The Broken God

by Gareth Hanrahan

  There’s a chair nearby, and Cari sinks into it. “Fuckers.” A thought strikes her. “So where are the Black Iron Gods, El? Do they have the other bells, too?”

  “No. While you were away, I removed the contents of the vault for safe-keeping.”

  “What do you mean? What are you doing with the bells? No one should ever touch those things, ever. Fucking ever.” Her grip on the knife tightens, to fight her rising panic. She judges the distance between them. “You never told me what really happened, last year, when you went into the vault. The Black Iron Gods teleported you to the isles of the Ghierdana. What was the price, Eladora? What did you promise them?”

  “Owe them,” whispers Eladora. She stands. “Come here. I want to show you something.” Eladora beckons Cari across the room, brings her over to a trapdoor set in the floor. “It’s warded against me. I can’t touch it. You have to open it.”

  Cari hooks her hand around the iron ring, pulls the hatch open. Wards glimmer on the trapdoor for a moment. There’s a small storage space beneath – Jere Taphson kept vials of alkahest down there, once.

  Now, something else.

  “Why,” asks Cari, “do you have a phlogiston siege charge under your chair?”

  “Because I don’t know when the Black Iron Gods will call in their debt. I don’t know how much time I have, Cari. I’ve gathered all the power I can, as fast as I can, to use for the betterment of Guerdon. But when the bells call for me, I shall deny them as b-best I can.” Eladora’s clearly rehearsed this speech before, over and over, but her voice still quavers at the end. “I need your help. Please. I can’t do this alone.”

  Cari crosses to the window. The pane of glass is new, and she absently notes the afternoon light glinting off little shards of glass in the cracks of the sill. She stares across the Wash at the towers of the New City. Closes her eyes, and there’s an after-image, like she’s been looking straight at the sun. A dragon coils around Spar, trapping him.

  She wants to run to him. To sneak across the border, to trust that she’ll get her power back. The Saint of Knives, reborn. To do what she did to Artolo, only this time she won’t leave an enemy behind.

  Breathe. Swim up. Turn away.

  “I need to know what I’m walking into,” says Cari.

  “Our sources in the New City are gone,” admits Eladora.

  “Forgive me,” says a voice from the door. “I don’t mean to eavesdrop.”

  Eladora hurries over to the newcomer. “Ah, Cari, permit me to introduce Minister Nemon.”

  “We’ve met,” snaps Cari. “Sort of. Back during the invasion, just before I killed Pesh, I saw him on Hark Island. And I saw him die in the New City before that. What the hell?”

  “An unlikely series of events,” says Alic, smoothly, “none of which are germane now. Welcome back to Guerdon, Carillon Thay.” He smiles, and it’s not reassuring. Then he points at Cari’s satchel. “You have something for me.”

  Cari frowns. “What do you mean?”

  “As I was saying, Cari, permit me to introduce Minister Nemon,” says Eladora. “Minister for security.” She makes a magical gesture with her hand, as if warding off unwanted attention, and plunges on. “Also, godshade of the Fate Spider, incarnate deity of spies and thieves.”

  “The fuck?”

  “We didn’t discuss this amount of disclosure,” mutters the spy to Eladora, then he smiles again at Cari. His expression is in a different register now, and it’s like she’s seeing him for the first time. The muscles beneath his skin are oddly taut, an articulated mask thick with strings he can pull. His smile is as artificial as something grown in an alchemist’s vat.

  “He’s a god? Not a saint or something like that, but an actual god?” If he can do it, why not Spar?

  “Only in the most diminished sense,” says the spy.

  “Everyone’s always telling me that gods are repeating patterns,” says Cari. “Whirlpools in the aether, spells that cast themselves. They don’t think like we do, you said. So – how?”

  The spy takes Eladora’s chair. “By means of a great sacrifice. You are correct, Carillon, that gods exist – and I once existed – outside the constraints of mortal time. Saints are our masks, allowing us to interact and understand the material realm. When Ishmere attacked Severast and threw down my temples, some of my priests escaped through secret ways. Their prayers preserve the thread of my existence. As long as they live, so do I.”

