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

“We’re far enough south now, maybe, to be clear of the Kraken,” says Cari. “We get a boat at the fishing village. Sail as close as we can to Khebesh.” The sea is bigger than gods, she thinks, and it’s an odd thought, and not entirely hers.

“It’s not far inland,” agrees Myri. She licks her broken lips with a blackened tongue. “In Khebesh, there are golden orchards of apples and figs. Wheat waving in the sun, behind the Ghost Walls.” Myri leans back against the inner wall of the skull. “I mean, fuck the masters of Khebesh, but it’ll be nice to get some real food. And to rest.” She closes her eyes.

Only one of us gets to pass through the Ghost Walls, though. We only have one book.

Cari lifts the Fucking Book. One corner is still stained with blood from when she fought off the ghouls. And Myri’s weak. Defenceless. One good swing…

“Captain Hawse waited for us,” says Cari. “He kept the Rose riding at anchor in the bay, until Adro and I found our way out of the tunnels. Nearly drowned carrying the jade, so most of it’s at the bottom of the sea off Mattaur. But we made it.”

She slings the pack on her back, the ornamented edge of the aethergraph digging into her sore ribs while the book scrapes the same vertebra as always. She’s really sick of dragging this stuff across the world.

“Come on,” she says again. “We’ll rest in Yhandis.”

Yhandis is wonderfully dull. It’s a few huts, a few leaky little boats, masts outlined against the tortured sky like armless signposts, as if to say “there’s nowhere to go from here”. Stony fields with a few goats grazing there. It’s all in a little enclave, surrounded on two sides by the new mountains and on the other two sides by the sea, with only a narrow pass affording access from the land. A sheltered place. Even the weather is dull and damp.

Cari hides her cursed hand in a fold of her skirt, and bribes the sentries at the pass with emeralds. It’s that or have Myri blast them.

The villagers look at them with suspicion. Cari tries to bargain for passage to Khebesh, but it turns out most of them never sail further than a few miles out. There’s one fisherman who might be willing to risk a longer voyage, Mad Quint, but he’s not due back until tomorrow.

“We’ll wait,” says Cari. Like they have a choice.

The villagers aren’t happy about that. Strangers out of the Godswar could bring anything with them, and it’s always more perilous at night. No one’s willing to offer them shelter.

Cari points to one building, longer than the rest. A thin wisp of smoke rises from the roof, and the poles outside suggest it’s being used to smoke fish. Something about its outline reminds her of… of Captain Hawse’s books. There were once carvings on the door, too, but they’ve been hacked away. It was a temple to the Lord of Waters before it was a smokehouse. Declaring allegiance to a god here is probably like wearing a uniform in a regular war, or wearing the Five Knives gang kerchief in the Wash back in Guerdon.

Still, people remember old oaths. Cari dredges up the memory of a prayer to the Lord of Waters, a plea for aid made by shipwrecked sailors. She leans towards one of the villagers, whispers it in the old man’s ear.

“One night,” he says. “You can stay one night.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“You spied on us?” Vorz bares his teeth and lunges for his bag of tricks. Baston grabs the alchemist’s hand, pins it to the desk, then punches Vorz in the face, stunning him, breaking his nose again. The pale man goes down in a tangle of limbs.

Rasce doesn’t react. He picks up the bullet, holds it up to some light Baston cannot perceive. “I see it,” he says, dreamily. “There’s holy fire in this.” He reaches out his hand, holding the bullet above the stone floor. Then he tips it out. The bullet falls, and it’s like the stone is suddenly liquid, a marble pond. The bullet vanishes, ripples spreading out from the point of impact to break on the legs of the wooden desk, to splash against the toe of Baston’s boot. “And that’s that. What else did they have you do? What else did you tell them?”

Baston shrugs. “Little enough they didn’t already know. But, boss – the gods in the street know that you’re going after Mandel & Company. They know about the tunnel. They’ll be waiting for you.”

Rasce pours a glass of arax for himself, passes another to Baston. The Ghierdana prince sips the liquor. “You know, my friend, if you had taken the ash, I’d be obligated to kill you for this betrayal. Instead, I can act as I see fit. Tell me, Baston, if you were me, what would you do?”

“Use the stone I planted and find Duttin’s Tallow Vats, and end them. Free the Rat, and work with the ghouls, the Brotherhood. Since the invasion, there are a lot of angry, scared people in this city. Give them weapons. Give them a champion. Give them… give them a future.” As he says those words, something touches Baston’s soul, and for an instant he sees as Rasce sees, as Cari must have seen. The whole shining promise of the New City whirls around him, a city made to be a refuge from the madness of the Godswar and the cruelty of tyrants. For an instant, it’s like a bomb going off inside his brain, and he soars.

And then it’s gone. Baston staggers, holding on to the desk for support.

Rasce leans back. “And the dragon? My Great-Uncle’s commands?”

“He’ll have to be patient, won’t he? We can retake what we’ve lost, but not overnight. Take out Duttin’s Tallow Vats first. And then… gods below, Rasce, look out of the window. We’ve got a fucking army