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

point-blank into Rasce’s chest. The walls of Lanthorn Street echo with the gunshot, but Rasce is undamaged. “Monster!” she spits at him.

“Wait!” Baston pleads desperately.

“Not you, too, Baston.” Rasce wipes blood from his mouth. “Not more treachery.”

“I’ll take the ash. I’ll be Eshdana.” The words stick in his throat. They’re like a noose around his neck.

Vorz sneers as he stumbles to Rasce’s side. “An irrelevant technicality.”

“A measure of indulgence,” says Baston. “Please.”

The whole city seems to wheel around them. Everything’s unmoored.

“Doctor Vorz,” snaps Rasce. The doctor extends his hand. He’s wearing black leather gloves, but they’re dusted with ash. Rasce dips his finger in the ash, then marks Baston’s forehead.

The ash is still warm, as if fresh from a crematorium. Some part of Baston’s mind wonders what the doctor was doing with the bodies in the cellar.

“Swear,” commands Rasce.

“I’ll serve you in all things, you and the dragon. My life for the Ghierdana.” Baston swallows. “And if I break my word, my life’s forfeit.”

Rasce extends his hand, helps Baston stand. “My friend, you have to understand. The ash buys only a measure of indulgence. Not forgiveness.”

A pit opens beneath Karla. She vanishes, falling into the darkness. Her scream’s cut off by the street closing above her. Baston jumps forward, tries to catch her, but his hand meets only solid stone.

“Karla!” His cry echoes off the walls of the city and the heavens above, and is ignored by both. Karla’s gone in an instant, swallowed up as if she never existed. All the strength and courage seem to drain from Baston, leaving him hollow and broken.

“She is alive,” says Rasce. “I’ve sent her away. All the way down to Rat.”

Baston turns, slowly, to face his new master. He thought himself bigger than Rasce, taller and stronger, but he now realises he’s very, very small in comparison to the creature that stands before him. Everyone else on the street, all the onlookers, all the thieves who’ve rushed down from the House on Lanthorn Street, even Doctor Vorz – they’re immaterial now, living ghosts, no more substance than a candle-flame. Easy to snuff out. Just like him, just like Karla. Rasce’s the only solid presence, the only truly real thing.

No longer human. He’s stepped through some unseen door, risen to some exalted height no mortal can attain. Once, they were on the same side, allies despite the tangle of oaths and duties and family. Now, that’s no longer possible – they are of different orders now. As scythe to the corn, as fire to the forest, so is Rasce to them all now.

He desperately wants to vomit, to scream, to get away from the horror of the living god.

“I’d like to trust you, my friend,” says Rasce, “but you must atone first. My Uncle Artolo cut off his fingers with his own knife to prove his loyalty to the dragon. Tiske took the greatest risk at Dredger’s yard. I have something in mind for you, now.

“It’s time for you to go home.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Carillon and Myri feast on a banquet of dried fish, with a delicious appetiser of dried fish, two main courses of dried fish (prepared in the traditional Yhandisian method, that is to say, drying), and polished off with a dessert of dried fish. It is unquestionably the best meal Cari has ever had in her life.

And fresh water, too! This little village is better than any of the broken heavens they’ve travelled through on their way here.

When they’re finished, it’s Cari who breaks the silence. She takes out the book, props it up like a gravestone against the aethergraph set. Balanced between the two of them.

She takes out a fish-gutting knife, lays it on her lap.

“So—” she begins.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” Myri interrupts her, leaning forward with curiosity.

Cari holds up her numbed hands. “It’s been like this ever since I stabbed Rhan-Gis.” She can still bend her fingers, a little, but only with great effort, and the flesh is greyish-white and mottled.

“You blasphemed.”

“I figured.”

“Does it hurt?” asks Myri.

“Aches a bit.”

“Here.” Myri fishes in her robes, digs out a small glass vial, and tosses it across to Cari. “Rub a little along your wrist.” It’s a vial of Myri’s pain medication.

“Hey, I stole all these off you back on Ilbarin!” Cari cracks the vial open, lets the liquid inside drip on her wrist.

“A sorceress always has something up her sleeve,” says Myri, then she shrieks, “Don’t use it all! Just a few drops!”

Cari throws the vial back, and Myri pours the remainder down her throat. Even a few drops absorbed through her skin makes Cari feel like she’s floating, the tugging weight of her maimed hand suddenly gone. She has no idea what drinking a whole vial would do to you, or what internal fires Myri has to quell. She flexes her hand, and it feels somewhat better.

“Fuck it,” says Cari, “let’s assume we can get a boat to Khebesh from here. Do you want to sort this out now? That was the bargain, wasn’t it? We help each other until we get there, and then…”

“And then we kill each other?” Myri’s scar of a mouth twists into a wry smile. “Here and now?”

“Winner takes the book.”

“Winner,” echoes Myri, “takes the book.”

“Only… it’s not like it’s a ticket, right? It doesn’t say ‘admit one only to the fabled city of Khebesh’, does it?” Cari’s seized by a brief moment of doubt; she can’t read Khebeshi in the slightest, so it might say exactly that.

“It’s not.”

“So. Fuck it?”

Myri sounds exhausted and amused at the same time, punch-drunk. “By that, do you mean you don’t want to kill me any more?”

Cari considers it. “I’m not going to cry over you when you go. You worked for that fucker Heinreil.”

“Doesn’t it get tiring,” asks Myri, “holding grudges so long?”

“Hate keeps me going. You have to fuck the fuckers before they fuck you.”

“Very eloquent.”

“What about you? You still want to dissect me?”

“Honestly? Yes. But—” Myri raises a finger. “Only in the spirit