Dihana walked back toward the doors, wondering how many gourds were scattered throughout the city as gifts from the Loa.
“Prime Minister,” Mother Elene called out. “What we go do without the Loa?”
Dihana paused. “The same things we were going to do with them.”
She walked up the steps.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The dreams came back to John. A spiked egg dripped water from its sides as it rose from between the waves. The giant metal bird returned and flapped toward him. Dark seas tossed and turned all around him.
John’s own face loomed out of the liquid metal that coalesced above the bird’s neck.
Pepper stood next to him dressed in gleaming metallic armor. A gun the length of his body attached to his hip. He winked at John. “Keep her steady, deBrun, I’ll be right back.”
Now John was trapped inside the egg. There was nothing anywhere, he was going to die in it. Stale air and stench made him gag.
It cracked. Ocean and fresh air rushed inside, choking him. Steam rose up around the egg. He burned his fingers on the inside edge of the crack as he floundered out into the water.
The egg sank behind him. He was alone in the ocean. He didn’t know who he was. Broken pustules on his arms hurt. Blood ran down his head and out his nose.
Were there sharks in this ocean? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t even remember what sharks were.
John woke up on the surgeon’s table. A small kerosene lantern swung overhead, lighting up the room in random half-shadows and patterns. Pepper sat in a chair watching John from the corner of the small room, bundled in heavy clothes.
Tight bandages wrapped John’s left thigh. His pants had been cut away.
“You did this?” John asked, resting on an elbow.
“No. Mongoose-man surgeon. I watched.” Pepper stood up. “So you will keep me aboard then?”
John nodded, still half-awake. The sound of Pepper’s voice felt familiar and comfortable. “If you wanted to kill this expedition, you could have killed me. There is something else going through your head.” John wanted to know what the hell Pepper was thinking of next.
In time. He gingerly swung his leg over to get off the table. Pepper’s mind had always been something of a closed trap.
That was a memory. John froze in place, and the familiarity fled.
He was alone, on the boat again, and the man in front of him wasn’t a friend, but a stranger to him again. Pepper.
“Wait,” Pepper said. “We need to splint that before you get moving.” He walked to the door and bellowed for the surgeon.
John observed a strange thing on deck. The way in which the crew looked at Pepper. Conversation dropped around him. They looked nervous around him.
Respect or fear?
Obviously Pepper had killed Azteca, brutally. He must have, to have been covered in so much blood.
Even Oaxyctl fell silent and shifted from foot to foot.
After a morning of limping around the deck, John sat down with Oaxyctl facing the rail by the side of one of the cabins. Oaxyctl had a new set of knots to practice.
“What did he do?” John asked.
“Who?” Oaxyctl concentrated on joining two lines together with a sheepshank knot.
“Pepper.”
Oaxyctl finished the knot. He held it up. “He killed the first man with his bare hands.” Oaxyctl pulled the knot apart. “Took his gun. Killed the second man with that. A third by bashing his head in with the barrel. A fourth tossed between the hulls. And many others after that. Then they say he jumped between the boats and killed Azteca there, then leapt back over before we pulled away.”
“Did that really happen?”
Oaxyctl shrugged. “As far as I can tell.”
John looked down at the knots. “Shit.”
“He’s a scary man. You keep strange company.”
John shrugged. He saw Barclay at the center mast balancing and taking a sighting. “It’s more like strange company keeps me.”
“That will get you killed one day.”
“Keep with the knots, they come in handy.” John stood up and limped back down toward Barclay, using the rail to help take the pressure away from his leg.
He waited until Barclay had done his calculations, then took the piece of paper. “I’ll go and look at the charts,” John said.
“I can handle plotting them,” Barclay said. “I familiar with this. If you will let me see the chart.”
“I know.” John frowned. “But I would rather keep the charts with just me. That was what was asked of me before we left.” Neither the minister nor Haidan wanted the coordinates to their find being given to anyone. Not unless it threatened the mission because John was dying would he give anything up just yet. Then John would have to give somone the coordinates, and the strange artifact the Loa had given him.
Oaxyctl? He had saved his life. Barclay? Barclay was already thinking about it, trying to get in to see the final coordinates and chart. Or Pepper?
Pepper? The thought had bubbled up to his surprise. It didn’t make sense. That wouldn’t work at all.
Barclay’s curiosity about the maps made him nervous.
“Barclay, please.” John held out his hand. “The sighting. I am sure it is accurate, and I already know you can use our charts well.”
Barclay handed over the slip of paper.
Later, when Barclay was not around, he would have to find a way of double-checking the sighting.
Just in case.
John limped over to the nearest companionway. One of the crew helped him down the stairs.
Down at the chart table in his small room John wondered if he was being paranoid for no reason. One explosion and the three Azteca ships made him think otherwise.
The world was turning upside down, he thought, taking out a pair of walking rulers. A little paranoia is needed. John marked their location on Edward’s chart.
Everything looked good.
Harrison knocked at his door. “A problem,” he said.
