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

The Crawling One extends a hand to Cari, offering to help her out of the water.

Adro runs forward, hacking at the Crawling One with his sword. It’s as ineffective as slashing the floodwater. His sword slips right through the monster, comes out covered in worm-goo, but the Crawling One isn’t wounded.

“We mean you no harm,” says the Crawling One. Its voice is rich and deep, soothing in its confident warmth, but there’s a disconcerting accompaniment – barely audible, at the edge of hearing – of other voices saying the same words. “We have been expecting you. Please, come with us.”

The long night has made Artolo’s eyes feel raw. He shuffles through the papers, and the columns of numbers dance in his vision. To the abyss with it – he’s no clerk to fuss over accounts. The shape of the problem is clear enough – the yliaster produced by the work camp is barely enough to meet the quotas demanded by Great-Uncle, and the supply of workers is limited and dwindling. Either fewer of the bastards get to leave, or they stop dying – or Artolo sends more bodies to the camp.

He tries to shove the papers away across the desk, but his gloves bend under the pressure. The damn ghost-finger spell has worn off again. He slams his palm down on the papers and paws them across the table. He storms across the room and fumbles with the doorknob but he can’t get a grip on the slick brass. Infuriated, he steps back and kicks the door down, splintering the lock. A passing servant in the corridor yelps in alarm and scuttles backwards.

“Where’s the witch?” demands Artolo.

“Shore! The shore! She’s down there!” The words come spilling out of the servant in a jumble, a frantic defence against Artolo’s anger. “Someone reported seeing the Guerdonese woman there!”

Artolo snorts, like a bull about to charge. The witch should have told him there’d been a tip-off. Has her sorcery rotted her brain? Damn Eshdana should know their place! The ash-mark can be wiped away as easily as he put it there, he thinks, but his limp fingers mock him. He remembers the first time she woke his ghost-fingers, and how pleasurable it was to dip his thumb in the ash and smear the grey dust across the brow of her helmet. She won her life with that spell.

But she must learn her place.

“Find Dol Martaine. Tell him to fetch my horse—”

“Begging your pardon, lord, but Dol Martaine’s gone down to the shore, too. Soon as he heard the witch was gone, he took his men and followed.”

“Get my carriage ready. Now.”

Cari doesn’t know if the Crawling One found this loft room intact, or if it salvaged furniture from all over Ushket. The shattered blue windows look out on the troubled stars over Ilbarin.

Adro sits down next to her on the rotted sofa, his eyes fixed on the Crawling One. His face has a sickly greenish cast, and his hands grip his knees tightly to keep from shaking.

“You may call us Twelve Suns Bleeding,” said the creature. “Forgive us – we were not expecting you until tomorrow. We intended to provide more pleasant environs for any negotiation.”

“But you have a ship, right?” asks Cari.

“One that suffices for our purposes,” says the Crawling One. “You will not find it a pleasant voyage, I fear.”

“And you’ve got an understanding with Artolo? With the Ghierdana?”

“We do,” says Twelve Suns Bleeding. “We do not interfere with their harvest of yliaster, and they do not interrupt our consumption of the remains.” There’s a sickening relish in the way it says the last word, a sort of leering. The Crawling Ones devour the dead, capturing what remains, reading the lingering patterns in the brain. The colony in front of her has the knowledge of hundreds of people, all their minds trapped within the grubs. There must still be corpses down there in the ruins of Ilbarin City. Most of the human remains would have rotted by now, but there could be the relics of saints and divine monsters. A banquet for the worms.

“Do they search your ship when it leaves?”

“We have, as you say, an understanding.”

“All right, let’s talk business.” Cari’s eager to get out of here. If things turn sour, they’ve got nothing that can hurt the Crawling One.

Twelve Suns Bleeding doesn’t so much sit as engulf the chair. “Do you desire refreshment? Dry clothing, perhaps?” The creature’s black robes are bone-dry.

Adro looks to Cari for guidance, and she shakes her head. Accepting anything from the Crawling Ones is perilous. Cari rarely dealt with them directly, back in Guerdon, but she knows they’re not to be trusted.

“You need not fear us, Carillon Thay.” It must notice her involuntary frown, as it continues. “Your friend Hawse did not tell us your true name. We knew it through other sources. We are exceedingly well informed on many matters.”

“Does my name make a difference? I just want passage to Khebesh.”

“We knew your grandfather.” The porcelain mask remains impassive, the voice measured. “He too sought the city of Khebesh.”

“He did?”

“When he was a young man, as humans reckon age. He came to Ilbarin as a merchant, trading with the prefects and the spicers by day, but by night he visited the crypts and the temple of Rammas, Recorder of All Deeds, seeking wisdom. He tried to enter Khebesh, but the gates of the sorcerer’s city open for few.” The mask tilts slightly, asking the unspoken question: why would they open for you?

“What was Jermas looking for in Khebesh?” Cari can’t resist wanting to know more. Her grandfather was a lunatic – he squandered the family fortune on a deranged attempt to remake the Black Iron Gods, to turn them from monstrous deities of carrion and suffering into something more tractable. Civic gods, protectors of Guerdon. Guardian spirits for the whole city.

“He sought the most skilled mortal sorcerers.” Twelve Suns Bleeding turns their pseudo-palms