The knife breaks the spell, too, freeing Usharet. She crumbles, hunching over, keening like a wounded beast. Turning, she scrambles away from Artolo, loping up the hillside towards the shrine. Her monstrously long strides carry her away across the mountain. If the goddess escapes, she can draw power from the shrine to heal herself. Maybe come back and hunt them down for profaning her mountain, or go and find a potential saint.
“Hold her again,” he orders the witch.
“I might not be able to,” the witch whispers, but she tries anyway. She extends her hand, chants the spell again, and again the goddess is caught mid-stride, paralysed by the spell. Bolts of arcane energy leap from the witch’s body to the soil. The smell of burning flesh.
Artolo ignores it. He cups his hands, shouts an order. “Martaine! Bring the explosives back here! Quick!”
He can’t see Martaine in the dust and confusion, but a few moments later there’s a flash, a roll of thunder, a rain of stone. The witch collapses at his feet, gasping in relief. As the smoke clears, the ruin of the goddess becomes apparent. A blackened thing that somehow recalls a woman, lying at the bottom of a fresh scar in the mountainside.
Artolo marches across the hillside, stepping over the remains of his soldiers. Ignoring the witch’s whimpering behind him. There’s a job to do first. He climbs down into the hot pit, holding his breath to ward off the acrid fumes. The withered god husk raises the stump that used to be her head, and for a moment he sees the statue, the girl from the shrine, superimposed over the ruined form of Usharet. Her expression hasn’t changed – there’s no pleading for mercy, no fear. Just defiance.
The dagger’s blunt, so it takes him several long, lung-searing minutes to saw through the thorn-root sinews of her neck, to cut through the mud-flesh and part the stone vertebrae.
Fuck saints and fuck gods.
It takes them nearly an hour to rally the scattered Eshdana, and to gather any dropped weapons or unused explosives. By then, a living veil has grown over the slopes like a spreading bloodstain. Artolo tugs at one of the new plants, pulling it out of the dusty soil. The miracle-spawned growth is the only patch of green on the whole mountainside. The plant is misshapen, a weird amalgamation of different species that once grew on the Rock, on the foothills now lost beneath the new sea. It’s probably poisonous or tainted – eating the flesh of miracles is foolish in the extreme. Letting a god into your body… madness.
“Clear the corpses from the mountain,” orders Artolo. If they don’t, worshippers of Ilbarin’s broken gods could use the remains as offerings, extract the residuum with funeral rites. “And when you’re done with that, search the upper slopes. The Guerdonese woman might be hiding up there.”
Martaine hesitates. “What should we expect if we find her? Anything I should know?”
“She’s not to be killed.”
“Anything else? Is she armed? Alchemy?”
“She’s alone. Maybe armed. Bring plenty of men.”
Martaine looks across the corpse-strewn hillside. The skirmish with Usharet killed half a dozen Eshdana. “We’re going to run thin on ash-marks.”
“Take what you need from the work camp. Get it done, Martaine.” Artolo spits into the pit, listens to his saliva sizzle on the smouldering corpse of the goddess. He turns on his heel and walks away.
The witch waits for him by the roadside. “‘Take what you need from the work camp’,” she echoes. “What about the production quotas? What will you cut off to atone this time?”
“Watch your tongue,” snaps Artolo. “Let me handle my Great-Uncle.”
“I’m not taking the blame for any delay,” says the witch.
“Great-Uncle will understand.”
A carriage arrives to bring them back to Ushket. Artolo would prefer to ride – sometimes, when riding fast, it’s almost like flying on Great-Uncle’s back again. But the witch is exhausted, and she’s too useful to neglect.
It’s dusk by the time the carriage reaches Ushket. After curfew, and they speed through empty streets to the citadel.
The citadel in Ushket was once a provincial fort, home to a small garrison of troops. The prefect of Ushket province dwelled here. For a few chaotic weeks after the fall of Ilbarin City, the citadel was the seat of the government, when senators and prefects came scrambling up the Rock in search of higher ground and shelter from the Godswar. There’s still a government in exile, off in Paravos, but the only law in Ushket now is his word.