  “So if I stab you,” asks Cari, “what happens?”

  “Why,” says Eladora, a note of despair in her voice, “does your mind go there instantly?”

  “Considering what we’re asking her to do,” replies the spy, “it’s a good question. Kill me, and I return. I am a god, and gods cannot die easily. Rasce, though, is still a mortal. Kill him, and he dies.”

  “El said you already tried that, and it didn’t work.”

  “Ah,” says the spy. “But now we have you, and you can bypass his defences.”

  Like Rhan-Gis, she thinks. Hesitantly, Cari reaches into her satchel, pulls out a cloth-wrapped bundle.

  “Doctor Ramegos’ grimoire,” says Eladora with genuine joy, the eagerness of a librarian when a long-lost book is returned, “you brought it back!”

  “No.” Cari unwraps the oilskin. Inside is the aethergraph taken from Vorz’s laboratory in Ilbarin. She’s carted the damn thing all the way home. “I could never get it working. Stole it off an Eshdana sorcerer called Vorz who works for the dragons.”

  “I have heard of this Vorz. A backstreet alchemist, by all accounts,” Eladora says, “but this aethergraph wasn’t made in any back alley.”

  Nemon examines the machine. “It’s intact, unlike the one from the Inn of the Green Door. We can pull psychic echoes off it, find out what they were talking about. A valuable prize.

  Cari shrugs. “How long will that take?”

  Eladora gives a sad little smile. “I have a singularly talented alchemist on staff. It won’t take long.”

  “And I have something for you in return,” says the spy. He reaches into his pocket, takes out what looks like a grey silken handkerchief, as delicate as a cobweb. He shakes it out, and a little pebble of pearly stone falls.

  Hanging in the air for a moment, plummeting end over end.

  To crash on to the surface of Jermas’ diary, coming to rest on the dark leather of the binding.

  Cari exhales. Wipes her eyes, her face suddenly wet with tears.

  She lays her hand on the table, fingertips brushing the stone.

  Spar, are you there?

  Yes.

  Cari and Spar begin with words. Fumbling, awkward, misplaced.

  I’m sorry I was gone so long

  I couldn’t hold out

  I’ve made mistakes

  I missed you

  The words give way to a flood of emotions and memories. In the technical argot of sorcerers and theologians, their souls are congruent.

  For Cari, Spar’s presence is shelter against the storm. He’s home, the one place where she never feels that nervous restlessness, never feels that she has to move and fight to survive. The place where she doesn’t need to lose herself. She returns to him now with new eyes. She’s seen the Godswar. The horrors that lie ahead for Guerdon if the fragile Armistice breaks and the war returns to the city – internment camps watched by armed guards, prisoners dredging the last scraps out of a dying world for cruel men. Mad gods for mad worshippers, denying the world around them, stumbling towards oblivion.

  At the end, nothing but worms.

  And for Spar, Cari is life and fire, a light that guides him. Behind him, the stony pit of despair. Above him, always unreachable, is the duty passed down to him from his father. Idge is always there in memory, dangling from the noose, at once sacrificed to and liberated from the dream of a better city. Like alkahest, Cari frees him to move, to think, to find another way.

  Welcome home.

  “I didn’t think I’d make it.”

  I
knew you would.

  “Liar. You told me not to go.”

  It was hard. His thoughts carry that darkness with him, the memory of his broken time. Cari shudders – even experiencing that dissolution, that unravelling, second-hand is terrifying.

  “What are you, now? I saw the New City as we approached, and… it wasn’t you.”

  I was driven out. Spar’s voice is thoughtful. Although I’m not sure what “I” really means, any more. What are you, Cari? Your soul? Your thoughts? Your memories? The body that houses them? We are all more fluid than we imagine, I think. We seek meaning to give ourselves form.

  She clenches her fist around the stone so tightly it digs into the skin. “I’m here. I came back for you. I don’t give a shit about philosophy. How’s that for an answer?”

  A distant flicker of amusement. She’ll take it.

  “I hear,” she jokes, “you’ve been cheating on me with another saint.”

