The Broken God by Gareth Hanrahan (most life changing books .txt) 📗

mind shielded her from the last of the bells. The calling of the gods silenced at the last.

She wants very much to live. She’s fought for so long to find this home again.

Spar. Forgive me.

Now, as she lies dying, Cari listens again. She strains to hear the sound of the bells. She names the Black Iron Gods, speaking their secret names with her last breath, squeezing the air out of punctured lungs, past shattered ribs, through broken lips. A reluctant, desperate claim on the legacy of the Thay family.

Saint of Knives. Saint of Thieves.

Saint of Black Iron.

Carillon Thay unravels her broken shape and steals another.

EPILOGUE

Months pass. Alchemists, gulls and other scavengers pick the carcass of the dragon clean, leaving only a few bones visible at low tide.

There’s less traffic, now, at Guerdon’s docks. Fewer ships sail past the dragon’s bones. Trains and carts roll south, carrying the wealth and knowledge of the alchemists, and do not return. The city falls into a sullen, weary mood. Turns inwards, against itself. District against district, zone against zone. Not outright war, but suspicion, jealousy. It goes unspoken for the most part, but everyone knows the city’s in decline. The Fog Yards and the new Alchemists’ Quarter are twin urban wildernesses, full of half-finished or half-destroyed factories. The alchemists’ guild has ruled Guerdon – openly or not – for nearly fifty years, but now it’s gone. The city has lost its animating spirit.

For a time, suicides on Venture Square are commonplace, ruined speculators falling from towers like overripe apples at the end of autumn.

But if there’s one thing Guerdon understands, it’s commerce. Someone’s always buying. Someone’s always profiting. Haith, for instance – with Guerdon diminished, the influence of the Crown of Haith over the northlands grows. Haith’s allies in the HOZ, too, feel the benefit of Guerdon’s slump. The churches of the Keepers are thronged, and the king’s influence waxes as parliament’s wanes. A new crop of alchemical salvage workers, in imitation of Dredger, searches through the ruins of Mandel’s yards and the other wreckage for scrap and wonders.

The Brotherhood, too, benefits from this diminishment. The New City is a thief’s city, in the end. Oh, it’s still technically the Lyrixian Occupation Zone, still technically under the control of the Lyrixian military and their Ghierdana allies, but it’s the Brotherhood’s city now. The war’s shifted south again, to Ulbishe and Khenth, and the dragons fly south, too, to new dracodromes closer to the front lines – and closer to the shipping lanes, for a little piracy on the side. As for the Lyrixian military – a knife at Major Estavo’s throat, and an explanation of the new order, and that’s that.

There are still Tallowmen, but fewer than before. Rebuilding the Tallow Vats is expensive, and parliament no longer has the coin to spare. The closure of the factories, too, puts a host of newly unemployed workers on the streets of the Wash. Baston’s men move among them, speaking of Idge and Karla, of other martyrs to the cause. Discontent rumbles in Guerdon that winter, but no one knows how to put things right. The city is no longer safe, no longer prosperous. What is Guerdon, if the streets don’t run with silver and the factories don’t run at all?

The future becomes shapeless and uncertain. The threads of the city’s destiny unravel.

Months pass, and a ship from Ilbarin docks at the quayside of Shriveport.

The sorceress walks the streets of the city warily. Familiar routes are closed to her. The old Brotherhood clubhouse in the Wash, for example, is locked away within the IOZ, and the streets there are all changed. On Valder Street, where she once lived, she discovers houses reduced to rubble in the invasion. Some have been partially rebuilt; one is surrounded by yellow tape flapping in the breeze. It marks places tainted by alchemical weapons. The tape is old and faded, and flakes away when she touches it. No matter.

A poster on one wall advertises sorcery-for-hire. A Crawling One. She’s heard they’ve returned to Guerdon, filling gaps left by the departure of the best of the alchemists. Hired by rich families up in Bryn Avane – and, she’s willing to wager, criminal bosses over in Five Knives. It’s how she first came here, after all.

She turns, heads south, parallel to Mercy Street. A carriage passes her, drawn by a pair of raptequines. Troubled by the sight, she ducks into a tavern. There are some half-familiar faces there, in the shadows, but they don’t recognise her spell-blasted features. Still, a few coins gets her what she needs to know.

South, towards the shining mountain of the New City.

There’s a checkpoint at the border. The slovenly guards are in civilian clothes, the only mark of their authority a tattered notice tacked to the wall, signed by a Major Estavo. Not one of the guards at the LOZ border is Lyrixian by their accents. Initially, they refuse to let her pass without a hefty bribe – her licence to practise sorcery is out of date, they tell her – but she makes the old Brotherhood recognition sign, and that opens the gates of this city. A hell of a lot easier, she reflects, than the Grimoire of Doctor Ramegos.

On Lanthorn Street she meets her first familiar face. Dol Martaine approaches her cautiously, mindful of her power.

“Guessed it was you from the border guards. Are you here to make trouble, witch?”

“Here to pay back a debt. And I actually mean a debt. If I meant ‘take revenge on someone’, I’d say that, all right. Books have to be balanced.”

“Right.” Martaine relaxes a little. “Is this about Ilbarin?”

“No. Not really.” She glances up at the twisted spires. The light catches her face, and Dol Martaine flinches at the sight. “Is it safe here?”

“Nowhere’s safe. But it’s all right for now.” Some passers-by stare curiously at Myri’s strange garb, and Martaine hurries them along with a growled threat. “Carillon told me you pulled her