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

citadel, white stone painted a delicate pink by the dawn. The new harbour, ugly as a freshly sutured wound. The thick mud staining everything. And off to the left, the long shore of wrecked ships.

Black smoke. From near the Rose. Maybe, maybe, from the Rose. Too far away to be sure.

“Oh.” Cari’s voice sounds small and childlike in her ears. The Rose was her home. And she’s brought disaster to it. You ruin everything. She looks for some sign the captain’s still alive. Surely they’d have brought him to the work camp in Ilbarin City. They can rescue him – she’ll demand the Crawling One help her break the captain out. Hawse has to still be alive.

“Has the grimoire been destroyed?” Twelve Suns Bleeding’s cultivated voice expresses sympathy and deep concern, but she’s quite sure the Crawling One is about to cut its losses. Without the grimoire, the gates of Khebesh stay shut. Without access to Khebesh, the Crawling Ones have no use for her, or anyone else on board.

“It’s safe. The captain hid it.” She puts as much fervour into her words as she can. “But we’ve got to go back.”

The ship turns smoothly, the useless rudder bumping against the hull, the masts quivering under the shock of the sudden change of course. They’re not so much sailing as being carried in a wooden box. A floating coffin.

Adro notices the smoke and comes running up. “Is that the Rose burning?”

“I don’t know.” Ilbarin swells before them once again, as if the Rock exudes some malign gravity, pulling them back.

“This won’t take long,” Cari insists, to herself as much as Adro or Twelve Suns. “I’ll just grab the captain, and the book, and we’ll be gone again. Straight to Khebesh.”

Adro digs the box out of his pocket, holds it up to show Twelve Suns that he still has it. “We’ll plant your little wriggler for you, soon as you get us there.”

Twelve Suns doesn’t answer. The Crawling One shudders, the whole ship, too. From all around them there’s a sudden cacophony of chirping and hissing, like fat in a frying pan.

The ship slows, almost stops. Abruptly, they’re drifting on the waves instead of being propelled by the Crawling One’s sorcery.

“Twelve Suns?”

The waters around them whiten with worm-flesh. The ship’s leaking, worms wriggling out from every timber and hole, pouring out in pale torrents. She can see shoals of the worms swimming away from the ship, knotting together into new shapes like eels or dolphins.

“What’s going on? I’ll get you the book, I swear! Don’t—”

“A thousand pardons.” The human form of Twelve Suns collapses. The Crawling One topples forward, vomiting itself over the railing into the muddy sea.

“Cari, what are they doing?”

Cari tries to grab at Twelve Suns Bleeding, but the worms wriggle between her fingers, or burst in gobbets of slime. There’s no way to stop the Crawling One from abandoning them again. The whole ship sags, creaking as the sorcery ceases to support it. They’re riding lower in the water now, the lower decks flooding.

Ren, coughing, struggles out on to the deck, clutching Ama, pressing her face into his shoulder so she doesn’t have to see the ocean. They’re close enough to the shore that they should be able to make it if they swim, but the waters here are treacherous. Cari imagines their bodies washing up by the Rose, to be picked through by the Bythos.

The last of the worms leaves the ship. They’re alone on a sinking wreck. But why have the Crawling Ones suddenly fled? She looks around, scanning for the Ghierdana gunboat approaching, or…

There.

There, in the sky.

Circling down towards them. Lazily, unhurried, its great wide wings outstretched like storm clouds. It comes lower and lower, and Cari can feel heat radiating off the dragon’s underbelly, a promise of the terrible fires within.

Closer and closer. She can see the monster’s armoured flanks now, the gigantic claws, the sinuous serpent tail. She can see the jaws, a crocodile smile. The eyes fix on her – not on the ship, on her – and she can’t move. Terror roots her to the deck, even as water begins to well up between the boards.

Closer and closer. The sword drops from her nerveless hands. Far away, Adro’s running back and forth, looking for a weapon, looking for a way out. Looking for anything, but they’re powerless in the face of the dragon. Ren crouches down, holds Ama, waits for the fire.

Closer, but the fire never comes. The sky is full of dragon, pressing down on her. A hemisphere of scale and muscle, fire and bone, awful in its undeniable existence. This is no god, nor it is a conjured monster like a Kraken, dependent on unseen forces, bound by arcane rules. No, the dragon’s as solid as she is, as free as she is, but infinitely stronger, infinitely more powerful. As solid as the bells of Guerdon.

Closer, and the stench of the dragon rolls over her, sweat and soot and rotten meat. It circles around once more, beating its wings as it turns, hurricane winds whipping up waves that crash over the wreck, cracking the timbers. The ship lurches, sinking faster now.

The dragon hovers above them, filling the world. Cari won’t kneel, won’t look away. There’s nowhere to run and there’s no way to fight back. No god will grace her here, she’s got no clever tricks to hand. All she has left is defiance – to look into the dragon’s eye and say, at the last and for all time, fuck you.

Claws dig into the ship’s side, grabbing the wreck’s ribs, and the dragon lifts the whole ship out of the water. The worm-ship doesn’t have the strength to hold together for long, but it’s only a short flight to land. The dragon drops them in the mud, another in the line of wrecked ships along the shore.

Then it slithers forward, touching down just inland of them. Its tail bats Cari, knocking the wind from her lungs, sending her