The Broken God

by Gareth Hanrahan

  Rasce’s finger probes the spot where she stabbed him. A new stony plate is growing there, a scab like wet concrete. “I did not ask for this,” he says quietly. “Any of this. I did not ask for this gift of sainthood. I did not want to fight you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Rasce smiles, thinly. “I knew you would say that. I have learned much from Spar.” He toys with his dragon-tooth. “I thought you would understand, you of all people. You, too, knew the burden of this sainthood. To be a saint without a god. To command such power, and to feel the weight of the New City on your brow. I hoped you would understand.”

  “Fuck you,” she says again. “You stole that power, and you crawled up the dragon’s arsehole. Spar’s worth a hundred of you – you should have listened to him, not Vorz. I fucking understand you, all right. You’re weak.”

  “You have no idea of the sacrifices I made. Spar Idgeson had not the strength, so I carried him. I broke Mandel! I broke the alchemists! I beat this city.”

  “And all for the dragon.” Cari gingerly touches the bruise on her forehead. “Second fucking time I’ve been hit there,” she mutters to herself. Then, to Rasce: “What do you get out of it? What’s the point?”

  “Love.”

  “Oh, gods below.”

  “Great-Uncle loves me.” He takes a deep breath, drawing on the well of that knowledge. It’s warmer than alkahest. “You think he is like the Black Iron Gods, and that I am a fool for serving him. But what would you know of such things? You were born in a vat, Vorz tells me, bred by cultists for a singular purpose. I am Ghierdana, blood of the dragon. For a hundred generations, the dragon and my family have been one.”

  He stands. “Great-Uncle has decreed your fate. First, Doctor Vorz shall bleed you dry, to make more of his potions for me. Then, you shall be traded to the Sacred Realm of Ishmere. The blood of Pesh is on your hands, and the Sacred Realm will pursue you to the ends of the world for that crime.”

  “What about Spar?” Cari’s voice is very small and scared. “Send me to Ishmere, but… please. It’s not fucking fair.”

  “The gods sent dragons to scourge the living and the dead alike.” He pauses before entombing her once more. “I wish things were otherwise.”

  Rasce allows himself a moment of indulgence before visiting the third prisoner. His mind ranges over the New City once more. He sees Great-Uncle up on the plaza, curled up. Rain drums on the stretched membrane of the dragon’s wing – Great-Uncle is in private conference with Doctor Vorz. For a moment, Rasce feels like he’s a child back home on the isles of the Ghierdana, watching older members of the family in similar confessionals. The mantled wing is an ancient symbol of trust and secrecy among the dragon families. Nothing discussed in the shadow of the wing can be discussed without Great-Uncle’s permission, not even with other members of the family. When he was a child, he craved to be admitted into that innermost sanctum, to be initiated into that secret.

  Now, he pauses at the threshold. He can see all things, hear all things in the New City – even under the shadow of the wing. Neither Great-Uncle nor Vorz would ever know if he eavesdropped through the stone.

  It would be wrong to listen, would it not? But the dragon takes what he desires.

  Rasce’s consciousness flickers forward, enters the sanctum.

  “… Aethergraphed me this morning,” says Vorz. “The target is the rail junction at Limerock.”

  “What about the junction’s air defences?” rumbles Great-Uncle. “I am too old, Vorz, to fly blind into their guns.”

  “Master Helmont has supplied a list of the weapons stationed there, and he shall ensure the guns run low on phlogiston before you attack.”

  “Very well.” Great-Uncle chuckles. “When this is done, I shall sleep for a century.”

  Rasce recalls the rail junction at Limerock. His mind flickers to Major Estavo’s office in the dracodrome, to the map that hangs there. Limerock junction lies to the south-west of Guerdon, a lonely outpost on the edge of the Godswar, where rail lines from Ulbishe and the other cities of the south meet. A return to action, at last! A return to the sky!

  He withdraws. His mind moves on, searching and probing, until he finds her. Karla’s sleeping in a shelter in the New City, an almshouse run by an old Brotherhood man called Cafstan. A den of traitors, Great-Uncle would call it. All those names should go on the list. Rasce lingers a moment, looking at Karla’s sleeping features. He could reach out and destroy her now with a thought – Cafstan’s shelter is not so far from Lanthorn Street. He could squeeze with his mind and crush them all. He could open the ground beneath them and swallow them.

