“Mother!” she cries. “Men are at the wall—they are closing it! We will be trapped!”
Weeping, and spilling water from the pitcher she so nobly attempted to fill, the girl throws herself into Berthe’s arms, handing what little water remains in the vessel to Dagobert.
“It’s true, my lady,” Jerej says, catching his breath. “Masons lay stone as fast as it can be brought to them, protected all the while by the Merchant Lord’s Guard.”
“The good Lord Baster-kin,” Bohemer adds, bitter sarcasm in his voice. “He must have had most of the city’s masons assembling, even as we were distracted here.”
Dagobert looks down in alarm. “Mother …?”
But his mother is already murmuring in reply: “So that was his meaning—‘by way of the city walls …’” Then, never one to allow a moment of crisis to stun her for long, Isadora looks up, encouragement in her features. “But it must make no difference. It is must be treated as a sign that we are have struck close to the hearts of those who have committed the various outrages within this district.”
Having done what she can to embolden those around her, Isadora takes a few steps off on her own, and is allowed to do so by her comrades, who sense her exhaustion. Looking up at the city wall once more, she whispers:
“Forgive me, Sixt. But we who have remained in our homes must see this business through to its end — just as you, belovèd husband, must safely navigate the dangers you face on your campaign …”
She is about to issue more commands aloud to those who stand about her; but then sounds still more alarming than the screaming of Berthe’s child echo through the streets: it is the hard pounding of leather-soled boots against the granite of the walkway atop the walls, and then the voices of soldiers calling out orders to their men. Moving back from the wall, Isadora and the others look up, their men with torches spreading out so as to cast light in a wider upward arc—
And they are there. Not men of the Merchant Lord’s Guard, this time, but soldiers of the regular army, their cloaks of rich blue and their numbers forming a near-continuous line atop the wall. In addition (and most frighteningly, for the residents below), they bear regular-issue Broken bows. Before long, an almost ritual wail begins to rise from many men and women in the streets and houses below — but not from the local children, who flock to aging, stoical veterans, rather than to their near-panicked parents, and who try as best their young hearts will allow to adopt the old soldiers’ dispassionate demeanor.
“You men above!” Isadora calls to the soldiers, with real authority and effect. “You know who I am, I daresay?”
“Aye, Lady,” says one particularly wide, bearded sentek, who needs not shout to be heard. His face is well lit by the torches his own men carry, and it is vaguely familiar to Isadora. “You are the wife of Sentek — or rather, Yantek—Arnem, our new commander.”
“And you are Sentek—”
“Gerfrehd,”† the man replies. “Although I can understand your unfamiliarity with it. For as my cloak indicates, I serve in the regular army. But rest assured: you are well known to me, my lady.”
“Good,” Isadora calls back. “And, while I do not expect you to disobey orders that doubtless bear the Grand Layzin’s seal, I do think you owe me, as wife of your commander, an explanation of your appointed task.”
“Certainly, Lady Arnem,” replies Sentek Gerfrehd. “We have been told of insurrection in the Fifth District — but we do not come to engage in any precipitate action.”
“I should hope not,” Isadora replies. “For this ‘insurrection,’ as your own eyes can tell you, is largely one of children.”
“I have determined as much,” the man answers, nodding. “And will report it to the other commanders of our other regular legions, who will doubtless wish, like me, to know more of just why we have been dispatched here.”
“And your immediate instructions?” Isadora presses.
“Are simple enough: citizens of the district may exit the city through the Southern Gate, but no one is to be allowed to enter the city through it. Nor to interfere with the completion of the wall at the head of the Path of Shame.”
“You realize,” Isadora replies, “that your actions could be seen as those of enemies, Gerfrehd — not of fellow subjects.”
The sentek is slow in answering, finally doing so with a rather inscrutable smile. “I am aware of as much, my lady. Just as I am aware that yours could be seen as the actions of rebellious subjects, rather than loyal ones.”
But for Isadora, after a lifetime of close contact with soldiers, the smile is not difficult to understand at all; and she holds out a hand to the children that surround her aging veterans, standing at their best approximation of attention. “Well, Sentek — I say again, here are your ‘rebellious subjects.’ There will be little glory in subduing them.”
At this, Sentek Gerfrehd almost seems to chuckle quietly, and he replies, “No, my lady. Any more than there is such glory to be had fighting alongside the Merchant Lord’s Personal Guard.”
“And so?” Isadora asks. Her boldness in speaking thus to a sentek of the regular army has made many of the terrified adults about her ashamed of their fear, and they begin to move forward to surround her and stand by their children.
“And so we will wait, my lady,” Sentek Gerfrehd calls. “For we take our orders, as you know, from the God-King, the Grand Layzin, and your husband, in such order. The merchants are not our masters.”
Isadora nods once, approvingly. “And so we, too, will wait, Sentek,” she says. “And see what actions your superiors force upon us.”
“It would seem we await the same things, then, my lady,” Gerfrehd replies.
“Indeed,” Isadora states; and with that, she nods and moves away from the wall, subtly leaning upon Dagobert for support, and offering as much encouragement to those around her as she can.
But that effort is mitigated by one question that will not leave her mind, as she walks back to her home, despite the fact that she cannot voice it to the citizens around her: yet as she looks above those citizens, above even the soldiers on the wall, and, soon, from the safety of her second-floor bedroom, toward the edge of Davon Wood, as it becomes faintly visible in the far distance, she murmurs:
“And what orders or signs will you, my husband, understand as offering the same evidence that matters are far from correct or well at home, and require your return to put them right …?”
{xi:}
Soon after ordering the city’s masons to work through the night to finish the work of sealing the Fifth District off from the rest of Broken by walling in the gateway at the head of the Path of Shame, Lord Baster-kin orders his litter to return to his Kastelgerd, while he and Radelfer journey humbly afoot to the High Temple. Radelfer waits without as his lordship enters the Sacristy, for it is here that Baster-kin must brief the Grand Layzin on the most recent developments concerning what are in fact his own and the Layzin’s plans for the seemingly ill-fated Fifth District: plans that represent the second part of a long-schemed strategy to reassert and ensure the kingdom of Broken’s strength in the years to come. (The Layzin is unaware of Baster-kin’s private intentions concerning Isadora Arnem, which the Merchant Lord considers every bit as important to the health of the state as the destruction of both the Bane and the Fifth District.)