The Broken God

Book 3: The Black Iron Legacy

by Gareth Hanrahan

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dragons & Mythical Creatures; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

Dark gods and dangerous magic clash in this third book of Gareth Hanrahan's acclaimed epic fantasy series, The Black Iron Legacy. "This is genre-defying fantasy at its very best . . . Insanely inventive and deeply twisted" (Michael R. Fletcher). Enter a city of dragons and darkness . . . The Godswar has come to Guerdon, dividing the city between three occupying powers. A fragile armistice holds back the gods, but other dangerous forces seek to exert their influence. Spar Idgeson, once heir to the brotherhood of thieves has been transformed into the living stone of the new city. But his powers are failing and the criminal dragons of the Ghierdana are circling. Meanwhile, far across the sea, Carillon Thay—once a thief, a saint, a god killer; now alone and powerless—seeks the mysterious land of Khebesh, desperate to find a cure for Spar. But what hope does she have when even the gods seek vengeance against her? "A groundbreaking and extraordinary novel . . . Hanrahan has an astonishing imagination" (Peter McLean). Also by Gareth Hanrahan: The Black Iron Legacy The Gutter Prayer The Shadow Saint The Broken God

Release date: May 18, 2021

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 544

Sample

The same dream, again.

That same day, again. More than a year ago, now.

In the dream, Artolo of the Ghierdana swaggers down a street in the New City of Guerdon. Spring is in the air, and there’s a spring in his step, too. He looks across the unlikely vista of the New City, this realm of fanciful spires and bridges, as if the froth of a breaking wave froze and turned to marble. He looks up at the towers, all conjured in an instant by a creation of the alchemists gone awry – or so rumour claims. Across the world, Guerdon’s chiefly known for the wonders wrought by the alchemists’ guild. Weapons from their foundries and cauldrons flow out across the sea to the Godswar and streams of gold and silver come flowing back.

In Artolo’s eyes, this New City is a sieve, straining the city, skimming off gold and silver for him and his family. It was born of chaos and crisis, and chaos always brings opportunity for those with the nerve to seize the moment. That is why Great-Uncle chose Artolo, out of all the family, to oversee operations in Guerdon. He’s got the strong hands needed.

In the few months he’s been here, he’s proved it. He broke the local criminal syndicate, the Brotherhood, operating out of the pisspot district of the Wash – he owns them now.

And he’s dealt with anyone else who crossed him.

Because when you cross Artolo, you cross the Ghierdana, and no one crosses the Ghierdana.

No one crosses the dragons.

This is only the beginning. The New City doesn’t belong to anyone, not really. Half these enchanted spires are empty, or claimed by squatters and refugees who have no one to protect them, who can easily be driven out. Guerdon’s still knitting itself back together after the Crisis. The city watch’s wax golem-things, the Tallowmen, banished off the streets. The alchemists are rebuilding their broken factories, the Brotherhood’s gone, parliament’s staggering around stunned, run by some cobbled-together emergency committee. Even the local gods are moribund.

All wide open. All ripe to be plucked. Artolo runs his big hand along the smooth marble railing of the balcony, delighting in the sensation. He taps the Ring of Samara off the railing, and he can almost feel the whole city tremble, feel it quiver beneath his touch like it fears him. A horse to be broken, a woman to be taken.

It feels good. It feels right. It feels like the first time Great-Uncle took him flying. The New City around him might be a cloud in a shimmering sky, and he’s soaring towards his glorious destiny.

In the dream, he walks down a stairwell. His men bow their heads as he passes, murmur words of respect. Soon, the whole city will bow to him, too. Boss Artolo, Great-Uncle’s favourite. Great-Uncle’s Chosen.

He enters the cellar room. Two of his men wait, his cousin Vollio and Tiske. Loyal men, even if Tiske’s only Eshdana. Ash-marked, not one of the dragon’s kin. They’re holding a prisoner between them. A woman, young, dark-haired, struggling like an alley cat. Yowling like one, too.

