A general chorus of enthusiasm—one that includes even Dalin’s voice—rises up from the children, making it clear that, whatever other improvements Isadora may have effected in the Fifth District, supplies of food to that beleaguered section of Broken have not increased of late. Golo and Gelie lead the dash through the heavy curtain partition, with Anje urging all of her younger siblings to slow down and behave themselves. But Arnem’s eldest daughter pauses at the partition; and, making sure the other children are engrossed in the food, she returns to the sentek and Radelfer despite her own hunger.
“That is not all I was to tell you, Father,” Anje says, now appearing more plainly worried. “Although Mother did not wish the younger ones to hear it.”
“I suspected as much, Anje,” Sixt Arnem says, holding his oldest daughter tightly, as if it will give him some reminder that his wife still lives. “Tell me, then.”
Anje—ever her mother’s most sensible child—speaks in a remarkably controlled voice. “Lord Radelfer can tell you of it far better than can I. If he will be so kind.”
As Arnem continues to keep one arm around Anje, Radelfer says, “I am only too happy to oblige, Maid Anje—if you will promise in return that you will eat, for you are exhausted and have been without proper food for too long.”
To this, Anje only nods. “All right, Lord—”
“I am no ‘lord,’ Maid Anje,” Radelfer says. “Although I appreciate the honor you do me by calling me such. Now—get yourself some food.”
Anje nods again, and then follows her siblings. Radelfer turns to Arnem, his face displaying both unease and admiration. “Your daughter is brave and wise, Sentek,” he says, “just as her mother was at her age.”
“You knew my lady even then, Seneschal?” Arnem asks, amazed.
“I did—and I shall tell you more of that in a moment,” Radelfer replies. “As well as of the miraculous changes she has brought about in the Fifth District, assisted by your son and by an old comrade of mine that you may remember—Linnet Kriksex.”
“Kriksex?” Arnem replies. “Yes, I recall both the name and the man—he was with us at the Atta Pass, among many other engagements, before he was grievously wounded.”
“Not so grievously that he has not protected your wife, in the company of other veterans, from the terrible change that has taken place—”
Radelfer stops speaking when he grows aware of a presence; and, turning, both men see a young face poking through the rear entrance of the tent: Ernakh’s.
“Excuse me, Sentek,” the youth says quietly, “but I was wondering if I might ask the seneschal a question?”
“One question only, Ernakh,” Arnem says, increasingly anxious to know what is happening to his wife and eldest son. “Then go and join the other children, and get something to eat.”
At this, Ernakh enters the tent fully, making sure to close its flaps tight behind him, and turns to look up at Radelfer. “It is only—” he says haltingly and fearfully; “My mother, sir—why did she not come out with the sentek’s children?”
Radelfer smiles, and puts a hand to the boy’s shoulder. “Lady Arnem urged your mother to leave, Ernakh,” he says. “But she would not abandon her mistress. Yet there was probably greater danger in the journey than in staying behind, so you may put your young mind at ease.”
Ernakh smiles with relief, then nods once as he says, “Thank you, sir.” Turning to Arnem, he repeats, “And thank you, Sentek—I only wanted to be certain.” The skutaar then runs out into the council room, where he renews his friendships with the Arnem children.
The sentek turns to Radelfer. “What is the truth of the matter, Seneschal? Would my children have been safer in the city, and was my lady merely being exceedingly cautious by sending them out?”
Radelfer sighs, then takes the cup of wine and the seat that Arnem—who also sits and drinks a little, out of uneasiness, if nothing else—offers him. “I wish I could say that I had been entirely truthful, Sentek,” Radelfer begins. “In fact, the situation in the city has grown vastly more dangerous—especially for Lady Arnem because of my master’s past feelings for her, which seem to have returned, if indeed they ever truly departed.” The seneschal pauses, staring into his wine. “Although I suppose I must refer to the Merchant Lord as my former master, now—and I am not at all certain that such is a bad thing … But the peril to your lady, as well as your district? That, I fear, is truly heightened, which is why I have come. Never, in what has been his troubled life, have I seen Rendulic Baster-kin so full of anger, so possessed by schemes that have driven him wild with passionate desire and a murderous determination.”
