Ragamuffin

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “The gods want Capitol City next. They will use us as the front line in the occupation.” Ahexotl brushed past the stool. Xippilli hopped off to follow him.

  “We are their chaff?” Xippilli asked.

  “They are searching for one thing: any ancients that might be alive still from the days when our world used to be connected to the other worlds. They were most insistent.” Ahexotl had a spring in his step. “They have to be captured and brought to them alive.”

  “That seems to excite you.” Xippilli struggled to keep up.

  “They need something, they are not omnipotent, and they will be giving us Capitol City in exchange for what they want.” Ahexotl, his eyes gleaming, looked at Xippilli. “And we have the first tool, a piece of leverage to use to gain all that, don’t we? Jerome deBrun. You have him in a safe location, correct?”

  Xippilli stopped with him at the steam car. The driver had spotted them and begun warming it up; the boiler hissed as Ahexotl opened the door. “Yes, I do.”

  “They want these people alive, Xippilli. That doesn’t offend your sensibilities, does it?”

  Xippilli stared at the dirt underneath the car. “No, no, it doesn’t. But I view my promises as ironclad, and even in a situation like this, breaking a promise I made to protect the son of a close friend is hard to do.”

  Ahexotl grabbed his shoulder. “Your loyalty is why I trust you, Xippilli. Not many here struggle to remain true to their word. So I tell you this, deliver Jerome to me. Deliver his father to me. I’ll make you the ruler of Capitol City, you know it best of all the people here, and I know what you promise me will stand, so I can trust you over in Capitol City more than any of the pipiltin back there.”

  “Capitol City?” Xippilli looked up. “In charge how?”

  “Deliver me the men the gods want and I will not bother you there. Sacrifice thousands, or none, I don’t care. Just keep my goods coming, keep the order, and you will rule that city for as long as you wish.”

  Xippilli held on to the door of the car. If this was indeed the age of the Teotl, they could do nothing against them, could they? What better way to protect Capitol City and the people he loved that lived there? As a powerful ruler for the rapidly rising Ahexotl, he could protect many who would otherwise have their hearts cut out.

  “Don’t delay your answer to this offer too long,” Ahexotl said, “or I’ll find someone else to do it.”

  Xippilli grabbed his arm. “The others would kill the very people the gods want,” he growled. Then with a deep breath, he said, “I’ll do it.”

  He had to.

  Ahexotl grinned. “Where are they?”

  Xippilli swalled the acid at the back of his throat and told Ahexotl where to find Jerome and the delegates who lived with him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Jerome nailed the edge of plank across the window of his room. The morning light filtered through cracks between the wood. No one had returned for them. All night had passed in nervous silence.

  Screaming and shouting came from down the street. Jerome peeked out through a tiny crack to see two priests pull a seven-year-old girl away from her mother. One of them clubbed a man down as he struggled to hold on to the girl.

  Her foot slipped out of his fist. With one last kick the priests walked off down the street with the kicking girl.

  Jerome dropped the hammer and ran down the stairs, across the foyer, toward the main door.

  He grabbed the edge of the massive dresser they’d shoved up against the door, but Bruce held him back. “Ain’t nothing you can do.”

  “That a child they taking,” Jerome shouted, straining to get free. The bush warriors pushed him down into a chair.

  “I know.” Bruce let him go. “We all know. Now hush, we don’t want them hearing no foreign voice out of here.”

  Jerome walked over and looked through the shutters. The mother held her husband’s bloodied head in her lap.

  “You think maybe we should run for jungle?” Jerome asked. He’d assumed Xippilli’s men would already have arrived to take them away and that they had only needed to last the night with some caution.

  “It light now. This place crawling with warrior-priest,” Bruce said. “Got to wait until dark again.”

  “They got to know we sitting here,” Jerome muttered.

  “Mainly diplomat and Xippilli, and some people around this house. It go take a little while.”

  Jerome walked a circle. “We go tonight, make we way through the jungle and back over the Wicked Highs.”

