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

“Fine!” she spits. “I’ll do it, then!”

“Biscuits!” sings out Silkpurse, re-emerging into the little garden carrying a tray laden with more cups of tea and a plate of biscuits and sandwiches. The ghoul blinks at the tableau before her – Baston and Karla glaring at each other, Elshara pale and shaking.

“Give us a moment,” snaps Karla.

“Oh, I can’t do that, dearie,” says Silkpurse. “I’m being called below – we’re off to the Fog Yards, tonight, all us ghouls. Lord Rat’s orders. I need to get some surface food in my belly before I go into the dark, so I’m going to sit here with your mother and eat my supper, and we’ll have no more shouting.” Silkpurse drags over another chair with one hoofed foot, then lays the tray on the table. With ghoulish strength, she yanks Baston and Karla down to their seats.

“Thank you,” says Elshara.

Silkpurse removes her veil and lays it aside. Karla absently takes it and folds it. “So pretty,” says Silkpurse, glancing at Karla’s features. The ghoul scoops up a handful of food and stuffs sandwiches into her wolfish mouth, gagging with every bite, but still forcing them down. She speaks around each mouthful. “I couldn’t but overhear. It’s maybe not my place to speak, but I’ll say my piece anyway. Take it from a Guerdon ghoul – there are always monsters and powerful folk in charge, scheming and squabbling with each other. Sometimes they’ll help you and sometimes they’ll hurt, but they never give a damn about us on the streets.”

“Idge wrote—” says Baston.

“I knew Idge,” says Silkpurse. “Lovely man, but not very practical. He’d walk into an open manhole while talking about moments of destiny. Or Mr Kelkin – I’ll always support him, after what he did for the ghouls, but I don’t pretend he did it out of love for us. It was Mr Kelkin against the priests, and he could use the ghouls against the church, back in the day. Or…” Silkpurse swallows another bite of meat, and sighs. “Or Miss Duttin, whose name I heard mentioned in most unpleasant terms earlier.” She kicks Baston’s shin, sharply. “Miss Duttin bought me this house, and she’s been a good friend to me. She’s trying to keep the peace in this city – but Baston’s right, she doesn’t give a damn about any of us. Not really. I don’t mean to be unkind, but when times are hard, it’s the folk at the bottom who suffer.” She looks at Baston, shading her eyes against the sunlight with her clawed hand. “Does Rasce give a damn about you?”

Baston shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know. But Spar does. What if we lose him, too?”

“Spar Idgeson’s dead, dearie.” Silkpurse finishes the last sandwich, then sucks her fingers. “The ghouls know. Everything comes to ruin in the end.” The ghoul stands and bows, like she’s stepping offstage. “We’ll eat together again, some day soon,” she says, “one way or another.”

And then she’s gone.

For a few moment, the sounds of the city fills the silence of the garden. Distant bells up on Holyhill, and ship engines down in the harbour.

It’s Karla who speaks first.

“The ghouls can hide. We can’t. We’ve nowhere else to go. It has to be done.”

“It’s not just Rasce,” says Baston quietly. “It’s Spar.”

“We’ve seen no sign of him since Vorz came back.” Suppressed panic in Karla’s voice. “And the dragon follows after Vorz. We’ve no time. We have to act now.”

“We do have a choice,” says Elshara. “Let’s be honest with ourselves. Baston – you’ll be the one pulling the trigger. What do you want to do?”

He closes his eyes. In a way, it would be a relief to be told what to do again. To give in and just be a weapon again, instead of a man who has to think and to live and to feel.

“It’s not enough to go back,” he says slowly. “Nothing will ever change for the better while the alchemists and Duttin and their sort are in charge. What’s Heinreil’s plan?”

Baston listens as Karla outlines what he’s supposed to do next, what Heinreil’s plotted for him from his prison cell.

The girl in the tailor’s shop on Greyhame Street ushers Baston into the back room again and unlocks the cabinet that conceals the aethergraph. It takes a few minutes before the machine goes live, before Baston senses the ugly presence of Sinter on the other end.

NEED TO TALK IN PERSON. IT’S URGENT, he types.

USE AETHERGRAPH, comes the reply.

NO.

He hits the power stud, shuts the machine down. And waits.

The girl comes in, tells him to leave. He doesn’t hit her, but he twists her arm in the way the Fever Knight taught him, tells her softly not to scream. Tells her that he’s not going until he gets to talk to Sinter.

She runs off. Comes back in a few minutes with two big louts. Baston’s last few fights have been with Tallowmen, so it’s nice to hit someone who feels pain, to hit someone who can’t dodge so quick. To hit someone who goes down when you smash a head into a cabinet, or who roars in pain when you put their face through a dressing-room mirror.

He sits and waits amid the devastation for the priest to show up.

“Fuck me,” says Sinter, stepping over the unconscious bodies. “But you’re the shittiest spy I’ve ever run.”

“I want to make a deal.”

“We had a deal. You tell us what Rasce’s up to, and we spare your slut of a sister. Your ma. Your drinking pals down in Pulchar’s. Most of them are still alive, despite you being singularly bad at telling us what we needed to know. For example, just a passing thought, why the fuck was there an Ulbishe-made aethergraph in the room where young Vyr got killed?”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“No? Clever thing, I’m told. More advanced than even the ones our alchemists can make. Long range, no fecking wires. Why, they’d love to