The Broken God by Gareth Hanrahan (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Gethis Station. Pain rushes through him, although he cannot be sure what “he” refers to at this juncture.

Is he the Ghierdana boy on Lanthorn Street, sawing madly at the glowing stone walls like he’s trying to cut the house free from its foundations? Is he the New City, defiant labyrinth, a thing sprung from neither victory nor defeat, but something else entirely, an act of faith in no known god? A thing the scholars have yet to name, a magical accident as misshapen as the alchemical waste-poppets that crawl from their birthing vats in agony?

Is he the spiderweb of consciousness drawn across Guerdon, the ghost of a Stone Man who died two years ago, animated by miracles stolen from the Black Iron Gods, his brief afterlife bought with the coin of a thousand thousand sacrificial victims?

He falls.

He flies.

His consciousness leaping across the city, focusing on another point. His stepping stone across the abyss is a single pebble, lodged in the wax of a Tallowman.

This Tallowman is new-made and knows it. Life flows through it, artificial but no less sweet. The flame burns clean and bright, a tongue of fire dancing across the finely drawn glyphs and runes engraved on the inner surface of its skull, illuminating them in order to form ersatz Tallow-thoughts, an approximation of mind. Artificial but no less cherished.

For now, it’s content to follow orders. It was told to stand guard, and stand guard it will! It’s so young that the simple act of standing and watching is fascinating and novel. Why, it could stare at a blank wall for hours, and find joy in watching the light moving across the bricks. Some part of it knows that, as the wax hardens, so too will it become jaded, and it’ll be harder to think. It’ll have to do cruel things, hurtful things, to feel anything. It’ll have to be blood spraying across the bricks. But for now – bricks! So intricate, the lines and patterns like veins and arteries.

And this Tallowman has something much more interesting to look at. This room is circular, the ceiling a glass dome, ornate ironwork made to resemble astronomical glyphs – although only a tiny patch of sky can be seen through the forest of pipes and storage tanks above the dome, and that sky is choked with fog. This place was made as an observatory, but instead of a telescope, an aethergraph has pride of place. A Guerdon-made model, its thick connecting cable of rubber-sheathed orichalcum running into a socket in the floor.

Mandel – the Tallowman’s maker – sits at the aethergraph, his lined face bathed in the glow from the machine. His lips move in silent communion with the other minds in the circuit. His scribe waits patiently, heavy ledger balanced on his knees.

There’s something in the Tallowman’s side, between where its ribs used to be, before rib and lung and everything else got rendered down in the vats. It doesn’t hurt but having something lodged in its flank is interesting. A chip of stone. Oh, yes, when it fought that human. Humans, so slow and stodgy and messy on the inside. The Tallowman’s glad to have left that behind. It thanks the alchemists, thanks Mandel, for making it better. Nearly perfect.

The glow from the aethergraph fades.

“Cowards,” says Mandel, “Rosha left us with a guild of jellyfish pretending to be human.”

“What was the consensus?” asks the scribe.

“There wasn’t one. Most of them are just piddling around in their breeding vats or sniffing around the edges of the Great Work. Demanding praise for creating condensed aether or grinding mummy to ninety-nine-parts pure. The rest… either they talk only of rebuilding the factories, or they see the peril posed by the Ghierdana, but think fleeing is the better option. That the Armistice is unsustainable, and the threat to the yliaster supply is the final straw. The new guildmaster… gah, what’s the fool’s name again?”

“Helmont,” supplies the scribe.

“He leans towards decamping to Ulbishe. But he doesn’t command the guild the way Rosha did. He can’t bring them with him, so it’s war between the jellyfish and the accountants.” Mandel shoves the aethergraph in irritation, sending the fluid inside sloshing against the glass.

“You should let me talk to them.”

“Ha. Wouldn’t that be a thing? ’Twould be almost worth the risk of revealing you to see their mouths drop open like gaffed fish.” Mandel groans. “Maybe we should consider evacuating. Third time’s the charm and all. Khebesh was too isolated, Guerdon too welcoming. Maybe Ulbishe will be right. Ready supplies of the base materia, and while their athanors may not be as advanced as Guerdon’s, at least we would be away from the front lines.”

“And end up as Kept as the gods. You know you cannot trust the mirror princes of Ulbishe.” The scribe lays down his pen, rubs his weary eyes. The Tallowman watches in fascination, enchanted by the idea of having little flaps of skin that cover the eyeball! Tallowmen do not blink.

“And anyway,” adds the scribe, “young Duttin has us in a vice.”

“Ach, I know. What a debacle it was to let Aloysius Ongent of all people get hold of both Thay heirs. Now Duttin’s got her stable of monsters and rogues to meddle with us. Not to mention Ongent’s homunculus skulking around the city. I swear, I’ll wake some morning to find the creature sharpening his knife on my ribcage.”

The scribe passes Mandel a letter. “This arrived while you were in conference. Parliament has voted in emergency session. In response to, ah, the growing threat to the peace and stability of Guerdon, they’ve agreed to reopen the Tallow Vats. They’ll be under the auspices of the Ministry of Security, not the alchemists’ guild.”

The Tallowman doesn’t have a heart. Or blood. Or, really, anything but wax and wick and fire. But wax and wick and fire all thrill at the thought of more of its kind. There have been so few since the making of new Tallowmen was banned.

“Under Nemon, then.