“Quiet,” he snaps. He grabs her by the chin, twists her head so he can see her face. Her skin is marked by a dusting of little dark marks, like scars or burns. An ugly amulet of some black metal hangs around her neck. “I’m told that you’ve been spying on me. That you stole from me. That you stabbed three of my men.”

“Three that you’ve found,” she whispers.

“Do you know who I am?” He squeezes her mouth.

“Tolo,” she mumbles.

“Wrong!” he shouts.

He releases her. Takes out his knife. The hilt is gold and studded with jewels. The blade is a dragon’s tooth, given by Great-Uncle. It’s more than a weapon – it’s a symbol of Great-Uncle’s trust, of his authority as a Ghierdana prince. He lifts the knife, enjoying the weight of it, the way it fits in his hand. It was made for him.

Artolo slams it into the woman’s face, hilt first. He holds the weapon up so she can see it.

“See this? Know what it is? I’m a boss of the Ghierdana. I’m Chosen of the Dragon.”

He puts the knife to her throat, pressing the blade against her skin.

A little more pressure, and the skin will open in a red spring.

A little more work, to saw through the cartilage, and then there’ll be that parting, that hot rush as the windpipe gives way.

“Cross me, and you cross the Ghierdana!” There aren’t any witnesses, down here in this cellar. Just Vollio and Tiske. Just the glimmering stone of the impossible New City. Still, Artolo likes to say his piece. He’s said it before, many times. It’s for his own good as much as anything else. Reminds him to be tough. Reminds him not to fail.

He looks the girl right in the eyes. There’s no fear there. She doesn’t think he’s going to do it. That makes him even angrier.

“Take from me,” he snarls, “and you take from the dragon!”

He draws the knife across her throat.

There’s a screeching, scraping noise, like he’s drawing the blade across solid stone. Sparks fly where the knife grinds across the soft skin of the girl’s throat. The knife – his knife, the dragon-tooth knife – can’t injure her.

Somehow, though, it injures the room around them. A dozen wounds open in the glimmering white walls, deep wet gouges tearing the stone, mimicking the path of the knife across her unblemished, still-uncut throat.

A miracle. It’s a fucking miracle.

But Great-Uncle told him there were no saints left in Guerdon.

The stone floor convulses, flinging Vollio and Tiske away from the girl. They land in opposite corners of the cellar room. The ceiling melts, long fingers of glistening stone cascading from it like stalactites, intertwining and blooming flowers of solid rock, walling off the corners from the rest of the room. In an instant, Vollio and Tiske are immured, locked away behind stone. Artolo can hear their muffled shouts of alarm.

The girl stands up slowly, a wicked grin on her face. Flushed with excitement, drunk on power.

Behind her, the cellar door quivers, and then the stone lintel above it melts, too. The only way out of the room clenches shut. He can’t call for help.

The knife can’t cut her. He slams the hilt of the blade into her nose.

The walls of the room – no, gods below, it’s the whole New City that takes the force of the blow. She’s untouched. He punches her in the face, and it’s like punching a wall. His knuckles come away bleeding, and it’s a game to her.

He can’t hurt her. He can’t kill her. He doesn’t have a gun, or anything more destructive. He needs a gun. Why didn’t he bring a fucking gun? He’s killed saints before, across the sea, but not without weapons. Not without Great-Uncle.

He can’t fail Great-Uncle. He can’t fail the dragon.

There’s no air down here; he can’t breathe. He can’t stand, and, in his panic, he can’t tell if it’s the floor or his knees that have turned to liquid. She looms over him, suddenly terrible and monstrous. He crawls backwards away from her, or tries to, but the ground is mirror-smooth and slick.

She picks up his dragon-tooth knife, admires the jewelled hilt. Flips it around expertly, examines the blade.

“You’ve blunted it,” she says. “It’s shit now.” She throws his knife to the floor. “But I’ve got my own,” she says, laughing, and produces her own blade from some hidden fold of her cloak.