  “The Wicked Highs going through storm season,” one of the other men pointed out.

  “Crossing the mountains never easy.” Jerome had lived in their shadow most of his life. People died on the slopes more often than not. “Pack warm. Get all the food in this house pack up as well, we go need it.”

  A suicidal trek. Weeks of jungle, and they couldn’t stop at villages or use the roads.

  “Heard. Better moving than sitting still here.”

  Someone rapped at the door and shouted at them.

  “What do they want?” Jerome asked. He didn’t understand Nahuatl. “Who’s out there?”

  “For we open the door now.” Bruce walked up and looked through the crack. “A whole bunch of Azteca with guns out there. A couple priest them. I don’t see Xippilli anywhere. Open the door?”

  Jerome shook his head. “I think we all know better.”

  Guns were taken out. Bruce took a hunting knife out and handed it to Jerome. He hefted it in his hand. “Think we should run for it?”

  Bruce looked at him. “They like locusts out there.”

  “I don’t want die in this house,” Jerome said. “We run for it if they break in.”

  “We by your side.”

  Jerome shook his head. “Don’t stick with me. Scatter.” He raised his voice. “You ain’t here for protecting me. We need get word back to Nanagada, hear? Scatter fast if they break in. Find a way to get the message back, somehow, anyhow.”

  Bruce stood still, saying nothing.

  The Azteca on the other side kept shouting, then stopped. They’d given up on asking for what they wanted.

  A bullet splintered the main door. Two mongoose-men walked to either side of the doorway.

  “Come on.” Bruce walked up the stairway to join the other mongoose-man perched along the railing, aiming down at the door and able to see throughout most of the house.

  More commotion outside, then a thick chunk of log punched through the door. No one inside moved.

  “Jerome,” Bruce said. “Get up here, now.”

  Another hit from the heavy log and the door caved inward. Feathered Jaguar warriors clambered over the dresser. Jerome stood still and stared at them.

  “Cut them down!” Bruce shouted, and the mongoose-men fired. Six Jaguar scouts lurched forward and screamed, their blood staining the wooden planks of the floor. One of them pulled himself forward, one hand holding his own guts in while bleeding out, the other hand reaching for a dropped rifle.

  Jerome aimed his rifle at the man’s head, hands shaking.

  The Jaguar scout paused, looked back at him, and Jerome closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked, the acrid smell of gunshot wafted up, and Jerome flicked up and looked at the mess of brains and blood and shivered.

  He wanted to throw up, but Bruce ran down the stairs and pulled him up. “Don’t make it so hard for we to protect you now.”

  More screaming Jaguar scouts tried to force through the door.

  Jerome’s heart pounded at triple speed as Bruce pushed him back into his own room. “Hey, I said we was going to run.”

  “Jerome, you done well, but we can’t run. And we orders was to stay with you and protect you. We surrounded. Look out the window.”

  They grimly guarded the door. Jerome looked out at the street below. Azteca filled the street, fifty of them.

  He was going to die here.

  “They coming up.” The mongoose-men downstairs
had stopped firing. The stairs flexed as Jaguar scouts pounded up them, then the crack of rifles from the last two mongoose-men stopped them.

  Jerome slowly reloaded his rifle and loosened the knife, each gun crack making him jump slightly.

  “Hold the door,” Bruce said, and stepped into the room with Jerome. He shut the door and flipped the wooden cradle of Jerome’s bed up to shove it against the door’s handle.

  “Bruce—”

  “Shut up and get ready.”

  Jerome stepped back and stood by the window.

  The Azteca outside shouted in Nahuatl again, and Jerome looked at Bruce. “What they say?”

  “They say they don’t want kill you. If you surrender, you go live as a prisoner.”

  Jerome shook his head. “So they can sacrifice all of we later? No.”

  Bruce shouted back, and the downstairs door burst open, two Jaguar warriors pushing through. Jerome shot the first one in the head.

  Gunsmoke filled the room. Jerome recocked the hammer and fired at the second man and missed.