Arnem feels the steady pain of dread growing in his heart. “You say the situation in Broken has changed, Radelfer,” he replies. “Is that why I have received no written word from my wife, of late, when previously she had been writing so regularly?”
“Aye, Sentek,” Radelfer says. “Lord Baster-kin has closed all avenues of communication between the Fifth District and the rest of the city, as well as the rest of the kingdom. No food enters, and few citizens escape. I only passed into the area and then back out, because of the Guard’s knowledge that I am the seneschal of the Merchant Lord’s household: I could therefore hide your children in the wagon I took from our stables.”
“The Guard?” Arnem echoes. “But my wife’s last dispatch, as well as my own children, reported that Sentek Gerfrehd and the regular army were atop the walls.”
“As they were,” Radelfer answers with a nod. “But, just before our departure, his lordship was able to convince the God-King, through the Grand Layzin, to order the regular army to confine itself to its own Fourth District, because they would not participate in the planned destruction of the Fifth. The second and last khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard now man the walls above that unfortunate district on all sides, and are preparing, after they have starved its inhabitants, to burn it to the ground. Therefore, if you now plan to march back to Broken, as I suspect you do, you cannot expect to be welcomed. For his lordship has also convinced the God-King—again through the Grand Layzin—to declare both the Talons and the residents of the Fifth to be in league with the Bane.”
Arnem’s face fills with an expression of both crushing betrayal confirmed and even more terrible fears realized: for what Radelfer has told him is no more than the logical continuation of the conclusions he has already been forced to reach, at Visimar’s insistence, concerning Lord Baster-kin’s intentions regarding the kingdom’s most elite troops; yet he had not thought that such a charge, in all its deadly absurdity, would ever be extended to his wife and eldest son, to say nothing of the people of his native district.
“In league with the Bane …,” the sentek repeats, in no more than a dreadful whisper. He stands and begins to pace, running a hand through his hair roughly, as if he will drag comprehension from within his skull. But after several moments of silent bewilderment, as well as being alerted to the full extent of the danger by the laughter of his children and Ernakh from behind the thick, rich hides that compose the partition inside his tent, he can conclude no more than, “Madness … He cannot be in his right mind, Radelfer!”
The seneschal shrugs, having already had at least some time to adapt to the terrible turn that Rendulic Baster-kin’s mind has taken. “On the contrary, Sentek—I have known his lordship since he was but a boy, and I have rarely seen him speaking and behaving so seemingly lucidly.” Pausing, Radelfer drinks deep from his goblet, and looks up at Arnem. “I doubt very much that you have heard he not only witnessed but presided over the death of his own son.”
Arnem spins on the seneschal in horror. “Adelwf? He allowed him to die?”
“He arranged it,” Radelfer replies; and there is a sadness beneath the even tone of his words that he is very obviously working hard to suppress. “In the Stadium. As good as served the lad up to one of the wild beasts, there—he explained that he wished to frighten the wealthy young men who frequent that place into serving with the k
hotor of the Guard that has just marched on the Wood.”
“And been destroyed to the last man by their arrogance and utter lack of professional understanding,” Arnem says, in an angry reply.
Radelfer takes in this information with the same labored steadiness that has marked the whole of his conversation with Sixt Arnem. “Have they?” he murmurs. “Well … then his lordship might have spared the boy so horrifying a fate, and let him die fighting our enemies.”
“If indeed they are our enemies,” Arnem says quickly. Radelfer’s features become confused, but before he can ask the sentek’s meaning, Arnem has set his fists heavily on the table before Radelfer and—in a voice measured enough that his children will not hear, but no less passionate—demands, “But why let his own son, his heir, die in the first place, much less arrange for it to happen?”
