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

two young boys daub Karla’s name on to a wall in an alleyway. In a nearby tower, one of the few thieves to make it back from the Fog Yards lies slumped in a corner. She’s taken lotus-dust to numb her mind, but she still has nightmares of the stone walls around her coming to life, erupting into spikes and knives. Rasce hears his name over and over, whispered over dinner tables and in clandestine meetings in taverns and temples.

I didn’t ask for this, he wants to shout. Even contained, his anger sets the stone around him burning, ripples of ghostlight blazing beneath the courtyard as he walks towards the house.

Twelve guards there, including the sniper in the attic. Four working down in the basement, their pickaxes hewing at his body, tearing new holes in him to match those made by the needles. They’ve already interred Gunnar Tarson. Rasce can feel the boy’s corpse like he’s a lump beneath the skin, feel microscopic particles of dust invade the body, sprouting within the dead man like marble fungi. A New City in miniature, growing within Tarson, those tiny towers like cilia through the gaping wound in Tarson’s neck, pushing through the dead flesh in search of the man’s soul. Tarson’s hate comes flooding out with the residuum, the last vestiges of the soul flowing into the hungry stone.

Rasce can’t stay here. He’ll go mad. He doesn’t want this sainthood any more. Has he not been faithful? Has he not shown his devotion? He did everything that was asked of him and more. He didn’t fail like Uncle Artolo. He didn’t skulk and conspire, like Vyr. He did what was asked of him.

In Lyrix, they lock saints up in madhouses and call them monasteries.

Rasce turns and runs, fleeing the courtyard. Fleeing that awful house, this awful city. He has to go back to the plaza, back to Great-Uncle. The dragon will fly him away from this. Lift him away from the stone and the slime, carry him to the cool airs above. Great-Uncle will save him. The dragon is ancient and wise. The dragon chose him; he must be more precious to Great-Uncle than any jewel. Great-Uncle will save him.

Guards shout at him in alarm, call for him to return. Running feet behind him, like a drumbeat on his spine. He twists the street behind him so they cannot pursue. The paths bend ahead of him, a convenient earthquake. Across the city, he knows that the dragons Carancio and Thyrus take to the air in fright, knows that Major Estavo hunkers down in the dracodome, mistaking Rasce’s headlong flight for the opening thunder of an artillery bombardment.

He closes his eyes and runs blind, but he can still see. The city parts for him. The stone will not impede him. Right now, right this instant, he can see Doctor Vorz down at the docks, standing on the deck of a ship as his servants quarry lumps of stone from the seawall. He feels every blow of the pickaxe, and every block is a torment in waiting.

It’s almost a relief to run into the mob. A dozen ruffians – he could summon up their names with a thought, retrace the paths they took through the streets if he wished. They know him, too – who does not know Rasce, Chosen of the Dragon, prince of the city?

A fist cracks across his jaw. A boot slams into his stomach. One of them kicks Rasce in the back of the knee, sending him sprawling, then draws a knife across his throat – but none of them can hurt him. The impacts of all their blows are swallowed by the streets around him. He is cursed with invulnerability. Even the knife cannot bite him.

Baston comes charging down the streeet, but only Great-Uncle can save him. Rasce lies in the street and watches with detachment as Baston scatters the attackers with efficient brutality. Sends them fleeing down the streets.

“Go after them!”

“I’ll put their names in the book,” says Baston, and Rasce has to laugh. The list is already too long. He can’t stay here until it’s done. Let some other servant of the dragon take over here. He cannot endure.

Baston helps him walk back to Lanthorn Street, brings him upstairs to the bedroom. A series of sharp pains. Tincture injections? Alkahest? Sedatives? He can’t tell, but it melts his soul.

“Baston,” croaks Rasce. “I can’t go on.”

“The gods send dragons to scourge the sinner and honest man alike,” quotes Baston, and he’s gone.

That night, he dreams of one name that isn’t on the list.

Carillon Thay.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Dol Martaine spits over the side of their little boat. “This is the sort of nonsense scheme you and Adro tormented me with for years, so now I will show you how to do it properly.”

Cari heaves on the oars, rowing towards Shriveport, the New City rising above them like a mountain, dark against the clouds. Only the lights of Guerdon can be seen on this foul night – the lamps up on Holyhill, the distant glow against the clouds of the alchemists’ furnaces, and the glimmer of the luminescent stone. A few candles burning on rooftops, making Cari shudder.

“Stay down,” mutters Dol Martaine. Cari ducks under the pile of burlap sacks, hiding while they sail past a Ghierdana patrol. Martaine calls a greeting, some Lyrixian joke, and the Eshdana on the patrol boat laugh and let them pass.

“Just get me close enough that I can swim to shore,” whispers Cari, “then you go back. You don’t have to come with me.”

“Ach, and what would I tell them if I let you die?” He brings the boat alongside a larger freighter, finds a line trailing in the water. They creep aboard like ghosts, and from there make their way on to the docks, disappearing in the maze of alleyways. Cari takes the lead here, leading him through the labyrinth. Brick warehouse walls give way to pearly stone, a frozen wave