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

redirects his spyglass. There’s Major Estavo, secure in his newly reinforced dracodrome. A thicket of flags, indicating targets for the dragons, planted across the lands south of Guerdon. Khenth is on the defensive, the Silent Conclave driven back across the wastes by forces from the south. Jashan, it seems, is newly allied with Ulbishe, an alliance bought with alchemical weapons from Ulbishe’s foundries. That alliance secures Ulbishe’s southern and western approaches, leaving Lyrix as its only potential rival to the east.

When he flies with Great-Uncle, they’ll set that thicket afire, won’t they? They’ll soar, dive, deal out life and death as they choose. He wants to be free of Guerdon, free of the New City. Free of the visions and the voices in his head.

Now, though, he scours the New City again, his mind a droplet of quicksilver through the streets. Enemies within and without; Tallowmen on the border, oath breakers and traitors within.

He has to prove himself to Great-Uncle. Only Great-Uncle can take him away from here.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Carillon Thay returns to Guerdon.

Last time she came by ship, a stowaway. She crept ashore in the middle of the night and vanished into the tangle of warehouses and taverns along the docks. That was before the New City, before the Armistice divided Guerdon into four zones. That was before she knew what she was, or what the name Thay really meant. When she owed nothing, owned nothing, loved nothing.

This time, she arrives by train from the outlying town of Maredon. She gets off at a station on the edge of Meredyke Park and walks across the green, under the shades of trees, a heavy satchel at her side. Unremarkable, forgettable, a world away from the deck of the Moonchild, when her hands ran red with Artolo’s blood. Carillon Thay walks through the park, her eyes fixed on the distant spires of the New City, visible around the shoulder of Castle Hill.

The skies over Guerdon are unusually clear today. The alchemists’ factories in the Fog Yards and on the far side of Holyhill have stopped for want of yliaster. The train was abuzz with rumours of some great change in the alchemists’ guild, a shift in power. Merchants and naval officers, scanning the newspapers like soothsayers trying to read omens from the gods.

Cari walks, looks for her own omens. Finds none.

Leaving the park, she passes through Newtown. The border of the Ishmerian Occupation Zone lies just ahead. She hunches her shoulders, fixes her gaze on the cobbled streets that follow the curve of Castle Hill, down past the King’s Nose tavern and into the upper Wash. She must look like a madwoman, she thinks, as she walks in two worlds. Choosing her route to avoid even the smallest prickle of divine friction, twitching in reaction to the unseen presence of a spider-sentinel or other spirit. Keeping her soul down. If she’s caught here by the gods of Ishmere, without Spar or any other defences, she’s doomed. And it’d be just fucking typical for her to escape the Kraken’s wrath down in Ilbarin, to cross half the world back again, and then to get picked up around the corner from Spar’s old place on Crane Street.

Ahead, the lithosarium.

The wax sentries on the roof catch her off guard. Old fears rise in her, but she batters them down. If the Tallowmen are here, she’s in the right fucking place.

There are back ways into the building. Cari slips through the archway of a tenement that adjoins the main body of the lithosarium and clambers out of a window on to the slick roof, just out of sight of the Tallowmen. The cells in the lithosarium are partially flooded. The Stone Men were once confined to little islands in the middle of these large open spaces, the threat of drowning restraining them where iron bars or walls could not contain their plague-granted strength. Cari dives into that foul, greenish water, and two strokes carry her to the cell door.

It’s not locked.

At the end of the corridor, another door. The sound of someone leafing through a book. And that door, too, is ajar.

“I’m back,” says Carillon.

“I know,” replies Eladora, marking her place in her book and closing the heavy tome. “Admiral Vermeil told me two days ago that a ship from Ilbarin had been sighted. Why did you land at Maredon instead?” Eladora sniffs. “And you could have come in the front door, instead of dripping mud everywhere. I think there’s a change of clothes in that locker behind you.”

“There are fucking Tallowmen at the door, El.”

“They will not harm you. I gave them strict instructions.”

Cari tips the liquid out of her satchel on to the floor, then grabs a towel. It’s awkward with one hand still sore, but she wrings most of the slimy water out of her short hair. “There’s something wrong in the New City. I couldn’t feel Spar at all. It’s like he’s hiding – and not from me.”

Eladora lays one hand on the leather-bound book. “The Ghierdana have a rival saint. A troublesome young man named Rasce.”

“How did they do that?”

“The same way you became a saint of the Black Iron Gods, or Sinter used me to disrupt my mother’s link with the Kept. Congruence via sympathetic magic. Enough to fool the gods.”

“Spar’s not a god.”

Eladora shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, then, Carillon. Whatever term you wish to apply, it worked.”

“Shit.”

“I take it your expedition to Khebesh was unfruitful.”

“I didn’t make it to Khebesh.” Cari buries her face in the towel. She doesn’t know if she wants to scream into the towel or hide her face while she weeps. Or twist the towel into a garrotte and strangle Eladora.

“I’m sorry.” Eladora moves some documents on her desk, nervously. Her fingers shake, blackened nails leaving half-moons of soot on the white paper. “If it’s any consolation, Rasce’s actions may have, ah, restored some of Spar’s strength.”

“They burned people alive. I dreamed of it.” Cari shudders.

Eladora nods, like