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—