Vollio was supposed to check the bitch for weapons.

“Call me the Saint of Knives,” says the girl, advancing on him. Then she stops, glances at the ceiling. “What? It’s a good name!” She pauses, as if she’s listening to some voice Artolo can’t hear. “Fine, I’ll get a magic knife then. A fucking flame sword, maybe. But first—”

She turns her attention back to Artolo. Her eyes glitter like the stone of the New City in the sun.

“This is my city. I know what you’re doing here. I know what you’re looking for.”

She can’t know that, Artolo thinks. Great-Uncle entrusted him with a mission so secret that it could only be given to one of the family. She can’t know about the Black Iron weapons. Who is this girl?

“I’ll kill you,” threatens Artolo, summoning the tattered remains of his bravado. There has to be some way to hurt her. Poison gas. Acid. Sorcery. Dragon-fire. She’s human. “I’ll fucking kill your family.”

She laughs. “Bit late for that. But if we’re swapping threats—” She closes her fist, and the wall holding Vollio mirrors her movement. There’s a muffled scream, and red rivulets squirt from the cracks in the stone.

“I’ll find a way.”

The woman ignores him. “The Ghierdana aren’t welcome here. Go back and tell the dragon that. You won’t get a second warning.” She gestures, and the wall opens behind him, ripping and reflowing to form a new doorway. The graveyard stench of ghoul tunnels wafts from this second portal.

She steps over him like he’s nothing.

Ignores him like he’s nothing.

No one treats him like that. He is Artolo of the Ghierdana. Great-Uncle’s favourite. Chosen of the dragon!

The dragon-tooth knife is in his hand. He finds his footing, leaps at her. The bitch is half his size, small and weak, and, for all her miracles, she’s just a girl. Take her by surprise and—

—The dream ends like it always does. She turns around, like she saw him coming. Her knife goes in just under his ribcage, and his momentum carries him on as she twists, and now the white walls are all red, red, red. And he’s falling, like he’s slipped from Great-Uncle’s back.

The dragon flies on and does not look back.

Some days, Cari has to remind herself that it wasn’t all a dream. The rolling of the ship is so familiar to her. The smell of sea air, the stink of the bilges. The creaks of rope and timber, the slap of water on wood, the shouts of sailors, all this was her life before, is now her life again. The wide world, sea under sky. She leans on the railing by the prow of the ship, watching the horizon. The empty expanse makes her feel deliciously anonymous. The open ocean accepts no name that mortals or gods might try to put on it. It admits no history, existing in one present and eternal moment. On the ocean, it feels like she could be born anew with each swelling wave.

On the ocean, her life ashore feels like a dream.

But it wasn’t a dream, was it, she thinks to herself, her fingers closing around the black amulet that once more adorns her neck. She’s not expecting an answer here – Spar is half the world away. And even if Cari was back in the New City, standing in the heart of the great metropolis that she inadvertently conjured from his corpse nearly two years ago, she doesn’t know if he’d be able to answer her.

Still, she prays for an answer. Strains whatever the psychic equivalent of an ear is.

Nothing.

Just the jagged whirling of her own thoughts.

She can’t help but be amused by the irony. She ran away from home long ago because she was haunted by the fear of unseen powers that called to her, and she found solace in the anonymity of the ocean. Distance muted the voices. Every mile she sailed away from Guerdon was a balm to her scarred soul.

Now, she’s terrified by the absence of one particular voice, and every day she sails is time she can’t afford to spend. If she could have teleported across the world, instead of spending months travelling around the Godswar, she’d have done that, and damn the cost.

Nothing’s ever simple with you, is it, she thinks to herself. Again, there’s no answer. Just a memory of her cousin Eladora, lying bleeding in an alleyway off Desiderata Street, whispering to her: You ruin everything.

Not this time.

“Ilbarin!” comes the shout from the crow’s nest. “Mark, the Rock of Ilbarin.”

