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

Bleeding has made them see instead of their quarry. Are they wandering the empty streets of Ushket in their minds? Or somewhere darker? The lips of one of the trio quivers, like he’s about to say something.

She’ll need to be careful. The Crawling One could do the same to her, just as easily. It could kill her, or Adro, with a word.

Adro’s place. The tall, narrow houses remind her of Guerdon’s Gethis Row. Here, though, the stairwells are open at the top, an internal ventilation shaft to cool the buildings in the Ilbarinese heat – but that was when Ushket was far from the cooling sea. Now, water drips down in unlikely cascades from the tiled roof above. They climb the stairs without incident.

Adro knocks on the door twice, a heartbeat pause, another double knock. A code. Instantly, the door’s opened from the inside revealing a smaller man, his features fine as china, marred by an odd mottling of the skin on his neck and left cheek. “Thank the gods! How did—”

He sees Carillon. Sees the looming shape of Twelve Suns Bleeding behind her.

“Adro. What’s going on?”

“A thousand pardons for the disturbance,” says the Crawling One, gliding in past Ren.

Inside, Adro moves quickly, stuffing clothes and other belongings into bags. “Change of plan, love,” he says to Ren. “We’re getting out, tonight.”

Ren pulls Adro away into a side room, where they talk in quick, angry whispers. Cari glimpses a child’s bed in there before Ren shuts the door firmly in her face.

Cari glances around the little apartment. Clothes drying on a rack. The embers of a fire in the stove. An unwashed pot with a crusted residue. A piece of blue jade on the shelf, twin to her own lost souvenir from that botched heist in Mattaur. She tries to imagine Adro’s life here; all she can visualise is an idealised scene, like an oil painting. Adro and Ren talking by the fire, some rosy-cheeked cherub of a child playing on the floor.

That sort of cosy domestic normality would have her crawling up the walls in days.

Ren and Adro’s argument gets louder.

“We must go,” says Twelve Suns Bleeding, “before we are discovered.”

Cari joins the Crawling One at the window. Down on the street – the armoured witch, and four Ghierdana soldiers.

“Godshit. Can you magic them?”

The Crawling One stares down at the witch, and there’s a moment of pressure in the air, a roll of thunder as unseen wills contend. Humans aren’t usually a match for Crawling One sorcery, but the porcelain mask snaps back as though struck with a hammer. “They are protected by a powerful sorcerer. A talented brain.” The worms squelch, like he’s licking his lips only it’s his whole body, and Cari really wants to set him on fire at that moment. “I shall delay them.” It glides over to the door of the apartment and draws a blazing sigil on the wood.

Adro emerges from the bedroom, a light-haired child clinging to him. Ren follows, carrying a bundle wrapped in cloth.

“Come on, we’ll go up,” she urges, making for the door.

Adro and Ren don’t move. They look at each other, a moment of silent debate. They could turn Cari over now, save themselves.

Ren moves. He reaches inside the room, fetches the captain’s sword. “Adro will have to carry Ama,” he says. “You take this.” He hands the blade to Cari.

Out over the rooftops.

Cari’s the fastest of the four, the most at home in the uneven landscape. Adro’s burdened by the precious weight of the child, which seems exaggerated, multiplied by the four-storey drop to the street below. Ren moves cautiously, too, and he’s got a cough that speaks of some long illness. He has to stop, twice, to catch his breath, as Cari leads them back across town. Twelve Suns is gone – the Crawling One crawled into a drainpipe and is now back on ground level. She’s spotted him twice, keeping pace with them on the streets below, illuminated by flashes of sorcery.

It’s easy to navigate from up here with the Rock behind her and the moon-dappled sea ahead, the bulbous towers of the citadel to her right. She just has to find a route they can all traverse. She darts ahead, looking for walkways over the flooded streets, for gaps between buildings they can jump.

Encumbered by her armour, the sorceress can’t follow.

Her guards can.

One of them catches up. Cari gets a glimpse of his face – young, his features reminding her horribly of Adro’s kid. His armour’s mismatched, and he holds his weapon as awkwardly as she holds the captain’s sword. When he sees her, he snarls and charges her, swinging his blade wildly. She brings up her own sword, but the thing’s heavier than she likes, and it’s an awkward parry that knocks her off balance. He comes at her again, and she dodges away, dancing over the roof tiles. Even without Spar to guide her and anchor her, this is her element. Heights and unsure footing hold no terrors for her. The boy tries to follow her, but he’s clumsy, and he slips.

She brings the sword down on him, putting her whole weight behind it, and, fuck, it’s awful. The blade bites, sinks in, and he lets out a ghastly gurgle, blood and spittle bursting from him with the sound. He whimpers, one leg kicking against the tiles, hands grabbing at her shoulders, clawing at her face.

Cari’s not a stranger to bloodshed, but not like this. When she was just a thief, she cut and ran. A quick slash with a sharp blade to slow down a guard, to slice her way free when someone tried to grab her. For all she knows, maybe someone she cut like that bled out, maybe the wound festered and they died from it, but she never hung around to find out. Cut and run.

And when she was the Saint of Knives, it was different. For one thing, she knew who she was killing. Spar could