The Broken God

by Gareth Hanrahan

  “What if I run out of tincture while you’re away?”

  “You will be left with an adequate supply.”

  Baston watches the Dentist work in silence for a few minutes.

  “I need some scrying done.”

  “He must rest. Just say what you need done. He will hear you.”

  Self-consciously, Baston recites what he found at the tavern, asks Rasce to find those responsible. Like he’s visiting a Keeper church and whispering prayers to the Holy Beggar, or staring into the vapours in the temple of the Smoke Painter with his mother. Rasce moans, tosses and turns on the bed, reddish sweat staining the pillow. Lights flicker in the depths of the stone.

  “He will know.” Vorz fastens his bag shut and rises. “He will sleep for some hours now, though. Come along. Great-Uncle calls for me.”

  “I’ll stay a bit.”

  “As you wish.” Vorz makes that gesture again, leans in close to Baston. “You know, I will soon have need of a reliable bodyguard. I could speak to the dragon, have you given into my service instead of Rasce’s. We both know the true value of an oath.”

  He doesn’t know if it’s meant as a peace offering or a threat.

  “I’m not sure that we do.”

  Vorz departs. Baston settles into the heavy armchair opposite the bed, and waits.

  The town of Maredon is Guerdon’s younger sister. More sensible, one might say – here, there are only the Kept Gods, no dalliances with alien gods, no wild speculation. Old church spires dot the skyline, mixed with the chimneys of the alchemy works and the cranes of the town docks. Maredon’s the home port for Guerdon’s navy, and the little harbour’s ringed with forts and gun emplacements.

  Moonchild’s met by naval escorts, who race around the armed freighter, their white wakes like a sigil of containment around the strange ship. It’s Ren who makes contact, Ren who goes ashore to negotiate. Refugee vessels were a common sight in these waters before the Armistice, but those days are gone.

  So, they wait. Moonchild sits at anchor in the middle of the harbour, a dozen cannons trained on her. The people on board huddle on the deck, staring at the brilliant green fields around the town, so close yet still out of reach. They’ve crossed ocean and Godswar, crossed hundreds of miles, only to be stopped short at the last few hundred yards.

  Dol Martaine waits. His rifle’s nearby, and its presence is like a sore tooth. Ren told them to take no hostile action, so they’ve spiked the cannons on Moonchild, surrendered their swords and guns to the city watch, but Martaine’s still got a smuggler’s instincts. The rifle and a few other necessities wait concealed in an air vent.

  Right now, he’s in charge, in the absence of Ren and Cari.

  Carillon Thay was never good at waiting. She’s already gone.

  Ama can’t wait. She squirms, unable to understand why they’re not there already, why they’re not landing at the magical city that Cari told her about, the earthly paradise where they’ll be safe. Martaine tells her to stay below, out of the wind and rain.

  He’s slow to see it. It’s only when he spots the Maredon guns hastily turn to track an approaching target that he realises the peril.

  The dragon swoops low, flapping lazily over the harbour. It’s not an attack – if the dragon meant to attack, Great-Uncle would come in faster than the wind, a hurricane of fire and scales, striking like a thunderbolt. This is something else – the dragon descends, the beating of its wings whipping up the waves, sending white spray crashing over the deck. Closer and closer the dragon descends, hovering above Moonchild.

  The naval escorts that circle Moonchild turn and race away. The harbour guns crank around to aim at the dragon. Fire, you bastards, prays Martaine. Fire before he breathes.

  But the guns remain silent. The dragon’s not attacking Maredon, not breaching the terms of the Armistice. They’re alone, without help.

  The dragon’s gaze sweeps over the ship. Ama screams in terror and runs to hide; people on deck cower before the dragon, or stare back at Great-Uncle, too tired to flee. The dragon’s gaze falls on Dol Martaine, and the monster’s mouth curls into a smile.

  “Where is my yliaster, Dol Martaine?” asks the dragon. The heat from the monster’s maw is so intense it’s like standing in the noonday sun in Ilbarin. Martaine feels the skin on his forehead blister.

  “In…” Martaine’s voice comes out a whisper. He swallows. “In the fucking sea.”

