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

Cari crosses to the window. The pane of glass is new, and she absently notes the afternoon light glinting off little shards of glass in the cracks of the sill. She stares across the Wash at the towers of the New City. Closes her eyes, and there’s an after-image, like she’s been looking straight at the sun. A dragon coils around Spar, trapping him.

She wants to run to him. To sneak across the border, to trust that she’ll get her power back. The Saint of Knives, reborn. To do what she did to Artolo, only this time she won’t leave an enemy behind.

Breathe. Swim up. Turn away.

“I need to know what I’m walking into,” says Cari.

“Our sources in the New City are gone,” admits Eladora.

“Forgive me,” says a voice from the door. “I don’t mean to eavesdrop.”

Eladora hurries over to the newcomer. “Ah, Cari, permit me to introduce Minister Nemon.”

“We’ve met,” snaps Cari. “Sort of. Back during the invasion, just before I killed Pesh, I saw him on Hark Island. And I saw him die in the New City before that. What the hell?”

“An unlikely series of events,” says Alic, smoothly, “none of which are germane now. Welcome back to Guerdon, Carillon Thay.” He smiles, and it’s not reassuring. Then he points at Cari’s satchel. “You have something for me.”

Cari frowns. “What do you mean?”

“As I was saying, Cari, permit me to introduce Minister Nemon,” says Eladora. “Minister for security.” She makes a magical gesture with her hand, as if warding off unwanted attention, and plunges on. “Also, godshade of the Fate Spider, incarnate deity of spies and thieves.”

“The fuck?”

“We didn’t discuss this amount of disclosure,” mutters the spy to Eladora, then he smiles again at Cari. His expression is in a different register now, and it’s like she’s seeing him for the first time. The muscles beneath his skin are oddly taut, an articulated mask thick with strings he can pull. His smile is as artificial as something grown in an alchemist’s vat.

“He’s a god? Not a saint or something like that, but an actual god?” If he can do it, why not Spar?

“Only in the most diminished sense,” says the spy.

“Everyone’s always telling me that gods are repeating patterns,” says Cari. “Whirlpools in the aether, spells that cast themselves. They don’t think like we do, you said. So – how?”

The spy takes Eladora’s chair. “By means of a great sacrifice. You are correct, Carillon, that gods exist – and I once existed – outside the constraints of mortal time. Saints are our masks, allowing us to interact and understand the material realm. When Ishmere attacked Severast and threw down my temples, some of my priests escaped through secret ways. Their prayers preserve the thread of my existence. As long as they live, so do I.”

“So if I stab you,” asks Cari, “what happens?”

“Why,” says Eladora, a note of despair in her voice, “does your mind go there instantly?”

“Considering what we’re asking her to do,” replies the spy, “it’s a good question. Kill me, and I return. I am a god, and gods cannot die easily. Rasce, though, is still a mortal. Kill him, and he dies.”

“El said you already tried that, and it didn’t work.”

“Ah,” says the spy. “But now we have you, and you can bypass his defences.”

Like Rhan-Gis, she thinks. Hesitantly, Cari reaches into her satchel, pulls out a cloth-wrapped bundle.

“Doctor Ramegos’ grimoire,” says Eladora with genuine joy, the eagerness of a librarian when a long-lost book is returned, “you brought it back!”

“No.” Cari unwraps the oilskin. Inside is the aethergraph taken from Vorz’s laboratory in Ilbarin. She’s carted the damn thing all the way home. “I could never get it working. Stole it off an Eshdana sorcerer called Vorz who works for the dragons.”

“I have heard of this Vorz. A backstreet alchemist, by all accounts,” Eladora says, “but this aethergraph wasn’t made in any back alley.”

Nemon examines the machine. “It’s intact, unlike the one from the Inn of the Green Door. We can pull psychic echoes off it, find out what they were talking about. A valuable prize.

Cari shrugs. “How long will that take?”

Eladora gives a sad little smile. “I have a singularly talented alchemist on staff. It won’t take long.”

“And I have something for you in return,” says the spy. He reaches into his pocket, takes out what looks like a grey silken handkerchief, as delicate as a cobweb. He shakes it out, and a little pebble of pearly stone falls.

Hanging in the air for a moment, plummeting end over end.

To crash on to the surface of Jermas’ diary, coming to rest on the dark leather of the binding.

Cari exhales. Wipes her eyes, her face suddenly wet with tears.

She lays her hand on the table, fingertips brushing the stone.

Spar, are you there?

Yes.

Cari and Spar begin with words. Fumbling, awkward, misplaced.

I’m sorry I was gone so long

I couldn’t hold out

I’ve made mistakes

I missed you

The words give way to a flood of emotions and memories. In the technical argot of sorcerers and theologians, their souls are congruent.

For Cari, Spar’s presence is shelter against the storm. He’s home, the one place where she never feels that nervous restlessness, never feels that she has to move and fight to survive. The place where she doesn’t need to lose herself. She returns to him now with new eyes. She’s seen the Godswar. The horrors that lie ahead for Guerdon if the fragile Armistice breaks and the war returns to the city – internment camps watched by armed guards, prisoners dredging the last scraps out of a dying world for cruel men. Mad gods for mad worshippers, denying the world around them, stumbling towards oblivion.

At the end, nothing but worms.

And for Spar, Cari is life and fire, a light that guides him. Behind him, the stony pit of despair. Above him, always unreachable, is the duty passed down to him from his father. Idge is always there in memory, dangling from the noose,