“It’s not the dragon I’m worried about. He’s bringing the Dentist.” The witch removes one of her gauntlets and scratches at the flaking skin beneath. Her fingers come away bloody. “I don’t like him. And I’ve never heard of anyone leaving the alchemists’ guild in Guerdon, other than in a gilded coffin. They seal their secrets with wax, aye?”
“Vorz is ash-marked, as are you. Vorz serves the Ghierdana loyally. As should you.”
“You think an oath and a pinch of ash means anything to him?”
“It means something to you, does it not?”
She falls silent. Sits back, her armour creaking, and stares out at the discoloured sea. Soil from the mountain has stained it a ruddy shade. The witch holds her hand up, examines it in the light. Most of the skin has long since withered or burned away, exposing the muscle and sinew beneath. Bizarrely, the ornate tattoos on her wrists and the back of her hands are unaffected. She reminds Artolo of the ruined goddess he killed earlier. If he struck the witch hard enough, would she too crumble into dust leaving behind only a tracery of tattooed flesh?
Sorcery is a quick route to power, if you’ve got the talent for it. If you’re willing to light your soul on fire. Artolo flexes his ghost-fingers. He could kill the witch with one blow in the right spot. Drive those ghostly fingers into her throat, for instance. Even if her sorcery-ravaged windpipe didn’t collapse, she’d be unable to speak, unable to cast a spell. She’s physically weak for all her power. What’s the point of power without endurance? She needs to be sheltered. Like the long gun – very powerful, very precise. A wonderful piece of engineering and alchemy, but easily broken.
He clears his throat. “Why do you fear Vorz?”
“I don’t fear. But either he’s not as clever as he thinks he is…” She scuffs a bit of dead goddess with her shoe. “Or he is, and that’s even scarier. He’s dangerous, boss. I want to stay clear of him.”
“Find Thay for me, and I shall protect you.”
“I’m working on it. Divinations take time. I can’t just read a pile of guts.” She sounds irritated. “It’d be easier if you didn’t have the whole island looking for her. It stirs up the aether, creates all sorts of echoes. You should leave it with me. Martaine and the rest are needed in the camp.”
“Don’t bother with your spells, then. Conserve your strength. The dogs in the street will find her.”
“No. I can do it. I’ll do it.”
CHAPTER TEN
It’s double shifts down at the docks all week, working night and day clearing warehouses contaminated by the fire at Dredger’s yard. Baston brings down the breathing masks from the raid and hands them out to the dockers working on the worst afflicted areas. It’s a risk, but he’d prefer to field awkward questions about the masks than watch some poor bastard vomit the dissolved remnants of their lungs up. Baston knows all about necessary evils, about justifying violence to himself. He tried to scrub his conscience clean many times over the years, working for the Brotherhood in the bad times. He told himself that the Brotherhood could still be a force for justice, a way to kick back against the oppressive rulers of the city. He told himself that those he hurt deserved it; they’d broken some rule of the streets, and so brought their suffering on themselves. He could tell himself, maybe, that the burning of Dredger’s yard was an accident, and that he shares no blame for what happened.
All excuses fall hollow in the end, though, and so all week he takes the hardest work on himself, wading into tainted floodwaters to scoop up deposits of alchemical gunk with
gloved hands. He works through the night until they send him home.
At the blackened ruins of the yard, the guild alchemists have erected a containment screen of some silvery cloth that glows in the dawn light, as if the New City has spawned a new district. Wearily, he makes his way back through the streets of the Wash, in the shadow of the temples. In Cloud Mother’s floating sanctum, they greet the dawn with torches, setting fire to the horizon. Baston’s perspective warps when he gets too close to the temple – for a moment, that symbolic act of worship becomes real and true, and the priests really are igniting the morning sun. He’s too close to the goddess’s influence. He crosses the street hastily, and reality snaps back.
