The Broken God

by Gareth Hanrahan

  She returned to her old ways. The mercenaries of the Pultish were all dead now, so she went west, to the Trading Cities, where a sorcerer might easily find employment. She would prove to those cloistered masters that it was foolish to remain in obscurity, to leave the gift of sorcery to moulder out of some misplaced sense of obligation to a future that will never come. The Godswar shatters the world more thoroughly than she ever could, and she intended to make a better life for herself amid the ruins, before the end.

  Better than she ever was before, thanks to her training in Khebesh. Better than any graduate of Haith’s dusty institutes, or Smoke Painter’s academies. The alchemist-scholars of Guerdon might be her equals in finesse or technique, but not in strength. She worked her sorcery, and the dice never turned on her. Her luck wasn’t faultless, and the power that runs through her burned her, but she did not relent. The power was worth the price.

  Severast to Jashan, to Khenth, to a dozen other places, and in the end to Guerdon. Some of those cities are familiar to Cari, but Myri’s descriptions of them make them sound alien to her. Weird shit attracts weird shit, she guesses – no one’s going to hire a sorcerer like Myri just to steal a cargo of blue jade or rob a warehouse full of wine-of-poets. No, you hire a sorcerer when you need to fight a demon, or spy on the dreams of some politician, or…

  “When did Heinreil hire you? When he stole my amulet?” Cari’s hand involuntarily grabs at her neck, remembering that her treasure has been taken from her again. This time, the loss of the amulet doesn’t hurt so much. It’s tainted now she knows the truth of its origin. Back then, though, the amulet was all she had of the mother she never knew, all she had to give her a home.

  “No. I’d worked with him before, several times. He kept me a secret from the rest of the thieves’ guild.”

  “Brotherhood,” Cari corrects automatically. She spits over the side. “That slippery bastard.”

  “He treated me well, and he wasn’t crazy like Artolo. As employers go, I rate him highly.”

  “He poisoned Spar!”

  Myri shrugs. “That’s between Spar and Heinreil.” She gestures at the grimoire. “That’s an account of all the spells Ramegos cast. All her sins, all her worries about how her actions distort the world. Fuck that. My actions are mine. Let the world attend to itself.” She takes a moment to catch her breath, then continues. “Heinreil brought the amulet to me. I could tell it was a potent talisman, but I couldn’t divine much about it. I figured you’d stolen it somewhere, but Heinreil found out that you got it from your grandfather.”

  “They told me it belonged to my mother.”

  Myri smiles, and it’s an ugly sight – her lips have been scorched by the words of power that rested upon them, so it looks like a wound opening. “More accurate to say that it conjured your mother. The amulet was a relic of the Black Iron Cult, repurposed by Jermas Thay’s sorcerers to be a link to the sleeping gods. But it also housed a fragment of the god’s hunger, a manifest emanation.”

  “A Raveller,” says Cari. The thought sickens her and fascinates her in equal measure, and Myri’s the first person she’s met who might be able to answer some of her questions. Well, the first person she’s met that wasn’t trying to use her in some arcane ritual, throw her in a prison for saints, or that she wasn’t actively trying to murder. “But I’m human, right?”

  Myri wrinkles what remains of her nose scornfully. “What a stupid question. Humanity is an accident of birth, not something to cling to or take pride in.”

  “Well, I’m not a fucking Raveller, am I?”

  The sorceress rolls over, draws a blanket around herself. “Clearly not. I’m tired. Wake me when the wind fails.”

  “Hang on. I want the rest of the story.”

  The rest of the story is short, painful, and Carillon’s fault.

  Cari doesn’t mention that part. She stays quiet as Myri describes her attempt to flee Guerdon at the height of the Crisis. Myri and Heinreil sold Eladora and the amulet to the Crawling Ones in exchange for a fortune in gold, and tried to drive out of the city in a carriage. But Cari had power that night, and from across the city she saw her enemy and struck at him. With a thought, she could have crushed Heinreil’s soul, smashed through all Myri’s wards and destroyed her. Instead, she snuffed out the life of one of the raptequines drawing the carriage, sent them careening into a wall.

  Heinreil, his legs shattered, was arrested.

