Crystal Rain (10 page)
Authors: Tobias S. Buckell
Dihana held on to the door’s top edge as the steam car turned hard into one of Capitol City’s angled streets. She tried not to yawn despite its being late morning already. She’d just finished a live telegraphing session with the mayor of Brewer’s Village, Roger Bransom. The telegrapher on her side had translated her request into stutter, and the telegrapher in Brewer’s read the stutter out loud to the mayor. After a pause the machine in Capitol City would chatter, and the telegrapher would read the reply to Dihana that had been spoken 370 miles away down the coast.
Dihana had asked Mayor Bransom several questions based on the mayor’s last visit to Capitol City to verify his identity before talking about any particulars of the impending invasion.
The open vehicle bounced through a pothole and she winced.
So now she knew Brewer’s Village had not been overrun. Brewer’s was sixty miles away from the several days’ silent Joginstead. According to Haidan, that meant Brewer’s Village had three to six days to prepare for an invasion. Dihana and Mayor Bransom agreed that he had to immediatly send the village’s women and children up the coastal road to Anandale.
She’d had similar live “conversations” with mayors in Anandale, Grammalton, and Harford. They’d decided to send women and children up the coastal road while the men remained to fight. They’d head south into the bush if the Azteca army proved unstoppable.
Which it would. Eventually Capitol City would be packed with refugees who would be unable to fight a siege.
Something else gnawed at her. She didn’t pay much attention to anyone on the street waving or saying hello. Her telegrapher had told her that her secrecy was pointless. Word buzzed on the street that an Azteca army had got past
Mafolie. The announcement was supposed to be released by papers the next morning so that Dihana would have more time to coordinate with mayors throughout the Triangle Tracks before panic broached, so this was a problem.
Mafolie. The announcement was supposed to be released by papers the next morning so that Dihana would have more time to coordinate with mayors throughout the Triangle Tracks before panic broached, so this was a problem.
Lines were starting to form at banks, people changing city notes for gold. Speculation was spreading, mutating, and turning dark.
The steam car lurched to a halt as a ragamuffin with an unbuttoned shirt waved them down. They had stopped in the middle of Baker’s District, although Dihana hadn’t seen any bakeries on this block since childhood.
Crowd noise one street over surged. People shouted. Glass broke.
“What’s going on?” she asked while the ragamuffin caught his breath.
“We found a dead man,” he said. “Sacrifice, Aztecastyle, heart torn out and all.”
They had stopped just outside Tolteca-town, where most Azteca immigrants clustered. Dihana’s mouth dried as she saw a brown-skinned man stagger out from an alley holding a bloody rag to a gash in his head. “City people out in that street?” she asked the ragamuffin.
“People standing around, trying to get in to see the body. Word spreading.”
Dihana tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Get back for more ragamuffins.” She opened the door and got out. The driver looked at her. “Go. Now.”
“Just four ragamuffin here,” the ragamuffin standing by her said as the car hissed and groaned, then lurched away.
“Take me there.”
It was the hair Dihana noticed. Fifty or sixty men with black, straight hair cut in a fringe across the forehead, clustered on the street around an abandoned building. They faced the crowd, their backs surrounding four ragamuffins who nervously held their rifles in a semiready position before a broken-in door.
“They found it inside this old store. Flies coming out got people suspicious.” Xippilli, an Azteca nobleman Dihana
knew well, pushed through his fellow men and approached Dihana. The Capitol City crowd gave them room. The words
prime
and
minister
fluttered through the crowd. “When we realized what we had, we sent for ragamuffins,” Xippilli continued. “And the pipiltin”—Tolteca-town’s Azteca nobility, Dihana knew—“ordered me to round up as many men as I could find to stand guard so nothing got meddled with. What should we do next?”
knew well, pushed through his fellow men and approached Dihana. The Capitol City crowd gave them room. The words
prime
and
minister
fluttered through the crowd. “When we realized what we had, we sent for ragamuffins,” Xippilli continued. “And the pipiltin”—Tolteca-town’s Azteca nobility, Dihana knew—“ordered me to round up as many men as I could find to stand guard so nothing got meddled with. What should we do next?”
