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

Kill me. If I’m gone, Cari has no reason to stay in Guerdon. I’m all that keeps her here. You can let her go.

Rasce rolls the pebble around the desk. He knows that Spar is a spirit or ghost or some other thing of aether – no doubt Doctor Vorz has some cryptic definition – but he cannot shake the mental image of a tiny man, no taller than his fingernail, living inside the stone, hurled this way and that as Rasce toys with the pebble. “When I first encountered you, my friend, you were nearly gone. I do not know anyone who has gone so close to the borderlands of death as you. Do you not fear death?”

Of course I do. But… I lived with the plague for so long, I had time to consider it. The world is full of injustices and imbalances, and death is but one of them. You can rail against it, fight against it, but it comes for all of us.

“Save the gods.”

I don’t believe that any more. We’ve seen gods die, like Pesh. And even the ones who don’t perish are so diminished they hardly count. I’ve seen Stone Men who are so far gone they’re just shells – rocks with a few vestigial human organs, incapable of thought or speech. Death takes many forms.

“I think there is a natural order to all things, and it is this: the lesser kneel down to the great, and the great give reward and punishment as they see fit. There are but two truths in the world, luck and strength, and to have both is to be great. If I were to spare your friend Carillon, I would be sowing bad luck for myself. No, she must die, so the Ghierdana may prosper.”

My father believed that all tyrannies must eventually fall – that they shall be overthrown, or else grind themselves into the dust.

“Mortal tyrants and mad gods, maybe. But Igde never knew the dragon.” The dragon’s victory is inevitable. He’s seen that here in Guerdon. All other powers – Eladora Thay and her Armistice, the alchemists, even the gods – they’re bound by rules and laws, beholden to debts and obligations, caught in complex webs of intrigue. The Ghierdana, though, we soar above such restrictions. Everything is simplified, uncertainties flensed away. You’re either with the dragon, part of the family, or you’re an outsider to be used or robbed or slain as the dragon desires. Rasce picks up the pebble. “What about you? Could you take the oath, I wonder, as Baston did, and serve me in all things? Or should I do as Doctor Vorz said, and destroy the last of you? What shall I do with you, little ghost?”

I can’t fight you, Rasce, and I won’t serve you. You’ve nothing left to take from me, so you cannot threaten me.

“Always the martyr! I have suffered, too! I have endured!” He’s sick of Spar’s moralising, sick of his detachment. Spar’s no longer the moral high ground, damn it. The city belongs to Rasce.

Enduring suffering in itself means nothing. It’s only if you draw perspective from it that it becomes worthy. The Stone Plague taught me patience. It taught me that things happen in degrees, a fraction at a time, until suddenly the world changes. That what is within counts more than what is without. But you – you still see everything as kindling. Offerings to please the dragon.

Of course they are, thinks Rasce. That’s how it works. The Ghierdana speak for the dragon, the Eshdana serve, and everyone else burns in the end. “Do not speak!” he snaps. “The decision is mine alone. Your life, in my hands.” He throws the pebble into the air, catches it. “I am leaving Guerdon with my Great-Uncle. My work is done; the war is won. My place is in the skies, at Great-Uncle’s side. I will leave, and never look back!”

Rasce flings the pebble across the room. The door opens. Baston catches the stone in midair, stares at it in confusion, then tosses it back to Rasce. “Boss.”

“I sent you to secure your sister.”

Baston ushers another woman into the room. “You’re going to want to hear this.”

Eladora Thay draws back her hood.

“Miss Duttin. You are very daring, to enter into the Lyrixian Zone alone and unarmed.”

“It seems I am not safe from the Ghierdana even in my own office,” sniffs Eladora.

Rasce spreads his hands. “Who knows what rogue attacked you there? Some turncoat spy, perhaps, bitter at being used? What do you think, Baston?”

Baston shrugs. “We’ll never know, boss.”

“Are you here to offer a ransom for those who trespassed against the Ghierdana? The price shall be high indeed, I warn you.”

“No ransom.” Eladora reaches into her bag. “Your attack on Mandel & Company may not have ended the ceasefire, but it has wounded Guerdon, perhaps mortally. The alchemists’ guild—”

“What of them?” snaps Rasce.

“They are leaving. The guildmaster has already departed, taking with him the contents of the alchemists’ treasury. They have signed a memorandum of understanding with their counterparts in Ulbishe. They won’t immediately abandon Guerdon, but everything of worth and all future research shall go to Ulbishe. They fear that Guerdon is no longer safe, and they have little loyalty to the city.”

Rasce shrugs. “What has this to do with me? Should I fall down and weep at your misfortune?”

“At your triumph. Doctor Vorz – what do you know about him?”

Vorz looming over him, injecting him with the tincture. Vorz, in endless private conferences with Great-Uncle. The brief stab of jealousy, all those weeks ago, when Great-Uncle declared Vorz would fly with him in Rasce’s place. “He… he’s an alchemist. A renegade from Guerdon, he told me. Thrown out by your guild.”

“He’s from Ulbishe. An agent of the Glass Court. I have proof if you want it. Carillon brought me Vorz’s aethergraph, and we were able to read traces of his correspondence.” She places a glass vial