  Myri escaped. She fled south, to Ulbishe. To survive, though, she had to use sorcery despite her wounds. Like a gambler on a losing streak, taking double-or-nothing bets to turn it all around. The cost paid in stigmata on her body and scars on her soul. In Ulbishe, she traded what coin she carried out of Guerdon for the containment suit. The first time she’d passed through Ulbishe, the quality of the alchemy work there was far behind that of Guerdon, but the alchemists of Ulbishe had improved greatly in the intervening years, and anyway, she had little choice. Augmented by the iron prison, she continued south. Skirted the Godswar—

  “Is that when you signed on with Artolo?”

  “No. Ilbarin was under siege by the gods of Ishmere. I took Tymneas east, beyond the Isle of Fire, and reached Khebesh by that route. Only the Gates were closed to me, and they would not open.” Myri shivers beneath the blanket. “I tried every opening spell I knew. I hammered on the Gates. I argued, demanded, pleaded, begged. But the city remained closed.” Her gaze lights on the book. “But I shall return there, and the Gates will open.”

  “Say you get back to Khebesh—”

  “I will.”

  “Say you abandon me to get eaten by wild gods or something.”

  “I may.”

  “And you show up with Ramegos’ journal, and they let you in, and they heal you. What then?”

  Myri’s words are a whisper. “Then I spit in their faces and depart again. My present circumstances have no bearing on the fact that I am right and they are wrong.”

  Cari sullenly checks the fishing line. There’s little chance of them catching anything at this speed, but they’ve nothing else to eat. The dark coast of the mainland slips by to starboard. Dark shapes in the water, too – she wonders if they’re not fish at all, but Bythos. An escort sent by the Lord of Waters? Some ghost of Captain Hawse, still watching over her? More likely they’re just carrion hunters, waiting to collect two fresh corpses, brimming with residuum for their broken god.

  She shakes the line, taking her frustration out on it. She wonders why the end of Myri’s tale angers her so much. The sheer selfishness of it, maybe – Myri threatening to take Spar’s one chance for survival. It’s her only chance, too, of course, but Spar’s a better person than Myri, damn it. If Cari gets to choose, she chooses Spar.

  Oh, now you want it to be up to you. Now you want to be the one who sorts the living and the dead. It was easy, back in the camp, to choose between her freedom and Adro’s health.

  Tymneas rolls and shivers. Cari leaps up and scans the seas behind them, a lifetime of instinct warning her of danger. There’s a long band of oddly still, glassy water stretching out from the north, from the smudge on the horizon that’s the Rock of Ilbarin. The band rolls west, reaching and rotating, like the spoke of a tremendous wheel – and there’s another band moving in from the east, visible in the distance as waves break along it.

  Cari’s seen it before. At Guerdon, before the invasion. She knows that if that glassy, stolen sea touches Tymneas, they’ll be caught like a fly in amber. It’s the Kraken’s miracle.

  “Kraken!” she cries, slicing the line free with her knife. She leaps to the tiller, hauls it around. She kicks the wood next to Myri’s head to wake the sorceress. “Kraken! We’ve got to get out of the water!”

  Myri wakes, and with a word she wakes a hurricane.

  Tymneas races west, the sails straining to contain the conjured wind. So fast they leave the Bythos far behind.

  The Kraken-miracle reaches for them, like the fingers of some gargantuan hand, searching an
d probing, but they outrun it, too. The mainland coast swells ahead of them. As they draw closer, Cari sees the distant flash of miracles reflecting off the low clouds.

  “We have to get off the water,” she repeats.

  “That’s the Godswar,” warns Myri. “We’ll have to pass through the Godswar.”

  “Let the fuckers try to stop us.”

  Artolo watches the Moonchild approach from the tower of the prefect’s villa in Ushket. The freighter is too large to make its way through the flooded streets of the city to reach the new docks. Instead, swarms of smaller boats ferry cargo out to her, emptying the warehouses of their yliaster stocks. Iron-hulled Moonchild looms above them, taking all they can bring her yet remaining unsated.

  Great-Uncle is gone, and Vorz with him. All of Artolo’s pleas ignored. They have left him here on this cursed island to oversee the loading of Moonchild. The witch is gone, too, and she’s taken his hands with him.

  “How can I serve, Great-Uncle, when I have no hands?” he’d asked.