  Rasce. He’s… I thought he had it in him to be a good man. I still do. But his loyalty to the dragon poisons him. Spar’s voice fades in and out in Cari’s mind. The psychic equivalent of a furtive whisper.

  “You’re hiding from him.”

  He drove me out.

  “How did he force you out? I mean, it’s your…” She searches for the right word. Body? Domain? Miraculous gift?

  My consciousness is fragile, says Spar. I can’t fight him without… losing the thread of myself. Cari can sense his fragility, Spar’s mind is like a soap bubble on the surface of the stone. Something beautiful and precious and fleeting. She crossed the world to find a way to save Spar, and now he’s in more peril than ever. She glances across the room, to where Eladora and Alic Nemon whisper to each other. Eladora and a renegade god, wearing a human mask. Their prayers preserve the thread of my existence, Alic had said, like it was something to be proud of. Using people like stepping stones across the mire.

  Could Spar do the same? Cari would gladly bear that burden. But he was fading even when she was right there with him as the Saint of Knives – that’s why she left in the first place! There’s something different about Spar, so the trick that Nemon’s using won’t work for him. All these sorcerers and alchemists and priests running around conspiring against each other, and none of them willing to tell her how to put things right.

  Cari, it’s all right. It’s not your job to save me.

  His thought comes as a shock. She’s been travelling alone for so long, she’d forgotten what it was like to have him reply to her thoughts.

  “Of course it is,” Cari replies.

  No, it’s not. Some things cannot be fixed.

  “Fuck that. The Ghierdana stole my blood, Spar. They stole my amulet. The only reason Rasce was able to do what he’s done is because of magic shit and alchemy.”

  I don’t think it was just that. My first connection with him was before that. I think I recognised something in him. Some… potential, maybe?

  Cari runs her fingers through her hair in frustration. “Eladora wants me to kill him. So, we kill him. He deserves it for all he’s done. Burning the towers and—”

  We burned the towers, too.

  “Not the same. That was an accident—”

  We didn’t know what would happen, and we tried to put it right afterwards. We made amends as best we could. We should give Rasce the chance to make amends, and resolve this peacefully. The city’s seen enough death.

  “Godshit, no. This all fucking began because I didn’t kill Artolo when I had the chance. No more leaving enemies behind us. Spar, I’ve spent months running from the Ghierdana. The bastards don’t give up. They’re all, I dunno, inbred or something.”

  Brought up from birth to serve the dragon. But you of all people, Carillon Thay, should know something about breaking free of one’s monstrous family and their intentions for you.

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  Sorry, but… we can do this. Remember in the Crisis – before I died – when we thought we could gain control of the Ravellers through you? It’s a moment like that one. Idge wrote that there are moments when individuals can break free of the historical forces that constrain them and make a change.

  Carillon groans. “You’re so bloody stubborn. All right. We’ll try – but we get Rat first.”

  Because Rat is always so eager to forgive those who have wronged him, says Spar with a wry note of relief in his voice.

  “Yeah. I’m hoping he brings you down to the gutter with the rest of us mere mortals.” Cari rifles through Eladora’s desk – ignoring Eladora’s horrified glare – and finds a small silver necklace with an amber pendant. She draws her knife, pops the amber out of its housing, and slots the Spar-pebble in its place. “Saving you bought Rasce one chance. If he doesn’t take it, I’m going to kill him.”

  Rasce is watching the tunnels. He sees like you saw. If you enter the New City, he’ll know.

  “He has to catch me first.”

  Tallowmen hiss and leer as Carillon leaves the lithosarium. She pauses at the threshold, looking back at her cousin. Eladora stays in the shadows of the doorway, careful to stay out of sight. Flinching at every movement on the rooftops, cautious of both gods and men with guns.

  “Be careful, Carillon,” says Eladora. “Please, return here once you’ve dealt with Rasce. Finding a way out of this present peril will require delicate diplomacy. Once balance is restored between the occupying forces, we shall need above all a period of stability. We’ll need time to, ah, reassure the alchemists that Guerdon is still safe for business and convince them to reverse their decision to leave.”

  Cari stares up at the towers of the New City. “I’m not coming back, El.”

