“I understand,” Oaxyctl said. Either this was his god, and it had followed them all the way here, or it was another that knew about Oaxyctl and the plan to get the codes.
“Soon it go be free from it recovery here. So waste no time.”
Oaxyctl stood up, water draining from his pockets. “I will go at once.”
“Good. We done. Come.” The man shut the light off, plunging them back into the dark. The hair on the back of Oaxyctl’s neck rose. He struggled to turn around, leaving the god behind him. He rubbed his throat, remembering the feel of the claws around it, not so long ago.
Before they climbed back out of the hatch, Oaxyctl grabbed the man’s arm. “What is your name? I need for you to do something.”
“What you need?”
“We need to take control of this ship. We need to get John deBrun to ourselves.”
The man thought about it. “Okay. One of we high up in command here. We can throw enough doubt to turn this ship back around.”
“Who?”
The man sighed. “High up enough. Don’t ask.”
“Why not?” Oaxyctl asked, frustrated.
“The less who know, the better. I ain’t taking no chance.”
The man moved again. Oaxyctl took one last look at the dark water beneath the hatch, the ship’s bilges, then walked away. Behind him the hatch closed, squeaking as the wheel tightened it shut.
Still not enough metal between him and the incubating god. Oaxyctl would not be able to sleep knowing what rested in the lowest depths of the ship. You cannot escape the gods, he thought to himself.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Someone considered killing Pepper. Half of Pepper’s conscious mind heard them walk toward his hammock, then pause. Pepper waited, welcoming the attack, his nerves fired, senses tuned to every clink and squeak.
Then the would-be assassin changed his mind and ran.
Pepper let the rest of himself come up out of the resting state. The steamship was taking a pounding. His hammock swung from side to side and someone mewled and retched, scrunched up against the side of the flexing bulkheads.
Pepper crossed his arms over his chest and dropped back down toward sleep. His steely eyes could see his warm breath in the air, though no one else could discern anything but the failing oil lantern swinging at the center of all the hammocks.
Three days of this storm. A break before that. Another storm. They were crossing out of the warm waters into the cold. An abrupt and miserable transition.
The moment of alarm had passed. Pepper returned to his half-sleep without further thought, conserving energy for whatever lay ahead.
Today the storm blew itself out, passing them by with ominous low-sweeping clouds and explosions of lightning that sizzled and exploded into the waves in front of them.
Crew and mongoose-men alike crowded the decks, dressed as warmly as they could, carrying picks and tools to scrape at the elaborate formations of ice that clung to every surface of the ship.
Pepper joined, his fingers numb as he pried sheets of ice away from the rigging. Right now they treated it as a joke, a novelty, taking their time. By tomorrow, Pepper realized looking around, the ice would begin to weigh down the ship. Then it would become a matter of scraping ice or drowning in the cold water.
He kept scraping. Everyone gave him a wide berth. Which was just how Pepper wanted it.
During a break in the scraping Pepper sat at the aft railing, watching the water and small bits of ice churned up by the propeller. To the starboard a large iceberg floated by, reflecting the sun off its clear sides. Mongoose-men and sailors thronged to the side of the ship to watch it and marvel.
John limped to his side. Pepper regarded the bandage around John’s thigh with suspicion. “You’re going to lose your leg.” John grimaced and gripped the aft rail with a gloved hand. The hook rested by his thigh. “Speaking of which,” Pepper continued, “why the hook? I spent some time in Capitol City before stowing aboard. They have the means to make a mechanical hand. Couldn’t you afford one?”
“No, I couldn’t.” John looked down. “Not with a family.” He turned his back to Pepper, watching the iceberg. “We’d better slow down at night, shouldn’t we? Do you think we can afford losing that time?”
“We’re close to land.” Pepper flicked a stray piece of ice over the side with his forefinger. “The icebergs calve big. Better to slow down.”
John nodded. “At least we’ll have access to freshwater soon.”
“And then?”
“Then we have a lot of work in front of us.”
“You up for that?”
“The sooner we find this device, the sooner we can figure out what the hell it does, the sooner we can return and use it against the Azteca.” John crouched in front of Pepper. And for a brief moment Pepper saw a bit of the old John that he knew, in command, fire and purpose in his eyes. “What is the Ma Wi Jung?”
Pepper smiled. “If you truly don’t have any of your memories …”
“Try me.”
Pepper thought about it. “I can use words, and make analogies, but they don’t really matter. It is technology. Advanced technology.”
“Everyone wants it. The Loa certainly want it, or control of it. Haidan thinks it might allow us an edge. And you say even the Azteca gods wish to stop us from getting it. Or want it themselves.”
“And you?” Pepper asked, curious.
“Can we attack the Azteca with it? Is it really a weapon?”
“Not really the weapon anyone thinks it is,” Pepper said, half-lying. It made him nervous. John might have amnesia, but was he still good at ferreting out lies? Pepper didn’t want to undo any of the trust he’d built with this new John in front of him.
“Then I’ll drag it from the ice by my own hand,” John said. “If it helps us push them back over the mountains and helps me find my wife and son, then I’ll deliver it to Capitol City.”