  “You have a tongue,” the dragon replied. “Command in my name.” And then he vanished into the bright sky.

  The new dragon-tooth dagger hangs at Artolo’s belt, like a cruel joke. The witch’s spells have faded, and he cannot wield the blade.

  So Artolo uses his tongue. He commands. He sends his remaining Eshdana to search the island once more – Carillon may be able to hide, but how can the fucking witch escape him? She can barely walk! Dol Martaine returns empty-handed and says there’s no trace of the treacherous pair.

  Hollow, lost, Artolo walks the streets of Ushket, aimless as a Bythos. His bodyguards shadow him, confused and nervous. Sometimes, beggars approach him, pleading for passage off Ilbarin. They offer to work in the yliaster camp, offer to crew the Moonchild, offer him treasures salvaged from the drowned city, offer their daughters to warm his bed. He ignores them all.

  Unable to touch, he just walks and stares. He returns to the ruins of the Rose, as if there’s some answer hidden there. Returns to the Street of Blue Glass and wades through the ash-flecked waters, through the tide of dead worms. He walks the decks of the Moonchild. She’s Maredon-built, a prize taken by Ghierdana pirates. In another life, Artolo imagines himself as captain of this great ship. Fit her out with stolen cannons, gird her in warding runes and sail her into the maelstrom of the Godswar. Loot and pillage, like a proper Ghierdana, and never go to Guerdon. Never go to Ilbarin.

  Never lay eyes on Carillon Thay.

  Tides rise and fall. Boats go in and out. Figures melt away as he passes, scurrying in terror. He doesn’t eat – he cannot endure the shame of having some servant spoon-feed him. He doesn’t sleep.

  How can he use his tongue? He needs it for screaming silently.

  Another beggar emerges from an alleyway, blocks his path. A bodyguard steps forward to shove the old woman aside, but she moves with surprising grace, filthy rags whirling as she ducks past to stand in front of Artolo.

  “Your fate has not changed,” she says.

  He searches for his tongue. “You. You’re the Ishmeric priestess. Damala.”

  “Carillon Thay is still within your grasp. Fate Spider has foreseen you strangle her.”

  He holds up his ruined hands, his finger-stumps. “With these hands?”

  Damala takes his hands, raises her voice in a prayer to the Kraken. Waves crash against the hull of Moonchild, the spray glittering like shards of glass in the sunlight. Artolo suddenly feels doubled, simultaneously standing in this muddy street in Ushket but also out in the sea, observing the town from afar with cold, inhuman eyes.

  “With these,” she says, and she releases him. Tentacles sprout from his hand, writhing and slimy, the Kraken in miniature. His own skin giving way to the mottled squid-flesh. He flexes his transformed hands, feels the god-given strength flow through him. For a moment, he has the sensation of brushing his fingers against the wooden hull of a little boat, and through taste-receptors in his knuckles he smells the sweat of Carillon Thay, the ozone stink of the witch.

  And then it’s gone.

  “Make an offering,” whispers the priestess. “Seal the bargain.”

  What does he have left to give? His tentacle-fingers close around the hilt of the new dragon-tooth dagger, and the priestess nods. “Most fitting. You shall please the gods.” She points down towards the harbour. “Cast it into the Kraken’s seas, and He shall claim you as His instrument.”

  “No,” he says thickly, his tongue too big for his mouth. “Not from this fucking town. Not from Ilbarin. To the abyss with this place.” He turns to the bodyguards. “Find fucking Dol Martaine! Tell him to get the Moonchild ready to depart immediately!”

  “My lord, only half the yliaster has yet been load—”

  Kraken-fingers close around the Eshdana man’s throat. Kraken-fingers squeeze, and the bulging of the man’s eyes, the choked gasps that escape his purpling lips are a prayer to the Kraken.

  Moonchild departs with the evening tide, pushed clear of the Rock’s shallow waters by tugs. In the open ocean, her mighty engines growl, her screws spin, taking her south.

  He casts the blade from Moonchild’s stern deck, and the Kraken’s glass seas accept the offering of the dragon-tooth dagger, swallowing it like they swallowed Ilbarin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Days pass, and Rasce is still abed.

  Baston sat around the house on Lanthorn Street for most of the first day, waiting for the boss to recover. He called a doctor to treat the wound in Rasce’s leg, but the injury itself wasn’t the problem. They needed a sorcerer. Or a priest.

