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

The city sorely needs inspiration. The dream of the New City is rotting around him. It’s a thief’s city, but thieves in the manner of Heinreil, in the manner of the dragons. Taking from the poor and the desperate, instead of the guilds and rich merchants. Idge wrote of a better way. Spar allows himself to imagine rebellious saints, holy thieves. Champions of the gutters and the alleyways, casting down the corrupt guilds, demanding a fairer city. The Tallowmen and the other obscenities and cruelties of the alchemists destroyed, the mad gods driven from the city.

A holy revolution.

But Spar Idgeson is not his father. He’s been the custodian of Idge’s dream all his life, all his temporary after-life too. He’s served Idge’s memory as Rasce served the dragon, thought himself chosen to carry on the dream of a fairer Guerdon.

But in his own way. Not Idge’s.

Spar draws all his remaining strength together. With an unseen finger, he writes on the cellar wall, burning his message into the stone.

I’LL WAIT FOR HER.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It’s 13 July 2020 as I write this, and honestly some days the future feels so unpredictable it’s an act of absurd optimism to write. I hope, gentle reader, that you’re well as can be expected under the circumstances, whatever those happen to be when you read this.

Thank you, by the by, for reading this; special thanks to all those who read and reviewed The Gutter Prayer and The Shadow Saint. Special and heavily armed thanks to BookNest.eu.

Endless gratitude to the editorial team of Emily Byron, Bradley Englert, Jenni Hill and Joanna Kramer, cover artist Richard Anderson and the rest of the Orbit team.

Even Nazia. She knows what she did.

Portions of this book were written during lockdown. My condolences to Edel and the kids, who were trapped in a house with a writer on deadline and no access to coffee shops.

I remain indebted to stalwart agent John Jarrold, beta readers John Nephew and Neil Kelly; also to the Pelgrane crew, the Twitterati, and the circle of friends that became a set of squares on Zoom in recent months. Here’s to better times ahead.

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extras

meet the author

Photo Credit: Edel Ryder-Hanrahan

GARETH HANRAHAN’S three-month break from computer programming to concentrate on writing has now lasted fifteen years and counting. He’s written more gaming books than he can readily recall, by virtue of the alchemical transmutation of tea and guilt into words. He lives in Ireland with his wife and twin sons. Follow him on Twitter @mytholder.

Find out more about Gareth Hanrahan and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at orbitbooks.net.

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THE BROKEN GOD

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THE BONE SHARD DAUGHTER

Book One of The Drowning Empire

by

Andrea Stewart

The Bone Shard Daughter is an unmissable fantasy debut from a major new voice in epic fantasy—a stunning tale of magic, mystery, and revolution in which the former heir to the emperor will fight to reclaim her power and her place on the throne.

The emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animallike constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands.

Lin is the emperor’s daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognize her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright—and save her people.

1LinImperial Island

Father told me I’m broken.

He didn’t speak this disappointment when I answered his question. But he said it with narrowed eyes, the way he sucked on his already hollow cheeks, the way the left side of his lips twitched a little bit down, the movement almost hidden by his beard.

He taught me how to read a person’s thoughts on their face. And he knew that I knew how to read these signs. So between us, it was as though he had spoken out loud.

The question: “Who was your closest childhood friend?”

My answer: “I don’t know.”

I could run as quickly as the sparrow flies, I was as skilled with an abacus as the Empire’s best accountants, and I could name all the known islands in the time it took for tea to finish steeping. But I could not remember my past before the sickness. Sometimes I thought I never would – that the girl from before was lost to me.

Father’s chair creaked as he shifted, and he let out a long breath. In his fingers he held a brass key, which he tapped on the table’s surface. “How can I trust you with my secrets? How can I trust you as my heir if you do not know who you are?”

I knew who I was. I was Lin. I was the Emperor’s daughter. I shouted the words in my head, but I didn’t say them. Unlike my father, I kept my face neutral, my thoughts hidden. Sometimes he liked it when I stood up for myself, but this was not one of those times. It never was, when it came to my past.

I did my best not to stare at the key.

“Ask me another question,” I said. The wind lashed at the shutters, bringing with it the salt-seaweed smell of the ocean. The breeze licked at my neck, and I suppressed a shiver. I kept his gaze, hoping he saw the steel in my soul and not the fear. I could taste the scent of rebellion on the winds as clearly as I could the