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

On his own, Rasce’s just an interloper, a spoiled dragon-prince with no understanding of Guerdon’s history, of the Brotherhood’s purpose. But Rasce is not on his own. He’s got Idgeson’s blessing; he’s got Baston by his side. He may be an outsider, but he could be the leader they need. That’s the Guerdon way, isn’t it? Everyone’s from somewhere else. Even the first people to settle in this city found it abandoned and empty.

There’s the dragon, though. There’s the dragon. Baston sticks his hand in his pocket, grinds the white pebbles he carries against each other as a nervous gesture, like a priest toying with prayer beads.

The train grinds to a halt. Baston opens the door on to a platform crowded with grey-faced factory workers, coughing as the fumes fill the underground station. The Fog Yards.

The dragon is a problem for another day.

Mandel & Company is a big enough problem for today.

Mandel & Company is a big enough problem for a lifetime.

Mandel & Company is, literally, a fortress. Before Guerdon swelled in size and influence, the old city was guarded by walls and towers, and Mandel’s yards straddle that border. Most of the walls have long since been scavenged by stone-hungry masons, but not here. Mandel’s fort incorporates part of the old city wall, new fortifications piled on old stone. The wall’s scarred in places, which Baston realises must be damage from the siege of Guerdon three hundred years before, when the saints of the Kept Gods overthrew the cult of Black Iron. If the old wall’s intact, then that lends some credence to Heinreil’s claim of a secret tunnel in the depths, but he has to know for sure.

The Fog Yards sprawl out from the line of that former wall – an industrial landscape, trail tracks spilling out like steaming steel entrails, sheds and factories and sullen red-litten mills. The streets here are wide. They have to be, to make room for the heavily laden wagons that crawl between the factories, drawn by teams of raptequines. Off in the distance, rising like skeletal giants, are the new towers of the alchemists. All steel and corrugated iron and vat-grown bone, not the dark stone of the city proper.

The Mandel fortress may be older than the rest of the Fog Yards, but the defences are brand new. The guards walking the walls wear helmets with thaumic lenses and breather masks, the same as the city watch. Ensorcelled to spot hostile magic and miracles. A man could scale those old stone walls, but Baston doesn’t like the look of those gaps between the blocks. You could hide anything in those dark fissures. Biters. Green slime. Knife-smokers, spitting mist that cuts your fingers off. The four walls form a rough square around the Mansel compound; tanks and aetheric vanes rise above the parapet, suggesting the yard inside is filled with industrial machinery.

It reminds Baston of the old Alchemists’ Quarter, with its impenetrable sheer stone walls rising like cliffs, looming over the lesser structures in the Fog Yards. It took the Gutter Miracle, Spar’s martyrdom and miraculous rebirth, to destroy the old Alchemists’ Quarter; it’ll take something equally divine to breach the wall of Mandel & Company.

Vyr looks equally daunted. He shakes his head as he spots gun emplacements and aetheric vanes on the upper levels. “Even Great-Uncle would balk at this.”

“It has to be doable.” From the shadow of the subway entrance, Baston gives the fortress a quick once over, casing it as best he can. There’s a statue at the subway entrance, depicting some dead guildmaster, cradling the cup of the alchemists. Baston reaches up, drops a marble pebble into the mouth of the cup. “Let’s go,” he says.

Vyr squares his shoulders. His face adopts a cold sneer that makes him look like Rasce. He marches across the street, head held high, dodging the wagons. Pounds his fist on the door. The walls seem even taller up close, looming like a Kraken-wave of black stone. Above the door is a recess, and nestled there is a glass tank filled with greenish liquid – and a giant eyeball, as big as Baston’s fist. The thing’s alive – it stares down at Baston, and it seems to him that it’s pleading with him.

“Mandel & Company export all over the world.” Vyr looks up at the eyeball, presenting his face to it. “They know the Ghierdana’s reach.”

The door opens. A footman welcomes them in. “Mr Mandel will see you now.”

They’re let through the outer walls of the fortress, but instead of passing into the central courtyard the footman leads them through another door into a long carpeted corridor. Portraits on the walls tell of the glorious works of the alchemists’ guild, and long series of studious men and women, pale faces lit by glowing flasks or blazing crucibles. Baston recognises some of the faces – a red-haired woman holding a candle must be Rosha, the former guildmistress who vanished in the Crisis. A few politicians he vaguely recalls, mainly because they took bribes from the Brotherhood of old. A group portrait, showing the founding of the guild, watched over by a frowning Keeper priest.

Other pictures show other fruits of their labour – the burning ruins of cities, armies vanquished by alchemical weapons, new forms of life sprouting in vats. A Tallowman, and no amount of talent on the part of the artist could make that waxy horror appear noble. In the image, the Tallowman in city livery stands before a gallows, displaying Idge’s body like a prize catch.

At the end of the corridor, a gigantic canvas shows the last moments of the invasion. The war goddess Pesh stands astride a shattered city, her claws tearing down churches and towers. There’s no sign of the hasty alliance of city watch, Keeper saints, and Haithi soldiers who fought against the invasion, nor is there any sign of the dragons, the threat of whom sealed the final Armistice. The only resistance