  “Eshdana…” says the dragon, drawing out the word. “You know your life is forfeit.”

  “Aye.” Martaine steps forward, and looks up at those massive jaws. “To hell with it.”

  Flames dance in the dragon’s smile. “Not here, Dol Martaine. Not yet.”

  And then he’s gone. Great-Uncle twists in the air, his tail cracking like whip, and then he flaps his mighty wings and climbs, rising out of the harbour.

  Ama runs up to Martaine, slipping on the wet deck. “Are we safe? Is the dragon gone?”

  Martaine looks down at the girl. “No.”

  Scratch.

  Scratch.

  There are ghouls in the cellar, and they trouble Rasce’s sleep.

  Not the cellar of Lanthorn Street, of course – though the corpse-stealers would love to break in there, wouldn’t they, a rich bounty of rotten flesh and residuum. No, he can sense the ghouls far, far below, in the tunnels beneath the New City. His attention flickers through the stone, leaving his body far behind, and observes the ghouls in the darkness below. Lots of them, skulking and scraping, like an itch at the base of his skull. Tormenting him. A chorus of yelping and yowling, mocking him.

  It’s within his power to crush them. He could bring the tunnel walls smashing down on them, squeezing them like he’d squeeze a fist, but it would cost him. The magic comes dripping slow, miracles distilling from the rot in the cellar as the city slowly digests the souls of the dead. It would be satisfying to crush them, but foolish.

  He could tell Baston. Have him send a squad of armed Eshdana down into these tunnels, but the ghouls would be long gone by the time they arrived. No, the sensible thing to do is to ignore them. The wise thing. They haven’t attacked him since they stole the Black Iron Gods, and he still has their Lord Rat trapped. So, ignore them as they scratch.

  Scratch. Scratch.

  Other voices trickle into his consciousness, unwanted revelations. Plotting against the Ghierdana. Major Estavo broke the initial protests – Rasce heard the crack of the rifles echo off every wall, felt the blood spray splatter over the stones. Watched as a dozen died, and the rest fell. Watched as Vorz’s Eshdana dragged the bodies away to Lanthorn Street.

  Wearily, Rasce rolls over in bed – wincing as his stone plates catch – and finds Baston sitting in the chair opposite, looking at him. His expression unreadable.

  “What?”

  “Someone hit the Gull’s Perch tavern.” Baston hands Rasce a little piece of half-melted metal. Visions flicker into Rasce’s brain, embedding themselves there like hot stones.

  “It was Gunnar Tarson. He planted the bomb.” The vision burns in Rasce’s mind, an echo of the flames. “He’s on Horsehead Street.”

  Baston nods. “I’ll deal with him. Be ready in an hour.”

  “He was your friend—” begins Rasce, and Baston shrugs.

  “No one crosses the dragon. That’s how it is, right?”

  Rasce watches him walk down the hallway, down the stairs, march across the courtyard outside Lanthorn Street. All the visions tangled now. He can see Gunnar Tarson, too, like he’s watching him through a spyglass from some tall tower. Tarson’s meeting with enemies of the Ghierdana. Plotting revenge for the burning of the towers, whispering about the attack on the tavern.

  He redirects his spyglass. There’s Major Estavo, secure in his newly reinforced dracodrome. A thicket of flags, indicating targets for the dragons, planted across the lands south of Guerdon. Khenth is on the defensive, the Silent Conclave driven back across the wastes by forces from the south. Jashan, it seems
, is newly allied with Ulbishe, an alliance bought with alchemical weapons from Ulbishe’s foundries. That alliance secures Ulbishe’s southern and western approaches, leaving Lyrix as its only potential rival to the east.

  When he flies with Great-Uncle, they’ll set that thicket afire, won’t they? They’ll soar, dive, deal out life and death as they choose. He wants to be free of Guerdon, free of the New City. Free of the visions and the voices in his head.

  Now, though, he scours the New City again, his mind a droplet of quicksilver through the streets. Enemies within and without; Tallowmen on the border, oath breakers and traitors within.

  He has to prove himself to Great-Uncle. Only Great-Uncle can take him away from here.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Carillon Thay returns to Guerdon.