After locking his room John hobbled after Harrison to the hold near the front of the ship. John leaned against a bulkhead, his thigh throbbing to the point he felt dizzy. “The freshwater?”
“Yeah. It were one of them Azteca ship point-blank shot.” Harrison opened the door. “Aiming for we waterline no doubt.”
Shattered water casks dripped their final drops onto a waterlogged floor. The hole in the side of the hull had been patched over with another metal sheet. They were lucky it hadn’t been lower. The Azteca might have sunk them.
“What we do now?” Harrison asked. His face looked yellowed and tired in the weak electric light coming from the small bulb at the top of the hold.
“We just need to make it there.” John had no intention of turning back since the attack. The Azteca were desperate to stop this expedition. He understood that now. He could hurt their plans with this expedition and he felt more committed to it as a result.
“We won’t have the water to make it back.” Harrison moved aside to let somone past with an armful of broken casks.
“Plenty of fresh water where we’re going,” John said.
“Maybe we don’t got enough for that.”
A pump, connected with pneumatic hoses to the engine room, hissed away. One hose snaked down into La Revanche ’s sump through an opened hatch, and the other led out and up the stairs onto the deck, spitting the salt water over the sides.
“Make some new casks. Take them to the center of the ship. Gimbal them so they don’t splash. And get some rubber, or rubberized tarp. Then get any big pots we have and fill them with salt water to boil,” John gave directions, and Harrison smiled.
“A still?”
“Yeah.” John shuffled his straight leg over with his good hand and leaned his shoulder against the doorway for balance. “Freshwater still.” He grunted. “And while you’re at it, have them make me a cane. Do it now before people start saying we don’t have water. Get them to h
elp you.”
“Right.” Harrison still hesitated. “There something else you go need see first.”
John watched a crewman in the far corner who hadn’t moved yet. The man stood still, watching them. “What?”
Harrison walked over through the undamaged water casks. He looked back. “Close the door,” he ordered. “And you two by the pump, leave.”
When the door closed, Harrison and the other crewman pulled the sides of a cask off. Shaggy fur spilled over the cracked wood and snapped metal.
“What the hell?” John limped forward.
Harrison grunted and pulled the creature out of the cask. It flopped onto the floor, a thick hand lolling out from its body. The face of the thing had been blown off, leaving a messy stump on its shoulders.
“What kind of god you think it is?” the sailor asked, crouching next to it. “Teotl, or Loa?”
John looked at the jagged claws on the heavy, padded hands. And muscle. Even beneath the fat and blubber he could sense this compact creature could have killed anyone who had found it alive in the blink of an eye.
“Could be anything,” John said. “Wrap it up in something and throw it overboard.”
“Suppose it a Loa?” Harrison asked.
“Suppose it is,” John said. “What else can I do? Keep it to rot? Give it a burial?”
Harrison looked down at the deck. “No. You right.”
“Get the still going.” John walked out of the locker. “Clean this place out. I need to go rest.” His thigh ached. A small spot of blood stained the front of the bandage. John avoided looking down. He’d lost a hand to the saw the last time he’d made this journey. He did not want to undergo another amputation. It gave him chills just thinking about it.
Best not to.
Better to hope, look forward, and plan. Keep moving.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
A faint frost had formed on the rigging. Oaxyctl pressed his fingers to a railing and let the cold seep into the palms of his hands. His fingernails were black and he stank. Black grease and dirt clung to his clothing. He’d been in the deepest bilges of the ship, moving pump hoses around to suck water out. They kept taking in water from leaks. Leaks from the shot taken to the front of the ship, and the explosion in the rear. Even the massive stuffing box where the propeller came in through the hull had started to leak.
Now he had a moment to rest, and he chose to clamber up the deck to the bowsprit. He shimmied out along the long pole and dropped onto the netting just below it.
Hard work was good. It had kept him from thinking about the attack. It had shaken him. He still wasn’t sure if it was an attempt to capture them all or kill them all. Remember, he told himself, your god seems to think different than some other gods.
There was a thought that could keep a man up late into the night.
And it was best not to think about.
So the work was good, it kept his mind away from such things.
The sea remained calm tonight. The days had been getting shorter, it seemed to him. The moons seemed to be out more often. And the air was getting colder.
It was like climbing a mountain. The higher you got, the colder it got. And this was the second week of it.
Oaxyctl lay back in the netting and watched the stars, occasionally catching a bit of lighthearted spray on his back as La Revanche pushed farther north on the large, almost infinite ocean, until the last faint bits of orange evening succumbed to the gradual night.
How could someone obey the gods when the gods themselves couldn’t agree with one another?
Oaxyctl held up the bight of a line, the loop flopping over, and tied a sheepshank.
“You still know your other knots?” John asked. He limped over with the aid of a cane. Oaxyctl noted that the bandage around John’s thigh was stained with blood from his injury, and John winced in pain as he moved.
“Yes.” Oaxyctl pulled the knot apart and demonstrated the bowline, the sheepshank, a simple square knot, and a sheet bend.