“Strange. I still can’t get over it. John deBrun, settled down, raising a family. That’s certainly not the John I knew.”
John stood up. A loud crack split through the air, and the sides of the iceberg they had passed slumped into the water. A small, frothy wave washed toward them.
“That John is gone.” He pointed his hook at Pepper. “You’re the only one who remembers him, and you hardly speak to me about it.”
“Those things will come back, John.” If John had blocked his own memories, then Pepper wouldn’t force anything.
Too dangerous.
There was no context, no way he could even begin to draw a picture, unless John was a willing participant. Pepper wasn’t willing to risk doing anything damaging or dangerous by forcing out things the block was there for. “And nothing is gained by my telling you things right now. I will tell you what you need when the situation calls for it.”
John changed the subject. “You asked me why I want the Ma Wi Jung. But a better question is, what do you want it for?”
The steamship rocked as the wave slapped against the stern.
“You and I shared goals and concerns once,” Pepper said. “No doubt, when I help you get your memories back, we’ll share them again. Listen.” Pepper stood up, almost dwarfing the tired, anemic-looking John. “I can still see you, John. Some things don’t change. And one thing is that, even now, you’re the most dangerous man I ever met.”
He could see John calculating what to do with him still. And without the memories … Pepper knew he was an unknown. And a potential liability.
“You can’t throw me off the boat,” Pepper said. “You’ve seen me in action. The cost of life is too high. All you need to know is that I am an old acquaintance, and that you should keep me around. I will protect your life. What greater bargain is there?”
“Acquaintance? An interesting word choice.”
“We weren’t bosom buddies, John. People who do what we do don’t have that to spare.”
John shifted on the deck. Pepper saw the pain from walking. A s
ure sign the wound in John’s thigh was not getting any better.
John sighed. “Will you be able to help me find my family? Push back the Azteca?”
“I can’t guarantee anything, John.” Pepper looked around at the sea, at the coils of ropes on the deck, and not into John’s eyes as he thought for a moment. “But I will say there is something I can give you.”
“Yes?”
“Your old life back.” Pepper met John’s eyes. He kept them level, meeting John’s in a silent deadlock.
“You’ll give me my old life back, but not talk to me about my past?” Pepper nodded. “If you were the closest thing I had to a friend, Pepper, I don’t know if I want this old life back without my memories. I can see what you are, and that is just plain dangerous. And I don’t like it.”
No threats, no power games, just the truth, Pepper thought. “You’re right. For now I can’t remember your past for you, only you can do that, so you’re a player in a game you don’t even know the rules of. But if we make it to the Ma Wi Jung, you will be given your memories back. I will make it so. Then you will have your old life back, and you will know who you are, and you will know what to do.”
“Suppose I die rather than follow this ‘old life’?”
“I doubt that John. Die, and leave your family? You’re not that kind of coward.” John stiffened, and Pepper bit his lip. Bad choice of words. “Besides, I can’t let you do that.”
“Why?”
“You’re the key to the Ma Wi Jung. You are the only person on this planet that has the code to get in.” When Pepper had first stowed away, he’d searched John’s cabin, trying to figure out how they were hoping to get onto the Ma Wi Jung. He’d found an artifact from the wars, a device the Loa used to get in and take over ships. But not even that ancient device the Loa bred, and John was hiding from everyone else, would work quickly enough. It would take the Loa several weeks to take over, and even then, then it wouldn’t be of any use to the Loa who’d given it to John. Ma Wi Jung had been made for humans, and only humans, to use. That had been the agreement all those years ago when the Loa helped build the ship.
“Why am I the only person? Wouldn’t others have had the codes?”
Pepper cleared his throat. “You’re the code. Your skin, your blood. Your voice, your eyes, your fingerprint, your face, and most importantly, your heartbeat.” Because John had to be alive, and not coerced, for the ship to open up to them. And he had to grant Pepper permission to board. John was the only living human Pilot on this planet, and he didn’t have the capacity to realize it. “You’re it, the only person that can save this world.”
John looked at him with obvious incredulity. Pepper shrugged, long and languorously, his shoulders bunching. “Anyway, right now these things don’t matter. We must first survive to get to the Ma Wi Jung.”
He stood up and walked away. Enough conversation. Verbal games annoyed him. It would have been a lot easier to grab John, and for Pepper to put the tip of his right index finger against John’s temple, then link up and shove the information down into his brain.
But that would kill John. The block on his memories would make sure of that.
Another iceberg approached the ship. Pepper watched it from the side rails, alone on the busy deck as people chipped at the ice still accumulating on the ship.
Later that night something else came to his attention. A hatch had opened somewhere, and he caught the faintest whiff. A faint smell. One he was surprised he hadn’t noticed before. Decay.
Teotl.
Pepper left his hammock and followed it. Several times he doubled back, losing it, but found himself moving down into the ship until he came face-to-face with a closed bilge hatch.
He opened it, carefully, quietly, then stopped. He sat next to it for a long minute, holding an internal conversation with himself that even he didn’t recognize.
A casting of the odds.
