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

both armed. All she has is her little knife clutched in her hand. Two’s more than she can handle – two, when once she’d have laughed at a dozen of the bastards. They sweep through the hold, kick open the door to the bosun’s locker, give the place a cursory search, and leave. The creaking of the stairs under their boots signals they’ve gone above.

She exhales. Amateurs, right? Not even worth my time. Spar might chuckle at that.

Cari relaxes a little, but she can still hear the grumbling of the gunboat’s engines nearby.

The sliver of blue light turns golden as the sun begins to set. From above, she can hear Dosca shouting orders. Sounds of sails being furled, the rattling of chains and the distinctive jerk as something starts tugging the ship forward. They’re being towed into port, presumably by the Ghierdana gunboat. Presumably into Ushket. The gunboat’s engine downshifts and strains, and the ship rocks.

Plan: wait till they’re tied up at the quay. Wait till it’s dark out. Slip ashore; head south around the rock to Ilbarin City and the last leg of the journey to Khebesh. Even without Spar’s miraculous guidance, even with the weight of the fucking book, she’s still sneaky enough to get ashore without being seen. And if she is spotted, well, she’s had a lot of practice knifing the Ghierdana. But you’re not invulnerable any more, so don’t get hit, she tells herself in Spar’s voice.

The golden sliver of light turns orange, then grey. Sunset’s quicker this far south.

Outside, the noise of engines ceases, gives way to the creak of ropes, the muffled thump of the ship coming to rest against some jetty. Shouts of dockworkers. The journey’s end. Captain Hawse taught Cari always to thank the local sea-gods after a safe voyage, but she dares not even whisper.

Not long to wait now.

Then the stairs creak again, groaning under a heavy weight. There’s a hiss of a breathing apparatus. The daylight’s mostly gone, so Cari can only see a silhouette. A metal helmet. A rubbery suit, covered with tubes and metal plates that glimmer with arcane sigils. The armoured figure clomps into the middle of the hold and stops, scanning the room. Cari presses herself back into her hiding place again, heart pounding again, mouth dry.

She’s seen things like the armoured figure before. Suits like that were originally intended to protect wearers against alchemical fallout, plagues and toxins and knife-smoke and shit, but she’s also seen them adapted as containment suits for the incurably contaminated. Back in Guerdon, there’s a dealer in second-hand alchemical stuff called Dredger who uses one. Then there was the Fever Knight, the enforcer who worked for Guerdon’s old criminal boss, Heinreil.

Spar killed the Fever Knight, but he nearly died in the process, and he had the strength of a Stone Man then. Cari broke Heinreil with a thought, but that was when she could work miracles. Here, she’s got nothing but this knife, no miracles or unnatural strength to back it up.

The Fever Knight’s armour was a boiler with legs, the ironclad of the alleyways, all rivets and armour plating. This suit is delicate, ornate – more fragile, maybe? The helm is made to resemble a boar, and the mouth of the beast gapes wide to reveal a dispassionate metal face. A woman’s face, cold and cruel. Green lenses for eye sockets.

Go for the breathing tube, go for the joints, she thinks, you won’t pierce the armour. The knife handle’s slippery in her grasp. She wipes her palm on her shirt, grips the weapon again. Go for the tube.

The armoured figure raises a hand, gurgles something – and the hold’s suddenly flooded with light. A dozen little floating globules of liquid illumination dance through the air. Sorcerous werelights – the armoured bastard’s a sorcerer. Shit. Cari’s fear is now titrated with a cold flood of uncertainty, which she really hates. Sorcerers are hard to judge, hard to fight. You can’t tell how good they are until they start throwing spells. Can’t tell how strong they are, because that really depends on how desperate they are. Magic burns them up from the inside.

A memory, the same memory she always sees when she closes her eyes: Spar falling, tumbling over and over as he plummets from the ceiling of the great Seamarket to break on the floor far below. His terrified face, eyes pleading with her as he falls, while she’s held paralysed and frozen by a spell.

Hell, what can she do against a sorcerer? If she was still a saint, she’d have a measure of divine protection. Saints and sorcery both exist in the aether. Saints can brute-force their way through spells, smashing enchantments and breaking wards like they were physical barriers. If Cari were still in Spar’s grace, still the Saint of Knives, maybe she could charge through the sorcerer’s spells like a brick thrown through a spider’s web.

Now, she’s powerless. Harmless as a fucking fly.

The lenses whir and click as the helm slowly rotates, scanning the room. Cari tenses, ready to scramble out of her hiding place and attack if she’s spotted.

Sorcery takes time. If she’s quick enough, maybe she can get out from under the bunk and get to the sorcerer before her foe gets a spell off. Maybe.

The werelights follow the sorcerer’s gaze, sweeping towards her.

Go for the breathing tube, she thinks, and get lucky.

“Witch?” calls one of the Ghierdana from above. “Need you up here.”

The armoured sorcerer snaps a hand shut. The werelights go out. Again, the mercifully, blessed, best sound in the world – footsteps creaking on the ladder.

Cari slithers out of her hiding place, dragging the heavy pack behind her. From above, the sounds of an argument – the Ghierdana want Eld, the saint of Cloud Mother to go with them, and he’s not budging. From what Cari can tell from the noises, Eld’s trying to squeeze out a sylph-spirit on the spot to fight the Ghierdana.

Terrible combat tactic for him. Brilliant distraction