Cari stares at the horizon, looking for the distant hump of the mountain, but she can’t see it from down here yet. She suppresses the urge to climb up into the rigging and get a proper view. She spent half her old life aloft, and the swaying of the mast holds no fear for her. But she can’t abandon her prize. She pats the heavy oilskin bundle that hasn’t left her sight in six months, feels the comforting weight of the book inside.

Comforting weight? More like fucking inconvenient weight. The book’s absurdly huge, and the cover is shod in metal, with a hefty lock built into it. Probably magic wards, too. The thing could stop a bullet, and not a small one either. If Cari’s ever caught in an artillery bombardment (again, she adds), she’s hiding under that fucking book.

The Grimoire of Doctor Ramegos, to give the book something like its proper title. From what Eladora explained, it’s some sort of magical diary. Cari wishes she knew which pages were actually important. If she knew what was valuable, she could just steal that, cut the pages out and wrap them up in a nice neat bundle. But no – it’s all incomprehensible arcane runes in there. She can’t distinguish between the world-shattering secrets and the magic equivalent of “day eight of gastric distress. Today’s bowel movements were mostly greenish and inoffensive” so she has to carry it all. She’s dragged this fucking book from Guerdon to Haith, across the sea to Varinth, down south to Paravos, across to the Caliphates into the Firesea, and now nearly to Khebesh.

Thinking about it, six months with this book can be counted among her longest relationships, and she can’t even read the thing.

She listens again. Spar was always amused when she got ranty. She’s still curating her own thoughts, storing away things that he might enjoy. But he’s an absence in her soul, an unseen wound. A phantom limb that other people don’t have. She’s left only with her own thoughts, and Cari’s always been poor company for herself.

Some of the crew of this ship might understand. Some of them, too, have walked in the shadow of divinity. It’s not a Guerdon ship; she boarded this ship in . . . one of the occupied Caliphate ports? Taervosa, maybe, or some other stop on her long, meandering journey. Not a Guerdon ship means not a Guerdon crew – there are god-touched on board. They’ve got a weatherworker, Eld, a minor saint of Cloud Mother. Waddling around, complaining about his swollen ankles and swollen belly, occasionally called on to birth sylph-spirits to fill the sails and speed the ship along. Another sailor has a Tomb Child from Ul-Taen riding on his shoulders, the shade of a child sacrifice. Cari can see the Child, sometimes, if the sun catches it at the right angle. And there’s one mercenary who has the Lion Queen’s sigil tattooed on his chest.

She’s stayed away from him, this whole journey.

She’s made enough enemies for one lifetime.

The Rock of Ilbarin grows as the ship struggles to make headway through a sea of debris. Floating wreckage bumps against the hull. The crew rush to the rail to take soundings, check the depth beneath the keel. They have charts, of course, but charts are useless these days. The gods can tear up the foundations of the ocean to throw at each other.

It’s been five years since she last saw the Rock, but she still remembers Ilbarin City. Other travellers might speak of Ilbarin’s glittering fountains amid the lush green gardens, or the goldenroofed temples, but Cari chiefly remembers the crowded quays and the alleyways between the warehouses, the dockside inns and chandleries. She spent her formative years there, and on the Rose. She’ll be able to find her way on from there.

The ship’s course shifts. The distant Rock of Ilbarin vanishes behind the bowsprit, reappears a moment later on the other side. They’re no longer heading for Ilbarin City, but instead making for the north end of the island.

Cari stuffs Ramegos’ grimoire into her pack and swings it on to her back. The weight of the loaded satchel makes her feel lopsided, and the waters are choppy here. She finds Captain Dosca nearby, standing at the rail, spyglass raised. Something’s coming.

“Hey,” she calls. He ignores her, so she puts her palm across the end of his telescope, blocking his view. That gets his attention.

“I paid for passage all the way to Ilbarin City. I paid you extra to go straight there.” In fact, it was the first time in her life she’d ever had the money to pay passage instead of working it, and she’s damned if she’s not getting her money’s worth.

