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

The subway in the Wash has not run since the invasion, after Kraken flooded the tunnels. So Baston walks, his long legs carrying him steadily across the district. It starts to rain, a fierce downpour that sends muddy streams cascading down the alleyways. Rats scurry from the drainpipes – the rainwater’s picked up some caustic gunk from the clouds, and it makes his eyes sting.

Greyhame Street’s up near Holyhill, outside the Ishmeric zone and near the Haithi border. Under the terms of the Armistice, papers must be produced when entering or leaving any of the three occupied zones. Occupying forces from one zone are supposed to stay out of the other two, and require permission to enter the neutral portion of the city. In theory, citizens of Guerdon are supposed to be permitted to enter any of the zones, but unusual movement risks scrutiny. One of the guards at the checkpoint sports a broken nose – from the bar fight, maybe. Baston keeps his head down, tries to avoid showing his face until he’s at the head of the queue. There’s no watch-priest at this gate – it’s Cruel Urid himself, a manifest demigod. Nine feet tall, bird-headed, a beak that can pluck out the hearts of the unworthy.

Urid crows something in a language Baston doesn’t know.

“What business among the faithless?” translates one of the priests.

Baston holds out the tail of his coat. “I’m going to see about getting this mended.”

Urid croaks, then anoints Baston with oil and lets him pass. The oil smells different – maybe they use different oil down at the other checkpoint, or it’s some ritual he doesn’t understand, or Urid’s presence changes it. Or they know what he intends, and they’re marking him. He imagines Urid stalking him through the streets, that curved beak smashing through his breastbone to pluck out his heart.

Somehow, he can’t envisage his heart as a beating thing. In his imagination, it’s a hollow grey shell, an engine part.

He passes through one of the scarred areas of the city. Buildings so damaged they cannot be repaired, awaiting demolition – and, for those blasted by miracles, exorcism. If he turned left instead of right here, Mercy Street would bring him up past the HOZ, to the place called the Peace Grave. The spot where Pesh, Ishmerian goddess of war, perished. The spot’s sealed off, buried in a containment vessel, an empty tomb. Alchemists are still studying it, and it’s said that those who were too close to the goddess’s death will never be whole again.

The city was too close, says a despairing voice in the back of his mind.

Despite the effects of the war, the city’s commercial district still hums. Traders and speculators scrambling over the rubble, ignoring the damage around them. Shares in weapons shipments, in alchemical components, in companies and ventures overseas. More money changes hands here in a day than a thief could hope to steal in a lifetime – a thief from the Wash, anyway.

He climbs up Holyhill, finds the tailor’s shop. The place mostly deals in robes for priests and students, a wasteland of grey and black cloth. It reminds him of an old railway tunnel near the Viaduct he knows, a haunt for thousands of bats, all hanging there, wings neatly folded. Sinister, lurking presences.

The young woman behind the counter appears to recognise him. She takes his coat, folding it over her arm like it’s an expensive garment and not a filthy rag, and ushers him into a fitting room. There she fishes out a key, opens a cupboard. A magical sigil glows drawn on the wood for an instant, then fades back into invisibility. A mass-produced concealment ward, one of the more recent innovations of the alchemists. Sorcerous sigils drawn by machine.

Inside is another creation of the alchemists. A strange machine, a typewriter awkwardly mated to a glass tank of some glowing fluid. A thick silver cord runs from the base of the machine to a hole drilled in the back of the cupboard.

“Have you used an aethergraph before?”

Baston hasn’t. The woman shows him how to position his hands over the keys of the communications device, then presses a switch, and the machine comes to life. He thought it might speak, or show him his interlocutor, but it’s stranger than that. While the aethergraph’s live, it feels like Sinter is in the room with him, looking over his shoulder, breathing down his neck. He can smell the priest’s odour, feel the scratchy robe rubbing against his wrists as he reaches for the keyboard. Baston’s fingers move of their own accord, tapping out a message.

REPORT.

He waits for a moment.

Baston’s never touched a typewriter before, but the machine compensates, and the words fly from his fingers as fast as he can shape them in his mind. Such a device is dangerous; a stray thought could escape and be transmitted. He guards his thoughts as carefully as he would back in the Wash when the spiders are near.

THE GHIERDANA BURNED DREDGER’S YARD.

GOING AFTER YLIASTER SUPPLIERS.

LIKELY CRADDOCK & SONS NEXT. NEAR TARGETS FIRST.

THEN FOG YARDS.

He can almost hear Sinter lick his dry lips. Baston’s knuckles twinge with phantom stiffness as the echo of the priest’s hands moves his own fingers over the keyboard.

RETURN HERE IN ONE WEEK, replies Sinter.

Baston types again, his fingers stabbing the keys. ONE JOB.

The reply comes quickly, and carries the echo of a sadistic smile. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE GHIERDANA DO TO INFORMANTS?

And then the light from the machine fades, and the sense of the priest’s presence is gone. The girl returns instantly. She bustles about, handing Baston his mended coat, closing up the cupboard with its secret machine. Baston just sits there, admiring the neatness of the trap. Once, no one would have dared treat him like this. The Brotherhood looked after its own. The city watch had tried to find someone to inform on Heinreil for years, and never succeeded. Everyone knew that the