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

slink out of the inn, hiding their faces from the eyes of the watch. They’d melt into the shadows if they could, vanish down the alleyways and side streets off Mercy that run down towards the Wash. Karla’s there, close behind the corpse. Baston at the corner of Seamarket Way, as close as he can get without breaking the watch line, urging them onwards with his eyes. A motley host, marching back up towards the New City on the hill.

“Your kin can go. Your Eshdana can go,” says Nemon. “But I mark some in that crowd who are Guerdonese. Criminals known to the watch. They’re under arrest.” At a nod from Nemon, the watch level guns at the Brotherhood thieves. Baston’s suddenly seized by plainclothes watchmen in the crowd and slammed up against the wall. Karla breaks from the line and runs towards her brother; the watch closes on her, too.

The Lyrixian ambassador huffs up, followed by Major Estavo. “Don’t—” he gasps for air, “don’t argue. Otherwise – breach of Armistice. They’ll—” Out of breath, he waves an arm towards the New City, gesturing in the direction of the Lyrixian Occupation Zone and their military toehold here and the Godswar and everything. “All fucked,” he explains, undiplomatically.

Rasce’s hot anger has been quenched, congealed and cast like metal into something hard and cold. He turns to Nemon.

“No. All of them are mine. All under my protection. They all get to leave.”

“That’s not going to happen,” says Nemon.

Rasce closes his eyes for a moment, sees a shadow cross the New City.

“Yes, it is.”

For months now there have been dragons in the skies over Guerdon. Ever since the Armistice, ever since Eladora Duttin crossed the ocean and invited the Ghierdana to occupy part of the city, there have been dragons in the skies. But all that time they’ve been a distant threat, easily forgotten by a city eager to return to its grubby ways of commerce and corruption. They’ve nested in the heights of the New City, where there is all manner of strangeness anyway, not part of the real city, the old city. They’ve soared beyond the clouds, vanishing into the smog above Guerdon on their way to war in the south or west, problems for some other unlucky city, just like the crates of alchemical weapons piled on the docks. For months now, the people of Guerdon have had the luxury of forgetting they share their city with living dragons.

Not today.

Thyrus lands atop the Inn of the Green Door, her massive claws sending roof tiles cascading to shatter on the street below. Screams of alarm and terror break from the crowd, triggering a panicked stampede. The watch take a step back – for all their weapons, for all their authority, they’re only mortals, prey flinching in the presence of a predator. She spreads her wings, plunging the whole street into darkness. She extends her long sinuous neck; her massive head, her terrifying maw so close to Nemon and the others that the heat of her breath is like standing before a furnace.

Thyrus twitches her tail, smashing another part of the inn. “One of my brother’s children,” she hisses, “was murdered here. The Ghierdana must grieve. Do not try my patience today.”

For a long, long moment, everyone stops. The city swirls around them – the crowds further up Mercy Street flee in terror, the gods in the Ishmeric zone and on Holyhill rumble in their temples. Smoke curls from the gaps in Thyrus’ teeth. The Armistice balances on a knife edge.

It’s Eladora Duttin who moves, who breaks from the crowd. She hurries up and whispers in Nemon’s ear, and it’s Duttin who curtsies to the dragon.

“They may all go.”

I told you she’s a friend, says Spar.

“If she stands between me and Mandel, then she is an enemy of the dragon.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When the armoured witch begins to remove her helmet, Cari braces herself for a shock of recognition. The witch, whoever she is, knows her from back in Guerdon. Knows all about her, too – her mysterious Thay heritage, her connection to the Black Iron Gods, her involvement in the thieves’ guild. Cari stares as the helmet comes away – a slight sucking noise as damaged flesh adheres to the inside of the faceplate.

No recognition; it’s a shock of a different kind. The sorcerer’s face is scorched, half melted. Every vein is like a lightning bolt crackling beneath the skin, burning the flesh to grey ash. Hairless, the curve of the skull visible. Runic tattoos crowning the scalp, tracing the vanished hairline, and somehow the tattoos protect those patches of skin, remaining grotesquely pink and healthy, islands in the ruin. Cari’s met Haithi undead who look healthier.

“If you want to live, help me with this,” demands the witch. Her voice is still damnably familiar.

More of the armour comes away, syringes tearing through dead skin like wet paper. Cari’s heard that practising sorcery is ruinous, she’s even seen the toll incantations took on Professor Ongent or Eladora, but this is much, much worse. It’s why most sorcery is performed by godspawn and inhuman monsters like Crawling Ones…

And then it comes back to her. Guerdon, Thieves’ Court – the night she and Spar thought they’d taken Heinreil down. Heinreil had allied with Crawling Ones – but he had his own sorceress there that night, too. Myri, her name was. Cari saw her only briefly, but she’d glimpsed her in Black Iron visions, too. Tall and proud, bare arms rippling with arcane tattoos. Beautiful, like a coral snake.

“I saw you. I know you.”

A scowl crosses the parts of Myri’s face that can still move. “No time for that now. Get in the barrel.” Myri points at a yliaster cask outside the door of the lab. Cari hesitates for an instant, but what’s she going to do, not get into the barrel? Hang around and wait for the psychotic Ghierdana and the creepy alchemist to come back for her?

She climbs in, squeezing into