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

city to reach the new docks. Instead, swarms of smaller boats ferry cargo out to her, emptying the warehouses of their yliaster stocks. Iron-hulled Moonchild looms above them, taking all they can bring her yet remaining unsated.

Great-Uncle is gone, and Vorz with him. All of Artolo’s pleas ignored. They have left him here on this cursed island to oversee the loading of Moonchild. The witch is gone, too, and she’s taken his hands with him.

“How can I serve, Great-Uncle, when I have no hands?” he’d asked.

“You have a tongue,” the dragon replied. “Command in my name.” And then he vanished into the bright sky.

The new dragon-tooth dagger hangs at Artolo’s belt, like a cruel joke. The witch’s spells have faded, and he cannot wield the blade.

So Artolo uses his tongue. He commands. He sends his remaining Eshdana to search the island once more – Carillon may be able to hide, but how can the fucking witch escape him? She can barely walk! Dol Martaine returns empty-handed and says there’s no trace of the treacherous pair.

Hollow, lost, Artolo walks the streets of Ushket, aimless as a Bythos. His bodyguards shadow him, confused and nervous. Sometimes, beggars approach him, pleading for passage off Ilbarin. They offer to work in the yliaster camp, offer to crew the Moonchild, offer him treasures salvaged from the drowned city, offer their daughters to warm his bed. He ignores them all.

Unable to touch, he just walks and stares. He returns to the ruins of the Rose, as if there’s some answer hidden there. Returns to the Street of Blue Glass and wades through the ash-flecked waters, through the tide of dead worms. He walks the decks of the Moonchild. She’s Maredon-built, a prize taken by Ghierdana pirates. In another life, Artolo imagines himself as captain of this great ship. Fit her out with stolen cannons, gird her in warding runes and sail her into the maelstrom of the Godswar. Loot and pillage, like a proper Ghierdana, and never go to Guerdon. Never go to Ilbarin.

Never lay eyes on Carillon Thay.

Tides rise and fall. Boats go in and out. Figures melt away as he passes, scurrying in terror. He doesn’t eat – he cannot endure the shame of having some servant spoon-feed him. He doesn’t sleep.

How can he use his tongue? He needs it for screaming silently.

Another beggar emerges from an alleyway, blocks his path. A bodyguard steps forward to shove the old woman aside, but she moves with surprising grace, filthy rags whirling as she ducks past to stand in front of Artolo.

“Your fate has not changed,” she says.

He searches for his tongue. “You. You’re the Ishmeric priestess. Damala.”

“Carillon Thay is still within your grasp. Fate Spider has foreseen you strangle her.”

He holds up his ruined hands, his finger-stumps. “With these hands?”

Damala takes his hands, raises her voice in a prayer to the Kraken. Waves crash against the hull of Moonchild, the spray glittering like shards of glass in the sunlight. Artolo suddenly feels doubled, simultaneously standing in this muddy street in Ushket but also out in the sea, observing the town from afar with cold, inhuman eyes.

“With these,” she says, and she releases him. Tentacles sprout from his hand, writhing and slimy, the Kraken in miniature. His own skin giving way to the mottled squid-flesh. He flexes his transformed hands, feels the god-given strength flow through him. For a moment, he has the sensation of brushing his fingers against the wooden hull of a little boat, and through taste-receptors in his knuckles he smells the sweat of Carillon Thay, the ozone stink of the witch.

And then it’s gone.

“Make an offering,” whispers the priestess. “Seal the bargain.”

What does he have left to give? His tentacle-fingers close around the hilt of the new dragon-tooth dagger, and the priestess nods. “Most fitting. You shall please the gods.” She points down towards the harbour. “Cast it into the Kraken’s seas, and He shall claim you as His instrument.”

“No,” he says thickly, his tongue too big for his mouth. “Not from this fucking town. Not from Ilbarin. To the abyss with this place.” He turns to the bodyguards. “Find fucking Dol Martaine! Tell him to get the Moonchild ready to depart immediately!”

“My lord, only half the yliaster has yet been load—”

Kraken-fingers close around the Eshdana man’s throat. Kraken-fingers squeeze, and the bulging of the man’s eyes, the choked gasps that escape his purpling lips are a prayer to the Kraken.

Moonchild departs with the evening tide, pushed clear of the Rock’s shallow waters by tugs. In the open ocean, her mighty engines growl, her screws spin, taking her south.

He casts the blade from Moonchild’s stern deck, and the Kraken’s glass seas accept the offering of the dragon-tooth dagger, swallowing it like they swallowed Ilbarin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Days pass, and Rasce is still abed.

Baston sat around the house on Lanthorn Street for most of the first day, waiting for the boss to recover. He called a doctor to treat the wound in Rasce’s leg, but the injury itself wasn’t the problem. They needed a sorcerer. Or a priest.

Or an exorcist, some of the Ghierdana whisper.

Fuck them. The Ghierdana doesn’t understand the transformation Spar has wrought through Rasce. It’s a thief’s city now, a lucky city. Every day, there’s another story from the borders of the New City, about how some thief escaped through a gap in a wall that wasn’t there before, or a watch patrol managed to get lost in a single blind alleyway for half a day, or how some old woman dreamed of where to dig to find hidden alchemists’ treasure. How an alleyway was smooth when a pickpocket fled down it, but the stones turned uneven and treacherous when the watch pursued.

They used to tell tales of the Saint of Knives, the vengeful guardian of the New City. Now, they speak of a more subtle angel.

With Vyr dead, and Rasce drifting in and out of consciousness, the responsibility to run the business falls on Baston and Karla. There