Dihana walked Xippilli back into the Azteca crowd and leaned in close. “What am I supposed to do, Xippilli? We offer Azteca—”
“Tolteca,” Xippilli interrupted.
“—sanctuary in this city. Even despite the fact we know this allows spies in.”
“We are Tolteca,” Xippilli said. “Tolteca spurn the worship of the war god. It is only Quetzalcoatl who deserves our attentions. And not with people’s lives. We left that behind. We ran from it. I climbed the great mountains myself, my child strapped to my chest, to leave that behind.”
“I know that, Xippilli, I swear to you I understand. The Loa opposed me on this, many opposed me on this, but I worked hard to convince the city to allow Tolteca-town. But no matter what you choose to call yourself,
Tolteca
or
Azteca,
you came from over the Wicked Highs to live here. You were once Azteca, and that is all that matters to these people in the street right now. They’re understandably suspicious, and nervous. And on top of all that, the news is breaking around the city that the Azteca have crossed over the mountains.” Dihana had told the pipiltin herself the same night she’d found out. “I don’t want to go in, I don’t want to see this.”
Tolteca
or
Azteca,
you came from over the Wicked Highs to live here. You were once Azteca, and that is all that matters to these people in the street right now. They’re understandably suspicious, and nervous. And on top of all that, the news is breaking around the city that the Azteca have crossed over the mountains.” Dihana had told the pipiltin herself the same night she’d found out. “I don’t want to go in, I don’t want to see this.”
Xippilli turned and rested his back against brick, looking out at the murmuring crowd. Maybe a few hundred milled about right now, Dihana guessed, facing them as well, to Xippilli’s fifty men and the five ragamuffins with rifles.
“What would you have us do, Prime Minister? Go back out into the open land? Where Jaguar scouts will find us? We face the same horror you face now. You now are in the nightmare we have feared ever since any one of us has
slipped over the mountains for what we thought would be freedom.” Xippilli sagged and looked down at the deteriorating cobblestone sidewalk.
slipped over the mountains for what we thought would be freedom.” Xippilli sagged and looked down at the deteriorating cobblestone sidewalk.
“I will do what I can to help, Xippilli, but the solutions may be hard. This is bad. Both these things together, bad. I’ll have to get Haidan, we’ll need to coordinate a plan to patrol Tolteca-town.”
“Do you have any idea who broke the rumor?”
Dihana shrugged. “Could have been anyone. A telegrapher, a newsman, a Tolteca.”
Someone pushed up close to the Azteca cordon shouted, “What did they do to that man in there? We have a right to know what they did!”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Dihana shouted back at him. “Have some respect. Let the ragamuffins do their job.”
“How raga go protect all of we if the Azteca live in the middle of everything?” someone else yelled.
“The same way they protect you from any other criminal,” Dihana returned.
“We want justice!”
“You get justice by hunting down the man that did this,” Dihana told the crowd. “Not by kicking out your neighbors. We don’t even know if an Azteca did this.” She ended the conversation by turning her back to the crowd and facing Xippilli.
Xippilli leaned closer. “Do you know for sure Azteca march at us?”
Dihana pulled back and stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“When you met with the pipiltin, you said Mongoose-General Haidan gave you the evidence that the Azteca were coming. Did you verify it with anyone else?”
Dihana’s stomach churned, making her feel lightheaded. She couldn’t talk about her father’s warnings about the Spindle, it would seem ridiculous. But, “Brungstun and Joginstead don’t reply to any messages.”
“Did they report an Azteca invasion before going quiet?” Xippilli’s dark eyes seemed like dark wells. “Any raids by Jaguar scouts in Brewer’s Village yet?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I will say this, and then hold my tongue. If I wanted to take over this entire city, with a smooth transition, I would snip the telegraph wires to the first two towns along the coastal roads, station patrols to stop anyone in them from walking up to Brewer’s Village. Then I’d convince the prime minister to invite mongoose-men into the city to prepare for the invasion. And suppose there’s a riot as a result of the Azteca rumor. I could get the prime minister to invite more mongoose-men in quickly. I would have them position themselves all over the city in the name of preventing rioting.”
“If Haidan wanted the city he could take it,” Dihana said. “He has thousands of mongoose-men to my hundreds of ragamuffins.”
