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

the Kraken-waves that carried temples full of saints and monsters, the things in the clouds reaching down with their tentacles. The feeling that everything was breaking, everything was slipping away. She saw hundreds of people go mad as the gods approached. She had Spar to anchor her, but the things she saw that day still wait in her dreams.

She had power then. She could do something. How much worse to be utterly powerless before the wrath of the mad gods? To know that no matter how hard you tried, all your efforts could be brushed aside in an instant. To know that you were nothing compared to them, a mote of dust, a drop of water in a torrent. Like the whole world is theirs, to be remade as they wish, and you count for nothing.

Captain Hawse plunges his hands into the water, and the blue glow intensifies. He closes his eyes again. “All was lost. My ship was lost. My crew… I had to save them. And the Lord of Waters heard my prayer. I swore that I would serve him with all my soul, and with His great hand, he lifted the Rose out of the storm and carried us to safety.”

Captain Hawse cups his hands, lifts them out of the water. He splashes the glowing blue water over the icon of the Lord of Waters on the altar. “I saw, too, the hateful gods of Ishmere attack my Lord. I saw the Kraken wrap tentacles around Him to drag him into the blackest depths of the ocean, where the damned dwell. Smoke Painter poisoned him. The Lion Queen tore open his stomach, and the waters poured out. I saw my god sacrifice himself to save me and my crew.” Tears run down Hawse’s cheeks, and they too glow blue, leaving luminescent tracks on his face.

“That’s what will bind Dol Martaine, Cari. His life and mine belong to the Lord of Waters.”

Cari leaves Hawse at prayer, or communing with the Bythos, or whatever he’s doing down there, and climbs back on deck. She’s glad to be back in the open. A cool night breeze blows in from the sea, and she shivers.

She wants to climb. She’s always liked to be up high, up in the rigging, or on rooftops and spires. She likes getting to places where no one can follow her, where no one can see her but she can still watch the world below. Back in Guerdon, when she could choose where to live, she made herself an eyrie atop one of the tallest spires in the New City. It’s a stupid thought, she tells herself – even if she wasn’t limping and sore, even if the Rose still had her graceful masts, she’s supposed to stay hidden.

So, she walks around the deck, prowls through the empty cabins. The sound of Hawse’s prayers from below mixes with the endless washing of the waves, but it’s not a restful sound. She’s not sure if she likes this new side of Hawse. Faith in the gods is not something she trusts – it’s a form of madness, surely, to put your trust in such things. Or anything, for that matter. She trusts Spar. Trusted Rat, sort of. And once, she’d have said she trusted Hawse.

She trusted the captain he was. Not the priest he’s become.

The urge to run wells up in her. Well, limp, but she can still move. There’s food in Hawse’s cabin, maybe money. A sword, at least, perhaps some other weapons. She could try to get around the mountain again. Dol Martaine said that the Ghierdana control all the ships leaving Ilbarin, but that means that people do leave. She could sneak aboard. All she needs to do is reach the mainland, and then she can find her way south to Khebesh, right. Maybe that’s why Hawse took the fucking book – to keep me from leaving. What if he’s in league with Dol Martaine, and Martaine’s gone to get the Ghierdana?

The stairs creak. She tenses, ducking into a hiding place, hand reaching for the knife that isn’t there, but it’s just Hawse coming back up, wringing out his shirt and pulling his coat around him against the chill of his wet clothes. He digs through his pockets, searching the wrong hip pockets first, just like he always does. A gesture made so very familiar over the years.

That’s the Hawse she wants to be here.

“Dol Martaine said your god is dead,” she says.

He lights the pipe, ambles over to her. “Gods cannot die. They always return in some form. They are outside death.”

“I killed Pesh.”

His face is unreadable.

“In Guerdon. They made an alchemical bomb, a god-bomb. It annihilates gods. No coming back. That’s why the Ishmerians left Ilbarin. I killed their goddess, captain.”

He’s silent for a long time before he speaks again. “The Bythos already told me. They would not have guided you here otherwise. And Martaine’s half right – the Lord of Waters fell in the invasion. But nothing is ever wholly lost. He shall come back, not as he was, perhaps. Nothing will ever be as it was. But he’ll come back.” He sighs. “I’m a poor priest, Cari. I’ve never studied the scriptures, and I don’t know much about interpreting omens. But I believe that the Lord of Waters has a special purpose for you. If you must get to Khebesh, then I’ll help you. But you must be patient: you need time to heal.”

CHAPTER NINE

Artolo runs his ghost-fingers over the barrel of the gun. Flexes them, to make sure they’ve got the strength and speed to pull the stiff trigger when the moment comes. He looks up at the barren hillside and imagines Carillon Thay popping up from behind one of those rocks. Would shooting her be enough? The rifle’s chambered with oversized phlogistonic rounds, and the witch has woven spells around each bullet to make them even more potent.

No. Shooting would be too quick, too painless.