Dosca sucks his stained teeth. “We must change course,” he says slowly. “Ilbarin City is no longer safe. There has been, ah, flooding.”

“You said you’d take me to Ilbarin City.”

“We cannot land there.”

“I’ve got friends in the port.” Using the present tense is a risky assumption on her part; she had friends there, long ago. Family, sort of. She spent five years aboard the Rose. Hawse or Adro will help her. She’ll even go to Dol Martaine in a pinch – she’s got money to pay her way, now. Captain Hawse came from Ilbarin, and always said he’d retire there. She’ll take any ship that’ll bring her to the forbidden land of Khebesh, but secretly she’s harboured the fanciful notion that it’ll be the Rose that carries her there. “I need to go to Ilbarin City.”

Dosca pauses for a long moment, then says, “We’re going to Ushket instead.”

“Ushket . . . Ushket’s halfway up the fucking mountain!” How bad was the flooding? Shit, how out of date is her information? Sailing from Guerdon to Ilbarin usually takes four or five weeks, but Cari did it all arseways, took the long way around. She had to – there was no way she dared get anywhere close to the gods of Ishmere, not after what she did to their war goddess. She’s been travelling for months, with little news of the south until she reached the Caliphates. And she was so eager to find passage onwards to Ilbarin that she didn’t take any precautions.

“We will put you ashore at Ushket. There is nothing else to be done.” He raises the spyglass again.

“What is it?” Cari asks. She can see some other vessel approaching, a smudge of dark smoke above it. Alchemy-powered, probably a gunboat from the size. Ilbarin military, maybe? She reaches for Dosca’s spyglass, but he folds it up and tucks it away before she can take it.

“An escort.” He glances down at Cari. “It would be best for you to stay hidden. I will tell them I have no passengers.”

“Are they Ilbariners?”

Dosca shakes his head. “No. They are Ghierdana.”

Ghierdana. Fucking dragon pirates.

Run. Hide. Cari sprints below deck, leaping down the narrow ladder, ignoring the curses of Eld as she shoves past him. His big, wind-pregnant belly nearly takes up the entire gangway. She races to the corner she’s been sleeping in and gathers her other few possessions. The hold stinks of rotten eggs, and the smell is bearable only if they leave the hatches half open most of the time. From down here, she can look up and see a bright blue sliver of sky, hear movement on the deck above.

Acrid smoke crosses the sliver of blue, and she catches the whiff of engine fumes. The gunboat’s alongside. She hears shouts, thumping against the hull as people climb on board. Cari discovers a hiding place under a bunk, pressing herself into the shadowy corner, a child hiding from monsters. Knife clutched in her hand, ready to strike. Her heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s going to break her ribs.

All her instincts are off. Back in Guerdon, she was fucking unstoppable. She was the Saint of Knives. With Spar’s miracles backing her up, she was invincible. Spar shielded her, took on any wounds that might hurt her. With his help she’d single-handedly stabbed the fuck out of the Ghierdana crime syndicate. Kicked them out of Guerdon without taking a scratch. Only a few months ago, she wouldn’t have had to hide. She’d have known where every Ghierdana bastard was, felt their footsteps on the stone floor. The walls would open for her, the New City reshaping itself according to her desires. She’d have shrugged off gunfire with marble-hard skin, defeated a dozen men with a saint’s cruel grace.

Made them beg her for mercy.

Pray to her for mercy.

Sometimes, she’d given it. Sometimes, she hadn’t.

Do you think they know who I am, she thinks to Spar, wildly. Hell, maybe they won’t. Maybe she’s overreacting. The Ghierdana are a big outfit, a syndicate of criminal families, each headed by a fucking noshit fire-breathing dragon – there’s no guarantee that any of the ones here in Ilbarin know anything about what happened back home. Three times so far – twice in Varinth, and once on Paravos – she thought she’d spotted someone was following her, but she lost her pursuers each time. She doesn’t even know if they were Ghierdana or not – she’s made a lot of enemies.