  Rasce opens his eyes. Returns to his body.

  “Baston,” he says softly, and Baston appears. A loyal dog, coming when called.

  “I’ve found your sister. She’s at Cafstan’s.”

  Baston nods. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I spared her at your request. But there has to be a limit to my indulgence. She is well loved, I know, by the people of the New City.” A twisted grin crosses Rasce’s face. “Love bought with the dragon’s gold. My Great-Uncle will wish to make an example of her. She will be permitted to live, Baston, but more than that I cannot promise.”

  Baston nods again. He turns and walks out of the door of Lanthorn Street, shoulders hunched against the rain.

  The pebble lies on Rasce’s desk.

  One last conversation. One last prisoner. One last hiding place.

  “Spar, are you there?”

  Yes.

  “Ha! You have become very, very small, my friend. When I met you, you were a great city, home to many thousands. Now, an ant would find you a cramped house.”

  Where’s Cari?

  The question irritates Rasce. It’s not merely that so many foes conspire against him, it’s that they are so damnably loyal to one another, even the rogues. Karla, choosing Baston and the Brotherhood over all Rasce could have given her. Spar, still asking after the fate of the street thief when Rasce has defeated her completely.

  Even his allies cannot be trusted – Vyr schemed against him. Doctor Vorz uses him. The other dragons mistrust him. He is everywhere and everything in this cursed city, and he is terribly, completely alone.

  He’s broken Guerdon, survived every attempt to bring him down, and still he’s alone.

  Only Great-Uncle can be trusted. Only the dragon knows the lonely burden of power.

  “Still alive,” says Rasce, grudgingly. “But you have failed, all of you. The dragon is invincible. All that is left now is to dole out punishments.”

  Kill me. If I’m gone, Cari has no reason to stay in Guerdon. I’m all that keeps her here. You can let her go.

  Rasce rolls the pebble around the desk. He knows that Spar is a spirit or ghost or some other thing of aether – no doubt Doctor Vorz has some cryptic definition – but he cannot shake the mental image of a tiny man, no taller than his fingernail, living inside the stone, hurled this way and that as Rasce toys with the pebble. “When I first encountered you, my friend, you were nearly gone. I do not know anyone who has gone so close to the borderlands of death as you. Do you not fear death?”

  Of course I do. But… I lived with the plague for so long, I had time to consider it. The world is full of injustices and imbalances, and death is but one of them. You can rail against it, fight against it, but it comes for all of us.

  “Save the gods.”

  I don’t believe that any more. We’ve seen gods die, like Pesh. And even the ones who don’t perish are so diminished they hardly count. I’ve seen Stone Men who are so far gone they’re just shells – rocks with a few vestigial human organs, incapable of thought or speech. Death takes many forms.

  “I think there is a natural order to all things, and it is this: the lesser kneel down to the great, and the great give reward and punishment as they see fit. There are but two truths in the world, luck and strength, and to have both is to be great. If I were to spare your friend Carillon, I would be sow
ing bad luck for myself. No, she must die, so the Ghierdana may prosper.”

  My father believed that all tyrannies must eventually fall – that they shall be overthrown, or else grind themselves into the dust.

  “Mortal tyrants and mad gods, maybe. But Igde never knew the dragon.” The dragon’s victory is inevitable. He’s seen that here in Guerdon. All other powers – Eladora Thay and her Armistice, the alchemists, even the gods – they’re bound by rules and laws, beholden to debts and obligations, caught in complex webs of intrigue. The Ghierdana, though, we soar above such restrictions. Everything is simplified, uncertainties flensed away. You’re either with the dragon, part of the family, or you’re an outsider to be used or robbed or slain as the dragon desires. Rasce picks up the pebble. “What about you? Could you take the oath, I wonder, as Baston did, and serve me in all things? Or should I do as Doctor Vorz said, and destroy the last of you? What shall I do with you, little ghost?”

  I can’t fight you, Rasce, and I won’t serve you. You’ve nothing left to take from me, so you cannot threaten me.

  “Always the martyr! I have suffered, too! I have endured!” He’s sick of Spar’s moralising, sick of his detachment. Spar’s no longer the moral high ground, damn it. The city belongs to Rasce.