“I never named names. Haidan could be just as fooled as you are.” The crowd’s muttering pitched higher; a scuffle developed down at its end as more people joined and jostled for space.
“You know something I don’t, Xippilli?” Dihana hissed.
“All I know is that the mongoose-men are incredibly talented.” Xippilli remained calm, as if chatting about tea. “And Mafolie Pass is impregnable. The mongoose-men own the Wicked Highs, Dihana, trust me, I
personally
know how hard it is to get over. How did the Azteca do it in large numbers?”
personally
know how hard it is to get over. How did the Azteca do it in large numbers?”
Dihana shook her head. “Even if you’re right … no. I can’t consider this right now.” Why was he trying to sow so much doubt in her mind? Was Xippilli a spy, trying to confuse her? Or maybe he was just right.
“The crowd is getting larger. We have retired warriors amongst us,” Xippilli said. “Maybe you should deputize some of us.”
“No. I can’t afford to have a war start inside the city over that.” The scuffling at the edge of the crowd increased: ten mongoose-men and a pair of ragamuffins arrived, yelling at people to move aside. “Xippilli, the man inside. What is he?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
Xippilli bit his lip. “He isn’t Azteca.”
“Prime Minister. Rubin Doddy.” The first mongoose-man joined them and shook her hand. “We got a car coming in quick with ten more mongoose.”
“What about ragamuffins?” Dihana asked.
“We nearest. Ragamuffin coming, just not here yet,” Rubin said.
The crowd, now maybe five hundred up and down the street, filled the air with discontent. “There’s a body in the shop. Give the ragamuffins what time they need to investigate. Then we need to wrap it up and get it out of here as soon as possible. Get your men to clear out this crowd.”
“Heard.” Rubin turned around and signaled his men. They fanned out. The car of promised extra mongoose-men steamed down the street, and ten more mongoose-men leapt out and added themselves to the cordon. The ragamuffins walked into the broken building.
“What about you, Prime Minister?” Rubin still stood next to her.
“Where is Haidan? I need to talk to him.”
“Down the Triangle Tracks now, in Batellton.”
“Doing what?” Dihana asked. He hadn’t told her he’d leave the city.
Rubin looked at her if she were crazy. “Preparations. Prime Minister, the word is spreading throughout the city that something wicked happened in Tolteca-town.” Too quick, Dihana thought. Far too quick. Most rumors were slower to spread. “Haidan didn’t give orders for anything like this, but I think we can get more man out on every street corner—”
“No.” Dihana knew what she was going to do. She steeled herself, projected authority, made the leap. “We’re getting all the ragamuffins out on patrol.”
“That don’t make no sense,” Rubin said. “How many ragamuffins you got?”
“Enough to let everyone know we’re serious. Everyone knows the ragamuffins. For some they’re family. For others, it’s just the familiar uniform. We don’t need outsiders patrolling the streets.” Dihana looked out at the crowd. “But we need mongoose-men to lock down Tolteca-town. No one goes in, or out, unless at a checkpoint. Who do I have to talk to to get that started if Haidan isn’t here?”
“Gordon is second-mongoose,” Rubin said.
“Xippilli, come with me. We need to find pipiltin to come with us. We’re going to quarter all the mongoose-men right here, in Tolteca-town, and get them off the Ministry’s grounds.”
“The city’s going to explode,” Xippilli said, and Rubin nodded in agreement.
“The ragamuffins will take bullhorns and read an announcement. We’re going to distribute paper explanations. Tonight we’re going to explain that the Azteca are coming, and that the Tolteca are helping by quartering the mongoose-men who will fight the Azteca army.”
She stood in front of the two men and raised her eyebrows. They looked at each other, then Rubin whistled for the car, pointed out two mongoose-men, and leaned in. “My two best mongoose will ride with you. Get out quickly. When more come, we’ll push them out. We will start securing the area. Good luck convincing Gordon.”
Dihana pulled Xippilli into the car. One mongoose-man took the wheel and began pressurizing the boiler. The other sat next to her. “Keep low,” he said. “You probably a target. Don’t risk you own head.”
She complied. Xippilli bent down and looked across at her. “I hope this works.”
Dihana nodded.
She did too.