  Damn. He cocked and fired again, gun jerking, and hit the man in the shoulder, but he kept coming. Bruce stepped in front and knifed the warrior, but another Jaguar warrior pushing through fired. Bruce fell.

  “Bruce!” Jerome shouted as. He pulled the gun up to aim at the warrior-priest that leapt into the air at him with a net, then stopped. His hair swayed, his mask slipped, and he gurgled. The priest hung in the air, a long speartip sticking through his chest.

  The priest moved aside to reveal a tall man in a long trench coat and dreads. Jerome couldn’t believe it.

  “Pepper?”

  Pepper tossed the priest aside. His coat dripped blood, as did his dreads. Dirt smeared his brown face, and he looked around the room. “A last stand, Jerome? I was expecting you to run for the forest.”

  “What you doing here?” Jerome walked forward to the door as Pepper moved over to the window to peer out at their surroundings.

  “Saving your ass. I promised John I’d keep an eye on you. Bad timing to promise that, don’t you think?”

  Jerome could see a trail of bodies on the stairs. He hadn’t even heard the slaughter Pepper had perpetrated. “What now?”

  “Well, we’re surrounded,” Pepper said. “So let’s move quickly.” Pepper stepped backed to the doorframe, a shotgun poking out of the trench coat. He fired it, twice, then reloaded.

  “Down the hall to the window.” Pepper shoved Jerome toward it and covered him like a shield as he fired again down at the entryway to the building.

  At the end Pepper smashed the wooden shutters out with a fist. Jerome looked down at the street. “What now?”

  “Jump.”

  “That’s cobblestone.”

  Pepper fired the shotgun again. “You want to wait for them to come back up the stairs?”

  Jerome clambered out onto the sill and took a deep breath. He lowered himself by his hands awkwardly, then let go. He hit the stones with a jarring thump that knocked the breath out of him.

  A stone-cracking thump behind him. Pepper landed on his feet, shotgun in each hand aimed down each side of the road. “Move.”

  They turned the corner, and Pepper stopped. Twenty Azteca with rifles clustered around a car. Pepper pushed Jerome behind him.

  “Gentlemen,” Pepper said in a calm voice.

  “Hello,” said the man in the car, standing up to look at them. He wore a feathered cape. His pronunciation sounded odd, not like Xippilli’s but more halting and unused to the language. “My name is Ahexotl. Xippilli said you were here.”

  Jerome bit his lip. Xippilli. That traitor. They might have had a chance if he had kept their location secret just a little bit longer.

  Pepper looked behind them as more Azteca moved into the streets, surrounding them. “What do you want?”

  “Originally the boy, but now, just you will do. Drop your weapons. You can’t get out of this.”

  Jerome felt Pepper twist, tense, then stop. “You’ve seen how many I can kill if I choose back there?”

  Ahexotl nodded. “Maybe you could escape. But then the boy will die, and I think you don’t want that. But to the reason I’m here: You are one of the Nanagadan immortals? Like this boy’s father?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Ahexotl said. “I’ll let the boy live if you come with us and talk to the gods.”

  “The Teotl wish to speak to me? Why?”

  Ahexotl made a face. “They have not deigned tell me yet. But they are most insistent that they talk to someone of your kind.”

  The two men stared at each other, two predators sizing each other up.

  “I’ll come,” Pepper finally said. He dropped the pair of shotguns. “The boy comes with. Harm him and, Ahexotl, I will not just kill you, but kill you very, very slowly.”

  Ahexotl smiled. “May I offer you a ride?”

  “You may.” Pepper walked forward and pulled Jerome with him. He muttered, “Stay fresh, stay sharp.”

  “I’ve got a pistol,” Jerome muttered.

  Pepper laughed, and the two clambered into the steam car with their new enemy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Mother Elene waited for John in the basement of an unassuming three-story house. From there she took over, leaving Sister Agathy behind and opening a door in the wall into a tiny, cramped room.

