God of Broken Things

Chapter 3

A couple of hours later, I was freezing my arse off hurrying halfway across the city to get to the hospital on time.

Winter’s grip on the ancient city of Setharis had broken, causing her cloak of pristine white to slump into piles of dirty grey slush. Her disrobing exposed the brutal scars of last autumn: the blackened ribs of burnt-out buildings, ruined streets and tumbled monuments, and worst of all, the frozen corpses of her murdered children. Far too many of them.

I splashed through reeking pools of corpse-melt and trudged up Fisherman’s Way passing patrols of armoured wardens and work-gangs of diggers carting away rubble in a long and gruelling attempt to return a measure of order to the streets. The wind bit at my skin and I tugged my sodden greatcoat tighter, for all the scant good it did. The ragged scars that cut from the corner of my right eye to my jaw and trailed off down my neck pulled tight in the cold, left unprotected by the absence of the forest of stubble which sheltered the rest.

I was bone-tired and half-starved but still had one last obligation before my hunt could begin, something that even morally bankrupt scum like me couldn’t bear to shirk. I always repaid a favour – good or bad; well, to people that mattered anyway.

The street led me uphill towards the Crescent and the Old Town and in my weary state it felt like a mountain beneath my aching legs. My belly rumbled, but I could only ignore it. Food was scarce right now – even for a magus – and our paltry rations never stretched far enough. With most of the grain stores torched and the fishing fleet wrecked we were barely surviving by stripping bare the farmlands and towns beyond the city walls. I was sick to death of fish, pickled cabbage, and turnips. Still, things could have been worse: the self-obsessed Arcanum magi and the High House nobles, safe in their mansions perched atop the high rock that loomed above the lower city, had opened their stores to the war-ravaged Docklanders below them. I… had not expected that from their sort, even given the horrors of Black Autumn. The cynical side of me suspected that Archmagus Krandus had threatened to seize it by force if they hadn’t taken the opportunity to flaunt their magnanimity.

As the edge of twilight approached and the sky began to darken, I paused to catch my breath and as always my eyes were drawn to the vast crater in the centre of the lower city that had once been the snarl of crooked lanes that made up the human cess-pit of the Warrens. Where I’d grown up. Where Lynas had been murdered. Much of the Docklands area had been spared complete devastation by the Magash Mora, instead being merely ransacked by Skallgrim raiders or subjected to fire’s voracious hunger. The people of the Warrens had suffered a far darker fate than axe or flame. I shuddered at the memory of that mountainous creature of stolen flesh and bone erupting from beneath our streets and lanes. It had been a thing of nightmares, and visions of it plagued my nights; I was lucky if I ever managed more than a few hours of undisturbed sleep.

An old man in rags with a long straggly beard shuffled towards me. “Got any food, friend?” There was little hope left in his voice, and just enough desperation to speak. His nose was red and his lips were blue, not good signs. A duo of corvun lingered on nearby rooftops, the great black birds waiting for him to drop dead so they could feast on his warm innards.

I went to turn away and resume my journey. I meant to. But some small voice lingering in the back of my head spoke up ‘What would Lynas do?’ My best friend had ever been my conscience in life, and in death his memory tried its best, but it was failing. I had always been selfish, but these last few months had wrought changes in me, and not for the better. You could not go through what I had and come out unscathed; mentally, magically and especially physically.

I sighed and dipped a leather-gloved hand into my money pouch. A couple of silvers left. Enough for scraps of food and warm lodgings on a few frozen nights. I dropped them into his shaking hand. “On me, pal.” It wasn’t like I was going to die from missing a few more meals. Magi died hard, and after recent events I would die harder than most. My flesh was changing, and that was more terrifying to me than any hunger. I flexed my right hand, skin and leather creaking. The taint was making it increasingly stiff and painful, but under that glove waited worries best left for another day.

As I left the old man behind I searched inside myself for any sign of satisfaction, any hint of taking pleasure from doing a good deed as I had felt in the past. Nothing. Just an old friend’s voice blowing away on the breeze.

Resuming my trek up the hill, I passed through palls of smoke and steam. The pyres burned day and night, sending columns of black smoke and funerary prayers up to writhe around the five gods’ towers that reared up over the Old Town on its high rock, slick black serpents of stone twining around each other until their fangs pierced the clouds. The towers remained dark and silent, our gods still missing, and in one case, dead. The Fucker. I only wished I could murder that traitor god all over again! You know, without all the writhing in agony and torture I’d experienced – he had not been in his right mind and I’d still only survived through crude cunning and blind luck.