He tries to cut up Crascuttle Walk, up the worn steps with the rusted black handrail running down the centre, but his path is blocked by a monstrous bull-scorpion creature. An umurshix, they’re called. Sacred animals of the father-god, High Umur. Baston can’t tell if the monster is sleeping, or meditating, or just unmoving. It’s not a natural beast, anyway – it’s godspawned. Maybe it only moves when the god wills it.
A bomb under it could kill it, he thinks, remembering the weapons they stole from Dredger’s yard. Then he hides that thought as quickly as it came to him. There could be sentinel-spiders nearby, scanning for blasphemous or seditious thoughts. Tiske was right – things were simpler in the old days. Back then, it was enough for a thief to hide from sight. Now, he has to patrol his thoughts, too.
He wonders how many of his neighbours in the Wash have given in and bowed to the Sacred Realm. The occupying forces of Ishmere favour those who convert. More potent, though, is the favour of the gods. Worship Blessed Bol, god of trade, and your business will thrive. Worship Smoke Painter, the divine muse, and your dreams will seep into the waking world. All you have to do is submit, and be exalted.
He breaks his fast in a food hall across the street from Pulchar’s restaurant. He hasn’t been back there since the raid on Dredger’s, since Rasce got them involved in that absurd bar brawl with the Ishmerians. The stupid arrogance of the Ghierdana, drawing attention like that. Baston spends his days hiding from psychic spiders, always holding back, always waiting for his moment, and Rasce just comes in and starts punching.
But damn, it felt good to hit the bastards.
In recent weeks, it’s become Baston’s habit to go to the church of the Holy Beggar and watch as the congregation spills out through the doors. The crowds grow smaller every week. The Keepers have already abandoned one of the Wash’s great churches, the church of St Storm down by the water. How long before some alien god squats in the vestry of the Beggar’s sanctum?
This morning, Baston scans the crowd, marking the faces. Some are defiant, but most are furtive, or worse, empty, walking downcast like automatons. They deny the strangeness of the city around them by clinging to old customs and habits.
One face is missing from the crowd – his mother.
Reluctantly, Baston trudges up the hill to Hog Close. The lower Wash is stinking and grimy in a way that defies even miracles. The temple of Blessed Bol had two idols of solid gold outside the doors, two saints so holy they transmuted into precious metal when they perished. Within a day of the statues being installed in the Wash, they were covered in a thick scum of soot and grease and alchemical run-off. (And within a night, one statue was missing its ears, nose and three fingers, and the other had vanished entirely.) Hog Close, though, borders on respectable – literally. It’s right up next to a high, sheer wall that divides the Wash from other, better parts of the city. That wall has become the border of the IOZ; another umurshix patrols atop it, an unsleeping guardian monster out of myth prowling at the bottom of the garden of Baston’s childhood home.
He lets himself in, unlocking the heavy door. Notes the unwelcome smell of incense.
“If you’re here to rob me,” calls his mother from upstairs, “my jewellery case is on the table in the front room. First door on the right. If you come upstairs, I shall throw shoes at you.”
“It’s me,” shouts Baston.
“Oh, then ignore the case. All that’s left is costume jewellery and contact poison.”
“What about the shoes?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
He risks it and climbs the stairs. The wallpaper’s peeling in places, and there’s a damp spot on the plaster that wasn’t there last month. There’s a portrait on one wall of Karla, standing next to her former betrothed. Karla never speaks of him any more. It wasn’t a love match. The boy was the scion of an alchemist family, immensely rich. The match arranged when there was a secret alliance between Heinreil and the guild. All gone now, of course, all the money and connections. No house in Bryn Avane for Karla.
He finds his mother kneeling before a small shrine to the Ishmeric god Smoke Painter. Incense fumes from two braziers coil around her. Multicoloured streamers of smoke twine and dance. Baston coughs.
“Nearly done,” says his mother, her eyes closed – in concentration or prayer or just making him wait, he can’t tell. The smoke slithers in and out of her nostrils, flows across her face like a veil.
“You weren’t at the Holy Beggar this morning.”
“You were at Dredger’s last week.”
