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

Rasce knows all this like he might know he has a stone in his shoe, like he might feel the sun on the back of his neck. But how? Where did this knowledge come from? He reels, steadying himself against the wall. He can feel the heat of the fires on the far side, outside the window. It’s getting hard to breathe in here, with all the smoke. That’s all it is – a lack of good air, making his mind play tricks on him. Like his ancestors who went flying on Great-Uncle’s back before the invention of breathing masks, tormented by phantoms of the thin upper airs.

That’s all it is.

“Are you all right?” asks Vyr, studying his face closely. Rasce grins, tries to speak, but another wave of dizziness washes over him – another building, a great stone hallway, the smell of burning paper, the desperate tolling of a distant bell. He’s seeing double. Baston’s face is cast in shadow, but the light from the fires outside makes Vyr look sickly, his face all rotten ghoul-flesh. Ghouls. Those are ghouls in the tunnels. How does he know that?

Rasce grabs his breathing mask, presses it over his nose and mouth. It has to be the fumes. He opens the window and drops the ledgers and documents into the fires burning outside.

“Let’s go!” he orders. “Now! Make haste!”

Outside, Rasce glances back at the burning yards. In the distance, he can still make out the figure of Dredger, outlined against the inferno. The weapons dealer is no longer directing the effort to save his yards. Instead, he stands there, staring into the flames as a lifetime burns around him. The salvage dealer is no fool; Rasce wonders if he recognises the hand of the Ghierdana in his downfall.

Rasce gives his defeated foe a nod of respect. Rasce always wins.

Whistles in the distance. The city watch are on their way.

The three thieves run along the dockside. Ahead of them, looming over the harbour, is the alien citadel of the New City. It looks different tonight in Rasce’s eyes, brighter somehow. But there’s a long, dark stretch of old Guerdon between him and the New City, a waterfront district of alleyways and tenement. Once they’re back in the New City, they’ll be back in the Lyrixian Occupation Zone. The watch won’t be able to touch them in there.

Shapes rise out of the darkness and the drifting haze of ash. Not ghouls – it’s Karla’s crew. Most of them are local Guerdonese, but a few are Lyrixian, sent by Rasce to make up the numbers. Every one of them groaning under the weight of stolen alchemical weapons – boxes of ammunition, canisters of knife-smoke, blisterlight lenses. Karla pulls off her breathing mask to talk, gags at the smoky air. Her green eyes rimmed in red, face shiny from the heat.

“Come on,” she shouts, “this way!”

No. Ghouls have come out of the sewers. That way is blocked. They can’t get out that way. He knows that with an impossible certainty.

Rasce turns to Baston. “How close are we to the Ishmeric Zone?”

“Three streets over, top end of Heavengut Wynd,” replies Baston, “but why—”

“There are ghouls there. We cannot return to the New City by the route you planned.”

Vyr mutters an oath under his breath. “How—” Baston begins to ask a question, then shakes his head and changes tack. “We can stash this stuff at Tarson’s.”

“Then, I pray you, lead on,” orders Rasce. “The rest of you dogs – be ready to become fine upstanding citizens as soon as we cross the border. Vyr, we may have to sacrifice you to some Ishmeric god, just to be sure of salvation.”

They rush up the steep steps of Heavengut Wynd. The tenements along the wynd are waking up, the inhabitants’ fitful slumber disturbed by the commotion in Dredger’s yard. People peer out of their windows, wondering what fresh hell has come to Guerdon.

At the end of the stairs, the Ishmeric Occupation Zone begins. Two statues with the heads of beasts stand watch at the top of Heavengut Wynd – Sammeth and Cruel Urid. Even at a distance, Rasce can sense a divine presence in both statues. Beyond the icons, the narrow streets of Guerdon twist into an enchanted realm. Purple fog that smells of incense coils around the temple precincts. The sanctum of the Smoke Painter hovers in the sky, held aloft by illusory pillars. Tentacles stir the waters down by what was once some Keeper church, now a temple to the Kraken. Even at this late hour, devotees of Cloud Mother gather in a market square, reading portents in the clouds illuminated by the burning dockyard.

As a son of the Ghierdana, Rasce is not permitted to enter the Ishmerian Occupation Zone. The inverse is true for the Lyrixian Occupation Zone up in the New City. If one of those mad Ishmerian priests showed up in Ghierdana territory without permission, his life would be forfeit. His soul, too – no ritual burial, no final offering to the gods. Dragon-fire burns away all evidence.

The ghouls aren’t supposed to cross the border, either.

“In here,” hisses Karla. She leads them into a building off Heavengut, three doors shy of the border. Through a hallway crammed with old furniture and debris and up another staircase, until they’re nearly to the roof. Then down a narrow corridor, its walls covered with old graffiti and thief’s marks, into an adjoining building. From there, they cross through an attic, down another set of stairs, across a little rope walk strung across an alleyway, through a dozen secret paths. The border’s porous to a Guerdon thief.

Karla brings them down yet another staircase and stops at a door. She makes an intricate series of hand signals. A chain’s drawn back, the door opens and they’re in, a dozen heavily burdened thieves crammed into the hallway of a little flat. Karla and Baston are like conjurers, making everything incriminating