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

on the table, a component of an aethergraph. “All along, your true mission was not to profit from the trade in yliaster. It was to choke it off, and force the alchemists’ guild into the arms of Ulbishe. To convince them that Guerdon could not protect them.”

“Why would Great-Uncle keep this from me? I’m Chosen of the Dragon.”

“Because he has no intention of taking you with him,” says Eladora. “He intends to leave you behind.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The last day in the life of Carillon Thay dawns bright and almost cloudless. The city’s factories have ground to a halt, and sea winds drive away the smog.

Rasce comes to exhume her from her cell. Baston Hedanson reaches in, pulls her roughly from the grave. Marches her through the too-familiar streets of the New City.

They walk in silence. Faces look down from every window, eyes full of pity for Cari, full of hatred and resentment for the Ghierdana. It’s Ilbarin again, almost. There’s still resistance here, in places – even with Rasce’s divine presence guarding them, the Eshdana guards are nervous as they make their way through the twisted streets. Dragons circle overhead, sunlight flashing off the lenses of the goggles worn by their chosen riders. Rasce signals to them with a wave.

They come to the seawall, a cliff of stone that guards the portion of the city that juts out over the harbour. Cari remembers the feeling of the waves against the stone, the way the water rushed and drained through channels and cracks, the unseen entrails of pipes and sewer left over from when all this was the Alchemists’ Quarter. But this morning she’s just herself, cut off from Spar and the city. No voices in her head.

Moonchild waits below. Waves push her against the shore, bumping her steel hull against the stone. There’s a narrow ledge down there, at sea level, a walkway running along the foot of the wall. Even at this distance, Cari can make out individual figures on the deck – Ama near the prow, Ren standing behind her protectively. Dol Martaine’s lanky frame, and, gods below, she’s happy to see the bastard, even from afar. All the others she brought out of Ilbarin. She promised them a better future, and instead they get this. She snarls, tries to break free, tries to do something, but Baston grabs her, locking his arms around her, and he’s too strong. He forces her to submit, kicking the back of her knee in a way that sends pain shooting through her spine.

But as he releases her, his fingers brush against her shoulder, and he makes the Brotherhood sign for trust me.

Rasce watches the passengers disembark from Moonchild, far below. The Eshdana guards make the refugees from Ilbarin line up along the narrow ledge of the shore, pressing their backs against the walls of the New City, prisoners waiting for the firing squad. Sacrificial goats, helpless and penned against the stone.

Further off, Vorz’s ship. It’s beyond the reach of Rasce’s preternatural senses, so he cannot feel it the same way he senses Moonchild. He doesn’t know if Vorz is aboard that ship, cannot eavesdrop on the Dentist while he’s at sea. He wonders if Vorz has already extracted another tooth from Great-Uncle’s mouth, carved it into a new dagger.

The sheath at Rasce’s side is empty.

He pulls the long coat he borrowed off Baston close around him. The coat smells of soot and sweat, leather and alchemical run-off. It smells of Guerdon.

Vorz’s ship is still within the waters of the Lyrixian Occupation Zone. Beyond, city watch gunboats prowl, aetheric searchlights instead of Tallow-flames, but bound by the same Armistice. They cannot cross the treaty line, cannot interfere. They are powerless to stop this offering.

The ragged peace births its own sorrows. Guerdon is a trading city – in the books of the accountants down on Venture Square, to exchange the threat of invasion by Ishmere for the slow rot of corruption and compromise was a trade worth making. Rasce came to this city thinking himself a pirate prince, Chosen of the Dragon. Now he’s sickened by divinity. Unfriendly eyes stare at him from every window. The stone speaks to him of hateful whispers; his name is a curse here now.

He thought he came here to fight a war. To strike like the dragon – the swift blast of fire, the hurricane wings, the directed catastrophe. But it was something else. He was heat applied to an alchemical reaction, nothing more than a tool.

He glances at Baston, who walks a few steps behind him, a grim shadow. Baston’s face is unreadable. Fresh vials of tincture in his pocket, to prepare Rasce for the next – the final – miracle. Baston drags Carillon Thay along. The girl is pale, woozy from injury and loss of blood.

Great-Uncle awaits them at the end of Sevenshell Street. The sun gleams on his red scales, his golden underbelly. The scars of the war have healed, and the dragon is glorious. Great-Uncle’s claws and teeth are wrath made manifest, and to see the dragon – to know that he is kin to that – still sets Rasce’s heart afire with pride.

Even Baston is cowed by the dragon’s presence. Carillon struggles as they draw close, but Baston holds her tight.

“Rasce,” purrs the dragon. Then his reptilian gaze flickers to Cari. “Thief.”

“Fucker.”

The dragon extends his neck, bringing himself face-to-face with Carillon. The heat of his breath is enough to scorch her skin. “Vorz tells me you were made for a purpose. The waking and scourging of the Black Iron Gods. I, too, was made for a purpose. Long ago, the gods of Lyrix made me and my siblings to torment the sinful. I am divine, and you have sinned against me. No god will absolve you. You have come a long way to perish, Carillon Thay.”

Another procession approaches, heralded by horns and defensive chants. The priests of Ishmere, given special dispensation by Major Estavo to cross the border of