{ix:}
“WELL, LINNET KRIKSEX,” Lady Arnem says happily, before she can answer Baster-kin’s question, “so you have made good on your promise.”
“Aye, Lady Arnem!” the old soldier answers, in a voice that is as rough as a large piece of stone being dragged across a quarry floor. “We were not certain when to expect you, but I told the men that your return was promised, and that it would take place. The wife of Sentek Arnem would never offer assistance and forget the pledge, I said!”
“Well done, Kriksex,” Isadora answers. “And now allow me to present Lord Rendulic Baster-kin, master of the Merchants’ Council and first citizen of the city and kingdom of Broken.”
Kriksex takes one or two steps toward Baster-kin, who, in a rare moment of humility, rushes to meet the hobbling old fellow more than halfway between them.
“My lord,” Kriksex says before delivering a sharp salute. “Linnet Kriksex, your lordship! Pleased to be of assistance to my kingdom, once again.”
“Kriksex?”
Another voice has joined the conversation, this one Radelfer’s; and Baster-kin and Isadora turn to see the seneschal stepping forward from his guard detail. “Is it really you?”
Kriksex looks past the great Lord Baster-kin, his face going first blank, and then joyous with recognition. “Ah, Radelfer, you have truly come!” he cries out, again flailing the crutch about as he moves quickly to meet what is apparently an approaching comrade. “So the stories were all true, and you did indeed remain with the clan Baster-kin!”
The two older men embrace, although Radelfer is careful with the seeming sack of bones and scars that was once his own linnet.
“But how are you still alive, you bearded, ancient goat?” Radelfer laughs. “It was enough that you survived the campaigns we undertook as young men, but—to find you here, among all this strange business, with what appears your own small army—it seems incredible!”
“Radelfer,” Lord Baster-kin says, not sternly, but rather with the tone of one who has had enough mysteries, for one night. “Perhaps you will be good enough to explain to me just who this man, who these men, are, and what they are doing seemingly guarding a decrepit alleyway, for no apparent purpose.”
“Your pardon, my lord,” Radelfer says. “This is Linnet Kriksex, who commanded my fauste when I joined the Talons, many years ago. And a more faithful servant of the realm you would be hard-pressed to find.”
“Indeed?” Baster-kin asks, looking at Kriksex and not quite sure of the explanation. “And I suppose this is the basis for your authority over these other assembled men, Kriksex, who also look to be veterans of various campaigns?”
“These are loyal men, my lord,” Kriksex replies, “here to protect the God-King’s name and laws in this district. An able core of veterans keeps the residents in this neighborhood free of both crime and vice. But the ominous occurrence that appeared again recently, the—the riddle that I showed Lady Arnem a few nights ago—went, I fear, beyond the power of men to either create, or to control. And so we determined that we must keep the situation exactly as we have periodically found it—spring is usually the most common time—until we determined whether or not we could persuade someone of greater consequence than ourselves to inspect it. My lady’s visit here was by chance; but then, Kafra be praised, you agreed in short order to accompany her back!”
Baster-kin looks up and down the alley with an uncertain expression, as he follows the ag veteran. “I fear you confound me, Kriksex,” Basterkin answers.
“The smell tells much of the tale, my lord,” he says. “But if you will only follow me to the southwest wall, I believe the peculiarity will become apparent quickly enough. It will be preceded by a worsening of that same stench, in all likelihood, one noticeable above even the usually delightful aromas of the Fifth.”
Baster-kin takes a deep breath, holding his forearm out to Lady Arnem once again. “My lady? May I assist you, as we follow this good man, that I may see what the difficulty is?”
“Your attention is much appreciated, my lord,” Isadora answers, placing her hand upon his lordship’s arm; she signals to Dagobert, who steps forward and moves on his mother’s free side further down the alleyway and through the lines of veteran soldiers, each of whom salute in turn.
