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

“Who is it?” calls Baston’s sister Karla from the floor above.

“Tiske.”

“Don’t murder him until I’m dressed.”

Baston advances into the kitchen. There was a time when Tiske would have been a regular visitor to this isolated house, Tiske and the rest of the Brotherhood’s inner circle. Heinreil, Tammur, Pulchar. Baston’s father, Hedan, too. His father grew up in this little house, and kept it even after his fortunes rose and he bought the big place up in Hog Close. Fortunes made and lives lost over this little kitchen table.

Baston recalls the Fever Knight standing guard outside that back door, the sound of rainwater dancing on the bodyguard’s armour.

Every one of them is dead, or gone – just like the Brotherhood.

“Your father,” says Tiske, “always had a bottle of wine to hand, for guests.”

“No. For friends.”

Tiske’s face falls. “I’d never wish harm on you and yours. I stood with you at the funeral, remember?” Funerals, thinks Baston, plural. Two in the last two years. His wife, Fae, was never part of the Brotherhood. She was nothing to do with this life at all. Fae was his second chance, his clean slate, and she’d died, too.

“I’d have carried your father’s body to the sisters with you,” continues Tiske, unaware he’s stepped on a mine, “if they’d ever found his remains.”

“And then you took the ash. You broke faith with the Brotherhood, and joined up with the Ghierdana.”

Tiske bristles. “I never broke faith. But I wasn’t going to shackle myself to a body that was already halfway down the corpse-shaft. The Brotherhood was as good as gone before I left.” He holds up his hands, like a priest giving a blessing. “I know you don’t see things the same way, Baston, but truth’s truth.”

We could have rebuilt, thinks Baston, if you and the others stayed true. It would have been hard, he knows that, with so many of their number dead in the chaos. But there’d been opportunity, too. The New City sprouting from the ruins – a literal rebirth of hope. If the Brotherhood had been united, they could have seized that divine blessing, taken the New City for their own. Instead, it fell into the claws of dragons, and the Brotherhood stayed broken.

“Tiske,” says Baston, “what do you want?”

“I want you to come up to the New City with me.”

“I won’t take the ash.”

Tiske rubs his forehead. “I’m not saying that. But—”

From outside, an uncanny sound, a chittering whisper.

“Quiet,” snaps Baston. Both men freeze.

Through the window, they see a spider’s leg the size of a tree trunk in the yard outside, stepping over the adjoining derelicts. Fine hairs bristle on the leg of the god-thing, twitching like antennae. Baston peers out – the spider-spirit straddles the house. The creature is only half real, its substance skittering in and out of the mortal world, moonlight reflecting off a shifting fog-bank. Eight eyes stare down at Baston as it probes his mind. He feels it, or imagines he feels it, picking its way over the folds in his brain.

He pushes his thoughts down deep. Weighs them down and drowns them in the dark recesses of his mind. Lets his conscious mind fill with quotidian thoughts – he wonders if there’ll be work down at the docks tomorrow morning, tries to recall if there’s bread in the cupboard, reminds himself to fix a broken window upstairs.

Finding nothing, the spider moves on, picking its way with unnatural lightness over the terraced rows of houses. From the street outside, Baston hears the chanting of the Ishmeric priests as they follow the emanation of their god on its nightly inquisition.

Tiske exhales. “By all the hells, Baston, how do you still live here with those things crawling around?”

It’s a fair question. And not one for which Baston has a good answer.

“Have you killed him yet?” Karla enters the room, pulling a shawl around her shoulders. “Hello, Tiske. Baston, if you’re going to murder someone here, put down a towel first.”

“There was a sentinel,” warns Tiske hastily. “It just passed.”

“I felt it. Oh, the gods of Ishmere don’t care much what we faithless do to each other. They only look for threats to the Sacred Realm.” Karla bustles around the kitchen. “Do you want a drink, Tiske?”

“Listen. This is for you, too, Karla,” says Tiske. “There’s a new Ghierdana boss. A young fellow, Chosen of the Dragon. He needs locals who know the streets. He’ll pay. Come on, lad, come up to the New City and meet him.”

“No,” says Baston.

Karla laughs. “Baston won’t take the ash, Tiske. He’s Brotherhood till the day he dies.”

Tiske reddens with frustration. “And when will that be? When some giant fucking spider decides you’re a sinner? When the clouds eat you? When High Um—”

“Don’t say a name,” snaps Karla. Mentioning a god by name is perilous.

Tiske catches himself. He spreads his hands across the table, takes a slow breath, smiles a sad, weary smile. “Do you remember what it was like before the Tallowmen?”

“How young do you think we are, Tiske?” says Karla from the window. Tiske knew their father, knew them when they were children. He still thinks of them that way. It’s how he can get away with calling Baston Hedanson “lad”. Baston’s north of thirty.

They’d have been nine or ten, still living up on Hog Close, when the alchemists’ creations were first loosed on Guerdon. The wax monsters were made out of condemned thieves, remade to hunt down their former brothers. Baston used to have nightmares about looking out of his bedroom window and seeing the face of his father lit from within by candle-flame.

“Ah, back then, things made sense to a simple man like myself. No gods except the Kept up on Holyhill, and the watch were flesh and blood. You could bribe ’em to look the other way, and they all knocked off at sundown. Then they sent the Tallows, and we were fucked.”

“The Brotherhood,” says Baston, “was fucked when Heinreil took over.”

Tiske sounds bashful, like he’s speaking beyond