Niksar kicks at the drunkard, hard enough to get him to his feet. “Go on, now — don’t make me use the other end!” he calls after the fleeing man. Then he softens his voice. “Your pardon, my lady,” he says, bowing quickly but gracefully. “I hope I didn’t startle you. Your husband dispatched me to escort you, as the hour grows late—”
“Thank you, Niksar,” Isadora says, “But I assure you, I was perfectly capable of handling the situation.” She returns her knife to its hidden sheath. “He was only a drunkard who wanted a lesson.” Niksar bows once again in deference, and Isadora’s aspect softens. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Reyne. I confess that I’m not in the best of spirits, at the moment.”
Niksar smiles, making sure the drunkard is retreating. “I’m afraid there are many more of them,” he says. “And they grow more restive every day. They seem to have it in their heads that silver grows in this city. We ought to let them have a term in the army …”
Isadora smiles. “You sound remarkably like my husband, Reyne. Speaking of whom, we’d best hurry along.”
“Yes, my lady,” Niksar replies, matching Isadora’s impressive pace.
Within moments Isadora and Niksar have entered the Fourth District, which is alive with action: two full khotors of regular army troops have been brought in from their camp on the mountainside, to defend the city in the absence of the khotor of the Talons. Hundreds of soldiers are milling about on the training and parade grounds, some slinging packs onto their broad backs, some undoing them and smiling, happy to be able to spend some time in the city barracks, rather than sleeping on the ground outside the walls. Spearheads and swords are sharpened, horses are made ready, and everywhere there is the laughter and shouting of men preparing for duty, at home as well as in the field.
A few of the men take note of Isadora’s arrival, and soon word is spreading about the camp, producing a healthy effect. If Amalberta Korsar had been beloved as the mother of the Broken army, Isadora Arnem is adored as the object of its collective amorous (but always respectful) sentiments. By the time she has reached the steps to her husband’s quarters, on the far side of the southernmost drill ground, crowds of men from a wide variety of units have begun to assemble before the pine log structure, the differing colors of their tunics and trousers — blue for the regular army, wine red for the Talons — for once causing no competition. They have come together for the happy work of sending off the men who are being readied to march — Broken’s five hundred finest soldiers (and luckiest, say the men who must stay behind); and each man hopes to get a glimpse of Isadora, as well as a chance to hear Arnem’s words of encouragement for the coming campaign. To the west, the sun is just beginning to set, sending the warm light of a spring afternoon to break through the dust kicked up by all the busy preparations: no one could ask for a better setting from which to begin the hard work ahead.
Above the Talons’ quadrangle and drilling ground, Isadora finds her husband in close council with the leaders of his khotor and their staffs, some ten men, in all, gathered around a rough-hewn table upon which sit half a dozen maps. Each of these men snaps to glad attention when their commander’s wife enters, busily saluting and bowing, laughing, rolling maps to be slipped into leather cases, and thanking Isadora for once again making the trip to their district, as well as assuring her of how much it will mean to their men.
As his aide delivers Arnem’s wife to him, the sentek calls out: “Thank you, Niksar. And now, gentlemen, if you will all join your units, I need a few moments with my wife, who wishes to remind me, I’ve no doubt, of how an officer in the field ought to conduct himself.”
Well-meaning mumbling to the effect of, “Aye, Sentek, we’re certain that’s how you’ll pass the time,” goes around the group of departing officers, causing a ripple of equally good-hearted laughter to pass through the small crowd. Arnem scolds the men as he follows them to the door and closes it tight. He then pauses as he turns to his wife, raising his brow and widening his eyes, as if to say, What’s to be done, they are good soldiers, and good men, at heart …
“You are as popular as ever, as you can see,” Sixt says aloud, moving over to embrace his wife, who leans back against the table. “And they’re right — it means an enormous amount to the men.”
“So long as I serve a purpose of some kind,” Isadora answers.
Arnem tightens his arms around her, putting his lips close to her cheek. “Do you feel your life has no purpose, wife?”
“A purpose for children,” she answers softly, turning her head so that her lips meet his. “And I suppose that will have to do. For now …”
What man can truly know the heart of a woman who allows her lover or husband to pursue his destiny, even unto death? And what woman can understand the passion that such trust builds in men? To be sure, there is neither any woman, nor any man, whose heart achieves such mutual trust more flawlessly than does the honest soldier’s and his equally selfless wife’s; and no more instructive instance of their mutual generosity than these times of departure, when the full reality and weight of what may transpire during the days to come, in the home as well as in the field — when just what sacrifices each will incur for the honor and safety of the other — are brought home with a terrible yet magnificent poignancy. And, in the few minutes they have to themselves, both Arnem and Isadora indulge those passions, without removing all or even most of their clothing: for they know the maps of each other’s bodies as well as Arnem knows those more traditional charts that were laid out on his table but moments ago. Indeed, they now know them so well, and can satisfy their mutual desire so greatly and knowingly, that they forget, if only for a time, the admiring groups of soldiers who guard their privacy with ferocious loyalty — even as those men continue to make respectful yet enviously ribald remarks to one another, in the most discreet and hushed voices …
But in the wake of these transcendently private moments, more immediate and devilish questions intrude, as they must, on the sentek and his wife:
“You’ve had no word from the Grand Layzin?” Isadora whispers; and it need not be said of what “word” she speaks.
“No,” Arnem says, keeping his head at rest on her shoulder. Their gentle intimacy has drawn a soft moistness to the surface of her flushed skin, which makes the more delicate and deliberate fragrances of both her body and the wildflower extracts with which she scents herself more potent; and he breathes all the aromas in deeply, knowing how long these last exposures will have to sustain him. “But I assume the ritual took place,” Sixt continues. “Some sort of word would have come, if it had not.”
Isadora sighs, her eyes welling. “The poor man,” she whispers.
Arnem, too, feels an enormous weight press down on his heart. “Yes. Although they may be right, Isadora, he may simply have lost his mind — certainly, I’ve never heard him talk that way before …”
“Mad or no,” Isadora answers, “he was our friend, to say nothing of a great man to whom they owed much. How can they have treated him so? And how can we be sure that the same fate will not befall you, should you fail to please them?” Her eyes search Sixt’s desperately. “We know so little of it all — the Layzin, the God-King, the priests … I understand their need to preserve ‘the divine mysteries,’ but how should we know, husband, if those mysteries were no more than disguises for terrible lies?”