Dihana leaned against the windowsill and cried.
The Azteca were here.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
La Revanche landed three days into the third week. Pepper stood on deck along with the other crew, all shivering, frozen, but awed at the majestic mountains covered in snow. All around them the staccato snaps of breaking ice and swoosh of calving icebergs filled the air.
It took another day before they were stuck in ice. The crew grew nervous, but Pepper saw from John’s calm that this was something John expected.
The bottom of the steamship was shallow and curved, not the sharp cutting shape of the traditional sail-ship. John explained that he’d seen shallow skiffs survive the freezing ice in his previous trip with that design and seen deeperkeeled skiffs staved in. Pepper watched over the next night, his eyes piercing the dark, to see unstoppable sheets of ice push against the sides of La Revanche, then slip under the hull and lift the boat up onto the ice.
La Revanche was shaped like the fishing skiffs that could be pulled up onto ground and float over shallow reef water easily. John was right. As a result, the ice could push up without damaging the hull.
Pepper smiled and explained it to several of the mongoose-men milling around, expecting the sides of the ship to be stove in, waiting for the announcement of their deaths.
The mood brightened somewhat. The land was alien, dark, like something out of a nightmare, but at least they still had the ship around them.
Preparations began in earnest. They pulled the ballast out of the bilges of the boat. No one found or said anything about the incubating Teotl, Pepper noticed. He helped with moving ballast and made his way through bilges, looking for it.
He only found a patch of clean hull in the grime. Presumably where the creature had attached itself to cocoon. Pepper looked around. The Teotl would have left the ship in the night, crossing the ice.
It was out there somewhere, watching them.
Sailors yelled at him to get moving. Great lead weights and blocks of stone had to be lifted out by yardarms and lowered over the ship’s side onto bright red tarps so they could locate them when they returned and put the ship back into the water. It was hard work.
Several men spent full-time shifts boiling and making clean water to replace their stores. Food was inventoried and split: half on the tarps, half in the ship. All spare supplies were set in the snow with the ballast and marked with tall flags.
They were lightening the ship. The Teotl could poison or get rid of the stores they’d left behind if they got free, but it was a nonissue. All Pepper had to do was get to the Ma Wi Jung.
The next surprise for Pepper came when massive axles were pushed out of the sides of the front bow and rear stern. Then tiny additional axles where welded to the sides of the hull. Wheels were mounted, and then several hundred feet of tread threaded on by grunting mongoose-men, their sweat freezing to their eyebrows.
In just a little over a day, they had converted La Revanche to a giant snow-tank. The mongoose engineers spent another day in the boiler rooms redirecting the gears from the ship’s propeller to the axles. Their shouts drifted up from the ship’s hatches into the crystalline air as they worked at getting the ship converted.
Pepper walked along the length of the tread. He’d been somewhat dubious, but the more he examined it, the more it looked as if it would work. Several small, additional wheels had been mounted along the hull of the ship, on upper and lower tracks, to keep the tread taut and provide some suspension.
Stars filled the sky, and for a moment Pepper enjoyed the mass of constellations, many still unfamiliar to him.
Something ahead made his nostrils flare, and he crouched to the ground.
Blood.
He found several scarlet drops on the ground, pockmarking the snow with their warmth.
Several more feet ahead a whole pool of fresh blood lay around the ripped furs of a mongoose-man. Pepper bent over and looked at the wounds. A cut to the throat had cut the man’s vocal cords, and then numerous nasty jabs to the stomach, chest, and groin had caused the blood loss.
Teotl. It had escaped. This poor mongoose-man had spotted it and paid as a result.
A spotlight struck Pepper and he tensed. Men rushed to the side of the deck, murmuring spreading around, looking down at him.
“You have got to be kidding.” Pepper turned and looked into the light. His eyes adjusted, and he made a note of every face on the deck, every expression, to analyze later.
“Is he dead?” someone asked.
Pepper nodded.
“You killed him,” someone else said.
John’s haggard face appeared on deck. He looked over and frowned. With his Aztecan friend’s help he walked down the gangplank to the snowy ground and crunched over to the scene.
The two men stood looking at Pepper in the glare of the light.
Pepper looked at John. Come on, man, he thought, you can’t believe this shit. But Pepper could tell it was futile.
“I didn’t do this,” he said.
John didn’t answer, but looked down at the dead man. Oaxyctl, Pepper noticed, never bothered. Instead the Aztecan stared Pepper down. Something was going on, behind those brown eyes and the frozen fringe of jet-black hair.
“We can’t be sure if he did this,” Oaxyctl said. “But we saw him in action at the battle. He did fight for us. But we know he is very capable of this sort of butchery. And we still don’t know what he is doing here. We must lock him up. For our own safety.”
Now Pepper knew who at least one of the enemy was. Pepper focused on the sweat frozen to John’s forehead. John was not doing well.
Oaxyctl hovered by him like a buzzard. John nodded, almost absentmindedly, considering Oaxyctl’s words. “Yes, yes, I think that is best for right now.” He looked at Pepper, met his eyes. “Just a precaution.”
