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

The dragon growls in irritation, which Baston takes as an acknowledgement of his point.

“My lads know the city. That’s why Rasce recruited us. We can help your family, too.”

“And in exchange? What will this cost?”

“Your presence down on Mercy Street stopped the city watch from arresting us when Vyr was killed. So, we need you and Carancio to watch over the old docks. There are still a few places in Glimmerside they haven’t gone after yet. And—”

“You ask too much,” says Thyrus. Her wing begins to open, letting in the world again.

“You don’t have to fucking do anything!” shouts Baston in her face. “Just be there! They won’t dare act while there’s a dragon present!”

“Unlike my feckless brother,” hisses Thyrus, suddenly rearing her head above him, flames flickering in her nostrils, “I still play my part in this bargain. I have responsibilities to my children back on the isles, and so I fly to war for Lyrix. I keep the peace of the Armistice. I owe little to my brother’s chattels—” she snarls at Karla, “and I owe nothing to you.”

That night, they lose the old docks.

The Tallowmen attack again, but this time they come via the ghoul tunnels, cutting the thieves off from the New City. It’s like the burning of Dredger’s yard all over again, recapitulated in a nightmare. The scorched ruins of the yard are alive with dancing flames again, only this time the flames pursue Baston and his crew, chasing them through the alleyways and warehouses, a whirl of knives and fixed, distended grins.

Some of the thieves try to retreat up Heavengut Wynd, just like before, but some bastard’s informed the Ishmerians they’re coming. The demigod Cruel Urid stands at the top of the stairs, spear in hand, judging the unworthy wretches who flee up the stairs. None are deemed worthy to enter heaven. Caught between the candles and the demigod, they perish. Baston hears their screams across the night. Their souls forfeit to the Ishmeric gods.

Baston leads another group west, towards the spires of St Storm. It’s not St Storm’s any longer, not since Kraken took it, but he knows those spires – and knows the little streets around them, the ones that slope down to the shore. There, on the edge of the IOZ, there are still a few fishing boats, near the houses of the harbour-priests who bless the ships and pray for fair winds.

They steal these boats and cut back east, trying to thread a course between the Tallowmen on the docks and the city watch patrol boats in the deeper harbour. Oars dip into black water; thieves hunch against spotlights. One boy, his stomach cut by a Tallowman, coughs wetly and dies at Baston’s feet, the warmth of his blood soaking through the leather of Baston’s boots. They heave him overboard. Let him go with Fae, the poor lad, and they can’t afford the extra weight.

One of the Tallowmen hears the splash. The crazed monster takes a running jump, leaping impossibly far out into the harbour, a grasshopper arc, head-flame like a signal flare. It falls short. Splashes loudly in the water, thrashing around and shrieking, until a wave quenches the fire in its wax skull and it freezes, bobbing up and down. Its fellow Tallowmen cluster along the edge of the docks, straining to get closer to their quarries.

Searchlights find Baston’s boats. The city watch bellow some command, an order to surrender. The whole city’s against them, watch and jacks, gods and governments. Rasce went too far, part of him says, pushed them too hard, but the truth is this was always going to happen. There’s no place for Baston’s kin in this new Guerdon, this city ruled by gods and alchemists who think they’re gods. Rasce just made it happen faster.

The city watch boats close in, their alchemical engines driving them, faster and stronger than the arms of the rowers. Acrid smoke drifts across the water. A searchlight falls on them like a blazing eye.

A loudhailer crackles, calls out.

“SURRENDER.”

Baston stands, casts off his coat. Braces himself.

Opens fire.

The gun’s a heavy repeater, fresh from the foundries. A beautiful piece of engineering, really. Something the Fever Knight would have appreciated, a weapon for laying waste to one’s foes. You could never get a gun like this for love nor money on the streets of Guerdon in Heinreil’s day, but the city’s changed, and Ghierdana coffers run deep.

The thunder of the repeater deafens him. The recoil nearly sends him backwards over the side. The nearest city watch cutter lights up in a dazzling shower of sparks, bullets ricocheting off the hull, smashing through the cabin. The searchlight explodes, and he turns his fire on the other boats. “Row!” he roars. “Row for fucking home!”

And stroke by stroke they draw closer to the New City, last refuge of scoundrels.

Spar can feel himself fracturing again. His mind falling apart, his thoughts wandering off and never coming back. I’m dying. Rasce still acts as an anchor, but he’s drifting, like an anchor skipping over the seabed instead of holding fast. He’s a maelstrom in Spar’s mind, pulling Spar into darkness instead of giving him a beacon to rally around.

He’s coming apart. His consciousness is already overstretched, spread all around the New City, and now it’s cracking under the strain. Even thinking has a cost now, he can tell. He’s a clockwork engine running down.

He’s been here before, when it was his body and not his mind that was dying – but that doesn’t have to change anything. When he lived, he resolved once to spend his remaining days helping the Brotherhood, fighting the Black Iron Gods that threatened the city. He fought to save Cari, and she ended up saving him instead. So, if he’s got only a little of this strange second life left, he’ll use it like he used his first life.

It’s tricky. Observing is less costly than thinking, and thinking is less costly