Kriksex maintains the lead of the guard detail that surrounds the three important visitors, and he often turns to watch the intrepid Lady Arnem with his same smile, no less genuine for its lack of teeth. As the moments mount, however, he seems to find some emotion uncontainable, and he lags back a few feet to whisper toward Lord Baster-kin’s left ear: “Is she not a fit lady for Sentek Arnem, my lord? Fearless!”
Baster-kin nods, making his way into the deeper darkness. “Indeed, Kriksex,” he agrees, in an equally quiet voice that Lady Arnem—who is increasingly engaged by those she passes by, despite young Dabobert’s attempts to keep her way clear—cannot overhear. “A finer woman could not be found in all of Broken. But, for now—to the business at hand. For, unless I am losing both my sense of smell and my mind”—the noble nose wrinkles, and a sour expression consumes the face—“something—perhaps many things—seem to have died, hereabouts …”
“Aye, Lord—many things, if we judge by that stench,” Kriksex says. “And yet you will find neither rot nor offal to explain it; only a seemingly ordinary, even innocent source …”
It takes but a few minutes to reach the southwest wall of the city; but before the interlopers have done so, Lord Baster-kin’s disgust only grows. “Kafra’s great holiness. You say there are no dead bodies in this area?”
“Several citizens have died in recent days,” Kriksex replies. “But they are not the source of it, for their bodies were burned by the district priest, according to all proper rites and methods, eliminating their remains as a cause. Young, they have been, most of them, as have been the others who have recently died in the district.” Lord Baster-kin casts a quick glance at Isadora; for he knows that the rose fever attacks the young before all others. “A terrible pity and waste, it has all been,” Kriksex continues. “But no, my lord—what you smell is a more inexplicable thing, and yet still, the cause will appear simple enough—nothing more than a small stream of water.”
Yet that seemingly innocent statement is enough to make Baster-kin pause for a moment. “But there is no water that flows above ground in the city—even the gutters that empty into the sewers are moved by collected rain. Oxmontrot saw to as much, to keep his people safe from the evils that open water of unknown origin can bring.”
“Just so, my lord,” says Isadora, who by now is standing on the pathway that runs at the base of the massive wall. From somewhere behind Baster-kin, a group of torches seem to simply appear, carried by Kriksex’s men, and they light the scored city wall, as well as the pathway beneath it; and when the noble Lord Baster-kin turns, he sees that by now every alley and nook, every window and rooftop of any house that offers any kind of a view of what is happening in this place has filled with the faces and jostling bodies and heads of curious citizens of the neighborhood, who must, by now, have heard who their visitors are. This eerie scene is, for a man such as Baster-kin, a glimpse into another world, almost into the mouth of Hel itself, and he has no wish to prolong it any more than he need do.
“Lady Arnem?” he calls out, in a somewhat unnerved voice, turning to notice that she has seemingly disappeared. “Lady—Linnet Kriksex!” the Merchant Lord demands, and Kriksex immediately lends him guiding aid:
“My lady is farther up along the wall and the stream, my lord,” the hobbling soldier says, appearing as from the darkness and pointing. “In the same area that interested her when first she came here, where the water first appears.”
Baster-kin nods, hurrying along to where Lady Arnem crouches. There, a delicate trickle of odoriferous water does, indeed, seem to spring from the base of the massive city wall itself: a trickle that soon grows, and that should, according to Oxmontrot’s plans for the city, have been intercepted and fed into the
underground sewer system long before it ever reached this open spot. It appears to run some hundred or hundred and fifty yards, hugging tight to the wall, until it finally disappears as suddenly and inexplicably as it now bubbles up beneath the lord and lady.
“How can this be?” Baster-kin asks incredulously.
“I have been puzzling with that since being shown it,” Lady Arnem says, inspiring his lordship’s momentary admiration—for he had truly believed that her ends in this journey had only to do with her husband and her second son’s service in the House of the Wives of Kafra. Now, however, it would appear that patriotism numbers among her motives. “And yet,” she continues, “its appearance is not the most disturbing part of the matter.”
“No, my lady?” he says, mystified.