  Enduring suffering in itself means nothing. It’s only if you draw perspective from it that it becomes worthy. The Stone Plague taught me patience. It taught me that things happen in degrees, a fraction at a time, until suddenly the world changes. That what is within counts more than what is without. But you – you still see everything as kindling. Offerings to please the dragon.

  Of course they are, thinks Rasce. That’s how it works. The Ghierdana speak for the dragon, the Eshdana serve, and everyone else burns in the end. “Do not speak!” he snaps. “The decision is mine alone. Your life, in my hands.” He throws the pebble into the air, catches it. “I am leaving Guerdon with my Great-Uncle. My work is done; the war is won. My place is in the skies, at Great-Uncle’s side. I will leave, and never look back!”

  Rasce flings the pebble across the room. The door opens. Baston catches the stone in midair, stares at it in confusion, then tosses it back to Rasce. “Boss.”

  “I sent you to secure your sister.”

  Baston ushers another woman into the room. “You’re going to want to hear this.”

  Eladora Thay draws back her hood.

  “Miss Duttin. You are very daring, to enter into the Lyrixian Zone alone and unarmed.”

  “It seems I am not safe from the Ghierdana even in my own office,” sniffs Eladora.

  Rasce spreads his hands. “Who knows what rogue attacked you there? Some turncoat spy, perhaps, bitter at being used? What do you think, Baston?”

  Baston shrugs. “We’ll never know, boss.”

  “Are you here to offer a ransom for those who trespassed against the Ghierdana? The price shall be high indeed, I warn you.”

  “No ransom.” Eladora reaches into her bag. “Your attack on Mandel & Company may not have ended the ceasefire, but it has wounded Guerdon, perhaps mortally. The alchemists’ guild—”

  “What of them?” snaps Rasce.

  “They are leaving. The guildmaster has already departed, taking with him the contents of the alchemists’ treasury. They have signed a memorandum of understanding with their counterparts in Ulbishe. They won’t immediately abandon Guerdon, but everything of worth and all future research shall go to Ulbishe. They fear that Guerdon is no longer safe, and they have little loyalty to the city.”

  Rasce shrugs. “What has this to do with me? Should I fall down and weep at your misfortune?”

  “At your triumph. Doctor Vorz – what do you know about him?”

  Vorz looming over him, injecting him with the tincture. Vorz, in endless private conferences with Great-Uncle. The brief stab of jealousy, all those weeks ago, when Great-Uncle declared Vorz would fly with him in Rasce’s place. “He… he’s an alchemist. A renegade from Guerdon, he told me. Thrown out by your guild.”

  “He’s from Ulbishe. An agent of the Glass Court. I have proof if you want it. Carillon brought me Vorz’s aethergraph, and we were able to read traces of his correspondence.” She places a glass vial on the table, a component of an aethergraph. “All along, your true mission was not to profit from the trade in yliaster. It was to choke it off, and force the alchemists’ guild into the arms of Ulbishe. To convince them that Guerdon could not protect them.”

  “Why would Great-Uncle keep this from me? I’m Chosen of the Dragon.”

  “Because he has no intention of taking you with him,” says Eladora. “He intends to leave you behind.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The last day in the life of Carillon Thay dawns bright and almost cloudless. The city’s factories have ground to a halt, and sea winds drive away the smog.

  Rasce comes to exhume her from her cell. Baston Hedanson reaches in, pulls her roughly from the grave. Marches her through the too-familiar streets of the New City.

  They walk in silence. Faces look down from every window, eyes full of pity for Cari, full of hatred and resentment for the Ghierdana. It’s Ilbarin again, almost. There’s still resistance here, in places – even with Rasce’s divine presence guarding them, the Eshdana guards are nervous as they make their way through the twisted streets. Dragons circle overhead, sunlight flashing off the lenses of the goggles worn by their chosen riders. Rasce signals to them with a wave.

  They come to the seawall, a cliff of stone that guards the portion of the city that juts out over the harbour. Cari remembers the feeling of the waves against the stone, the way the water rushed and drained through channels and cracks, the unseen entrails of pipes and sewer left over from when all this was the Alchemists’ Quarter. But this morning she’s just herself, cut off from Spar and the city. No voices in her head.

