Crystal Rain (18 page)
Authors: Tobias S. Buckell
Oaxyctl watched John step out through the doorframe. John’s hook glinted in the light outside, and then the door slammed shut, shaking dust loose into the air. Oaxyctl waited for the tiny swirling particles to settle before he stood up.
He took his atlatl with him and kept to the darkest alleys, where the people who would harass him could be killed with minimal effort, and few would notice.
It still hurt to walk, though.
People walking toward John avoided his eyes and brushed past. Mongoose-men patrolled the street corners, rifles slung under their arms. He stopped in front of a family sitting around a fire by the side of the street, orienting himself. The man at front looked out over the street with a blank stare.
A cold wind came in over the walls from the sea. John tasted brine and pulled his shirt around him tighter. He looked back at the family and saw the father quickly hide a knife under a rag and the daughter glancing up the street, keeping an eye on the mongoose-men.
“Babylon come soon for oppress we,” a Zionist yelled from a street corner, standing on a small box that strained under his bare feet. As John walked closer, he preached toward John. “Himself streaming over the mountain. We have fall, and now we go suffer bondage in a different land. God help we, we have fall.”
An explosion rocked the air. John ducked and shielded his head. Shocked, John looked around. The Zionist, his
long locks swaying, did the same. He pointed at the sky, east: a thin gray trail of smoke curled over the buildings.
long locks swaying, did the same. He pointed at the sky, east: a thin gray trail of smoke curled over the buildings.
“Azteca spy,” the Zionist spat. “Already here, among all of we.”
The two mongoose-men on the street corner conferred briefly, then one walked over to the small electric parked by them and drove off toward the smoke. The Zionist stepped off the box. He pulled on a dirty pair of sandals lying on the ground behind the box and laced them up and eyed John. “Don’t look too safe on these street anymore.” He took his box with him as he walked off down the street.
Maybe getting back inside was safer. John didn’t even know if Haidan still owned the old house he’d purchased just before John had left to return to Brungstun. But it was worth at least checking. John didn’t want to put Oaxyctl through any more trouble.
He reoriented himself toward the harbor.
A pair of mongoose-men patted John down, checking for weapons, before allowing him down the street. Another pair stood at the small two-story house. They released the safeties on their rifles and stepped forward. “What you need here?”
“I’m looking to talk to Edward,” John said.
“Who?”
“Edward Haidan.”
The mongoose-men looked at each other. “Who you is and why you want talk to General Haidan?”
“My name is John deBrun. I’m an old friend. From Brungstun.”
The mongoose-man on the left nodded. “Hold up a second.” He slipped through the door.
John waited. Voices inside conferred. A tired face looked around the door. Despite the silver locks, John recognized Edward. The door swung clear open.
“John deBrun!”
“Mr. Haidan.” John laughed. “Been a while.”
“I give up on anyone ever calling me Edward again these
day.” Haidan laughed. “My God, John. I can’t believe you here.”
day.” Haidan laughed. “My God, John. I can’t believe you here.”
John raised his hook in front of his chest and smiled. Haidan grabbed it and pulled John forward past the doorframe into a hug. Haidan felt like a small child, bony and thin, when John hugged back. He had to be careful not to impale his old friend.
Haidan gave John a look over. “You don’t look so good, man. How you get out Brungstun? I hear you marry and have you a kid. She name Shanta, right? You all come by road?”
John looked down at the doorstep. Haidan caught the motion and understood. Exuberance dried up; he reached out with an arm and touched John’s shoulder. “Come in?”
John nodded. “Please.”
Two mongoose-men stood by the door. Muscled, wearing coveralls, they also had daggers strapped to their sides. They put down the guns they had aimed through two peepholes. John had stood half a foot from the muzzles of two rifles.
“More guards?” John looked around. The foyer held old wooden chairs, and bookshelves on every wall. Corroded pieces of metal lined the shelves along with the books, trinkets and artifacts from below the waves.
“So far the bombs that been set off been in airship and gun factory them. Maybe the next one for me.”
“Azteca spies?”
“Who else,” Haidan said. “Azteca here, pretending to be Tolteca. You think, after living with the fear of death for so many years, living here would break them free. No. Still spy, still Azteca.” He walked down the foyer and up to a cramped set of stairs to his study. He paused on the second step, hand on the varnished rail.
“I haven’t eaten yet today,” he said, as if suddenly realizing the fact. “Are you hungry?”
John shook his head.
“Okay.” Haidan continued up the stairs as he yelled out to the guards. “A little bush tea and hops bread could be good, you know?”
There was a long pause. “They do that?” John asked.
