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

She creeps through the hold to the aft hatch. She scales a stack of crates, hooks her pack on a convenient nail, then pulls herself up through the half-open hatch on to the deck. She glances towards the prow. Eld’s writhing around on the deck. She can see the phantasmal shape of a wind-spirit halfway out of a fresh cut on Eld’s stomach, but the armoured sorcerer’s standing over him. One armoured gauntlet extended, glimmering with power. The sorcerer’s pinning the spirit in place with magical force, half in and half out. Gusts of wind hiss from Eld’s distended belly, from the edges of his caesarian cut. Most of the Ghierdana have gathered around the contortions, other than a pair of gunmen who are watching Captain Dosca and the rest of the crew.

No one’s looking her way.

Cari reaches back into the hatch and unhooks her pack. The weight of it nearly pulls her back into the hold, but she drags it out, secures it on her back. There’s a boarding plank, but Eld’s thrashing about next to that, so she sneaks to one of the ship’s toilets – a precarious little platform that hangs out over the side, near the stern.

From there, she climbs down on to the quayside.

The quay’s newly built, the concrete smooth and unweathered. There’s something deeply strange about her surroundings – it’s like they’ve docked in the middle of a market square. She finds a hiding place amid stacked boxes near a chain fence. It’s deathly quiet, and the streets beyond the fence are deserted. It’s hard to be sure in the dim light, but it looks like they’ve carved this harbour out of a flooded part of Ushket. She can see a narrow channel that must have once been a street – the gunboat must have towed Dosca’s ship along that route. It’s the only path that leads back to sea. The ruins on either side of that channel are scorched and blasted. Dragon-fire maybe. Or a miracle.

There are four other ships tied up at the dock, like prisoners in a chain gang. That’s what this is, Cari realises – a prison for ships. Only way in or out is by tug, and with a pilot who knows the waters. She can imagine all sorts of obstacles and dangers in those waters, ruined buildings like reefs that’d tear a hull open. A prison for ships – and she can guess who the fucking gaolers are. The Ghierdana.

She scurries, shoulders bowed under the weight of her back, running along the edge of the quay, staying in the shadows. As the last rays of the sun vanish, Carillon vanishes into the night.

The streets are unfamiliar, the buildings strange: the ones nearby are closely packed along steep lanes, but she can hear birdsong, smell greenery not too far away, so there must be gardens here, too. It’s a moonless night, and the twilight’s going fast. She splashes through puddles, skirts around the silt and debris that’s everywhere. It reminds her of parts of Guerdon after the Kraken-fleet of Ishmere attacked. That must be what happened here, too – the gods seized the sea and wielded it as a weapon, dropped an ocean on this place.

She needs to get off the streets before she’s spotted. The lower floors of the buildings look flooded out and abandoned. She spots an open door – broken, one half off its hinges, leaning against its mate like a drunk looking for support. Cari slips through the gap into a once-grand hallway. Paint peeling from rotten timbers stains her hands. Stairs in front of her lead up, but she hears the sound of distant snoring and guesses the upper floors must still be inhabited. This ground floor is caked in drifts of mud and flotsam, but there are no fresh prints past the stairwell. She forces a door into a derelict apartment, long since looted of anything valuable.

That’s fine. All she needs is a place to hide for the night. In the morning, she’ll get her bearings, get out of town, walk around the mountain to Ilbarin City and find a ship going south. She sits down in a dry corner, aching and exhausted.

Cari opens her pack and checks, for the thousandth time, that the grimoire is still there. It’s the only thing she has to trade to the sorcerers of Khebesh.

Eladora’s words replay in her mind: “Bring them this. Trade it for what you need. I don’t know if they can help Mr Idgeson, but I hope it’s possible.”

Not long now, Spar, she tells herself. Maybe, somehow, she tells him, too.

The lapping of the water in the street outside lulls Carillon to sleep.

CHAPTER TWO

The dragon Taras circles over Guerdon.

Great-Uncle’s massive frame soars through the sky, gliding on leathery wings so wide they cast a shadow over the world. Titanic muscles move beneath his ancient hide, marked with thousands of scars. Some are centuries old, made by arrows and crossbow bolts, by the javelins and lances of saints. Others are fresh: bullet wounds, acid burns, the bloody patina of knife-smoke or the marks left by the tendrils and claws of divine monsters. The Godswar has wounded everyone, thinks Rasce, even Great-Uncle Taras.

But the dragon is invincible.

He circles lower. Rasce’s mask was damaged by a stray shot during the bombing raid, leaving a spiderweb of cracks across his field of vision. He has to tilt his head this way and that to see different parts of Guerdon as it spreads out below him. From here, Great-Uncle seems to fill the world – no matter where Rasce looks, there’s always some part of the dragon, a wingtip or claw or tail.

“Is it not a pretty thing?” rumbles Great-Uncle. Rasce feels the words rather than hears them, the vibrations running through his thighs, his spine, echoing around inside his helmet.

He would never disagree with Great-Uncle, but the city below strikes him as singularly ugly. From