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

“About a third of ’em import by sea,” says Baston. “They’re all along the docks. The rest go by rail, or caravan. They’re based mostly in the Fog Yards. Far side of the city.” He sits back. “Close to impossible, now that the city’s chopped up into occupation zones.”

“Ah, the invaluable insight of a local,” laughs Rasce. “See, Vyr, this is why we need our new friends!”

Vyr looks queasy, and he’s hardly touched his arax. “We shouldn’t be discussing business here.”

“And yet, we are. Baston – if I wished to strike at a foe in the Fog Yards as we burned Dredger, how would I do it?”

Baston considers the problem. “Without knowing the specifics… you’d need a hell of a lot more men than we had tonight. And you’d have to get them all the way across Guerdon without the watch crying foul. Tunnels, maybe. Go through the undercut.”

“Is that not under the control of the ghouls?”

“It is. You’d need to cut a deal.”

“With the Rat?” asks Rasce, or tries to, but as soon as he says that name, the world seems to lurch around him. For an instant, the entire room is transformed from the back room of a bar to some little bedsit down in the Wash. Everyone vanishes, or almost everyone – only Baston and Karla remain, and they’re transformed, too. Baston has become ghoulish and hunched, his face lengthening into a wolfish muzzle. Karla’s replaced by another woman, smaller and slighter with gamine features, her hair darkening, her fingers toying with a chain around her throat. Rasce tries to speak, but his throat is blocked as if he’s swallowed a stone.

The vision lasts only a moment, but when reality snaps back the conversation’s moved on and Rasce has lost the thread of it. An argument about some gang from Five Knives. Karla looks to Rasce, obviously waiting for him to respond to a question.

He coughs, covers for himself. “Actually, my good cousin has the right of it. We shouldn’t talk business any more tonight.”

Awkward silence falls over the table. Baston and Karla glance at each other, some unspoken signal between siblings. Vyr reaches over and sniffs the empty arax bottle.

“I’ll say this for old Dredger,” says one of the thieves, breaking the silence, “he was good to the Stone Men. My cousin got the pebble-pox, and he worked in the yards for ten years before he went to the isle.”

“I’ve heard that Dredger has the plague,” says another, “and that’s why he always hides in that armour.”

“He doesn’t have it,” says Rasce without thinking. How the hell does he know that? The adrenaline’s wearing off now. The arax sits heavily in his gut – and it’s gone right to his head, too, skipping past merry and straight to a pounding pain in his temples. He slips away from the table, leaves the clamour of the back room for the quiet of the stairwell.

Outside, there’s a landing. A few yellowing playbills from old performances in the vanished theatre. The Sewer Children. The Tragedy of Gethis. The Badger and the Nightingale. The last one’s got a notice stamped across it – CLOSED BY ORDER OF PARLIAMENT. PUBLIC GATHERINGS FORBIDDEN. DANGER OF CONTAGION. He examines them in what he first thought was moonlight spilling in through the high window, but now he realises it’s not the moon – it’s the nocturnal glimmering of the New City, its magical radiance lighting up the night.

Without quite knowing why, he feels compelled to raise his glass in salute.

“My mother.” Karla’s voice.

He turns around. She’s followed him out, and now stands by one of the playbills. She taps the poster with a fingernail. There’s a sketch of a woman’s face, and he can see the resemblance now. “She played the nightingale.”

“Ah.” At the mention of Karla’s mother, he feels unwell again, and sways at the top of the stairs. The image of glass shattering pops into his head, the sounds of a loud argument, a man and a woman screaming at each other. It feels like a memory, but it’s not. He has no idea where it came from.

“Are you all right?”

“I just need some air,” he says. “This city chokes me, yes? All the chimneys and the factories spread a miasma through the sky.”

“You get used to it.”

He sits down on the top step, to avoid showing any more weakness. Great-Uncle would be displeased.

“Does she still act, your mother?”

Karla sits down next to him. Back home in the isles, it would be unthinkably presumptuous for someone like her to sit next to a scion of the Ghierdana. Her unwitting insolence amuses him. “Not professionally, any more. Not since she met my father. She taught me. In another life, maybe I’d be up on the wall, too. But I was always my father’s daughter.”

“He was a thief, yes?”

“He was one of Heinreil’s crew from the start. Rose with him.” She raises her glass in a silent toast and takes a sip.

“Tiske said your brother worked for Heinreil, too.”

“Bodyguard. No one’s better in a fight than Baston.”

Rasce laughs. These Guerdonese thieves are so provincial. “Indeed? A mere mortal man, and yet he can wrestle a wereboar or stand against a Nightshade! What a prodigy!”

“I’d take those odds,” says Karla quietly.

Rasce was trained from a young age to excel and catch Great-Uncle’s eye. Baston’s bigger than him, doubtless stronger – but Rasce’s sure he could defeat the Brotherhood enforcer in a duel. He always wins.

“And you? What was your place in the Brotherhood?”

She smiles. “I kept my hands clean.”

“Tiske told me your father has passed. The war?”

“Before that. The Crisis. He went down a crypt on Gravehill, and we never saw him again. Ghouls got him.” She sips her arax, tries and fails to hide the scowl. “What about your parents?”

“My mother is still alive, of course—”

“Of course?”

“On the isles of the Ghierdana, the daughters of the dragon are princesses, and treated accordingly. They rarely leave the family compounds.”

Karla snorts. “Sounds boring. And your father?”

“They