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

“One moment.” Cari takes a deep breath, reaches out and touches the stone of the New City. The stone feels empty at first, hollow – but then it seems like the whole New City is slithering down towards her, unwinding, something scaly and titanic. There’s another presence there, where once there was only Spar.

Looking for her. Hunting for her.

“Shit.”

“What is it?” Martaine looks around, as if expecting enemies to leap out of the shadows.

“Nothing you can fight. Come on.”

They backtrack, skirting around the fringes of the New City. Rain sweeps in from the harbour, drenching them both, turning the alleyways into tributaries. More rain falling in a minute than Cari saw in all her time in Ilbarin, water gushing through drainpipes, gurgling in gutters—

Hissing in the candle-flame. A Tallowman drops down in front of them, blocking their path, flooding the alleyway with harsh light. The thing’s taller than Dol Martaine by a foot or more, hideously distended. Wax flesh contorted into an expression half-quizzical, half-feral, as if it’s trying to remember why it’s not dismembering them right this instant.

Cari’s got her knife, but she knows the creatures heal minor wounds instantly. Martaine’s loaded down with alchemy, but most of the weapons either have no effect on Tallowmen, or would kill Cari and Dol Martaine if they tried setting them off at close quarters.

The Tallowman’s lips part, stringy gobbets of hot wax dribbling from its candle-lit mouth. “Paperrrsss.”

“In here,” says Martaine confidently. “In this bag.” He holds out a yliaster sack, shakes it. “Take a look.”

The Tallowman leans forward – and Martaine whips the bag over the monster’s head, pulls the drawstring tight. Cari darts forward and grabs the other end of the cord, the two of them struggling to hold the bag in place. The Tallowman screeches, but its cry is partially muffled. It thrashes around, one flailing limb catching Martaine and sending him sprawling, but the Tallowman’s more focused on trying to get its head out of the bag than fighting. Its fingers claw at the sack, but the fibres of the sack are tough, and the bag’s airtight. The lack of oxygen snuffs out the flame in the Tallowman’s skull, and it freezes in place, caught in the middle of its writhing.

“Bastard thing,” mutters Martaine as he pulls himself up.

“There’ll be more. And worse.”

Worse is the way down.

Worse is ghoul tunnels under the city. Martaine’s bravado ebbs the deeper they go, as Cari leads him down into Guerdon’s depths. In the unknowable distance, echoing up the tunnels, the hyena-calls of ghouls.

“You trust the ghouls?”

“Some of them.”

“The one we’re here to find?”

“Rat.” Cari toys with her new necklace. “Rat’s complicated.”

They slip and slide on muck, clamber over rubble. The dark places under Guerdon are comfortable to Cari now. The cool, moist air delights her skin. Her eyes have adjusted to the blackness, and she barely needs the little lamp she brought with her. She’s at home here in a way she never expected to be.

Martaine’s litany of muffled curses and oaths suggests he’s having a different experience.

“We’re here,” she tells him. “Turn up the light.”

His breath catches at the sheer size of the outer vault.

I did this, Cari thinks. We did this. She gave Spar the power to rewrite the city, to cast down the alchemists and bury them in this vault. In an instant, they wrought a transformation that remade Guerdon, the work of centuries upended in a moment.

You get it wrong, and then the whole world is your fault.

It’s strange, to stand in this titanic cathedral littered with the shattered remains of the alchemists’ machinery, this monument to her own moment of desperate power, and recognise her own arrogance. Back then, she thought that everything in the whole world turned on the decision she made. Now, she sees the truth – the Godswar is much, much bigger than Guerdon. Even if she’d taken command of the Ravellers, become the queen they wanted her to be, and seized control of the city, the world beyond Guerdon would have continued to grind on remorselessly. The poor bastards in the camps in Ilbarin don’t care who’s in charge in Guerdon’s parliament; the mad gods continue their blind struggle for supremacy.

A burden lifts from her as she crosses the vault. It’s not all her fault, no matter how much power she has. There’s a path between vanishing into the anonymity of the open seas, and the throne of Black Iron they showed her in visions.

She leads Dol Martaine across the chamber, looking for the weak spot. There’s a scorched section of wall, somewhere in the darkness, that marks where Haithi agents tried to break into the vault and steal the Black Iron bombs. Cari and Rat and Spar kept them safe.

Maybe they should have destroyed the Black Iron bells. Found a way, somehow – although Cari’s unsure what effect that would have on her. She’s still connected to those gods. So’s El. So is Miren, although that’s a tick in the pro-destruction column.

Scratch. Scratch.

And then a voice, out of her own mouth. The taste of mud and bad meat.

“CARI. WELCOME HOME.”

“Hey, Rat. Stand back.”

Dol Martaine plants a small explosive charge. It’s terribly small compared to the siege charge the Haithi sappers used, and Cari knows how thick she made that wall. They scurry for cover. The bomb explodes with a sharp crack, punching a small hole in the wall of Rat’s prison. It lacks the grace of a miracle, but it’s all they have.

When the soldiers from Haith blasted open the wall, Cari felt it. She has to assume Rasce can do the same, that he’s already moving. The gap is nowhere near wide enough for Rat to crawl, but he tears at the stone, his big ghoul claws tearing at the broken wall.

Cari grabs a bar of twisted metal from the debris and rushes over, works from her side, trying to pry chunks of rock away to widen the gap. It’s slow going, and every instant they wait