  Moonchild waits below. Waves push her against the shore, bumping her steel hull against the stone. There’s a narrow ledge down there, at sea level, a walkway running along the foot of the wall. Even at this distance, Cari can make out individual figures on the deck – Ama near the prow, Ren standing behind her protectively. Dol Martaine’s lanky frame, and, gods below, she’s happy to see the bastard, even from afar. All the others she brought out of Ilbarin. She promised them a better future, and instead they get this. She snarls, tries to break free, tries to do something, but Baston grabs her, locking his arms around her, and he’s too strong. He forces her to submit, kicking the back of her knee in a way that sends pain shooting through her spine.

  But as he releases her, his fingers brush against her shoulder, and he makes the Brotherhood sign for trust me.

  Rasce watches the passengers disembark from Moonchild, far below. The Eshdana guards make the refugees from Ilbarin line up along the narrow ledge of the shore, pressing their backs against the walls of the New City, prisoners waiting for the firing squad. Sacrificial goats, helpless and penned against the stone.

  Further off, Vorz’s ship. It’s beyond the reach of Rasce’s preternatural senses, so he cannot feel it the same way he senses Moonchild. He doesn’t know if Vorz is aboard that ship, cannot eavesdrop on the Dentist while he’s at sea. He wonders if Vorz has already extracted another tooth from Great-Uncle’s mouth, carved it into a new dagger.

  The sheath at Rasce’s side is empty.

  He pulls the long coat he borrowed off Baston close around him. The coat smells of soot and sweat, leather and alchemical run-off. It smells of Guerdon.

  Vorz’s ship is still within the waters of the Lyrixian Occupation Zone. Beyond, city watch gunboats prowl, aetheric searchlights instead of Tallow-flames, but bound by the same Armistice. They cannot cross the treaty line, cannot interfere. They are powerless to stop this offering.

  The ragged peace births its own sorrows. Guerdon is a trading city – in the books of the accountants down on Venture Square, to exchange the threat of invasion by Ishmere for the slow rot of corruption and compromise was a trade worth making. Ras
ce came to this city thinking himself a pirate prince, Chosen of the Dragon. Now he’s sickened by divinity. Unfriendly eyes stare at him from every window. The stone speaks to him of hateful whispers; his name is a curse here now.

  He thought he came here to fight a war. To strike like the dragon – the swift blast of fire, the hurricane wings, the directed catastrophe. But it was something else. He was heat applied to an alchemical reaction, nothing more than a tool.

  He glances at Baston, who walks a few steps behind him, a grim shadow. Baston’s face is unreadable. Fresh vials of tincture in his pocket, to prepare Rasce for the next – the final – miracle. Baston drags Carillon Thay along. The girl is pale, woozy from injury and loss of blood.

  Great-Uncle awaits them at the end of Sevenshell Street. The sun gleams on his red scales, his golden underbelly. The scars of the war have healed, and the dragon is glorious. Great-Uncle’s claws and teeth are wrath made manifest, and to see the dragon – to know that he is kin to that – still sets Rasce’s heart afire with pride.

  Even Baston is cowed by the dragon’s presence. Carillon struggles as they draw close, but Baston holds her tight.

  “Rasce,” purrs the dragon. Then his reptilian gaze flickers to Cari. “Thief.”

  “Fucker.”

  The dragon extends his neck, bringing himself face-to-face with Carillon. The heat of his breath is enough to scorch her skin. “Vorz tells me you were made for a purpose. The waking and scourging of the Black Iron Gods. I, too, was made for a purpose. Long ago, the gods of Lyrix made me and my siblings to torment the sinful. I am divine, and you have sinned against me. No god will absolve you. You have come a long way to perish, Carillon Thay.”

  Another procession approaches, heralded by horns and defensive chants. The priests of Ishmere, given special dispensation by Major Estavo to cross the border of the occupation zone. Although they’ve been ceremonially gentled, spiritually disarmed, they still come in pomp and grandeur. Saints of the Smoke Painter conjure vaporous banners of purple and red. A grinning priest of Blessed Bol, the golden god, squatting on a sphere of solid gold that rolls along under its own power. Priests of Kraken and Cloud Mother, in their regalia. On a palanquin rides a saint of High Umur, Lord of Judgement. Beside him, clad in grey, a priestess of the Fate Spider.