Very carefully, Radelfer stares into his goblet, and states with thinly veiled meaning, “He intends to have a second family. With a woman who, unlike his wretched, dying wife, is someone of strength, someone he has long admired—a woman who will, he believes, give him sons that will be true, loyal, and healthy servants of the kingdom.” Pausing to take a quaff of wine, Radelfer finally says, “Just as she has given you such children, Sentek …”
Once again, Sixt Arnem is momentarily stunned by how much more elaborate Lord Baster-kin’s plotting has run than he or even Visimar suspected. “My wife?” he eventually whispers. “He intends to steal my wife?”
“It is not theft,” Radelfer replies, still with remarkable control of his emotions, “if the former husband is dead. And his lordship has been daily expecting confirmation that both you and your men have died from the pestilence that is ravaging the provinces.” Staring into the distance, the seneschal reflects: “But instead, you are all still here, and the First Khotor of the Guard, along with the sons of most of the prominent houses in Broken, lie dead in the Wood …”
“And what of my children, Radelfer?” Arnem demands. “What was to become of them?”
Turning his head to the rough wool beneath his feet, Radelfer muses, with his first real display of remorse, “Your children would simply have been declared unfortunate casualties of the destruction of the Fifth District. Your insistence on remaining in that part of the city, even when you have attained command of the army, has always caused widespread consternation among the royal family, the priesthood, and the merchant classes in the city. The deaths of your children would have been laid to your own inscrutable stubbornness, rather than at the door of his lordship …”
Arnem is silent for a few moments, scarcely able to believe what he has heard. “But—why? Why, Radelfer, does the Merchant Lord turn on his own people in this manner? Or on my family? I have never voiced anything but support for him.”
“I can tell you what lies behind his actions, Sentek,” Radelfer says. “But in order to explain the situation fully, I must first tell you things that no one in Broken knows, save myself. The one other who even guessed at the truth paid the most awful price imaginable, simply for his attempt to be truthful and of assistance to the clan Baster-kin.”
Arnem ponders this statement for a moment. “Radelfer—would that ‘other’ have been, by any chance, Caliphestros?”
Radelfer looks up, wholly surprised. “Aye, Sentek,” he answers. “But how can you have guessed that?”
Sitting back and taking a deep sip of wine, Arnem says, “It may interest you to know, Seneschal, that Caliphestros not only survived the Halap-stahla, but is at this moment less than a quarter-league outside the southern perimeter of this camp, in the company of various Bane leaders, all of whom await my arrival under a flag of truce.”
Radelfer, stunned for a moment, eventually murmurs, “I see … The tales that the Bane merchants spread are true, then … It does seem almost too fantastic.”
“Not so fantastic,” Arnem replies, “as the mount it is said he rides: none other than the legendary white panther of Davon Wood. Apparently, she is there now, as well—amazing nearly all of my Talons.”
Radelfer considers the matter for a long moment, then grows far more restless. “Sentek,” he finally says, “if the Bane and Caliphestros are in earnest about their desire to parley—and I pray that they are—then we have greater cause for hope than I had dared believe …”
The seneschal’s tale, and the continuation of the truce …
THE SENESCHAL GOES ABOUT finishing the full tale of young Rendulic Baster-kin and the healer’s apprentice once known only as Isadora, as the sentek’s children and Ernakh eagerly laugh and fill their bellies beyond the tent’s partition. By the time that Arnem and Radelfer take horse to join the meeting south of the Talons’ camp, the sentek, having made certain that the children will be properly guarded in his tent during his absence, has also made certain that he has allowed the surprise and shock that he first felt upon Radelfer’s revelations to wane, so that they will not dominate his behavior during the parley to come. Yet now the sentek has been made aware, not only of how far back the history between Isadora and the Merchant Lord reaches, but of the very intimate and dangerous nature of it, as well as of a good many more previously unknown facts concerning Rendulic Baster-kin’s life that finally worried Radelfer enough to risk his own life in an effort to save, if not Isadora herself, then at least most of her children, as she asked. By the time they ride toward the southern gate of the Talons’ camp, Arnem has become as convinced as is the fugitive seneschal that no good can come of events as they are presently configured in the city. Broken’s greatest soldier will need to convince his own officers to march, not into Davon Wood, but back up Broken’s mountain—and he will need, as well, to plead that the military arm of the Bane, along with the legless sorcerer Caliphestros and his onetime acolyte, Visimar, support them in their effort, and embrace entirely the changes in outlook and, perhaps, loyalties required for any such scheme to succeed.