  Last time she came by ship, a stowaway. She crept ashore in the middle of the night and vanished into the tangle of warehouses and taverns along the docks. That was before the New City, before the Armistice divided Guerdon into four zones. That was before she knew what she was, or what the name Thay really meant. When she owed nothing, owned nothing, loved nothing.

  This time, she arrives by train from the outlying town of Maredon. She gets off at a station on the edge of Meredyke Park and walks across the green, under the shades of trees, a heavy satchel at her side. Unremarkable, forgettable, a world away from the deck of the Moonchild, when her hands ran red with Artolo’s blood. Carillon Thay walks through the park, her eyes fixed on the distant spires of the New City, visible around the shoulder of Castle Hill.

  The skies over Guerdon are unusually clear today. The alchemists’ factories in the Fog Yards and on the far side of Holyhill have stopped for want of yliaster. The train was abuzz with rumours of some great change in the alchemists’ guild, a shift in power. Merchants and naval officers, scanning the newspapers like soothsayers trying to read omens from the gods.

  Cari walks, looks for her own omens. Finds none.

  Leaving the park, she passes through Newtown. The border of the Ishmerian Occupation Zone lies just ahead. She hunches her shoulders, fixes her gaze on the cobbled streets that follow the curve of Castle Hill, down past the King’s Nose tavern and into the upper Wash. She must look like a madwoman, she thinks, as she walks in two worlds. Choosing her route to avoid even the smallest prickle of divine friction, twitching in reaction to the unseen presence of a spider-sentinel or other spirit. Keeping her soul down. If she’s caught here by the gods of Ishmere, without Spar or any other defences, she’s doomed. And it’d be just fucking typical for her to escape the Kraken’s wrath down in Ilbarin, to cross half the world back again, and then to get picked up around the corner from Spar’s old place on Crane Street.

  Ahead, the lithosarium.

  The wax sentries on the roof catch her off guard. Old fears rise in her, but she batters them down. If the Tallowmen are here, she’s in the right fucking place.

  There are back ways into the building. Cari slips through the archway of a tenement that adjoins the main body of the lithosarium and clambers out of a window on to the slick roof, just out of sight of the Tallowmen. The cells in the lithosarium are partially flooded. The Stone Men were once confined to little islands in the middle of these large open spaces, the threat of drowning restraining them where iron bars or walls could not contain their plague-granted strength. Cari dives into that foul, greenish water, and two strokes carry her to the cell door.

  It’s not locked.

  At the end of the corridor, another door. The sound of someone leafing through a book. And that door, too, is ajar.

  “I’m back,” says Carillon.

  “I know,” replies Eladora, marking her place in her book and closing the heavy tome. “Admiral Vermeil told me two days ago that a ship from Ilbarin had been sighted. Why did you land at Maredon instead?” Eladora sniffs. “And you could have come in the front door, instead of dripping mud everywhere. I think there’s a change of clothes in that locker behind you.”

  “There are fucking Tallowmen at the door, El.”

  “They will not harm you. I gave them strict instructions.”

  Cari tips the liquid out of her satchel on to the floor, then grabs a towel. It’s awkward with one hand still sore, but she wrings most of the slimy water out of her short hair. “There’s something wrong in the New City. I couldn’t feel Spar at all. It’s like he’s hiding – and not from me.”

  Eladora lays one hand on the leather-bound book. “The Ghierdana have a rival saint. A troublesome young man named Rasce.”

  “How did they do that?”

  “The same way you became a saint of the Black Iron Gods, or Sinter used me to disrupt my mother’s link with the Kept. Congruence via sympathetic magic. Enough to fool the gods.”

  “Spar’s not a god.”

  Eladora shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, then, Carillon. Whatever term you wish to apply, it worked.”

  “Shit.”

  “I take it your expedition to Khebesh was unfruitful.”

  “I didn’t make it to Khebesh.” Cari buries her face in the towel. She doesn’t know if she wants to scream into the towel or hide her face while she weeps. Or twist the towel into a garrotte and strangle Eladora.

  “I’m sorry.” Eladora moves some documents on her desk, nervously. Her fingers shake, blackened nails leaving half-moons of soot on the white paper. “If it’s any consolation, Rasce’s actions may have, ah, restored some of Spar’s strength.”

