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

A cavalcade of figures from Cari’s nightmares climb on board.

First, the armoured witch, sorcery crackling around her hands. She moves to the side to allow the others to follow her up the ladder, staying in the back of the crowd.

Dol Martaine, hustling Adro and Ren away from her at sword point, telling them to yield. Snatching Ama away from them. There’s a brawl, Adro throwing punches, but there are too many foes, and he goes down. Ama shrieking at the sight of her father’s blood soaking the deck.

And then Artolo of the Ghierdana. Powerful gloved hands gripping the top of the ladder. He’s bigger than she remembers. He strides across the deck to her, steel boots ripping out chunks of the rotten wood.

“Bring him up,” he calls.

They’ve got Hawse. Two more Ghierdana come up the ladder, the captain between them. Hawse’s face is bloodied, his nose broken. Soot and blood cake his features. Every one of his finger bones has been snapped, his hands dangling like the fronds of some sea creature. His bloodied lips move – a message or a prayer, Cari can’t tell.

Artolo takes out his dragon-tooth knife.

“When last we met, Carillon Thay, I told you I’d kill your friends.”

He rips her amulet from her neck.

“I told you I’d kill your family.”

He takes the blunt knife, hefts it, smashes the pommel into Hawse’s forehead. The old man staggers and falls. No one else moves.

Artolo kneels on Hawse’s chest, brings the knife down again.

And again.

Dol Martaine holds Adro back. Cari crawls forward, head spinning. She feels like she’s drowning in a nightmare.

And again.

No sounds except the wet thud of bone and flesh against the wood. The waves crashing on the shore. The low rumbling laughter of the dragon.

The world doesn’t move, but it breaks.

Artolo stands up, letting the gore drip from his fingers.

“I said,” he says thickly, “that I would kill you.”

Something breaks inside her, flooding her with furious energy. Her anger unravelling like a fraying cable, snapping around inside her. Cari snatches up the sword, swings it like a club. Everything Hawse showed her about technique is forgotten – all she wants to do is smash Artolo’s skull. To open him up again, like she did back in the New City. To break him like he broke Hawse.

The ferocity of her attack takes him by surprise. He leaps back, flipping his dragon-tooth knife in the air, catching it in his other hand. Urging her on. She stumbles across the blood-slick deck, feeling the worm-eaten timbers give under her weight. She slashes at him, and he dodges again. His face flushed red, taunting her, toying with her. Cari’s aware, distantly, of the massive dragon watching them from the beach, of Adro and Ren huddled behind her, of the Eshdana forming a circle around the pair, cheering on their boss as he takes Carillon apart, of the Rock on the horizon, rising up to dash all her dreams of escape.

All of them, even the dragon, are remote. A painted backdrop.

There’s nothing but Artolo, and the fight.

She steps over a pool of the captain’s blood. Hawse’s dead eyes stare up at her. Sorry, captain.

Cari knows she’s going to die here. She has no alchemical trickery that could deal with those guards, nothing that could stop the sorceress, and, well, there’s a bloody dragon right there, too, just to tip the whole situation over from merely doomed to thoroughly, absolutely no-question fucked.

Sorry, Adro. You should have stayed away from me. I can’t save you.

But Artolo’s only human. A vile shit of a human. If killing him is her last act, then she can live with that. So to speak.

Sorry, Spar. I tried. I did.

She has to keep Artolo at arm’s length. Up close, he’s too strong for her. She keeps moving, the sword between her and Artolo, feinting with the point to keep him at bay. On another ship, she knows exactly what she’d do – climb. On the Rose, she’d be up in the rigging by now, or up on the rail, walking on it like a New City alley cat. But the fucking worm-ship is too rotten for acrobatics. Even the deck is a gamble.

Artolo makes a grab for her wrist, trying to wrestle the sword away. She twists, tries to slash him with the blade, but it’s too heavy, too slow; he dodges, backs away.

Artolo switches his knife from hand to hand. It’s a streetfighter’s trick she knows – forcing her to second-guess how he’ll hold the knife, where the attack will come from. This sword is as heavy as the fucking book, more than she can manage. She’d give anything, right now, for the gifts of the Kept Gods. Strength and speed and a flaming sword – Saint Aleena would have slaughtered Artolo in five seconds flat. Hell, Cari would give Aleena good odds against the dragon.

Maybe the thought of Aleena shows on Cari’s face, somehow, because Artolo hesitates, just for an instant. She takes the opening, thrusts with the sword, puts everything into the attack—

—and Artolo steps aside, casually. Drives his knife into her side. The dragon-tooth is blunt and it doesn’t cut deep, but it’s still harder than a steel bar. Cari goes sprawling, the sword flying out of reach across the deck, a mouthful of wooden deck and worm-husks.

She rolls over, but Artolo’s already standing astride her.

He raises the dagger.

“Great-Uncle,” he cries, “this is the one who stopped me from finding the weapons of Black Iron! This is the one who drove us from Guerdon! I offer you her heart!”

The dagger falls to the deck. Artolo’s gloved hands suddenly lose their strength, deflating and drooping. He roars, a furious animal noise. “Witch!”

Sorcery crackles around the armoured sorceress. The guards back away. “Don’t kill her! That’s Carillon Thay,” shouts the witch. “She’s more valuable alive! I know all about her – her family, her gifts. She’s the Herald of the Black Iron Gods – the