Pepper tracked his way through the bush in the stolen cotton garb of the higher nobles: thick, starched cotton, the inner sides layered with blue and fiery-red parrot feathers. He carried a round shield with leather fringes hanging from the bottom. He’d ripped off the gold decoration. Gold was universal currency, he could use it later.
He could barely see out of the heavily stylized
wolf’s-head mask. It hadn’t been made to fit him, but it hid his dreadlocks, and the original owner didn’t need it anymore. Yesterday Pepper had waited offshore until night before he landed. He had found the high-class warrior guarding the docks and killed him, then destroyed all the boats in the harbor with explosives taken from the Azteca’s own stores.
wolf’s-head mask. It hadn’t been made to fit him, but it hid his dreadlocks, and the original owner didn’t need it anymore. Yesterday Pepper had waited offshore until night before he landed. He had found the high-class warrior guarding the docks and killed him, then destroyed all the boats in the harbor with explosives taken from the Azteca’s own stores.
Disguised as this warrior, Pepper had visited the town’s center to find records. The Azteca loved documentation. They had a whole class of scribes dedicated to it. And the scribes were busy: all around Brungstun, Azteca lords were taking inventories of food supplies and farms. Some moved into the nicer houses, while the empty barracks at the end of the wharf had been filled with Jaguar scouts. Brungstun children milled about in pens surrounded by barbed wire.
Pepper found deBrun’s address and lit all the records on fire.
He’d be damned if any Azteca used them to hunt any Brungstunners hiding from them still.
He killed three Azteca with their own macuahuitl on his way out, dashing their brains out against the whitewashed wall with the effective wedge-shaped clubs. Then he climbed up a wall in the nearest alley, walked over several roofs, and jumped back down to the ground.
He walked out of town unchallenged.
Fifteen minutes out of Brungstun, Pepper found the smoldering ruin of deBrun’s house. He followed tracks from there to find a sacrificial stone in the middle of a cleared area not too far up the coastal road. The Azteca had sacrificed a few victims just before and during the attack on Brungstun, asking their gods for a good battle.
It was an odd scene, though. Several Azteca lay dead on the ground. One lay suffering from gunshot wounds.
“Great sir!” three warriors called out in Azteca when they saw him. Though Pepper wore dark blue colors from the nobleman he’d killed, and they wore red, they looked to him as a superior. “Our priest was slaughtered yesterday like an animal by a one-handed savage. Some of our brothers have broken the orders to stay here. They chase him and
his accomplice in the forest. May we have permission to join and hunt the
nopuluca?”
his accomplice in the forest. May we have permission to join and hunt the
nopuluca?”
Nopuluca:
barbarian. Pepper grimaced behind his wooden mask. He slapped the macuahuitl he’d gained into the ground thoughtfully. He knew enough Azteca to understand what he heard, but he doubted he remembered enough to speak well. He’d last taken to learning it so long ago. He rubbed his throat, readjusting to speak Azteca.
barbarian. Pepper grimaced behind his wooden mask. He slapped the macuahuitl he’d gained into the ground thoughtfully. He knew enough Azteca to understand what he heard, but he doubted he remembered enough to speak well. He’d last taken to learning it so long ago. He rubbed his throat, readjusting to speak Azteca.
“Gather before me,” he told them.
Several frowned at his badly pronounced Azteca words and fractured grammar, but they obeyed. Pepper adjusted his pronunciation. “Describe to me about one-handed man.”
An eager young warrior, looking to curry a lord’s favor, spoke up. “A man with one hand killed them. We saw it from the clearing. He should honor the war god with his blood. Instead he runs. Our brothers ordered us to stay here and wait for orders, but we wish to chase the heathen.”
How many one-handed men lived on the outskirts of Brungstun? Pepper wondered. The four warriors moved closer.
Time to act before they spread out enough to make this harder.
Pepper swung the macuahuitl in his left hand up with enough force to smash the nearest warrior’s jaw into his skull. In the same breath Pepper fired into the group with his own gun, wading forward through the bewildered Azteca and swinging the macuahuitl in long bone-jarring arcs. Those that still stirred afterward, groping around in their own blood, he calmly executed with their own guns to save his bullets.