Maybe she can bluff her way out. Stick the knife in a pocket and stroll up on deck all casual. Who, me? I’m just another deckhand.

But they might find the fucking book.

So she stays hidden and waits. Her shoulder muscles and her legs ache from being crammed into the tight space under the bunk. The metal edge of the book digs into the small of her back. Roaches crawl over her hands, her collarbone. She doesn’t move. She cowers like a frightened child.

Two men open the hatch and climb down into the hold. Both are wearing military garb, but it’s a mismatch of bits and pieces from different uniforms, all stripped of markings. They’re both armed. All she has is her little knife clutched in her hand. Two’s more than she can handle – two, when once she’d have laughed at a dozen of the bastards. They sweep through the hold, kick open the door to the bosun’s locker, give the place a cursory search, and leave. The creaking of the stairs under their boots signals they’ve gone above.

She exhales. Amateurs, right? Not even worth my time. Spar might chuckle at that.

Cari relaxes a little, but she can still hear the grumbling of the gunboat’s engines nearby.

The sliver of blue light turns golden as the sun begins to set. From above, she can hear Dosca shouting orders. Sounds of sails being furled, the rattling of chains and the distinctive jerk as something starts tugging the ship forward. They’re being towed into port, presumably by the Ghierdana gunboat. Presumably into Ushket. The gunboat’s engine downshifts and strains, and the ship rocks.

Plan: wait till they’re tied up at the quay. Wait till it’s dark out. Slip ashore; head south around the rock to Ilbarin City and the last leg of the journey to Khebesh. Even without Spar’s miraculous guidance, even with the weight of the fucking book, she’s still sneaky enough to get ashore without being seen. And if she is spotted, well, she’s had a lot of practice knifing the Ghierdana. But you’re not invulnerable any more, so don’t get hit, she tells herself in Spar’s voice.

The golden sliver of light turns orange, then grey. Sunset’s quicker this far south.

Outside, the noise of engines ceases, gives way to the creak of ropes, the muffled thump of the ship coming to rest against some jetty. Shouts of dockworkers. The journey’s end. Captain Hawse taught Cari always to thank the local sea-gods after a safe voyage, but she dares not even whisper.

Not long to wait now.

Then the stairs creak again, groaning under a heavy weight. There’s a hiss of a breathing apparatus. The daylight’s mostly gone, so Cari can only see a silhouette. A metal helmet. A rubbery suit, covered with tubes and metal plates that glimmer with arcane sigils. The armoured figure clomps into the middle of the hold and stops, scanning the room. Cari presses herself back into her hiding place again, heart pounding again, mouth dry.

She’s seen things like the armoured figure before. Suits like that were originally intended to protect wearers against alchemical fallout, plagues and toxins and knife-smoke and shit, but she’s also seen them adapted as containment suits for the incurably contaminated. Back in Guerdon, there’s a dealer in second-hand alchemical stuff called Dredger who uses one. Then there was the Fever Knight, the enforcer who worked for Guerdon’s old criminal boss, Heinreil.

Spar killed the Fever Knight, but he nearly died in the process, and he had the strength of a Stone Man then. Cari broke Heinreil with a thought, but that was when she could work miracles. Here, she’s got nothing but this knife, no miracles or unnatural strength to back it up.

The Fever Knight’s armour was a boiler with legs, the ironclad of the alleyways, all rivets and armour plating. This suit is delicate, ornate – more fragile, maybe? The helm is made to resemble a boar, and the mouth of the beast gapes wide to reveal a dispassionate metal face. A woman’s face, cold and cruel. Green lenses for eye sockets.

Go for the breathing tube, go for the joints, she thinks, you won’t pierce the armour. The knife handle’s slippery in her grasp. She wipes her palm on her shirt, grips the weapon again. Go for the tube.