Would he live if he crawled down into the water?
Not sure.
A Teotl was down there. Damn creature. Probably waiting in molt, growing into a more focused hunter-killer.
The creature’s casing at this stage would be impermeable to gunfire or spears or anything Pepper could muster just now, unless he provoked it into coming out. He didn’t have the tools to pull it off the wall, either.
It would have the advantage, knowing he was there, waiting until he tired before it emerged. Then Pepper would be the one on defense. And he didn’t like that, not at all. Not in this small space.
No, he decided. Better not to let it know he was here. Let it make its move. He’d been lucky back at Capitol City, with the kids to obscure the fight and confuse the Teotl; he might not be so lucky now.
Better to kill it when it was out of the case, more vulnerable, not aware he was out. Pepper always looked for advantages going against the Teotl.
He hadn’t lost a fight with one yet, but that didn’t mean anything.
They were efficient adapters, and dangerous enemies.
Pepper closed the hatch and dogged it back, aware that the odds of survival had just dropped.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The Azteca armies arrived on the peninsula and the mongoose-men retreated before their numbers. Haidan’s men slowed the Azteca down by destroying train tracks and food warehouses as they retreated. Several large explosive traps closed off hill passes.
The brilliantly colored Azteca horde continued forward after clearing them and unknowingly followed the path Haidan hoped they would. Every hour the leaders of the mongoose-men sat with Dihana to update her on what was happening.
Until this morning. They told her there was no more information to give. The airships spied on the Azteca, and the city waited for the siege to begin.
Dihana left the Ministry building to find Haidan.
He stood on one of the walls, looking out over the empty villages and depots around the city’s walls. The fringe of jungle green lay beyond a wasteland of barbed wire, trenches, troops, and brown earth. Dihana imagined the shadows of Azteca creeping through it.
“What about their airships?” she asked.
“We can hold most of them with what we got. We got explosive shell we can fire from these wall. And we own airship go battle them down if they come too near. But they can still fly in the distance, watch the battle, try to look inside the city.”
Dihana allowed him to take her in hand and tour the rest of the walls, where men grimly manned guns of all sizes, machetes strapped to their sides. Most of the defenses on the wall weren’t useful until the Azteca broke the outer rings of trenches and came much closer to the wall. “Haidan, what could we have done to prevent this?”
“I don’t know. More spy in Azteca land?” He’d been up for nights in a row, overseeing every possible detail, hounding his men. It showed in his puffy eyes and gravelly voice. He leaned against the wall and put his head in his hands. “If we still alive after this, we go have to change things. Bigger forces, more villages. More cities. This entire land go have to be powerful, dynamic. We can’t wait, can’t be laid-back. There a thousand things we need.”
Dihana nodded. “We will have to be the ones on the move, not them. No more defensive waiting.”
“That too.” Haidan stood up. “We still can’t find any Loa.”
“Where do you think they went?”
“Deep under the city?”
Dihana nodded. “They give you a gourd? One with a plague in it?”
“We could fire it into the Azteca when they attack our walls,” Haidan suggested. “And hunker down. Maybe we won’t catch it?”
“I think the Loa would have suggested that if it worked, don’t you?” She walked with Haidan back toward one of the heavy platforms on the edge that would lower them to the streets.
“I collected all the other ones, the ones the Loa left behind for the priestesses, the one they gave the Councilmen, and the one they gave me, in a locked vault. I want yours there as well.”
Haid
an helped her onto the platform, the wood squeaking under her feet. “You think you go use them, if it get to that point?” Haidan asked, his teeth bared in what wasn’t a smile, but not quite a grimace. “Destroy everything, so no one gets anything?”
“That would be like Hope’s Loss. For us to point our own weapon at ourselves, just like our ancestors destroyed all of each other’s machines so no one would have anything. So many died then, Haidan. How could I do that?”
The platform jerked. The steam motor powering it hissed as it let the brakes go, and she dropped down toward the ground. “You hope you die with it all,” Haidan said, “and never get held responsible for such a thing.”
“The Loa are hoping to hide this one out and come back up when either their disease has claimed everyone, or we survive by some miracle. Maybe that was what the old-father thought they could do. Wait it out. They could have just been trying to buy some time.”
Haidan chuckled. “All that had survive of the old-father were the Councilmen them. Not so good, eh?”
The platform slowed and stopped at ground level.
There were more meetings to be had with the people in the city. No one knew how long this would take. Food and water supplies were critical, and meting them out meant dangerous decisions. No one was sure how long they could hold off an Azteca attack, but with so many people behind the walls, Dihana didn’t think it was long. A couple months? Maybe more if the fishermen kept their larders full.
Dihana wondered how much longer she could hold up without sleep. As she stepped into a waiting vehicle, she mentally set aside time in the afternoon for a nap.
Later in the night she awoke to a series of deep thuds. When she walked over to her window, she heard people shouting in the street.
Up on the walls of Capitol City, flashes of gunfire lit the night sky with stabbing orange streaks. A cloud of eeriecolored backlit powder floated in the air. Below the clouds seed-shaped figures coasted over the city, dropping flares.
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