He saved one, wrapping a dropped net around the young man. The warrior flailed and tripped back against the sacrificial stone.
“Tlatlauhtilia …
he whispered.
I beg
…”Kill me now.”
he whispered.
I beg
…”Kill me now.”
Pepper crouched next to him. “How many warriors here?” he asked in fractured Azteca.
The warrior shook his head. Pepper sniffed. He could torture the man, but many Azteca resisted torture well. This one looked young, inexperienced, so he would start
with something easier. He looked the warrior in the eyes and pulled his right hand out of the netting to find a pulse.
with something easier. He looked the warrior in the eyes and pulled his right hand out of the netting to find a pulse.
Pepper took several deep breaths. “You number only in thousands, here to capture people for sacrifices?”
The fluttered eyelids, slight blush, negated the warrior’s lying nod of agreement.
“Is this a … Flower War?” Pepper asked. Slight pause. Different Azteca regions, as far as he could tell from both ancient history and the tiny regional wars fought in the Azteca areas when he had last left Nanagada, waged ritual wars on each other to capture sacrificial victims. “Is this a small war?” Long pause. “A big war?”
The warrior smiled. “We will take this whole land as ours and rule it as ours. We will destroy your gods in Capitol City. We will take your machines and technologies, your—” He stopped as Pepper folded the warrior’s fingers back almost flat with his wrist.
“Speak when I ask,” Pepper growled. “Your warriors who move forward, tens of thousands?” That was on target. It was in the way the warrior’s broad face allowed blood to heat it. All these things—flutters, unconscious gestures—told Pepper more about people than people often knew about themselves.
“Our gods command us. We march through towards your great city.”
Pepper leaned close to the netting over the warrior’s face. Black face paint had rubbed off onto the net’s knots. “How did you get over the mountains?”
The warrior hesitated.
“By airship?” Pepper asked. No, he saw. “Boats?” Not that either. “Did you cross mountains somewhere?” The right direction. “Where?”
The Azteca ground his teeth. He would not answer this one.
Pepper pulled the man’s hand forward and folded it into a fist. He cupped it in his own, large hands and squeezed. A cracking sound came from each of the Azteca’s fingers as they snapped.
Both men locked eyes, not wavering. Pepper squeezed harder and kneaded until he got a whimper. “I destroy
hands and feet. You will be cripple. No honor, no glory?” He wished he were more fluent in Azteca than this. “Your bones will be dust if you do not answer.”
hands and feet. You will be cripple. No honor, no glory?” He wished he were more fluent in Azteca than this. “Your bones will be dust if you do not answer.”
The Azteca groaned as Pepper squeezed again. “Tunnel,” the warrior whispered. “Through the mountains.”
“How long it take to make tunnel?”
“Many generations. The gods directed it. We obeyed.”
“And Nanagada people don’t know about this?”
“It is hidden from them. Their spies are few and are lied to.”
Pepper dropped the man’s hand and wiped the blood off his own on the grass. This was ugly. The Azteca didn’t have a supply chain. He only saw warriors living off the land, pillaging for their food as they moved toward Capitol City. That was a huge gamble for the Azteca. They could starve before reaching Capitol City, could all likely die here. But many Azteca remained in Brungstun. If the Azteca kept each city and captured its supplies intact, and used the population as slave labor, they could set up a limited resupply system as they advanced up to the peninsula. Taking Capitol City would be almost impossible with an initial unsupplied mad dash, but this method would deliver the entire coast into Azteca hands. Bad news.
A grimmer thought was that the Teotl were most likely also hunting the
Ma Wi Jung.
Ma Wi Jung.
Three hundred years later those damn creatures were still carrying on their war against each other, with humans caught in the middle.
Pepper looked at the prints leading away from the sacrificial stone and into the jungle. “Time to think about catching up, John, isn’t it?” Pepper said. The Azteca struggled, confused by the change in language. Pepper ripped the heavy mask off. It bounced in the grass. Behind the netting the warrior’s eyes widened. Pepper slammed a macuahuitl down into the man’s ribs.
“Die slowly.” Pepper left the Azteca on the crude eagle stone gasping through a punctured lung. He followed tracks to a tree where a second pair of boots joined the original pair and then headed south. Together.
John had a friend. How interesting.
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