John grunted and sat down next to him. He set the quickly cut wooden cane next to him. “Isn’t there enough land on the other side of the mountains? Why do the gods think the invasion is necessary?”
Oaxyctl looked down at the rope between his hands. “They do not do this for land.”
“Then what for?”
John was looking for answers. Oaxyctl could hear it in his voice. John will die, he realized. That bullet wound, it was a killer. Not then, but in the near future. And John wanted answers before he died.
But when would John die? Oaxyctl wondered. Before or after they found what they were searching for? The mythical Ma Wi Jung that all seemed to desire. More important, could he get the codes out of John before that time?
“They need more blood. They need more land. More servants. They tell their people, go here, move over the mountains. Most cannot make sense of these orders. But gods are gods, and who are we to know what they direct in the long run?”
John rapped his hook against the deck. “I don’t believe in gods.”
The declaration didn’t surprise Oaxyctl. He’d been around Nanagadans too long, he thought. Too many different ideas, religions, and peoples.
The thought of living a life without the threat of sacrifice seemed pleasurable. Though he’d once thought dying for the gods the greatest honor, at the gut level dying still scared Oaxyctl. He’d confirmed that heretical survival instinct to himself, shaking and scared in the mud, on the outskirts of Brungstun.
But then, without the direction of the gods, how could someone live his own life? There would be no certainty in anything.
It was just as scary as facing the eagle stone.
“How can you not believe in gods?” Oaxyctl asked. “You see them walking the ground! The gods of Capitol City are there for any to see.”
John pulled his good leg up to his chin. He looked tired. “If I were the only black-skinned man to appear in Aztlan, and no one had ever seen such a thing, and I called myself a god, would you believe me?”
Oaxyctl shook his head. “You would have to prove it.”
John smiled. “Your priests. They have a lot of power?”
“They control all. It is the greatest position in society.” Oaxyctl cocked his head. “Why do you ask?”
“Because.” John looked through the scuppers at the sea. “After this, we will have to go into the heart of Azteca land and stop this at the source.” His face hardened. “One must understand the enemy to effectively combat him.”
It sounded both like John, and unlike him. The man was changing. All this stress. Before he seemed content to follow, and now he was thinking of other things.
“Am I your enemy?” Oaxyctl asked.
John shook his head. “You are a friend.” He craned his head back. “It is getting very cold. Look.” He exhaled; a faint puff of his breath hung in the air for a second.
Oaxyctl nodded. “I think soon we will see … what is it called?” He struggled to translate the words for a second. “Crystal rain?”
John smiled. “That’s a nice description. It is snow. Not a word we use often at home, but you see it in books sometimes. Stories. Tales of brave fishermen going far north, some disappearing.”
Oaxyctl leaned back and exhaled to see his own breath. “Yes, sometimes you can see it on the mountains. At their very tops. I’ve seen it a few times, when out scouting.”
When he stood up to help John struggle to his feet, the wind shifted, and it blew right through his clothes. It was cold enough to make him shiver. Like going up a mountain, he thought.
A faint tapping woke him up. Oaxyctl blinked, looking for the source. His hammock shook as someone brushed against it.
“Quimichtin?” a voice asked.
The word made Oaxyctl shiver. Spy. He swallowed. If he answered yes, would he die?
“Azteca-man, you here?” the voice whispered.
“Yes,” Oaxyctl said.
The sailor he had met in the rigging looked ove
r into his hammock. He looked scared. “Come with me.” The man carried an old, hooded electric lantern. A small, single beam of light broke the darkness, then flicked off again.
“It came aboard during the attack,” the man explained. “Them attack, just a diversion to place it aboard. Seen?”
Oaxyctl didn’t. He hesitated, not sure what the man was talking about. The man grabbed Oaxyctl’s hand. It was slimy, greasy with bilgewater. The faint smell of decay reached Oaxyctl. A familiar smell. Rotted flesh.
Together they moved down through the holds of La Revanche, careful not to wake anyone. The man popped open a hatch. Oaxyctl smelled dead flesh and heard water slopping around below.
“Come.”
Oaxyctl lowered himself into the brackish sludge, holding his nose. It came up to his knees. The water shifted around as the ship plunged into the rough waters, and tiny wavelets splashed the nasty water up against his crotch, making his privates shrink behind his cotton pants.
It was ice-cold enough that it hurt to breathe while wading through.
He bumped against the back of the man. The lantern flicked on, its single, concentrated beam flashing against dull, pitted metal and slimy water.
The beam of light rested on a giant lump of egg-shaped, black flesh hanging from the side of the hull.
“It speak to me,” the man said.
The egg stirred. Oaxyctl thought he could just see through it, to some familiar-edged shape beneath.
His heart almost stopped. He dropped to his knees, ignoring the pain of cold water around his waist.
“It tell me,” the man said, “we close to the northern land, where Ma Wi Jung lie. It say it waiting for you to deliver it the code because it changing for the cold weather. It waiting. If you do the job before it finish it change, it go reward you. If you fail again, it say you go suffer like you never suffer before and it go get the code anyway.”
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