  “You’re leaving Guerdon?”

  “No.” Cari closes her hand around her necklace. “But I’m not going to be one of your tools. I’m not going to hold back. That’s my city up there.”

  “I need the Ghierdana, Carillon. Without the dragons, the Armistice won’t hold. The whole damn point is that the three powers counter each other – if one breaks the truce, the other two are bound by treaty to attack.” Eladora steps forward to grab Cari’s arm. “If you weaken the Ghierdana too much, you’ll ruin everything. Or g-get yourself killed.”

  “I’m not going to weaken them. I’m going to drive them out. I’m not going to let them suck us all dry in the name of stability. Fuck that. El, I’ve seen where that goes, how everything rots and goes bad. I’m going to save Guerdon from that. I don’t know how, but it starts with saving Spar.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “On three,” whispers Baston.

  One, and his hand brushes against his pistol. He shouldn’t need it, but in the aftermath of the raid on Mandel’s, there are a lot of guns slopping around the New City.

  Two, and breathe. Steady head, steady hands. Like the Fever Knight taught him. Push all thoughts of Karla away. Remember your oath. He glances down the street, checking to ensure his men are in place. Eshdana from Lyrix, all of them.

  Three, and he’s kicking in the door. The place on Horsehead Street is typical of the New City – a stone mansion, conjured from Spar’s dying dreams, now turned into a slum. In fact, Baston recognises it – there was a kid’s book of fairy stories that Spar had when he was a boy, and Karla inherited it when Spar outgrew it. Baston remembers the faded illustration of some brave knight’s manor, and now he walks through Spar’s memory of it. He steps over ragged bedrolls, scavenged from some wrecked ship. Pushes aside a tattered curtain. Dirt smeared on the walls.

  One guy by the entrance, scrambling to his feet. Reaching for a blade. Baston punches him in the face, kicks him to make sure he stays down. Scoops up the blade without breaking stride.

  There are shouts of alarm from other rooms. Groggy confusion – it’s early in the morning, pre-dawn.

  “Hold ’em,” he orders. His men sweep forward, securing the lower floors. “Don’t hurt anyone,” orders Baston, “unless they move.”

  He marches upstairs. Third door o
n the left, Rasce told him. The walls of the corridor are covered in a scrawl of black paint, a litany in some tongue he doesn’t speak. Folk of Mattaur do that, he’s heard. The stone beneath the paint glimmers with its own internal light for a moment. He’s not alone.

  Third door on the left. Baston pauses, sniffs the air. There’s a faint smell of phlogiston.

  “Gunnar,” he calls out. “It’s me. Don’t make this messy.”

  “Baston,” shouts Gunnar. “I’ve no quarrel with you. Send in the dragon boy.”

  “He isn’t here.”

  “Join us, Baston! You owe that bastard nothing, not after what he did to Karla.”

  “I gave my word.”

  The tombstone click of a breech snapping shut. “Come in then. Let’s talk.”

  “Door,” whispers Baston.

  The corridor wall to the left of the door ripples, the stone softening. Baston puts his head down and charges through the gap – it’s like pushing through mud – into the room beyond. Gunnar’s there, facing the door with a gun in hand. His eyes widen in surprise, but he’s too slow. Baston’s strong hands close on the barrel, force it to one side. Baston’s forehead crashes into Gunnar’s face, and the boy falls to the ground.

  Baston wrenches the weapon free, flips it around, aims it at the woman in the bed.

  “Don’t,” says Baston.

  “Her family died in the dragon’s fires.” Gunnar spits blood across Baston’s boots. “How many of our friends did the Tallows get? And you don’t give a damn. You spent their gold and you spent our lives, and you don’t give a damn. The dragons and their fucking cult, and you’re one of them.”

  “You took the ash first.”

  Gunnar wipes his bloody hand across his forehead. “Aye, and you told me to take it. Karla said it meant nothing, that we’d get back what they took from us. But now…” He looks up at Baston. His voice shakes with fear. “Are you going to kill me?”

  Baston reaches down, pulls Gunnar upright. Presses the gun into his side. “You broke your oath. It’s up to the boss.”