“Sometime being the man running everything ain’t bad,” Haidan said.
John smiled. On the second floor the wooden rail looked over the foyer and main door. One mongoose-man stood with his arms folded by the door, the other off in the kitchen rustling around in cupboards.
Inside the study John sat down in a faded leather chair. “You’re the man in charge of it all now, then?”
Haidan sighed. “For all the good it doing, yeah.” He sat catty-cornered to John. Again, towering bookshelves covered the walls around them. A small ladder had been shoved against the wall. John realized that, except for the bookshelves, the study felt like a ship’s cabin: small, cramped, utilitarian. Varnished wood everywhere.
“Don’t beat yourself up. What’s coming over the mountain, that’s hellacious. We both know it.”
“Yeah.” Haidan rubbed red eyes, his lack of sleep obvious to John. “But that why I should have been working harder on defense. I spend me resources wrong. We all paying now.”
“We all did what we could,” John said. “What do you have in store?”
“Big airship-them. Steam car with armor. Some other thing the prime minister and I cook up. Thing that could mess the Azteca army up something serious as they move towards the city.”
The sun blinded John through a pair of large portholes in the back of the study. He could see the breakwall of Capitol Harbor spanning the lower lips of the brass rings. “I want to join the mongoose-men.” John leaned closer toward Haidan. “I want to fight.”
Haidan smiled. “I don’t want recruit you as a mongoose-man, John.”
“You know I can fight.” John grabbed the steel curve of his hook. “I’ve hacked my way through a lot of jungle just to make it here. I’ve seen the Azteca close up. I know what this is going to be like.”
“I don’t want you on the ground, John. But now I know
you here, I got something I want for you consider. We got this airship expedition plan. We going north again, but quicker, safer, and by air.”
you here, I got something I want for you consider. We got this airship expedition plan. We going north again, but quicker, safer, and by air.”
John looked at Haidan. “North?” The chair his friend sat in dwarfed him, holding him in folds of soft leather and sturdy planking, built into the wall. “By airship?”
“Maybe.” Haidan said. “A lot of problem with all this yet. Prime minister not with me on it yet. I still got me a backup plan, though.” He waved at the window. John wasn’t sure what he was getting at. “Maybe it get use that way, maybe not. Either way, I have something for you consider soon, so just hold on and wait, okay, John?” Haidan leaned forward with a cough. “But this all a change of subject, John. You just get in from Brungstun. You need time rest, you know that. How you managing?”
Haidan’s eyes locked on John. John looked down at the dusty floorboards to avoid the intense gaze. “There was nothing I could do, Man. Nothing.” He put his hand to his forehead. “I’m tired. Real tired. And I want someone to pay. I want to join the mongoose-men. I want to go back down with weapons. I want to fight.” John raised his head. “And you’re telling me to wait, you have something else in mind.”
“What good you fighting on land? You a sailor.” Haidan folded his legs up into the chair. “I know where I could use you.”
“No.”
“Come, John.”
“I’m not going on the airship with you. I’m not going north again.” John held up his hook. “I’ve already paid my price to the cold. Plus, my wife and child won’t be saved by going north.”
That was the most important part. He already felt ashamed for staying alive, for running through jungle
away
from the Azteca. He told himself the whole way it was regrouping, living to fight another day. And yet, the feel of the eagle stone on his back, the helplessness of being unable to even struggle free, had pushed him to run just as hard.
away
from the Azteca. He told himself the whole way it was regrouping, living to fight another day. And yet, the feel of the eagle stone on his back, the helplessness of being unable to even struggle free, had pushed him to run just as hard.
Haidan sighed. “I think it over. John?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what happen.”
John took a deep breath and leaned back into his chair. He gripped the large flat arms, the surface rough under the tender part of his forearms.
He was halfway through recounting his journey to the city when a mongoose-men interrupted. John was glad to stop.
“They here for you,” the large guard said.
John wiped his eyes dry and cleared his throat.
“I go to go.” Haidan cleared his throat and dabbed at his lips with a dirty brown handkerchief. “Time for we step up more serious preparation with invasion coming. The Azteca about five days out from Anandale now. Then it go be Grammalton, and then they start taking Triangle Tracks towns and moving much quicker, even though we getting ready to break up track. So we need more weaponry and people now. Sorry we can’t continue.”
“Yeah.”
They stood up. Haidan grabbed John’s good hand. “Where you staying?”
John told him. Haidan nodded. John knew that he would not forget the address; Haidan’s mind was a locked cage. Nothing escaped it.
