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

The right shell. By some miracle, Artolo takes Myri and lets Carillon go free. Cari gets to Khebesh, but Myri’s dead and the Crawling Ones get even more powerful. She’ll be the prisoner of a mad god and his evil vizier all the way to Khebesh. Some instinct tells her that Xargor Bane will get bricked up in some wall within five minutes of a deal being struck, his position fully eclipsed by Twelve Shits Conspiring.

Thing is, that’s the one shell she might be able to pick. Rhan-Gis is already infatuated with her, or at least amused by the novelty. Maybe she can push him, get him to protect her. Play to his city-sized ego. The Sacred Realm may want her dead, but how badly?

Anyway, she’s mortal and they’re immortal gods. If nothing else, they can wait her out and dance on her grave, like she danced on the grave of the goddess Pesh.

Spar, what the fuck should I do?

Artolo and Rhan-Gis bicker, and the argument swirls around Cari. She’s only half listening to it anyway, and it’s peppered with references to places or gods she doesn’t know, and a lot of posturing. Twelve Coins Bleeding’s in the middle of it, too, unctuous and all too calm, trying to sell Artolo on taking Myri as a consolation prize. The Crawling One will pretend to give in any moment now, shrug the shoulders he doesn’t have and then start haggling on a price for Cari. He’s as transparent as any junk dealer in the market.

You’ve got a knife. Cari doesn’t know if it’s a memory of something Spar said, or her own brain playing tricks on her. It’s true, though. She has the sacrificial knife, and that concentrates the problem. Knives have a way of cutting through bullshit, making everything bloody simple.

The problem of who to stab, though, is vexing. Most people in the room are too far away, or won’t be affected by a mere knife. She guesses Damala’s mortal enough to die from a knife wound. Xargor, too, if his heart doesn’t get him first. And Myri’s so weak that ending her would be easy. But none of those are helpful options.

So. Rhan-Gis is a powerful saint, and she’d lay money that he can pull off the same damage-redirection trick that Spar did for her. Her little knife isn’t going to hurt him. And knives definitely don’t hurt Crawling Ones.

Artolo. She can get to Artolo. No one’s paying attention to her; they’re all arguing over her, around her. She’s got no power here, no influence, no god backing her up. All her friends – all my living friends, she thinks bitterly – are far away. Taking out Artolo would be satisfying if nothing else, but that’s not enough. And, anyway, she’s not that strong, not that fast. There’s little chance, unless she gets very lucky, of inflicting a mortal wound from here. It’s a small knife, not a giant flaming sword.

“The sorceress is of no concern to the Sacred Realm. It was Carillon Thay who blasphemed against Pesh,” says Damala. Twelve Coins Bleeding shrugs, holds out his hands, gives a resigned sigh, the universal shrug of the con artist. I’m cutting half my own throats here, but maybe I can do you a deal on one lightly soiled Cari.

Think, she screams at herself. Do something. She digs her fingernails into her palms, almost hard enough to draw blood.

Blood.

Back in Guerdon, years ago, Cari fought a Raveller, a servant of the Black Iron Gods. Those creatures couldn’t be injured by mortal weapons, either – but she’d smeared some of her blood on her knife, and that was enough to wound the creature. Of course, that was because Cari was Herald of the Black Iron Gods, birthed by a Raveller, kin to the creature she fought. Alike enough to get past its defences. Rhan-Gis’ nameless saint is like her, too, right? People are always going on about congruency and sympathetic resonance when it comes to saints. Her grandfather made her to match the slumbering Black Iron Gods; now, though, she’s a better match for Spar.

And things like Spar.

She runs her palm across the edge of the sacrificial blade. It’s sharp.

Don’t pick any shell. Kick over the table.

Cari jumps up and stabs the Cornerstone of the World in his beautiful throat.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

There is time, in those days before catastrophe, for confessions.

A note from Karla, delivered by a messenger. Baston’s careful only to open it when he’s outside the New City, away from prying eyes. It directs Baston to a house in Newtown.

A stone’s throw from where they grew up, but two or three worlds away. Newtown’s quiet, law-abiding, unlike the rookeries of the Wash on the far side of Military Road. Free city territory. No god has ever walked here save the tame deities of the Keepers, and then only lightly; but Baston can smell the incense from the temples in the IOZ from here. Newtown even escaped significant damage during the invasion. A few patches and spots of fresh whitewash are the only scars left on these regimented terraces.

He raps on the door of one house, and it’s answered by a veiled woman.

“Mr Hedanson! Come in, come in. I was just making tea.”

They follow the woman in. No – the ghoul, as he catches a glimpse of hoofed feet beneath her skirts. A ghoul, dressed in human garb. He might have walked by her on the street and not known. He recalls a ghoul hanging around the Brotherhood clubhouse, years ago, but she was dressed in stolen rags then, an absurd scarecrow figure. Silkpurse, they called her.

The smell of fresh-baked bread mingles with thick perfume. Incongruous posters on the hallway walls – old theatre posters, rain-streaked, peeled off the walls and kept as treasures. Baston spots his mother’s face in one of them. Elshara stares out at him across thirty years. The ghoul leads them down the hallway to a side door, and out into a little