  “They burned people alive. I dreamed of it.” Cari shudders.

  Eladora nods, like Cari’s just given her a clue in a crossword. “I assumed that the dragon’s attack on the New City was connected, but it’s good to have confirmation. One can never be sure with the Ghierdana – feuds between families are not unknown. That raises the stakes.”

  “The stakes,” echoes Cari.

  “Right now,” continues Eladora, “the various factions appear to be holding back and letting things settle. The Ghierdana have stopped trying to push beyond the boundaries of the Lyrixian Occupation Zone. It’s exceedingly hard for me to get information out of the New City, as Rasce has the same, ah, supernatural awareness you possessed. However, there are reports only of comparative minor miracles, and no further sacrifices.” She coughs, a horrible hacking cough, then continues. “Of course, your return may precipitate further trouble.”

  “Fuck you.”

  A thin smile. “The alchemical works need yliaster. The Ghierdana have disrupted the supply lines. And you just showed up in a freighter that was supposed to be loaded with the substance, but instead arrived bearing a very different cargo. That will agitate events.” She sniffs. “The dragon Taras overflew the naval base at Maredon. They know you returned – or at least, they know that the Moonchild is here, and I assume—”

  “I don’t give a shit about any of that.”

  “You should. The freighter Moonchild is owned by Lyrix, and they have requested that it be returned to them – with all its current passengers aboard. Parliament has agreed to do so.”

  “The Ghierdana are fucking pirates! To hell with them! You can’t do it! I got those people out of Ilbarin. They’re supposed to be safe here!”

  “‘Safe’ is not a natural condition of the world, Carillon. A place must be made safe – and here, that is achieved by maintaining the Armistice. If it means anything, the Lyrixians have offered assurances that the passengers on Moonchild will be treated hospitably.”

  “It doesn’t. You can’t trust the dragons.”

  “I am aware of that. But preserving the peace is—”

  “Worth their lives?”

  “Yes. I shall do everything I can to avert such a tragedy, but, yes – if one must choose between a handful of lives and thousands – not to mention the accumulated learning and cultural wealth of this city – then the choice is obvious. In any event, it’s parliament’s decision.” Eladora shuffles the papers on her desk, holding them up like a shield.

  “W
hat’s the book?” asks Cari suddenly.

  “What book?”

  “That book. The one you’ve been trying to hide from me.”

  Reluctantly, Eladora moves the documents, revealing the leather-bound tome once more. “It’s one of our grandfather’s diaries. Jermas sent them to my m-mother long ago, when he sent you to live with us. I only obtained them after Silva’s funeral.”

  Cari draws a knife. “Tallowmen at your door. Jermas’ diaries. Talking like a fucking politician. Who knows what else you’ve got here. Gods below, El, what are hell are you doing?” It’s not like Guerdon was ever a shining beacon of moral clarity, but Eladora was always the good girl, the polite one, and Cari was the troublemaker, the one who didn’t give a damn.

  “Saving Guerdon. Preserving the Armistice.” Sorcery flickers around Eladora’s hand, a corona of incipient lightning. “I do have influence in parliament. Maybe I can help – but I’ll need your assistance. The balance of power has to be restored, and quickly. The alchemists’ guild is threatening to flee the danger by decamping to Ulbishe, and without the alchemists the city will be considerably weakened. I’m trying to bargain with the guildmaster – I still have certain things they desire – but it would help immensely if the threat was, ah, diminished. I need you to counter Rasce.”

  “You mean kill?”

  “If it comes to that. If it can be done. We tried, and that was before he came into the fullness of his power. The key, though, is returning the three occupied zones to balance. If Haith or Ishmere believe that the Lyrixians can strike outside the borders of the LOZ without impediment, the peace will collapse. I think I have General Bryal of Haith convinced, but Ishmere is… well.”

  “Yeah, I think I have some idea.” Mad gods all around. Cari shakes her head. “I want to talk to Rat, first.”

  “The Ghierdana have imprisoned Lord Rat in the vault under the New City. He is alive, the ghouls tell me.”