“And how you money?” Haidan asked. When John shook his head, Haidan dug into his pockets and pulled out a pouch of coins. “Take it all. You at least need lunch, eh? I go try come visit as soon as I get you something. I go find something for you. I promise.” Haidan clasped John’s shoulder. “I know everything crazy. But it still good to see you. I go come to see you when I done. I want talk to you some more. Hear?”
“Yes. Thank you. For everything.”
“Old friend, John. No problem at all.”
The guard accompanied them down the stairs and out the doors. An electric waited for Haidan. He jumped in and took off.
The pair of guards by the door stood with John. He turned and asked them for directions to the nearest market.
Capitol City stank of everything to Pepper. Fruit in the stalls, fear in the sweat of the people walking down Main Street, heading for market. He could smell the fresh salt of the Northern Sea coming in over the rooftops, a fine mist that settled on his coat, and that had to be brushed off like flakes of dander when it dried.
The smells built up, and Pepper stood still. He let the hems of his new leather trench coat, traded for Azteca gold in one of the towns along the coastal road, flow in the breeze. People avoided him, a second instinct. They looked at him sideways, or from a distance.
John deBrun, where you is? Pepper wondered, the accent of his deepest thoughts much like the voices around him. The ancestry was the same.
No traces of John. Did he pass John and his companion at some point and get to Capitol City first? He’d roamed all over the city for the past two nights. Maybe. John would be slower in the jungle than Pepper. Pepper was made for the kind of situation, John less so.
But something else got Pepper’s attention: Teotl. And Loa. Alien scents so very similar to each other. Right at the corner of Fifth Street and Main.
Pepper followed the faint traces, zigging and zagging to pick it back up where it had been trampled out by dirty shoes, manure, or dirty water.
The trail led all the way to Capitol Harbor. A small fleet of sailing vessels lay at anchor. Many more were tied up along the lower stepped piers. Pepper got on his hands and knees and followed the smells to the edge of the pier. The pier itself ran along the almost circular harbor. Only the arch leading out to sea prevented it from making a perfect circle. Tents fluttered in the wind, shelters hastily erected by the press of refugees fleeing into the city. All the buildings and farms that stretched out around Capitol City had been emptied and razed, the crops harvested and put into
city storage, and the land burned. It looked as if the apocalypse had already visited the land and left it blackened and flat.
city storage, and the land burned. It looked as if the apocalypse had already visited the land and left it blackened and flat.
Whoever led the city defenses planned well. There was nowhere for the Azteca to hide within striking distance of the city. Trenches were being dug, no doubt to be lined with stakes or explosives and other surprises. Pepper froze, shook his head, and waited.
The point of a knife dug into his back. “Give me your coat.”
Pepper looked down at the water and the edge of the pier, ignoring the person behind him. A streak of clear ooze stained the lip.
Something had been out hunting.
Pepper smiled. What he wanted now was to find out what a Teotl was doing here in Capitol City.
Hopefully not hunting the same thing Pepper was hunting.
And the fact that a Teotl had snuck itself into the city intrigued him. It must have sailed all the way to the Northern Sea and then snuck in. How? Submarine?
Pepper spun around, grabbed the knife, and held his attacker by the throat. The gaunt man held Pepper’s wrists and gasped for breath. His ring finger had a mark on it. A wedding band, gone. Pawned?
“Please,” the man pleaded. “Me wife, the wind chills her in we boat. Me landlord kick me out. Mongoose-men live there now. What else I go do?”
Pepper looked down at the fish-scaling knife in his hand, then let go of the man. He dug into a pocket and threw gold coins at the man’s chest. “I’ll keep the knife.” Pepper backed away to the edge of the pier. “Consider it a bargain. Leave.” The desperate fisherman nodded and ran back toward the tents.
There were spaces between the great slabs of stone that made the pier. Pepper slipped his fingers between them and flexed, then dropped his legs from their hold on the edge until he hung underneath the pier.
Slowly, deliberately, Pepper moved between the forest of pillars. If Teotl could grow submarines again, they might be growing bigger, more dangerous things. Then
again, it was only one submarine and one Teotl. If a fleet had been grown and manned by Teotl, Capitol City would be dripping blood back through these sewers.
again, it was only one submarine and one Teotl. If a fleet had been grown and manned by Teotl, Capitol City would be dripping blood back through these sewers.
A submarine, thought Pepper, might come in handy. The
Ma Wi Jung
was buried in the north continent. If and when he caught up to John deBrun, he needed a way to get there.
Ma Wi Jung
was buried in the north continent. If and when he caught up to John deBrun, he needed a way to get there.
Time to see what went on underneath these piers.
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