I passed over the worn hump of Carr’s Bridge into the largely undamaged streets of the Crescent, slogging through rutted piles of slush towards what had been a fine inn for wealthy travellers with a gleaming copper lion rearing over the doorway. It had served mouth-watering spiced meats and fine ale, and now it served up bandages and medicine. A line of the diseased and destitute stood outside waiting for hand-outs of stale bread, smoked fish and, if they were lucky, a morsel of preserved fruit.

The burning sun dipped behind the city walls and the bells of the Clock of All Hours rang the day’s last. Lanterns and candles came to life all across the city, a tide of flickering flame. I was too busy looking up to watch where I was going; my boot came down on black ice and went right out from underneath me, pitching me down on my arse. My back and side shrieked in pain from where that corrupted god had shattered my spine and torn out a rib to prove a point before putting me back together in order to start all over again. It had never fully healed, despite the best efforts of the Halcyon Order. I tried to lever myself up but my left hand flopped beneath me, taking another of its trembling fits.

“Fucking useless lump of meat, work damn you!” That damage was all of my own making, but you couldn’t fight a god and come out intact. The fear that both of my hands were becoming useless was inescapable.

Anger and frustration were futile, but when did that ever stop anybody from feeling it? I’d likely never be free of pain and disability: magical healing just didn’t work that way. It could only heighten what the human body could already do for itself and even a magus like me couldn’t suffer what had been done and walk away. It was, I suppose, a small price to pay for survival.

I staggered to my feet, bones clicking, and kicked a wall to knock the slush from my boots before shoving open the door to the hospital. Inside, the smoky, sawdust-floored room was packed with wounded being attended by chirurgeons and nurses. I wrinkled my nose at the sour reek of sweat, sick and putrefaction. It was a scent I was still to get accustomed to. As I stepped inside I ran head-first into a wall of agony, my every nerve raw and burning. Gritting my teeth, I shoved it to the back of my mind and hung my coat from a hook on the wall, in its place donning a stained leather apron.

That’s one problem with my sort of Gift: unlike the vulgar elemental magics – summoning otherworldly flames and the like – mine is a double-edged sword. While others called my mentally manipulative kind tyrants because we can get into your head and rearrange things, the men and women in this hospital could now affect me as well. My Gift had been abused and torn during the carnage of Black Autumn and I could no longer shut out all their fear and agony.

Old Gerthan looked up from the patient moaning atop his work table. His aged face was gaunter than ever, eyes red and watery, and his beard wispy and stained. “About time,” he said wearily, “I’m taking this man’s arm off.” He stabbed a thin dagger into the glowing coals of a brazier and took a bone-saw from the hands of an apprentice chirurgeon with a wine-stain birthmark across her cheek. She gave me a nod of greeting and then busied herself setting out needle and thread and other instruments.

Old Gerthan tested the saw’s teeth with a finger. He grimaced, then shrugged.

The emaciated young man on the table complained feebly and tried to sit up. The magus firmly pushed him back down – Old Gerthan might be cursed with permanent old age but his withered flesh still coursed with potent magic. I took his place holding the man down and studied the angry red and ominously black threads of infection running up the poor sod’s arm and shoulder from a festering wound in his forearm. His other arm was afflicted in a lesser way. I raised a questioning eyebrow. I’d seen them heal far worse.

“I have been here for ninety-six hours,” the old magus replied. “Assuming I haven’t missed an extra day.” He didn’t need to elaborate. There had always been too few magi with the Gift of healing in the Arcanum. And now? That number was hopelessly, laughably, inadequate. Countless Setharii had already felt the touch of his healing Gift, their flesh purged of infection and mending with eerie swiftness, but now he was exhausted and strained, teetering on the edge of losing control. And if a magus lost control they were destroyed like rabid dogs. A Gifted healer like Old Gerthan was far too valuable to take such risks.

Only the very lucky came back sane after ceding control to the Worm of Magic, and even then only if quickly caught and disabled. Nobody ever came back unscathed – I was a living example. My damaged Gift throbbed with remembered pain.

It had been ecstasy to be filled with such power. I was only too aware of the new and gaping holes in my self-control left from one moment’s madness necessary to save a friend.

I reached into the patient’s mind to tinker with his awareness of pain, dulling and diverting the flow of sensation until all he felt was vague warmth.

At my nod, Old Gerthan tightened a tourniquet around the man’s upper arm and used a sharp knife to peel back flaps of skin before setting the saw to his swollen flesh. I shuddered and looked away as the saw bit through muscle and then began rasping through bone. I had never been squeamish, but it reminded me of far worse horrors. Thirty seconds later the man’s arm thudded to the sawdust and Old Gerthan swiftly tied off his arteries and blood vessels with thread. Then he pulled on a thick blacksmith’s glove and retrieved the dagger, the blade now cherry red. He pressed it to the other wounds. Flesh sizzled and steamed, but thanks to my ministrations the man on the table barely twitched. The apprentice chirurgeon applied pitch to keep the wounds clean but still allow fluids to drain, and then it was done. The nurses quickly set another man in his place.