Again, Pepper saw a glint of the familiar John: calm, calculating, scheming. This was the easiest way to calm the crew. Have some faith in him, John’s eyes seemed to say. Even without his memories, John knew what he was doing. Pepper didn’t move as more men came down the planks and surrounded him. Several stayed far back, guns pointed at him. He could have killed them all. Instead he let them lead him back on board.
The sail locker they had locked him in the first time still had no doors, so they chained him between two sturdy posts.
Just temporary, he thought. John is taking the best gamble. And he couldn’t leave John here alone. John was Pepper’s only way into the Ma Wi Jung.
Don’t hold it against him.
Arms draped at his side, rattling chain, he sat crosslegged, ears perked, flicking as sounds reached him from the gloom of belowdecks.
After a few hours, movement started up again. People thudded around on the decks. The boilers in the engine room hissed steam, and men shouted instructions back and forth, reading off dials.
The crunch of gears being engaged shuddered through the hull. Pepper shifted as the steamship lurched forward, almost stalling as even more screaming came from between the bulkheads, the three engineers demanding more fuel be fired.
Not far from the hull Pepper listened as the treads thumped and creaked past. La Revanche moved forward. Men shouted as they clambered up from the slow-moving treads back onto the ship.
There was more conversation. Ahead of him on the other side of a bulkhead, in the hammocks where the crew slept, Pepper listened to someone breathing heavily. Pepper focused on the sounds, tuning his hearing up to unnatural levels.
Someone spoke.
“Can we trust him?” The voice sounded nervous, but a fake nervous.
The heavy breathing stopped. Someone dropped a spoon to the floor and fumbled about for it. “He the captain, he know what he doing.”
“He know where we even going?” The second person’s voice took on a tone of incredulity.
“Someone say he have map.” Defensive.
“You see it?”
“Uh-uh” The hammock crea
ked as someone got off it. “What you saying?”
“That we can’t self trust that.”
“Look, we can’t turn back. The mongoose-men ain’t go stand for that. This dangerous. But think back on what we done escape. Azteca.”
A long pause. Pepper tuned out the sound of treads to focus on the almost whisper that came next.
“What if I say some of the mongoose-men nervous as well? They think a run to Cowfoot Island would save all of we.”
The heavy breathing came back, along with footsteps that moved away. There was no answer, just the faint static of whispers that had moved out of his hearing range.
Mutiny, Pepper thought.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Five Azteca airships moved in with the clouds. They dropped several bombs before turning around and leaving. They had flown too high for any of the guns on Capitol City’s walls to reach them, and they had left by the time any of Capitol City’s airships took to the air. They’d been doing that all day.
Haidan had finally gotten a series of patrols in the sky to try to keep the Azteca airships at bay.
He walked down the street toward his house. He was tired, his cough had flared up, and he found himself perpetually out of breath. Three mongoose-men moved with him. One caught his arm when he stumbled over an uneven flagstone.
“I sorry,” Haidan said. “Let’s pause.” He leaned against a brick wall and caught his breath. Too many late nights, going 100 percent with no rest. The Azteca bombing airships had arrived, Firstop had fallen quiet, and the first Azteca warriors trundled in large cannons to open fire on Capitol City’s trenches. They’d been funneled right into the area of the peninsula he wanted, but they were testing his defenses, and waiting for the rest of the Azteca to catch up with them. And now his sickness had caught up with him. Haidan needed to rest as the siege began.
An armed squad of grim-looking Tolteca walked by and nodded.
“Where they headed?” Haidan asked.
“Outside the wall to fight. They volunteer.”
“I wonder how long they go fight their own kin,” Haidan said.
“You don’t trust the Tolteca,” the other bodyguard said. “How come?”
“Is not the Tolteca I worried about.” Haidan put his hands on his knees. “It all the Azteca spy who hiding in the Tolteca who volunteer to fight.”
The two bodyguards shrugged. “Too late to worry now.”
“It never too late to worry.”
“That’s true.”
They stood and looked at each other for a while. Then Haidan looked at the band of Tolteca marching to protect the city. “Either way, it damn good to see so many mongoose-men out,” he said. A high-pitched whistle filled his ears and the world exploded around him. The wall he had been leaning against crumbled. The bricks struck him. It all slumped on top of him, blacking everything out. Haidan coughed as he inhaled dust.
The roaring in his ears stopped.
He stirred.
He hurt all over. In several places it was more than the press of brick, but the pain of broken bones. Haidan moaned and tried to push the heavy weight off him, but he was too weak.
Voices filtered down to him. After several minutes large pieces of wall were dragged away from on top of him. One of the bodyguards and several Tolteca scraped away the rubble and pulled him out.
They strapped him to a piece of board and carried him down the street. Every few seconds a concerned face would look down at him and ask him if he was okay.
He tried to reply, but his voice croaked, and there seemed to be a lot of blood everywhere. He’d planned. He’d planned enough that it would go on, he told himself. No matter how tiring this was, no matter how he was hurt, the city would fight without him. Dihana and his men would see to it.
Far, far over the city, he watched a pair of airships crash into each other and burn.
