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

So, too, are the days when she could just swagger out there, the Saint of Knives, girded in miraculous armour. Hard as stone, glorious as the soaring spires of the New City. Power isn’t a card she can play any more, and she misses it. Once, she could have saved everyone. Once, she wouldn’t have had anything to fear.

Movement, outside! The lamps bob around, their beams shining back towards Ushket, lighting up the slope. More men have arrived. More Ghierdana – but they’re arguing with the others. Shouting, shoving, the two groups lining up and posturing. Cari knows a gang dispute when she sees one. No one’s drawing weapons yet, but they’re paying more attention to threatening each other than to watching the shore.

This could be the moment.

The leader of the newcomers pushes through the line, strides across the stony strand to the Rose. It’s dark, but he’s outlined against the torchlight, and Cari still knows his walk. Dol Martaine.

“The fucker sold us out,” she whispers, her grip tightening on the carving knife. If she still had her powers, she’d walk out there and kill Martaine for betraying them. She wouldn’t even hesitate.

Adro sounds like he’s about to say something, but she shushes him. She watches Martaine clamber up the side of the ship. The deck creaks overhead as he crosses to the sorceress. Cari can only make out a few words, but it sounds like a turf dispute.

Adro swallows. “You should run!” he whispers in her ear. “They’ll kill you if they catch you!”

She tenses, about to make a break for it, when the watchers outside the ship turn to face the rising sea. Shining their lamps out into the dark waves, drawing swords as if they’ve seen some danger.

If she runs out of the gap in the hull now, she’ll be running right into that light. They’d see her instantly.

The scrape of the trapdoor opening, the splash of someone dropping into the aft hold. Martaine’s voice, calling down from above. “Be respectful, you dolts! It’s a holy place. Do you want to bring a curse down on your heads?” Another splash, and another. Light flaring in the aft hold behind them.

They’re trapped. Three ways out – the stairs up to the deck, the door aft, the breach in the hull – and Ghierdana watching all three.

Then comes a wet slap against the hull, the sound of squelching mud, the hooting of the Bythos. The light from the sentries’ lamps outside becomes a flickering shadow-play as the Bythos march up the shore, hooting and belching. There are dozens of them out there, parading out of the sea, more than she’s ever seen before. A stream of glistening black scaly things, carried on shambling, stumbling host bodies, marching out of the surf and proceeding along the shore towards Ushket. The line of Ghierdana sentries parts to let the creatures through.

For a moment, a Bythos lingers at the entrance to the hold, the unblinking saucer of its fish-eye staring right at Cari, beckoning her. It’s the Monkfish, the one she saw on her first night on Ilbarin. She can still see the scars left by the broken glass.

“Now,” she hisses at Adro, grabbing him by the arm. They run out, staying low, and plunge into the midst of the procession.

The Bythos on either side of her extend their fins over her, soaking her with dripping seawater and slime.

The fishy stench is all-consuming; she can taste it in her throat, in the back of her sinuses. Slime coats the ground, making it slippery, and if she falls the Bythos might trample her to death. She can’t see anything except confused fragments of Bythos – a rotting buttock or forearm here, a wriggling fish-tail or gaping mouth there. She has to trust that the creatures will keep to their usual parade route, that they’ll march along the road to the town of Ushket.

Cari desperately wants to look back at the Rose, to see what’s happening on deck. Where’s Dol Martaine? The sorceress? Is Hawse all right? She can’t see anything except zombie fish-men, can’t hear anything except the hooting and yawping of the Bythos. She can’t tell how long they’ve been marching for.

Her lungs feel choked with their slime, her skin slick with goo. She feels them pressing on her. Their fishy gurgles and hoots become a hymn to the Lord of Waters, a plaintive cry for a missing parent. She’s not sure if their voices have changed, or if they’ve worked some change on her ears so she can suddenly understand. Is this how Hawse hears them?

Her fingers dig into Adro’s sleeve, holding his wrist tight. She can hear him cursing and complaining through gaps in the Bythos chorus.

Slimy rocks and mud give way to the packed surface of the road. The parade picks up speed, the Bythos wriggling with excitement as they rush towards Ushket. They’ve made it.

As they enter the town the parade breaks apart and the Bythos go their separate ways. Some turn down alleyways and streets; others just stop and amble aimlessly around. Cari tugs Adro into a sheltered doorway.

They’ve fucking made it.

“What the hell are we going to do?” Adro whispers, fearful of attracting attention. “We’ve got to get off the streets.”

“What about your place?”

Adro’s face is a mask of anguish. “No, no. I can’t bring you to Ren, Cari, it’s too risky. What were you thinking, going up against the Ghierdana like that?”

“We’re clear,” she says. “No one followed us.”

“Not that. In Guerdon. You stabbed Artolo! You crossed the dragon! Godshit.” He paces back and forth, rubbing his forehead. “I thought you’d just stolen from them.”

“Things were different back there.” She doesn’t know what to say. She’s already told Adro everything about her sainthood, but she can’t make him understand. He’s never known the strangeness of being close to the gods, the intoxicating and terrifying power to remake the world. And what terrifies her, almost more than anything else, is the thought that Artolo was