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

hole they cut in the wall, then brick it up again. Every god has their particular rites and methods for consuming the souls of the dead. Some use particular funerary rituals, like this. The city-god has its worshippers interred in the walls, blood mixed with mortar.

The dead woman’s eyes stare blankly at Cari. The woman’s belly is swollen, and there’s a lingering smell of old blood. She died in childbirth. That bundle must be the newborn. Gods below, what sort of life is that? At best, a lifetime spent wandering this god-torn world, blindly worshipping Rhan-Gis, force-fed tales of the glories of Gissa and the ghost of harvests pasts, until the walls close. Ilbarin’s better than this, and Ilbarin’s a prison camp in a dying land.

If Eladora were here, lying in the mud instead of Cari, she’d stammer about confluences of geography and history, wealth and culture. Guerdon was spared because it was sheltered by Haith, able to stay neutral through economic independence. She’d talk about how a series of quirks of fate led to Guerdon being the epicentre of the alchemical revolution. But it’s all just fancy words for luck.

Cari thought she was unlucky to be born – fuck it, admit it, made, not born. She fled, left everything behind and called herself unlucky for having to start from nothing. But she looks into the eyes of the dead woman and sees that starting from nothing is a blessing.

The New City was supposed to be a place where people could be safe. Spar made it for the people of Guerdon’s poor districts. He tried in his dying moments to fulfil the promise of the Brotherhood, but that’s still thinking small. She’s guilty of the same sin, Cari thinks. When she first discovered her gift for visions, she used it to get revenge on Heinreil and bring down the old master of the Brotherhood. And after, when she was the Saint of Knives, the vigilante guardian of the New City… what did that achieve, really? She hurt some bad people, stopped anyone getting their hands on the remaining Black Iron Gods, but was that enough? She and Spar, together against the world, but everything she did drained him. Every miracle ate his soul away.

The world’s too big to handle, too broken to fix. Even when she had power, she didn’t know where to start.

Her face is wet with tears. Angrily, she wipes them away.

Get up, she urges herself. Get to Khebesh. Then go back and do better.

Hawse thought she was worth helping. Hawse saved her.

And in the camp, she was able to save Adro, right? She sacrificed herself to get him a healer. That has to count for something.

A city starts with one brick laid on another. Get to Khebesh. Save Spar.

She pulls herself upright, leaning on the dead woman’s tomb until she’s able to stand.

Take all you can. Use it to better ends.

This time, she ignores the streets. She steps over the imaginary walls, refusing to let the delusions of mad gods shape her world. She walks in a line straight as a gunshot, heading for Myri’s hiding place.

Make your own luck.

But when she gets there, the sorceress is gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Shriveport wasn’t the only place they got hit.

In the house on Lanthorn Street, another half-dozen reports of attacks. All outside the borders of the Lyrixian Occupation Zone. Craddock’s is gone – there are Tallowmen on the streets of Glimmerside, along the border of the HOZ. Craddock was arrested and taken to the Last House; one of his sons is now in charge. The other yliaster merchants in Glimmerside and along Mercy Street, gone, too. The thieves bring the bodies of the fallen back to Lanthorn Street, so the ghouls don’t get them. Baston orders them brought down to the cool cellar, to be laid alongside Vyr’s wrapped corpse.

Along the waterfront, Tallowmen have raided the warehouses, hitting anyone connected with the Ghierdana or the Brotherhood in a concerted effort to push the Ghierdana and their allies back beyond the Armistice Line. They came in from the sea, on city watch gunboats. Bloody hard there; the lads got the cache of weapons from the Crane Street lockup in time, and were able to fight back against the Tallows. The candles are stronger and faster than any human, and bullets don’t do much to wax that doesn’t bleed or break, but there are alchemical weapons that do the trick. Knife-smoke to trim a wick, and transmutation clouds can melt wax as well as flesh. Phlogiston-shells work, too. Fight fire with fire that’s on fire.

The Tallowmen fell back to their boats. First time Baston’s ever heard of the jacks retreating, but, then, the thieves never had this sort of firepower before. But one victory among a half-dozen defeats is scant comfort.

“How’s Rasce?” he asks Karla for the hundredth time.

She shakes her head. “No better.” She glances at the walls, the ceiling. “We need to talk about what we’re going to do now.”

“The jacks aren’t crossing the border into the LOZ.”

“Not yet,” echoes Karla, “but they’re everywhere else in the free city. Kicking us out of everywhere we’ve taken.”

“We still have the old docks.”

Karla makes a derisive noise. “You’ve got them tonight. Who knows about tomorrow? Or next week? And when Rasce’s Great-Uncle comes back and finds everything’s fallen apart, we’re fucked. Either we staunch the bleeding, get back all we’ve lost and take down Mandel, or…” She lowers her voice to a whisper.

“Or?”

“Baston, you’ve got the loyalty of the thieves. We’ve got the Ghierdana’s money. We could go.”

“You shouldn’t talk like this.” He killed Barrow only a few hours ago for betraying his oath. Karla took the ash, too. If she runs, the Ghierdana will be after her forever. They’ll want to make an example of her. The image of his sister dead, her throat cut by a dragon-tooth knife… He shakes his head. “Go and see if you can wake Rasce. I ran into Lord Rat earlier, I think.