Baston considers his response carefully. Elshara Teris spent thirty years married to Hedan, thirty years married to the Brotherhood. Hedan may be two years in the ground, but those connections don’t just fade away. She still has connections, still hears whispers in the underworld. At the same time, she was never really part of the Brotherhood, not like Hedan. Not like her children. And she’s kneeling in front of an Ishmeric shrine. It would be folly indeed for Baston to hide from the spiders and the spies, only to be turned in by his own mother. If she’s gone too far, and fallen under the divine influences of the god…
“All right,” he concedes, “I’ll stop checking up on you, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t mind what you do, as long as it’s you doing it, and not your father.” She turns. “What do you think?”
She looks thirty years younger, and radiant. She looks like Karla.
He blows gently in her face, and the illusion dissipates like dust in the wind. Elshara scowls. “Damn, I can’t hold it.”
“An illusion.”
“A miracle of the Smoke Painter, Veiled Master, God of Revelation and Inspiration, Lord of Poets, Dweller in the Room Without Walls, Maker of…” She goes a little glassy-eyed as she recites the names, and he gently pokes her in the arm. She recovers and continues talking as if she’d never slipped into that near-trance. “I spent years shivering in the Beggar’s church, and never once did the Kept Gods answer any of my prayers. I thought I’d try another.”
“You hardly went without,” says Baston. This house on Hog Close is one of the largest in the Wash. Not the sort of wealth the Ghierdana have, but rich enough, thanks to the Brotherhood. Every time he visits, though, he spies some empty spot on wall or shelf that once held a treasure, now gone to the pawnshop. How much is she spending on necessities, and how much is on offerings to the gods? “And speaking of – do you need money?”
“Have the dockers started paying more than five coppers a day?” Elshara sniffs. “No, your sister came by earlier, so I don’t need anything. Fewer children hovering over me, maybe. I thought Karla had enough to do looking after you. She left a message for you, by the by, in case you called. Said to meet her at the Seamarket Arch at seven.”
“You’ve been talking about me.”
“Of course we have. We worry, Bas. It’s been a hard few years, but we’ll always take care of you.”
“I have to go.” Baston pauses at the top of the stairs. “You don’t need the smoke, you know.”
“You think I went to Smoke Painter’s temple out of vanity?” Elshara sounds hurt, but as always, Baston can’t tell if his mother is genuinely offended or putting on a dramatic performance of her woes. “There’s truth in the smoke. The priests have shown me visions.”
&n
bsp; “A mad god’s ravings.”
“I can’t make you see, Bas. Only you can look into the smoke. Come down to the temple with me.”
“I can’t.”
She snorts. “What, are the boxes getting impatient?”
“I’ve other things to do.”
Elshara turns back to her shrine, throws more incense on the braziers. The smoke begins to braid around her face, again, and Baston wonders how long it will be before he no longer recognises her. She’s becoming as strange to him as the Wash, the gods of Ishmere taking yet more from him. Elshara waves her hand through the smoke, studying the shapes that form.
“Be careful, please,” she says, without looking at him.
He grunts. He’s not the one in danger.
“I mean it. I always told your father, you’ve got to be a ruthless bastard to hold on to power. Not everyone can do it. Your father, Mercies take his soul, he couldn’t. So I told him to stay close to the cleverest, cruelest bastard he could find. If you go up to the New City, Bas, make sure you do the same.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Elshara clucks her tongue. “You give me crow’s feet, you and Karla.”
A memory trails across Baston’s mind as he leaves Hog Close. It was back before the Armistice, before the Crisis. No New City rising across the skyline of Guerdon, no alien gods planting their nightmare twisted temples amid the ruins. He hadn’t recognised the Stone Man waiting for him outside in the dusk. No Stone Man would dare come up to Hog Close.
“Baston, we need to talk.” The words were ground out, like he’d got millstones in his throat.
“Gods below – Idgeson?” The face he’d known lost beneath scales, pebble-like scabs, sprouting plates of stone. Only the eyes were recognisable, staring out of that stony mask. “Heinreil’s looking for you.”
The Broken God Page 13