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

as cover. Their target’s just ahead. A wide pier, sectioned off from the rest of the docks by a wire fence. Rasce can make out a long, low building, and beyond it, tents and temporary storehouses – Dredger’s yard. The arms dealer used to run part of his operations from an island out in the harbour, but Shrike Island was washed clean in the invasion last year, so now everything’s crammed into the yards.

They come to the fence. A row of red flags flutter limply in the breeze. Red’s a warning: it means the yard’s handling highly volatile phlogiston. Vyr shudders at the sight.

Poor, nervous Vyr. He needs to learn how to fight, how to act. Vyr should learn from his father’s bad example – Uncle Artolo came to Guerdon and lost everything through weakness. Rasce’s not going to make the same mistake. He’ll show Vyr to be bold, as befits a son of the Ghierdana.

He glances from Vyr to Baston. The local man’s face is dour, downcast. Does he doubt their chances of success? Or is it something else – Tiske mentioned a tragic backstory, but everyone has sorrowful tales to tell. Cling too tight to your sorrows and they’ll drag you down. These bastards need to feel alive again, to feel the dragon’s fire in their souls.

There’s an explosion at the far end of the pier. A flash of blue flame so bright it briefly lights up the low clouds over Guerdon, outshining the lights of the alchemists. Tiske’s work – Vyr gave him the most dangerous job, and he’s carried it out bravely.

Shouts and sirens ring out. The business of the yards is recycling and reselling alchemical weapons. A fire here could drown Guerdon in toxic smoke, or detonate some other weapon, like a phlogiston charge. Everyone stops working, drops everything to lend a hand when fire breaks out. Workers run out of the warehouses, out of the workshops, to grab buckets of water and canisters of fire-quenching foam. Rasce sees the blocky shapes of Stone Men, hauling wagonloads of salvage away from the hot zone.

“Wait for it,” mutters Baston.

A side door of the main building bursts open. Flames reflect off a burnished helmet.

“There goes Dredger,” whispers Baston. The salvage dealer, protected by his armoured suit, stomps off into the maelstrom leaving his offices unguarded.

More importantly, he’s also left the shed where Dredger’s stock of yliaster is stored. That’s Karla’s job – to smash open the casks and spill the yliaster into the water, as a warning to other dealers in the stuff.

Then the black harbour blazes red. A second, much larger explosion erupts near the first, showering burning debris down across the pier. The whole area’s aflame, now, red flames lighting the night sky, flaring blue and green and lurid violet shades as alchemy burns. Tiske’s misjudged where he set his fire, it seems, and paid for the error with his life. Neither ghoul nor god will ever find the man’s remains – the blast is big enough to scatter his ashes across the harbour.

Vyr quails at the sight of the devastation, looking nervously into the sky as if expecting to see an attacking dragon circling over the New City. Baston doesn’t flinch, but he looks to the Ghierdana for a decision. Lead on or fall back? Abandon the mission – or plunge into the flame?

“Onward!” cries Rasce. He darts forward, shoves open the door. Baston and Cousin Vyr follow. The air’s thick with smoke; this building isn’t supposed to be on fire, but, well, you don’t blow up a pier full of dangerously volatile alchemical salvage and expect everything to go as planned. They just need to be faster. Baston leads them into Dredger’s office.

“Vyr, to the shelves. Baston, you find the safe,” orders Rasce. He searches the desk himself. The worktop’s littered with machine parts – alchemical scrap or parts of Dredger’s armour, Rasce can’t tell, but none of it’s useful. He forces open the drawers, finds a bottle of nectar-wine, more junk, more junk, and…

“Behold! This bastard,” he mutters, holding up the weapon he has found mounted beneath the desk. The blunderbore looks like its maker harboured a subconscious death wish and tried to make a weapon that was guaranteed to explode when test-fired. Given its placement under the desk, muzzle pointing at the chair opposite, he suddenly has more respect for this Dredger as a negotiator. He’s glad he picked Dredger as the example, instead of burning down some other merchant and then trying to cut a deal from that chair of death there.

Baston tears a painting of a burning ship off the wall, revealing a heavy safe. He peers at the mechanism, coughing as the room begins to fill with acrid smoke. “This is going to take a few minutes, boss.”

Vyr’s looking out of the window. “Longer than we have, I fear.” Outside, flames leap and roar.

Rasce hefts the blunderbore. “Stand back.”

“Are you crazy?” Vyr flinches away from the weapon. Rasce tosses the heavy blunderbore to his cousin, who catches it with a squeak.

Rasce draws his dragon-tooth knife, advances on the safe. The blade cuts through steel like straw, and there’s a little puff of sulphurous smoke as whatever magic wards guarding the safe pop. The tooth still retains a trace of Great-Uncle’s magic. Little mortal spells can’t stand against the dragon’s might.

The door gives way under its own weight and falls to the floor. Rasce grabs the heavy ledger books, folders full of contracts and secrets. He grabs the petty cash for good measure.

“Come on, let’s…”

The strangest feeling overwhelms him. His vision doubles – he’s looking down at the yard from a great height, able to see Karla and her crew staving in the casks of yliaster, the flames raging along the pier. She moves like she’s dancing with the flames, eyes bright behind her breathing mask. He sees the foaming slime beneath the pier, thick with alchemical run-off. He feels like there are hollows in his skull, and furtive,