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

To shout at her for plotting behind his back, for not trusting him. He wants to hug her, make sure she’s all right. He wants to see her, one more time.

Temple bells ring wildly. The priests are closing in. He turns down another alleyway, scrambles over the gate at the end, drops into a stable-yard. He runs, leaping over the murky green-scummed waters of a drinking trough, then vaults up on to another roof. He can maybe get to Lower Queen’s Point from here by following the canal, then down to the docks, then loop back towards the New City.

Baston stumbles as the coins in his pocket suddenly become heavy as millstones. A curse of Blessed Bol, the trade-god of Ishmere. He topples from the roof, gold coins pulling him over, like he’s got a landslide in his pocket. He rips the lining with a knife, lets the coins smash through a wall and splash into the canal. Off to his left, the roaring of another umurshix.

Go right, then. Away from the harbour, back into the free city. Doubling back towards the lithosarium.

He runs, lights of Tallowmen keeping pace with him, wax bastards following the line of the border.

Left, the line of the Newtown Wall like a dark wave ahead of him. The streets ever more familiar as he climbs up the hill towards Hog Close. Back towards his childhood home. Behind him, the whispering of a spider-sentinel. He can feel it extend feelers into his mind, probing his thoughts. Knowing what he’s going to do before he does it.

He tears off his wedding ring, kisses it, then flings it aside. Lets his memory of Fae go with it, the ring holding the best part of his soul. He feels the awful attention of the spider turn aside for a moment to follow the ring’s arc, giving Baston a chance to turn again, dodge down an alleyway into Hog Close.

The close is dark as he enters it. Curtains drawn in every window, except for his mother’s house which is just lightless and empty. He runs through the little back garden, brambles tearing at his ankles. The place gone to ruin since his mother left. The Newtown Wall at the back of the garden is as tall as he remembers it, unclimbable. He remembers, one summer afternoon, when his father Hedan and a few other worthies of the Brotherhood tried to climb that wall. They were all drunk, laughing, betting on one another, and none of them made it all the way to the top.

Baston starts to climb. Blind, in the dark, his fingers searching for handholds in the stone. Hauling himself up by brute force. The spider-sentinel is close now, long hairy legs carrying its phantasmal body over the roof of the house – but the Ishmeric Occupation Zone ends at the top of the wall, and he seems to have lost the Tallowmen for now. If he can just get to the top of the wall…

Climb. Don’t think. Don’t hesitate. Run, little mortal, before the gods see you. You cannot endure their gaze. You cannot survive their presence.

His hand finds the parapet. He pulls himself over, takes one gasp of air, then rolls and runs again. He’s not clear yet. The spider-sentinel’s climbing after him, risking a brief trespass into the free city in order to capture him.

Baston races down a steep stairway on the Newtown side, runs into the clean, quiet streets. Newtown’s feigning sleep, the whole district hiding under the covers, pretending that if they can’t see the plumes of smoke from the Fog Yards or hear the gunfire from the Wash, then everything’s still normal in Guerdon. He runs, every muscle in him burning, until he comes to one small house, one anonymous door.

A moment later, the spider moves down the street. Picking its way carefully, legs delicately planting themselves down with sinister intent. Hairs vibrating to the thoughts of those nearby, tasting the dreams of the lucky sleepers, the mounting terror of the wakeful. It stops outside the same door. Eight eyes glitter as it probes the mind it finds inside that house, scanning the thoughts for any trace of the fugitive.

Nothing. The spider withdraws, fading into nothingness. Ishmere dares not risk a breach of the Armistice tonight, not when fate is in flux, and the trail of the fugitive has gone cold. He did not pass this way.

Inside the house, the greatest actress of her generation smiles, beckons her son to emerge from his hiding place.

“And, scene,” says Elshara.

Rasce runs. The chamber – the ancient temple of Black Iron – beyond has been shattered, the ceiling torn asunder by a spear of stone. Liquids cascade down from breached tanks on the levels above. He steps over corpses so blasted or encrusted with stone dust that he cannot tell what they once were. Human or Tallow, friend or foe, all anonymous in death. Even the ghouls don’t want these bodies.

He moves on. There are knots of survivors, thieves and Eshdana, stumbling around in shock. He shouts at them to find their way upstairs to the yliaster vats. A thief stares at him in confusion. “It’s death up there.”

Rasce ascends. The spear of stone becomes a staircase for him to climb to the next level. More bodies. More dead thieves, killed by something with claws and teeth, something strong enough to snap necks.

He pushes on through this battlefield, following the sounds of fighting – and, more and more, the sounds of chewing. Broken glass crunches underfoot. Twice, he has to retrace his steps. It becomes harder to see, and his second sight is no use here. The stone he’s conjured from Spar’s pebbles is wrong, somehow, and it’s like looking through melted glass.

He comes upon a body lying on the ground, a figure hunched over it. He raises his knife, assuming the second figure is a foe, but, no, it’s one of the thieves, looting the remains.

“Where is—” Rasce begins, but the thief scrambles to