Haidan was relieved to close his eyes, black out, and finally get some rest.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
The icy lands stretched out around them. Fast winds bit into the sides of La Revanche and made the rigging sing. Anyone not on watch huddled below near the ship’s kitchen fires or in the boiler rooms.
On the second day word spread throughout the ship as they passed between two great mountains of snow that something wondrous was to be seen from the decks. Through clear sheets of translucent ice, great slabs of silvery metal flashed back at them.
Buildings, hundreds of feet high, had been caught in the ice.
John stood with several mongoose-men at the ship’s rail. Someone asked the inevitable question.
“What are they?”
“Things left over from the old-fathers,” John said. Great buildings, leaning over at strange angles as they were swept away in slow motion by the blocks of ice. A great city had stood here once.
Welcome back, he thought. Yes, this was …
Oaxyctl walked over to John. “They are made of a metal?”
“It glints like metal,” John said, losing the feeling of another fleeting memory. “But there is glass as well.” He pointed. The buildings had rooms, and they could see furniture inside. It made John shiver. It was as if he were looking at a perfectly preserved piece of time.
The familiar feeling came again. John let go of the railing and turned to walk away, but his wounded leg buckled under him. Oaxyctl grabbed his shoulder and held him.
“Buildings by them god,” someone marveled. “No man could make them thing.”
John shook his head. “The old-fathers made Capitol City.” The sailors didn’t look so sure. “They were powerful men. Not gods. Men.”
“How long before we arrive?” they asked.
“Three days.” John leaned over and looked at the deck, almost talking to himself. “Just outside the city.”
The name on the map said this was Starport. It echoed around John’s head for a while. Stars. The old-fathers launched their great ships all the way to the stars from here.
“Whoa,” Oaxyctl muttered, catching him again.
John’s leg would not cooperate. Frustrated, he hung from Oaxyctl.
This was no way to lead an expedition.
“Take me to my cabin. Get the mongoose doctor-man,” John ordered.
Oaxyctl helped him hop over to the nearest companionway and struggle down into the ship.
John began sweating. The humid belowdecks, dank and dark, set something off in him. He fought off a touch of claustrophobia. The bulkheads loomed in on him, and his vision blurred.
It was too close, too dark. He’d spent an eternity in dark, cramped spaces, and he was sick of them.
“I don’t feel so well,” he said as Avasa walked into the cabin and Barclay came close behind.
“Sir,” Avasa said. “If that the case, you should hand over the chart. Let we navigate. You need to stay below, stay warm. Rest. Don’t use your foot.”
And maybe Avasa was too helpful, John thought. What happened when he handed over the map to the thin mongoose leader?
He couldn’t be sure. Or maybe he was paranoid.
Barclay leaned against the doorjamb with his hands crossed over his chest. “Ain’t no matter.” He shrugged. “When food get half out, we turn back. Right?”
John wiped his forehead with a sleeve. “We run out of food in ten days with no rationing. We have plenty of time.”
“Then no worry,” Barclay said. “We got four day to search for this … thing, we should do okay.”
“Maybe,” Avasa said. “But not if it buried under the ice.”
John began unwrapping the bandages around his thigh with his good hand. The strips of gauze were sticky and wet. The faint smell of decay made his heart sink. “You’re right, Avasa. But now is not the time.” John regarded his thigh with disappointment.
Avasa’s surgeon walked in. “What happen?”
John pulled off another bandage. He met the surgeon’s eyes. “Everyone out. Leave.” John waved them out. Parasites. Expecting him to die. Or tu
rn around. He couldn’t. Pepper had told him Jerome was still alive. He didn’t know where Shanta was.
They were far, far from here.
He’d be damned if he died so far from them. Damned if he didn’t finish this mad attempt to turn the scales back on the Azteca.
John looked at the surgeon. “No cutting. Not yet.”
“The longer you wait, the more likely you go dead.” The mongoose-man looked at John as if he were crazy. “It smell infect. Gangrenous.”
“You can’t operate,” John said fiercely. This insistence made no sense, but he did know that for some reason the idea of someone cutting into his leg scared him almost more than the thought that there might be someone on board the ship trying to sabotage the mission.
He had to rely on his instincts. Here, they were all he had.
The surgeon sighed and opened one of the cupboards near John’s desk to fetch more gauze.
After enduring more bandaging, John dismissed him and pored over the map, trying to memorize what was blank white past the coastline.
He would get them there yet and still remain in command.
John woke in the middle of the night. Feverish. Pepper sat near his bed, watching him, and John wasn’t surprised.
“How are you feeling?” Pepper asked.
“Not so well.” John looked around, eyes barely focusing. “They want to cut my leg. I won’t let them.”
“Good. It isn’t like your hand, clean separation. The leg will have more mods. Don’t want those cut, now do you?”
“What are you doing here? How’d you escape?”
“There are men among the crew who’re going to mutiny.” Pepper shifted. He hadn’t shaved in days, and John could see a patchy beard beginning to grow in. Pepper’s eyes reflected a random piece of light.
“What are they saying?” John asked.
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