position atop the great table in Rendulic Baster-kin’s most private retreat, the Merchant Lord considers more important than all the maps of the Cat’s Paw crossings and the dispatches concerning unrest in the kingdom that lie beneath it. As he leans upon the table, he studies the note; not for its few and inconsequential words, but rather for the hand that wrote them, the hand that is so like it was, many years ago—