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.”
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.”
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.
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.
CH
APTER THIRTY-ONE
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.
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.
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.
Time to see what went on underneath these piers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Smells of saltfish stew and fresh bread filled the air. The sun hung dead over the market, beating down through the heavy, thick air and warming the skin. A vendor poured a bowl full of saltfish stew from an iron pot hanging over a small wood fire. John handed over too many coins and took the small wooden bowl from the vendor. He walked over to the nearest wall at the corner of the market and held the bowl up and sipped.
Salty, nasty fish in a watery broth.
The smell hit him.
Home.
Shanta.
Someone jostled him, and stew spilled down his fingers. John looked around the square. Hundreds of stalls and umbrellas, people with baskets or wheelbarrows pushing through each other to get from table to table. And packed with desperate city people trying to buy everything. Scraggly fruit, old meat, skinny live animals, patchy vegetables, all were for sale and over sagging wooden tables. Market seemed just as tense as the streets, if not more so. Azteca were coming, and the market knew it. Mothers pushed grandmothers aside to pick at canned meats, and occasional fights were broken apart by watchful ragamuffins.
It was overwhelming.
John dropped the bowl of saltfish, stomach churning. He turned against the wall and threw up, spattering the lower part of the bright red paint.
A few more heaves and he was finished. He stood with his head against the chipped wall, eyes closed. How could he go on? Everything that balanced him was gone. No memories. No nothing. What was a person without memories?
A child.
He’d been stillborn at Brungstun and, desperate for identity, had become a sailor, a fisherman, and adventurer in Capitol City, searching for something.
No one could even begin to explain how it felt to be nothing. It sent him into spirals of self-doubt, and fear.
Fear: Suppose he forgot all this?
He was gripped by fear that something would happen, and everyone he knew would become lost to him again. It could happen anytime, he felt on some gut level. He could just lose everything again.
There had been dark moments before his marriage. Moments when, unable to pierce the darkness obscuring what he was, John wondered how to continue.
He was there again.
Running had been action, action that kept one away from thinking too much. Now he had time to think. It made him feel as if he were being spun apart.
John smacked his head against the wall. The pain and jarring on his forehead felt good. How could he know what to do with himself next if he didn’t know what to do?
Suppose Shanta and Jerome were dead, as Oaxyctl claimed. What did he do with himself then?
Fade away? Because he couldn’t start over again. No.
Were his new memories going too? He panicked. No. He remembered Haidan. He remembered the first time he’d met Shanta, Jerome’s birth. Everything from the moment he washed up.
He had that.
But didn’t have his family anymore, just their memories. And he could never trust memories, could he? John wiped his tears off with a sleeve, then punched the wall until his knuckles were bloody.
Action. Action. He had to do something soon, or he wouldn’t be able to maintain a hold on anything. No one around him even gave him a second glance. There was an air in the market that John had never felt before, one where people seemed to be in their own space, not looking at each other. It wasn’t just him, John thought, the whole place was coming apart.
He took a deep breath and turned back around. Time to find some food that didn’t make him think of family and take it back to Oaxyctl.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Four muddy children and their uncle, a leathery-skinned man in rags and a straw hat, stood in Dihana’s office.
“They had round everyone up in town square.” The old man’s voice quavered, and he put a protective arm around the small g
irl. “Start in from the edges, yank ’em out, drag them to a stone. Then …”
“They take Mum first. Then Dad.” The girl had distant, wide eyes. Unflinching and calm, she stared straight at Dihana. “Cut they heart out.” They had seen a thing that made Dihana’s stomach churn just thinking about it. And to this little girl Dihana was nothing to fear.
The door opened, and another ragamuffin pushed in. “Papers, from General Haidan.” He set the sealed packet on her desk.
Dihana regarded the unexpected intrusion. “Sabotage map?” She was expecting a map of sabotage locations and a summary of damage.
“And something else.”
She looked up at the small girl, who still stared at her. “How did you all escape?” Dihana asked.
“We didn’t.” The oldest boy shivered. “They sent us ahead. We it.”
Dihana looked up at the ragamuffin who’d brought them into her office. “We don’t have much space, everyone trying to make do, but that man behind you will get you some food, and a place to stay.”
They shuffled out. The ragamuffin who’d delivered the map waited for the door to close. “Brewer’s Village?”
“The last from it, yes.”
“They say the Azteca sacrifice over half the village.”
“Yes.” Dihana waved him quiet. She’d suffered hearing it from the actual survivors coming into the city, and all she could think about was seeing everyone in Capitol City die before her eyes. She unrolled the package, setting aside a clutch of letters to look at the map she wanted. “So it’s not just weapons they’re after,” she murmured. “It’s the grain.” The Azteca must know that Capitol City would be a long, long siege. They were doing their best to soften it ahead of time with their spies.
“Trying to starve we from the inside,” the ragamuffin said.
“Here.” Dihana looked up from the map. “Take as many ragamuffins as you can, and tell the mongoose-men in Tolteca-town that this is one of their tasks from now on: block off Tolteca-town from everyone else street by street. Any Tolteca outside Tolteca-town will be picked up and returned, or jailed if they do it again.”
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