The armoured figure raises a hand, gurgles something – and the hold’s suddenly flooded with light. A dozen little floating globules of liquid illumination dance through the air. Sorcerous werelights – the armoured bastard’s a sorcerer. Shit. Cari’s fear is now titrated with a cold flood of uncertainty, which she really hates. Sorcerers are hard to judge, hard to fight. You can’t tell how good they are until they start throwing spells. Can’t tell how strong they are, because that really depends on how desperate they are. Magic burns them up from the inside.

A memory, the same memory she always sees when she closes her eyes: Spar falling, tumbling over and over as he plummets from the ceiling of the great Seamarket to break on the floor far below. His terrified face, eyes pleading with her as he falls, while she’s held paralysed and frozen by a spell.

Hell, what can she do against a sorcerer? If she was still a saint, she’d have a measure of divine protection. Saints and sorcery both exist in the aether. Saints can brute-force their way through spells, smashing enchantments and breaking wards like they were physical barriers. If Cari were still in Spar’s grace, still the Saint of Knives, maybe she could charge through the sorcerer’s spells like a brick thrown through a spider’s web.

Now, she’s powerless. Harmless as a fucking fly.

The lenses whir and click as the helm slowly rotates, scanning the room. Cari tenses, ready to scramble out of her hiding place and attack if she’s spotted.

Sorcery takes time. If she’s quick enough, maybe she can get out from under the bunk and get to the sorcerer before her foe gets a spell off. Maybe.

The werelights follow the sorcerer’s gaze, sweeping towards her.

Go for the breathing tube, she thinks, and get lucky.

“Witch?” calls one of the Ghierdana from above. “Need you up here.”

The armoured sorcerer snaps a hand shut. The werelights go out. Again, the mercifully, blessed, best sound in the world – footsteps creaking on the ladder.

Cari slithers out of her hiding place, dragging the heavy pack behind her. From above, the sounds of an argument – the Ghierdana want Eld, the saint of Cloud Mother to go with them, and he’s not budging. From what Cari can tell from the noises, Eld’s trying to squeeze out a sylph-spirit on the spot to fight the Ghierdana.

Terrible combat tactic for him. Brilliant distraction for her, especially when Eld starts bellowing in pain.

She creeps through the hold to the aft hatch. She scales a stack of crates, hooks her pack on a convenient nail, then pulls herself up through the half-open hatch on to the deck. She glances towards the prow. Eld’s writhing around on the deck. She can see the phantasmal shape of a wind-spirit halfway out of a fresh cut on Eld’s stomach, but the armoured sorcerer’s standing over him. One armoured gauntlet extended, glimmering with power. The sorcerer’s pinning the spirit in place with magical force, half in and half out. Gusts of wind hiss from Eld’s distended belly, from the edges of his caesarian cut. Most of the Ghierdana have gathered around the contortions, other than a pair of gunmen who are watching Captain Dosca and the rest of the crew.

No one’s looking her way.

Cari reaches back into the hatch and unhooks her pack. The weight of it nearly pulls her back into the hold, but she drags it out, secures it on her back. There’s a boarding plank, but Eld’s thrashing about next to that, so she sneaks to one of the ship’s toilets – a precarious little platform that hangs out over the side, near the stern.

From there, she climbs down on to the quayside.

The quay’s newly built, the concrete smooth and unweathered. There’s something deeply strange about her surroundings – it’s like they’ve docked in the middle of a market square. She finds a hiding place amid stacked boxes near a chain fence. It’s deathly quiet, and the streets beyond the fence are deserted. It’s hard to be sure in the dim light, but it looks like they’ve carved this harbour out of a flooded part of Ushket. She can see a narrow channel that must have once been a street – the gunboat must have towed Dosca’s ship along that route. It’s the only path that leads back to sea. The ruins on either side of that channel are scorched and blasted. Dragon-fire maybe. Or a miracle.

There are four other ships tied up at the dock, like prisoners in a chain gang. That’s what this is, Cari realises – a prison for ships. Only way in or out is by tug, and with a pilot who knows the waters. She can imagine all sorts of obstacles and dangers in those waters, ruined buildings like reefs that’