There were always more in need of my numbing touch: today brought four amputations, three surgeries, and one painful investigation of post childbirth complications. It was a long and tiring day and Old Gerthan must have had inhuman willpower to do this for days on end. All magic had its limits where our bodies and sanity were concerned, even for canny old magi like him. I was a wreck after only one day here and there, but I owed the Halcyons: they had done all they could for my friend Charra and made her last days of illness as peaceful as possible. My streak of black bastardry was thick and rotten, and my friends had been all that was important to me. And now that they were dead and gone? What now? Lingering memories and half-baked promises to protect Lynas and Charra’s daughter Layla…

It was late and most of the hospital staff were finishing up for the day. They washed all the bloodied tools and bandages with boiling water and vinegar and left them out to dry for use in the morning. Tomorrow always brought more to fill up the hospital beds. Old Gerthan took me to one side and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “How are you doing, my boy?” He sagged with crushing weariness. He had been a loyal friend to Charra and that earned him as much respect and assistance as a wretch like me could offer. He’d readily cashed that debt in.

“Better than you, old man. You are dancing on thin ice. You need to rest.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “I’m in total control.” “For now.” I tapped my temple. “Who are you trying to fool? I’ve plunged into that icy abyss, remember? Let me take a wild guess how it’s getting to you?” I cleared my throat. “Imagine how many more you could save if only you had more power. Just open yourself up to the Worm and burst that dam, let magic pour through you…” His face grew stony “…you could do so much good if only–”

“I take the point, boy.” “Do you? I’m surprised you can string two words together you’re that knackered. When did you last eat a proper meal? Do you even remember?”

He grimaced and thumbed gritty red eyes. “Three months on and there is still so much needing done.” His voice held that haunted tinge of people who had seen too much. We all had. This was his way of dealing with it, trying to pour a little good back onto the scales in a futile attempt to balance out so much death and despair. Me, I wasn’t nearly so benevolent – I wanted to wreak bloody and brutal revenge. I still raged at what Heinreich and Nathair had done to my home and my friends, but with those two traitors dead I was left with this red mass of impotent fury eating away at my insides. Those alien parasites called the Scarrabus had been behind those two bastards, pulling their strings, and soon we would know what the creatures really were, and exactly what they planned.

“If they lose you, they lose everything,” I said. “They need you more than they need somebody like me. When you are this worn down you will make mistakes, or push yourself a step too far trying to save a life and it will all slip out of control. I don’t want to have to toss you on the pyre, Gerthan. Let the chirurgeons and nurses take care of them until you recover.”

He sighed and nodded. “Very well. You make irrefutable sense for once. However, don’t think you have dodged my question. How are you faring?”

“The usual.”

He grunted commiseration. “And Layla?” he continued. “How is she coping after her mother’s death?”

I shrugged. “Not very talkative, but holding up as well as can be expected. Everything going well I will see her tonight.”

He frowned. “I see. Do try and keep your head on your shoulders.” Ah, he knew what tonight held in store for me then. “I have no intention of dying; have no fears there.” It wasn’t surprising given his newly elevated status in the Arcanum hierarchy – I should have expected that all of the seven councillors of the Inner Circle would know exactly what prey I hunted tonight. I trusted that he had helped ensure that the information had also reached other, less trustworthy, ears.

With that I tossed my bloodied apron onto the wash pile, donned my coat and made my escape out into the night air. A chill breeze cleared the stench from my nostrils and the tiredness from my mind. I took several deep breaths, banishing the dregs of the patients’ fear and suffering from my mind. There was no room for such emotions this evening. The shattered face of Elunnai, the broken moon, was visibly smaller in the night sky and with her retreat the worst of the winter storms were already ebbing. Soon the sea routes would reopen, and with that would come more Skallgrim wolf ships and war. I relished the chance to pay back all the pain they’d caused.

Cold anger bubbled up. Heinreich could not have brought down the Templarum Magestus, the heart of the Arcanum, all on his own: he’d had Skallgrim allies without, and traitorous allies from within the Arcanum. Now I had narrowed it down to three magi.

I’d fully expected one or all of them to die tonight. First, I would be interrogating Vivienne outside a certain lusty warden’s house in the Crescent… how was I supposed to know the plan would fuck up so badly?