“No, my lord,” she replies, shaking her head. “There is this matter of its coming and going, especially during the rains. And there is also this …” With which, she opens her hand, and holds it up to the torchlight.
The Merchant Lord sees several objects that have an all too familiar appearance; and, looking behind him to see the same crowding faces and bodies, Lord Baster-kin places himself between Lady Arnem and the citizens, holding his elbows square so that his cloak drapes her revelation.
Isadora notes this movement with satisfaction—his worry is real indeed.
“Are those …?” His lordship begins to ask the question, but he cannot finish it: whether out of worry over the crowd or his own concern over what she holds, Isadora cannot say.
“Bones,” she replies, in a pointed whisper. “Taken from the bed of this—whatever it may be, stream, spring, or something wholly new.”
“Yet—so small,” Baster-kin says with a nod. “What variety of bones, then, my lady? Have you been able to determine? Some seem not even human—”
“And they are not.”
“Yet others—they would seem—”
“Almost from a Bane, a few of them,” she says. “And yet they are not.”
“No?”
“No. They originated with our own people’s children; such bones are far different than those of grown Bane men and women. And there are these, here,” she continues. “The several that are not human—first, the bones of small but powerful forest cats: again, not young panthers, but their adult cousins, the Davon wildcats. These others, however, are simply the smaller bones of the larger panthers.”
“Lethal Davon cats, all.” Baster-kin nods. “And you believe all the bones came from this running ditch?”
“I know it,” Isadora replies. “For you may find more, if you wish, by digging deeper. The more you do so, in fact, the more you will discover. Yet these objects certainly do not originate here—nor does the water. We have the opinions of the residents as to where they may come from, but the accounts conflict, and the source of each will swear to the accuracy of his or hers, no doubt expecting to gain some small favor—wine, silver, food, anything—for in many households, you will find small mouths to be fed, as we have just encountered in young Berthe’s. And yet those children shall not linger in such houses long—for their parents are also, like the stricken Emalrec, only too ready to sell them, and far too hopeful of doing so.”
“Sell them?” Baster-kin echoes, in some disbelief, yet remembering who it is that speaks, and knowing her reliability.
“Indeed, my lord. A grave crime that has been regularly committed.” Isadora begins to walk slowly along the bank of the strange little streambed that she has been investigating, dropping the bones she holds, and then producing both a small block of soap and a similarly small skin of what appears clean water from beneath her cloak. She offers them to Baster-kin first. “My lord? I would recommend it.”
Baster-kin looks at her, with both a smile and a sharp eye. “You seem quite prepared for this eventuality, Lady Arnem—and I appreciate the gesture, although I do not understand it.”
“Suffice to say that, if my mistress were alive and with us, she would insist that you do it.”
“Inscrutable, at times, she most certainly was that—though never wrong, that I knew of,” Baster-kin says, cupping his hands for water, then lathering them with the rough block of soap. “But the various subjects—the rose fever, this water, these bones, the possibility of such serious sacrilege as buying and selling children—what can they have to do with one another?”
“I have not had as long as I would like to consider it, since this particular proof appeared,” Isadora answers, as she begins to walk south again. Having reached a safe bit of shadow along the wall, she turns to his lordship, her face full of purpose. “But, as you have asked the question: all I can say with certainty, now, is that I have seen certain things with my own eyes, and heard enough stories to allow me to tell you that the children we speak of are not disappearing into slavery, nor outside of the city.” She turns, attempting to meet Baster-kin’s gaze full on, reminding herself that this man was but a boy, once, a boy whose weaknesses she knew only too well, and hoping that those weaknesses have not changed.
Gisa had taught Isadora to be rigorous in the exercise of her mind, never to guess or to gamble—but how could one form a considered opinion, when one had only incomplete facts? The method did not exist; at moments, inevitably, every living soul had to gamble. Her husband had taught her that by his example, over and over again, with his exploits in the field—and she had even seen Gisa take risks, although the crone would have denied it, especially on occasions when a life hung in the balance …
And with this final thought in mind, Isadora Arnem now looks north, and takes one deep breath: “The course of the stream would seem to indicate that it originates somewhere to the north—this is what concerns me most …”
Baster-kin, too, turns north; and then, after several moments, his face goes pale. “Lady Baster-kin, even the suggestion of such a thing is heresy … You cannot possibly think that this disease could originate from within the Inner City? Why should it not come from the sewers?”