  Or an exorcist, some of the Ghierdana whisper.

  Fuck them. The Ghierdana doesn’t understand the transformation Spar has wrought through Rasce. It’s a thief’s city now, a lucky city. Every day, there’s another story from the borders of the New City, about how some thief escaped through a gap in a wall that wasn’t there before, or a watch patrol managed to get lost in a single blind alleyway for half a day, or how some old woman dreamed of where to dig to find hidden alchemists’ treasure. How an alleyway was smooth when a pickpocket fled down it, but the stones turned uneven and treacherous when the watch pursued.

  They used to tell tales of the Saint of Knives, the vengeful guardian of the New City. Now, they speak of a more subtle angel.

  With Vyr dead, and Rasce drifting in and out of consciousness, the responsibility to run the business falls on Baston and Karla. There are yliaster merchants to bully into line, goods to be smuggled across the zone borders – in the last few weeks, Baston’s arranged alliances between Ghierdana smugglers and local sailors and dockers, and the wharfs of the New City are busy day and night. He visits friends he hasn’t talked to in years, reactivates old networks, puts coin into the hands of those that can use it. Puts knives and guns into other hands, too.

  It’s good work, balancing the scales. He can feel the old mechanisms coming back to life, the customs and connections of the Brotherhood returning in a new form.

  Baston returns to Lanthorn Street each night and checks on Rasce, who sleeps, and mumbles in his sleep. Karla sits by his bed with medicines, but also a notebook for their ad-hoc oracle. Baston’s nightly visits take on the aspect of ritual obeisances, a ceremonial blessing. He takes on a portion of Rasce’s authority, speaks for the boss, and no one questions his orders. The other Ghierdana whisper and grumble about an outsider – not even an ash-mark! – having such influence, but Baston’s too busy with the business to pay them much heed. The gold of the dragon flows through his fingers – and Karla’s. When she’s not with Rasce, she’s out in the New City, distributing coin and kindness, like the Brotherhood used to share a portion of their thievery with the poor folk of the Wash.

  Each night, he looks at Vyr’s map of yliaster suppliers. Two clusters, on either side of the city. The dock cluster, a long arc from the ruins of Queen’s Point to the new docks under construction up at the Shad Rocks, they’ve all taken the ash. Everyone from establis
hed merchants of good standing with the alchemists like Craddock, to the smallest mudlark with a few casks of old yliaster salvaged from the war, they’re under Rasce’s control.

  Under his control.

  He can’t deny it feels good, but it’s all built on sand. If Rasce wakes, if the dragon returns… what then?

  Karla comes down and hands him a steaming cup of tea.

  They sit in silence for a few minutes, but it’s different from the companionable silence they enjoyed in Baston’s old house down in the Wash. It’s like they’re intruders, sneaking into somewhere they don’t belong. Or is it only he that feels unworthy of this place? He hasn’t reported to Sinter in days – not that he wants to do so. Karla’s safe here, but Sinter threatened other people.

  “We should check on Mum.”

  “She’s safe. She’s with friends.” Karla sips her tea. “I’m staying here, in case I’m needed. You should, too.”

  Baston stares at his hands. He wants someone to tell him what to do, who to hit. That’s what he’s trained to do, what he’s good for. He can organise, he can build the Brotherhood, but it needs a leader with vision. He wants Spar to speak to him, to tell him what needs to be done to make a better city. Who needs to be taken out? Is it Mandel, as Rasce wants? Duttin and her cryptic allies? Gods below, he’d enjoy that. Is it the invaders from Ishmere, and fuck the Armistice?

  Tell me what to do. Tell me before this opportunity slips away. Tell me how to atone.

  “We need some lads to look after the Ghostmarket. And the old docks. I’m thinking Gunnar and maybe Sten Cantcount,” says Karla, breaking the silence.

  Both Brotherhood. Both ours. “I’ll sort it out.”

  “There’s a ship going to Lyrix next week. We should send Vyr’s body home.”

  “He’ll need an escort, I take it.”

  Karla smiles. “His kin should take him. Full-blood Ghierdana family, not ash-bought. I’m thinking we send some of them home to Lyrix. If you tell them the order came from Rasce, they’ll go.”