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

Just making that tunnel cost me almost everything I had left.

“I see.” Rasce pulls off one of his riding gloves, touches the stone with his bare hand. Toys, for a moment, with the jewelled ring he wears.

Then steps forward, off the edge of the building.

What are you doing!?

“Catch me if you can!” shouts Rasce as he falls. His words are lost in the wind, but Spar hears them nonetheless.

Spar gathers himself, a whirlwind of power. There are fragments of his soul all over the New City, tangled in objects. Now, with a desperate effort of will, he pulls them to the locus of his concentration, rupturing and straining his very soul as he draws all his remaining power into a point.

Rasce tumbles down and down—

—The past threatens to swallow Spar, to pull him back to that fall from the Seamarket, to the moment of his death, but he pushes it away, focuses on here and now, on the living man who falls, not the dead man who fell—

At the moment of impact, Spar catches him, redirects the energy of the fall. The New City quakes, walls cracking, towers swaying. Like a sorcerer swallowing a spell, the worst damage is unseen, internal. Far below, tunnels collapse, foundations crumble.

But it works. Rasce falls more than a dozen storeys to land as lightly as a cat. He looks up at the tower, at the ash falling around around him, and laughs. “See! You are stronger than you think, my friend! You need only a little encouragement!”

Spar’s too broken even to form words. The stone around Rasce fluoresces dimly, as portions of Spar’s soul combust from the effort of the desperate miracle. Flurries of indignant fury and confusion burst from him, but his mind is too shattered to hold even those gusts of emotion. His feelings blow away from him, his anger like wild dogs running through the streets of the city, howling in the distance until they vanish.

Rasce pulls the Ring of Samara from his finger. “An heirloom of my family. Enchanted to save a falling man. A useful thing for a dragon-rider – but you are more useful still!” He tosses it in the air, catches it again. “Forgive my deception! My Great-Uncle has commanded me to accomplish a perilous quest, and I had to know if you were ready for the battle to come!”

The New City changes.

Spar can feel the shift in mood. He feels the quick, subtle footsteps of thieves gathering in the house on Lanthorn Street; they come, sneaking out of the Wash and Five Knives, out of the Fog Yards and Glimmerside, from under the skirts of the Duchess Viaduct. Drawn by tales of dragon’s gold, by rumours of a new prince in the underworld, a new master. Some smugglers have thrived in this divided Guerdon, sneaking across the lines between occupation zones, but more have suffered. Neither Haith nor Ishmere have any love for thieves, and the free city’s new minister for security is eight times more vigilant and cunning than his predecessors.

The LOZ border is porous to them, secret ways opening as needed.

In the evenings, Lanthorn Street is the Brotherhood clubhouse reborn. They toast the fallen, naming their kin who were taken by the gallows, or the Tallows, or the war. Idge, Ven the Goat, the Cafstan boys. Silken Tammur. Even Heinreil gets a round. Karla leads the toast to her father Hedan, gone underground two years ago tonight, and never came back.

Another toast, to Spar Idgeson.

Karla whispers into her brother’s ear, unheard by any in the room save Baston – and Spar.

“What the fuck happened between you and Rasce?”

“Trust me.”

“Of course I trust you,” she whispers. “Make sure Rasce does. We should take the ash.”

“There’s no need for that,” says Baston. “It’s Spar. Idge’s son came back.”

Trust. Spar has to trust Rasce, trust this slender connection to the mortal world. This narrow crack in the walls of his living tomb.

His trust is rewarded. Those poisoned by the fumes from the burning of Dredger’s yard are given money by Karla. She hires back-alley alchemists and whisky saints to tend to them, rough healers of the streets, but at least it’s some help. Rasce’s campaign against the city’s yliaster dealers continues – one by one, other merchants of raw alchemical materials along Guerdon’s docks take the ash and swear allegiance to the Ghierdana.

Take the ash, or are given it. There are no more accidental conflagrations like the debacle at Dredger’s yard, but there are incidents of arson. Sabotage. The occasional beating. Spar learns much of this second-hand – the other alchemical supplies have their operations outside the New City, in the old docklands to the south or the new docks beyond Holyhill. From his spires, he sees columns of smoke, shadows moving on rooftops, but most of his knowledge comes from whispers heard by his walls. Thieves boasting about coin stolen from rich alchemical merchants (like they did in Idge’s day, thinks Spar, when his father led the Brotherhood against the crushing power of the alchemists’ guild). Grumblings from the other Ghierdana families, the subsonic rumbles of disquiet from the other dragons. The clatter of typewriter keys as Lyrixian soldiers write up worried reports about their unreliable allies.

Spar relays all this information to Rasce, and Rasce puts it to work. Secrets are weapons if you know how to use them. Rasce sets dragon against dragon, buys off Major Estavo with the promise of intelligence gleaned from the other occupation zones, rallies the thieves. His swagger is infectious; the younger thieves feel like these streets are theirs. They no longer need to be furtive and god-fearing – Rasce offers them a chance to be respected, to take what they wish from the city.

Spar watches Baston follow loyally behind Rasce, eclipsing Vyr as his right-hand man. It’s Baston who knows how to evade the city watch in Guerdon, Baston who knows who