  It was an elavator, which hissed and slowly sank down through the earth once Mother Elene shut the door.

  She said nothing until the elevator finally shuddered to a halt. “This way.”

  John followed her into a large rocky chamber. They were deep beneath the city now. The walls dripped strips of bioluminescent slime that lit the chamber in a faint green glow, helped along by large flaming torches planted every few feet.

  Large eggs sat at the far end.

  “You welcome to a privileged sight,” Mother Elene said. “The Metamorphosis.”

  John walked toward the eggs.

  “Stay back,” Mother Elene snapped. “Show some respect, man. Them the Loa.”

  “They are turning themselves into something different, a different physical form?” John asked.

  Mother Elene nodded. “Yes, but it ain’t for fighting, like you thinking.”

  “For what then?”

  A hissing set of syllables from behind John startled him.

  “The escaping,” the Vodun priestess said, translating for him. She sat down in a wicker chair by the doors they’d just come in. On the other side of her lay a Loa, its body looking like a pearly seashell. Halfway to becoming an egg like the others. The head had become absorbed into the shell-like area, but the face remained. Large eyes, beaked nose, and a slit mouth etched onto the shell’s surface.

  In the last war the Loa had disappeared into the bowels of the city to ride out the invasion. They were not repeating that, but doing something else now. They also knew how dangerous things had become this time around.

  “You know the Teotl are coming from orbit?” John asked it.

  It wheezed back. “Yes. We hear them calling for all of we. But we don’t respond,” Mother Elene translated.

  “So you’re running from the fight,” John said. “What do you want with me?”

  The Loa spoke for itself. “Information, assistance.”

  “Your ulterior motives disturb me.” John folded his arms. “You’ve caused us so much grief, and death, the Teotl and you.”

  For a few seconds the Loa hissed furiously, while Mother Elene looked down at the ground. Then it gathered itself. “You of all people know the damages your kind did as well. You yourself destroyed an entire lineage of my sisters in a nuclear attack. Do not presume yourself innocent of such vile things.”

  John blinked and then nodded. The creature was truthful, though he’d only had ten years to readjust to those memories and figure out who they meant he was.

  Not always someone he liked.

  “What am I here for?” he repeated.
>
  “Well, once, a long time ago, I would have liked to have killed you,” it said. “When you destroyed my sisters in a ship attack, I begged to come all the way out here and fight to wipe your kind out. We could not share a planet. Your DNA, right-handed, ours left. Our terraforming plans clashed, only one of us could live on a planet created by the other.”

  John looked over at Mother Helene. Had he been lured here to be killed? She gave no sign of what was about to come.

  “I was sent away to study where your kind came from,” the Loa continued, as if unaware of John’s nervousness. “We were a young race, so proud and sure of ourselves. I have shared memories from this time, and, oh, how we sing with determination.”

  “Your DNA is left-handed?” John asked, trying to move the alien’s attention well past memories of its dead siblings. “How have you survived all this time?”

  “We were wrong to think only one of us could hold the planet. We both could, if we drastically changed ourselves physically, just as we are doing now. In the beginning this was to be a base, a new beginning, and the start of an exodus for us. Unfortunately, in the end, all of our assumptions were wrong. We found we could share a planet, if we suffered deep changes to ourselves. We also found out that we could not run from our problems.”

  “Why not?”

  “We were supremely disappointed to find that the area beyond this planet was also infected. There was nowhere to really run to.”

  “Infected?” By what? John knew of no infections.

  The Loa shifted painfully, rocking the shell of its lower body. “When we strode into space, there were . . . things waiting for us. Creatures that grew up in the dark of interstellar space. We were not the top of the natural order, there were predators and ecologies out in the greater expanse of space. Within a generation of spreading out beyond our world, we were found by creatures that took control of our bodies and used our minds as a resource. In short time we were their limbs, minds, and eyes.

  “We fought back. We stored our memories chemically in backups, reshaped ourselves, and tried to escape. That was why we came here and fought you so desperately. Only your kind was under the same yoke.”