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

“That was a holy Bythos. Emissary of the Lord of Waters,” says Hawse reverently. Cari vaguely recalls the Lord of Waters as the Ilbariner sea-god.

“There was a shoal of them out there before dawn.”

“I know. The war broke the Lord of Waters, child, and his servants are lost. They wander the streets every night.” Hawse yawns, and Cari notices how old he’s become, how his jaw trembles. How much it costs him to lift that sword. She takes a step towards him, hesitantly, then another and another.

The sword comes back up. “What do you want? Nothing here for you to take.”

“I was looking for a ship. I need to get to Khebesh.” She nearly adds “sir”.

“The Rose is wrecked. You can see that.”

“But you used to know people in Ilbarin City. You’ve got to know someone with a ship, Hawse, you’ve got to. I’ve got to get to Khebesh. Please.”

Hawse lowers the sword. Cari takes another step forward, but he turns away from her. He digs around in his pockets, finds his pipe. Fills it, his hands shaking.

“I took you in. I remember you trying to sneak on board, making enough noise to wake the dead. With your hair cut short, wearing trousers pinched from some farmer. And that voice!” Hawse mimics an absurdly deep, gravelly voice. “Begging your pardon, captain, but I’m a boy who ran away to sea. I’ll work my passage. I’ll scrub the decks, do whatever.”

“I fucking did work, though,” says Cari, cheeks flushing. It’s ancient history now, of course, but she thought she’d kept her secret for years. She remembers nervously admitting to Hawse that she was a girl, the look of surprise on his face giving away to laughter. She’d always believed he was laughing at his own foolishness in not seeing the truth.

“You did. I can’t fault you on that. Best topman I ever had. You proved Adro wrong – he said I should have sent you home.”

“Adro said that?” She and the first mate were friends for years; he was like a brother to her. A big ox of a man. They’d planned to conquer the world together, go crawling the dockside taverns together. She smiles at the memory.

“I stopped Dol Martaine from hurting you,” says Hawse, harshly. “He’d have cut your throat and dumped you over the side. But, no, I gave you a place on my ship. And then you left.”

“Look, I was pissed. I’m sorry, I should have—”

“Do you still have that amulet?” asks Hawse, turning back to her.

Cari unclasps it and hands it to him. Hawse holds it up to the light of the rising sun. “Remember that time in Ilbarin, you ran off and pawned this ugly thing. Threw the ticket into the bloody sea. Then came crying to me that night, begged me to help you get it back.”

“I remember,” says Cari. “I… look, I didn’t know back then, but I… my family, back in Guerdon, they…” She struggles for words. How can she convey the strangeness of her origins, the terrible destiny that was made for her? The dreams that haunted her when she was a child, the nameless terror that drove her to flee across the world. She knows now that it was the Black Iron Gods calling for their herald from their prison, but, back then, she only knew that she was always, always in the wrong place. Always feeling dangerous, like some great doom was following her, and if she stayed in one place too long it would fall upon her. “I can’t talk about it.”

Hawse snorts in anger. “You always had one eye on the door. Always looking to the horizon, to the next port. Six years on board my ship, and you just walked away.” He throws the amulet back to her. “So walk away. Go on. Go to Khebesh, if they’ll take you. Or go back to Guerdon for all I care. There’s nothing for you here.”

The door of his cabin slams shut, leaving her alone on the deck.

CHAPTER FOUR

Baston Hedanson debates the best way to kill the man standing at his doorstep.

“Can I come in?”

Tiske stands there, hands twisting nervously, beefy face half hidden by a hood. Laughing no longer. He looks like he’s been through the wars – he has that hunched, furtive look of a man who fears the wrath of the gods.

The proper thing to do, of course, is hang him from a drainpipe. That was what the Brotherhood used to do to traitors. String them up, where everyone could see them, as a reminder that the Brotherhood owned the streets of Guerdon. It was a warning, too, to the politicians and priests that they weren’t the only powers in the city. The authorities hung Idge, the great leader of the Brotherhood, from the gallows on Mercy Street, after Idge refused to recant, refused to betray the movement he’d led. A gutter death in some alley in the Wash wasn’t a mockery of that martyrdom; it honoured it.

“I just want to talk,” says Tiske.

Drowning? The murky waters of the harbour are only a few streets away. Many a better man than Tiske has met an end there. You have to weigh the body down with stones, so it’s eaten by fish and not by ghouls. These days, even the corpse-eaters are informants.

“I don’t mean you any harm. The dragons didn’t send me, I swear.”

Burning? Now there’s a strong candidate.

It could be argued that Tiske deserves to burn.

Tiske makes the sign with his hand, the old distress signal of the Brotherhood. By tradition, no member of the Brotherhood of Thieves can refuse aid to one who makes that sign.

That sign shouldn’t hold any power over Baston now.

It does, though. A little. Enough to buy Tiske another few minutes’ life.

“Come in.” Tiske pushes past him, down the narrow hallway, into the kitchen. He peers out into the cramped yard behind