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

Lord of Waters. The soul of a saint is a great prize, easily enough to pay for their passage to safety.

The storm subsides. The clouds clear. Moonchild rests on a calm ocean, so tranquil that Carillon can see the flooded ruins of Ilbarin City beneath the keel.

The surviving crew emerge from below. In their terrified eyes, Cari can see how she must appear to them – clad in the tattered remains of a royal gown, knife in hand drenched in blood and gore. Beautiful and terrible at the same time, a saint of terror and darkness who has come out of the Godswar to bring ruin upon them all.

Dol Martaine crawls towards her on his bloody knees, babbling about how he tried to stop them killing Adro, how he’s protected Ren and Ama, pleading for her mercy. He thinks that she wielded the power of the Lord of Waters. He doesn’t know that she’s got no miraculous power here, that she’s far from Guerdon’s New City. That she’s human.

Mostly human, anyway.

But there are other forms of power, and other ways to wield it. Cari looks down the length of Moonchild, feels the vibrations of the alchemical engines through her legs, notes the deck cannon installed by the Ghierdana. Moonchild’s not the Rose, but Cari’s not the scared girl who ran away to sea any more, either.

“Set a course for the Rock of Ilbarin,” she orders, “and ready the guns.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Rasce emerges from the mouth of the tunnel into what must be the heart of the old temple, a great high-ceilinged hall that nevertheless reminds him of a slaughterhouse. The place is thick with ghouls, laughing and hooting. The beasts cluster around two ugly lumps of twisted metal. The ghouls are tying ropes around them, preparing to drag them into the abyss.

Those have to be the two surviving Black Iron Gods, stolen from the vault under the New City, and brought here. More prizes for Great-Uncle. Rasce advances into the temple.

“What are you doing? Onto the surface! Get to the yliaster vats!”

The ghouls ignore him. They haul on the ropes, pulling the two bells towards a shadowy archway. The misshapen lumps of shrapnel catch on the flagstones, like they’re trying to keep themselves from being dragged away into the depths.

“Those are mine!’ shouts Rasce. “They belong to the dragon!”

A ghoul breaks from the pack, lopes towards him. It’s Silkpurse, but it’s Rat who speaks through her. “NOT YOURS. NOT FOR YOU. WE WILL KEEP THEM SAFE. AWAY FROM FOOLISH MEDDLERS.”

“Leave them be,” demands Rasce, “or I shall crush you!” It’s bravado – he spent all his power on that catastrophic miracle. He doesn’t have the strength for another invocation, not at this range.

“HURRH,” laughs Rat-through-Silkpurse. “RUN, LITTLE MAN. WE WILL EAT YOU.”

The ghouls close on him, snarling, baring their teeth. Rat’s hunger glowing in all their eyes.

He runs.

Baston, too, runs.

It’s said that no one, except maybe the eldest of the ghouls, knows every path through the Wash. The old city of Guerdon is layered thick with previous incarnations of the city, wormed through with tunnels and secret passageways, ghoul-runs and back alleyways. The streets are only one way to traverse the Wash; there are other ways, above and below. Guerdon plunges underground, following the buried rivers through old sewers, cellars, measureless labyrinths. Guerdon soars skyward, reaching for the heavens with stairs, ladders, walkways and gutter-paths, buildings that lean so close together a man can step from one window to its opposite neighbour without breaking stride. String all these secrets together, and the freedom of the city is yours.

Can’t catch a Guerdon ghoul, they say.

Baston’s no ghoul, but tonight he runs like one. Hauling himself up the side of a building, wriggling in through an attic window. Crossing to a drainpipe, shimmying down the pipe to the ground, slipping in through a coal chute on the far side, coal cellar to a passage that runs under the next street to emerge in the toilets of an inn, up the stairs to the common room, shove through the crowd, out the back door, then doubling back, down Shabber’s Close, crossing back towards Sumpwater, then up again, racing up the stairs in a tenement block, heart pounding, lungs burning.

If he had Rasce’s gift, if he had Spar Idgeson guiding him, then he would know what awaited him behind each door, or around the next corner. He doesn’t.

If he was faithful to the gods of Ishmere, then maybe Fate Spider would bless him with luck. He’s not.

But these are his streets. He runs through familiar alleyways, climbs walls he climbed as a child, Karla daring him to go higher. The occupation has changed the Wash, warped it almost beyond recognition in places, but there are still patches of the old city, and there always will be.

Baston runs, always one step ahead of his pursuers. The forces chasing him change. The Tallowmen are first, of course, monsters out of his adolescent nightmares, wax horrors that flicker fast on his heels. Faster than he can run, so he has to be clever. He leads them on a dance, using the Tallowmen’s hesitation to cross into Ishmeric Occupation Zone to avoid capture. But it’s dancing over a pit of snakes – the Wash is now full of Ishmeric sentries and monsters. He exchanges one set of pursuers for another, with umurshixes chasing him down alleyways, spider-sentinels combing the rooftops for him. Where he can, he pits one set against the other, Tallowmen spitting hot wax at the Ishmeric sentries who bar their way.

He’s not going to make it. He never really entertained any hope of escaping alive. At best, he hopes he can buy time for the other thieves to escape, buy time for Rasce to complete his assault on the Fog Yards. While the Tallowmen are chasing Baston here, they won’t be fighting there.

He hopes his death will buy time for Karla, too. He really wants to have one last conversation with her.