“It runs above the sewers, my lord. In addition,” she asks quietly, “was there or was there not a recent attempt on the life of the God-King? One involving the poisoning of a certain well just outside that same Inner City? And is the Lake of a Dying Moon not the only standing water source in that direction?”
Baster-kin’s face fills, not with anger, initially, but with shock, and then concern. “Lady Arnem, I must warn you: there are only a few persons who know the details of this matter. And yet, since you seem to now be one of them—I assure you, plague can be as much the work of sorcery as of more ordinary paths of disease. And the men of my Guard who died of that sorcerous poisoning had symptoms far more horrible than the ordinary rose fever that your seksent in that house exhibits.”
“Your pardon, my lord,” Isadora says. “But, among many other uncertainties, we do not yet know what kind of symptoms that man may ultimately exhibit.”
“You think—” Baster-kin is further shocked. “You think both could actually be victims of the same attack?”
“You captured one of the Bane assassins,” Isadora says, holding Basterkin’s eyes with her own. “And tortured him for days on end. You would have a greater idea of the extent of the danger than I—whatever their means, they could well have released plague of some sort, rather than simple poison. And then there are further aspects to consider, concerning such an explanation.”
“Which are?” As she has been expecting, a sudden hardness finally enters his lordship’s features; but she presses on:
“Which are,” she breathes, “to begin with, the fact that many mothers I have spoken to in this district—including young Berthe in there—have seen at least one or two of their children sold to priests and priestesses from the First District, who are accompanied by those creatures who claim your patronage and name: Lord Baster-kin’s Guard. Indeed, so lucrative is the trade that certain particularly useless men—such as Emalrec, the man you have just seen on the bed in that house—have begun to depend on the birth and sale
of such children as a substitute for honest labor. And now, for his sins, perhaps, the rose fever visits him. Strange, is it not?”
Isadora tries to maintain her composure as his lordship’s features only harden and darken further: “Lady Arnem—even if such were the case, you and I cannot pretend to understand the workings of the Inner City, of the royal and sacred family, or of their priests and priestesses. You know these truths.” He draws closer to her. “And yet you pretend to be mystified by all of it. But you know the answers, do you not, to the secret of that water, to the poisoning and the rose fever and the plague, to how it all touches upon these royal and sacred persons?”
“Yes, my lord. I believe I have determined all these answers. Some you may suspect—and some would shock you. But all would work to the unrest of this district, and perhaps the whole of the city, were they to become widely known. For the Inner City cannot contain or feed so many children as are taken, to say nothing of the wild beasts that they are said to have captured. Nor does disease simply appear as an act of any god. Plague, be it of poisonous or ordinary origins, has broken loose in this city, to threaten all citizens. This district is not the cause—it is the victim.”
Baster-kin now takes a step away from Isadora. “And yet, you—you, with all this knowledge, have not yet made as much known, even in this district—have you?”
Isadora breathes deeply. “No. Not yet …”
“And in fact, you will remain silent,” Baster-kin says, nodding. “For a price.”
“Yes,” Isadora finally says. “A price. Perhaps too heavy for the rulers of this kingdom to pay, and certainly beyond your power alone to grant. But you can carry the message: for I would have it stated—in writing, atop the royal and sacred seal—that neither my children, nor any others, will, in the future, be required for the royal and sacred service, save those that go of their own will. Without payment to their parents, and without the escort of Guardsmen who wander the streets under your name.”
Baster-kin nods slowly: he is the image of a man whose fondest dream is coming unraveled—yet not in such a way that it takes him entirely off-guard. “And the plague …?” he asks quietly.