It is therefore no omen of success (or is it?) that, as the Ox and the mount with which Arnem has provided Radelfer storm out of the Talons’ camp and thunder toward the meeting place of the truce between the two opposing lines of leaders, the principal sound that they both hear and see from afar is that of a certain notorious, file-toothed Bane laughing as he presides over an apparent game of some sort, one being played among Arnem’s own officers and many of the Bane leaders. Unnerved by the strangely inappropriate activity, Arnem rides on, unnoticed by the bone-casters ahead.
“I ask you, Linnet,” Arnem can hear the infamously ugly Bane he knows must be Heldo-Bah shouting in derision, as the Ox draws closer beside Radelfer’s mount. Heldo-Bah has recognized Niksar’s rank by the silver claws, the color of his cloak, and the air of authority he projects over his men. “Is this any way for the senior representative from your accurs city—well, the most senior yet present—to face the most important encounter between your own and our peoples since the days that your Mad King began throwing the less than perfect in body and mind down off your mountain full of marehs and skehsels two hundred years ago? By not honoring his gambling debts?”
“I have told you,” Niksar says, “I will honor them, it is simply that my own store of silver is back within my tent—”
“Ah, Linnet,” Heldo-Bah replies airily, “if I had a piece of gold for every time I have heard an excuse like that …”
Now it is Caliphestros’s turn to erupt uncontrollably, declaring for but an instant, “Heldo-Bah! Will nothing stop this idiotic exchange of—”
Then comes the sound of hard-pounding horses’ hooves; and the old man looks up to see Sentek Arnem and Radelfer bearing down on their position with ever-greater haste. “Ah!” Caliphestros judges, allowing himself a smile that might be taken for a smirk, in a lesser being. “Well—apparently there may be. Let us see how greatly you feel like disrupting this all-important occasion when faced with both the commander of the Talons and the seneschal of the clan Baster-kin, Heldo-Bah, you impossible student of perversion …”
Himself turning to
see the same impressive sight, Heldo-Bah’s face goes a little pale: he straightens himself into something resembling a martial posture, and immediately grows silent. Throughout both sides of the parley lines, men return to their place of rank and draw themselves upright, silently leaving the knucklebones and the monies involved in the game untouched.
Even through his attempt at dignity, Heldo barks out, “No one touches the goods!”
Further comment from the most irrepressible of foragers is silenced, however, when Sentek Arnem bursts through to the spot where the game had been taking place. Sixt Arnem rides first to face Visimar, then crosses half the gap between the lines to study Caliphestros and the white panther in amazement. “So it is true, Caliphestros,” the sentek says. “Your former acolyte’s claim that you survived your punishment was more than fable. I confess that I did not fully credit it until this moment.”
“Understandably, Sixt Arnem,” Caliphestros says, his face a mask of inscrutably complex emotions: for the last time the legless old scholar had set eyes on this soldier, he had been a full man being cut to pieces. “Although I am not certain which of us is, right now, in the more unenviable position …”
Arnem can only nod grimly.
“Radelfer,” Caliphestros says, with a nod. “I confess to some satisfaction that you are here. It at least proves my suspicion that you were ever a man of honor, who has come to realize his moral predicament.”
Radelfer nods back at the compliment. “Lord Caliphestros. I, too, am pleased that you somehow survived your ordeal, for the charges against you were baseless.”
“Indeed,” Caliphestros says. “But that is the heart of this entire matter, is it not?” Radelfer nods again, although Arnem’s features become puzzled. “What I refer to, Sentek,” Caliphestros explains, “is the nature of the most dangerous men in Broken—perhaps the world. Do you know to whom I refer?”