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

The ninth day, when she and Adro were together, he’d tried cutting her rope with a sharpened stone. The rope was tough, but gave way in the end – and then the Ghierdana showed up instantly in one of their little motorboats, nosing their way through the drowned streets. Cari suspects the rope was magically warded, and cutting it alerted the sorceress. That, or her luck is absolutely cursed, which she’d also believe.

The twelfth day, she’d suggested they ambush one of the guards. Maybe steal a weapon. Maybe fight their way out. But Ren refused.

“Then what? Even if we escaped, where is there to go?” His voice matter of fact, something of the bureaucrat he once was, like he’s reporting to some prefect, discussing a trivial case instead of pronouncing his own death sentence.

Cari pleaded with Adro, begged him to help. One last madcap heist, just like old times. They’ll dress up as guards and set fire to something. Setting fire to things always works, right? But Adro shook his head, went off to trade chits for food for them.

So on this, the seventeeth day, she just waits.

Cari’s special. They want something from her.

Maybe, maybe, it’ll give her something she can use. Everything’s a weapon, right?

They drag the raft on to the makeshift dock, adding it to the pile of other rafts. The guards take the yliaster sacks, weigh them, give them a measly handful of chits. Unlock Cari’s collar.

Cari’s too tired to eat, so she staggers to their room and collapses.

Time passes. She thinks she might have got up, worked another shift on the raft, come back here again, but she can’t be sure. It might have been a dream. She’s losing track.

She’s lost.

A shadow passes over the camp, waking her from fitful sleep. A few ragged cheers from the guards.

“Dragon’s back,” says Adro. “Here, I’ve got you breakfast.” He passes her a bowl of some unidentifiable slop and gives another to Ren. “Eat up before they send us out again.” Adro’s own bowl is less than a third full. “I already ate,” he says.

Both Cari and Ren protest at the same time at the obvious lie.

“We’re out of chits.” Adro shrugs. But he lets them divide the slop evenly, and they all eat. From the sea, the spluttering roar of the motorboat, following in the dragon’s wake, heading towards the refinery along the shore.

“Maybe,” says Ren, “they’d move us up there.”

“What’s up there?”

“They process the raw yliaster. Wash it, filter it. Do things to it. Some alchemical procedure. It might be easier work.”

“Up there, breathing those fumes? You’ve already been exposed enough, love.” Adro gestures at the striations on Ren’s skin. Since they started gathering yliaster, the marks have become angrily inflamed, and sometimes even glow softly in the dark.

Cari watches the dragon settle on the roof of the refinery. She wonders how swiftly that dragon could fly her home. I need three days, Eladora said during the invasion, three days to somehow teleport to Lyrix and bring a fucking army of dragons to the city. Cari only needs one dragon, to fly her to Khebesh and then back home.

Those three days cost Spar everything he had left.

“Let’s steal the fucking dragon,” she suggests, as a gallows joke. When all else fails, try the impossible.

Adro gets it, and chuckles. Ren just stares at her. “How?”

“Let’s go and earn some chits,” she says in resignation.

Artolo watches from the roof of the refinery as the great ship approaches. The titanic freighter is too large to sail safely through the ruins of Ilbarin City. She’ll dock at the new harbour in Ushket, by the yliaster stores.

“Is she not magnificent?” breathes Great-Uncle, admiring the freighter. “Moonchild, she is called. Doctor Vorz has overseen her refitting, to carry the yliaster you have gathered for me.”

Artolo grunts. “She’s big enough to be a warship. We could have made her a corsair. Does the dragon not take what is desired?”

“This is business, nephew. There are greater prizes to be claimed.” Great-Uncle scratches a loose scale. “I asked if she was magnificent.”

“Not half so magnificent as you, great one.”

A boat’s lowered from the iron deck of Moonchild. Artolo’s eyes are still keen, and he can make out a hunched figure at the back of the little boat. Doctor Vorz has returned to Ilbarin.

“Vorz also brought glad tidings from afar,” whispers the dragon, half mantling a wing around Artolo. “Now, my boy, fetch Carillon Thay.”

“Ten sacks,” says Cari, “let’s go for ten sacks.”

She slips from the raft, limbs numb in the cold water. The rubble directly below has already been scraped bare, so she emerges from the first dive with nothing. They agree to sail the raft further, closer to the heart of the ruined city, closer to where the Godswar hit. The waves break on broken spires and shattered temples, and Cari spots the carcass of some gargantuan sea monster washed up on one bank of rubble. She can’t tell what killed it, but it looks burned.

Adro sees it, too.

“You stay up,” he says to Ren. “Help us with the sacks. Keep watch. I’ll dive with Cari. If you see anything Kraken-shaped, you tug on the rope, right? And we’ll come up.”

“Keep watch,” Ren echoes. The waters are so silty, it’s impossible to see any distance. He finds a length of mostly rotten wood amid the floating debris, holds it up as a crude club.

They dive. Cari kicks ahead, using the weight of her iron collar to pull her down swiftly. The slime-bearing ruins are deeper here, so it takes them longer to descend to where they can gather yliaster. The pickings are richer, though – Cari’s filled most of her sack before Adro even touches bottom. Lungs burning, she shoves another handful of glowing muck into her bag, starts helping Adro fill his. Their hands tangle, and one glimmering lump gets knocked from Adro’s palm and floats off. Adro curses, angry bubbles bursting from his