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

long voyage home. Some of the survivors of Ilbarin joined her crew there, abandoned the dying land for the promise of distant Guerdon. Others stayed behind, prisoners of their own pasts, or chained by fears of passing through the Godswar again. All were free to choose.

The Saint of Knives has little patience. After three days, Moonchild cast off from Ilbarin, never to return. Now she sails for Guerdon. Her decks are crowded, every hold occupied. The freighter becomes a floating city.

No Bythos ride the bow wave of Moonchild as she steams out of Firesea. The wounded Kraken does not reach for her, and she sails into open ocean where no gods hold sway. Her engines groan and roar as they are pressed to the limit of the capacities built into them by the alchemical engineers of Guerdon. The Saint of Knives does not tarry. She’s going home, as quickly as Moonchild will carry her.

A city needs order. Ren proves to be an able administrator, Cari’s right hand. He oversees the distribution of rations, ensures that everyone gets a fair share. Oversees the engines, ensures they have enough fuel to make it all the way to Guerdon. There are refuelling stations en route, but they’re all controlled by warring parties in the Godswar, by Old Haith or Ulbishe or Lyrix, and none of them would trade with Moonchild. Ren watches the gauges tick down, and knows that Adro would tell him not to worry. They’ll get lucky, Adro would say. It’ll be tight getting to Guerdon, but with a fair wind and calm seas they’ll make it.

A city needs hope and purpose. Ama, Ren and Adro’s daughter, plays in the sun, and laughs for the first time in months when they cross west of the cape of Eskalind.

A ship, though, needs a captain. Cari’s spent half her life at sea, but Moonchild has no rigging to climb, no sails to trim. Alchemical engines are a mystery to her. Still, she does her best impression of Captain Hawse, rallying and training her amateur crew, making them ready for the trials to come. They sail through disputed waters now, seas prowled by saints and monsters.

A ship needs a navigator, too, and again Cari fulfils that role. Hawse taught her to read charts, but she doesn’t need any map to tell her the bearing to Guerdon. She can sense the New City when she closes her eyes – but she can’t sense Spar. Her prayers go unanswered, and every day her worries grow as the silence remains. I’m too late, she thinks. She’s returning empty-handed from her quest, and she’s coming back too late even to say goodbye.

She hides her fears from her crew. She’s become their champion, their saint, and she has to show courage for them. She’s promised them a better home in the New City.

The crossing takes three weeks, even with Moonchild at full throttle. Supplies run low; disease stalks the lower decks. The voyage is not without sacrifice.

But, as Adro would have said if he was there, they get lucky.

The waters near Guerdon are empty. Far fewer now seek sanctuary than before. The war has moved, and the city is no longer as safe as it was. Still, the people of Moonchild cluster at the railing, searching the horizon for the first glimpse of their new home.

At last, ahead lies Guerdon’s wide harbour. Cari can feel the weight of the distant city. Past the Isle of Statues, where the old Stone Men go. Past the skeleton of the new lighthouse on the Bell Rock, past the quarantined Hark Island, the low sandbar of Shrike. She can almost see it now, see the towers of the New City reaching for the sky…

“Turn the fucking ship,” orders the Saint of Knives.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Glass crunches under Baston’s boots. The tavern’s windows were blown out by the fires inside. He steps through the scorched doorway, steps gingerly through the still-smouldering embers. It’s professional work, he has to admit. There were times when Heinreil would send the Fever Knight to torch some business that hadn’t paid its dues to the Brotherhood. If you won’t support us in the struggle, Brother, we have to assume you’re on the side of the Guilds. Heinreil’s words, making a mockery of Idge’s ideals.

For a tavern like this, you want to get the fire burning near the bar, near all those casks and bottles of flammable alcohol. An amateur, or someone who just wanted to send a warning, would toss a firebomb in the door. Sow terror and cause a bit of damage, but if you want the place destroyed efficiently, you set your phlogiston charge behind the bar.

The bar was popular with Lyrixian soldiers. When the fire started, the place was full of them, some just arrived from overseas, others just back from the Godswar down in Khenth. Major Estavo’s furious, according to Rasce, threatening retaliation.

Scuffed patches where the bodies were removed. Already, they’ve taken the corpses down to Lanthorn Street, so Vorz can drain them of what residuum might remain. The arsonists barred the doors to ensure no one could escape the blaze. Baston spots a little half-melted metal amulet behind the bar and bends down to examine it. A sigil of the Kept Gods of Guerdon.

He picks up the talisman, weighs it in his hand. Keepers burn the dead – the flames of Safid carry the soul to heaven, that’s the litany. He wonders if there’ll be any residuum at all left in that body, and if whoever died here knew what they were doing.

Like the rest of the New City, the tavern sprang from the stone, and Rasce has eyes in the stone. The attackers will be found and judged by the living saint.

Glancing out through the shattered windows of the tavern, there’s two dozen or so people on the far side of the street, staring at him. Faces soot-streaked. All silent, all unmoving like statues, except when a mother wraps her arms around