Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  A commotion in the town square suddenly brought her back to her body, and the gunshots that rang out had her ducking low behind the rooftop ledge. There were half a dozen horsemen galloping around the square, the stallholders scattering with yells and screams. She peered over the ledge at the men.

  They were Texans.

  She cursed herself for giving her name to those Steamtown banditos at the abandoned mine. The one the Nameless had sent back to his bosses had evidently delivered his message … and Steamtown had decided to retaliate against Uvalde if it couldn’t touch the Nameless directly. Shock caused her to stumble forward as she recognized the lead horseman in the dancing lamplight: the one who had thought to assault her.

  The rider took up an oil lantern from one stall and smashed it against the canopy of another, the flames quickly taking hold and spreading. This was why her fath—Don Batiste was a weak man. He left Uvalde open to the attacks and bullying of others. He had failed to secure a garrison from Nuevo Laredo, and once word got out, the town would be at the mercy of thugs like these forever. Nuevo Laredo, and Ciudad Cortes, did not care about this little border outpost. They would probably rather it wasn’t here at all. A few more raids like this, and they might get their wish.

  The Texans didn’t look as though they were on a kidnapping mission, thank God. And they were firing their guns into the air, not at the townsfolk. It was a message, then, that Uvalde had better watch out.

  Anger boiled Inez’s blood.

  Why weren’t the townsfolk fighting back? Why were they fleeing like rats? There were only six of the Texans. Was this what Uvalde had become? New Spain’s dirty little secret, a nest of cowards led by a weak-willed man who was only comfortable bullying young girls?

  Where was Don Sergio de la Garcia? Where was El Chupacabras?

  Inez looked down in fury at her leather-gloved hands, at the sword in her right, the silly little flour-bag mask dyed with juniper berries in her left. Where was El Chupacabras? Why had the masked hero of the prairies deserted them?

  Perhaps he hadn’t.

  Before she knew what she was doing, Inez had pulled on the mask. She leaped to the ledge and held her sword aloft. Then she cried, “Uvalde!”

  The Texans looked up and paused, pulling up their horses. The townsfolk slowed then stopped, looking up at her, bathed in lamplight and the dancing shadows from the burning market. The bandits glanced at each other, uncertain. A child, hiding beneath an upturned fruit stall, crawled out onto the cobbles and pointed at her.

  “El Chupacabras!”

  The name rolled like white horses on the crests of waves around the suddenly still town square. El Chupacabras. El Chupacabras. El Chupacabras.

  Then, as one man, a huddled group skulking in the shadows of the tapas bar surged forward, causing the nearest Texan’s horse to whinny and kick up on its hind legs, shedding its rider. They fell upon him with punches and kicks, and the crowd reversed its flow away from the square and back into it, taking up chairs and sticks, unsheathing swords and guns, and taking up the cry “El Chupacabras! El Chupacabras! El Chupacabras!” as they launched themselves at the remaining invaders.

  Inez watched them for a long moment, the fire below reflecting in her shining eyes, then stole away from the rooftop and back into the casa.

  * * *

  Early the next morning she found Batiste still in his study. He had not been to bed. He looked at her with red-rimmed eyes and croaked, “I am sorry. Can you forgive me?”

  Inez shrugged. “In time, perhaps.”

  He looked at the three heavy carpetbags she carried. “Where are you going?”

  “I am leaving. There is nothing for me here.”

  Batiste fell to his knees and began to weep. “Please, Inez, I am sorry.”

  She gave him a tight smile. “Me, too. Take care of the town, yes? El Chupacabras won’t be here every time you need saving.”

  Then she saddled up her horse and took to the trail, and with every step her horse took her closer to Chantico, she felt her heart might take flight.

  * * *

  Haruki Serizawa pinched his nose tightly. His eyes felt tight, and his back hurt from hunching over the roll of paper on which he had been scribbling formulas and calculations for eight solid hours. It was getting dark outside; he should think about finishing and getting home to Akiko and Michi. Those leg servers just would not hold, though. He thought he might have found a way to strengthen the joints, and during testing at the warehouse yesterday they had seemed to hold, but he could see that there were stresses forming in the long brass plates that simply did not show up in his calculations. Perhaps the thing was just too tall after all. Perhaps there was only so big you could go.

  He rolled up his papers and took a small cup of tea from the pot on his countertop that had long since gone cold. He would sleep on it. Perhaps the mistake was in trying to ape the human form too closely. That might be it. He would sleep on it and come back fresh tomorrow.

  The screen to the laboratory slid back, and Science Officer Morioka stepped in. Serizawa bowed, wincing as his stiff back pinched him.

  “Come with me,” said Morioka without ceremony.

  Serizawa followed him down the corridor to Morioka’s office. A clean table holding just a single bonsai tree and a thick envelope awaited them. Morioka sat down in his chair and invited Serizawa to take the other seat.

  “I have had an idea for building up the supports on the upper legs,” began Serizawa, but Morioka cut him off with an impatient wave.

  “The time for ideas is past. Now only action. Swift action.”

  Serizawa sighed; he could see where this was going.

  Morioka tapped the envelope with his fingers. “I told you that the British had been sighted in sector thirty-one.”

  Serizawa nodded.

  “Our investigations have proved that they did, in fact, breach the defenses. With the worst possible consequences.”

  Morioka opened the envelope and withdrew a stack of photographs. “These were taken yesterday in sector twelve. There is an observatory and watch base there. It is only a hundred miles from Nyu Edo.”

  He pushed the photographs across the desk and Serizawa took them. The first showed the observatory; it was wrecked, the dome smashed, the large telescope lying on the ground like a felled tree. The second was of the dormitories in which the soldiers who manned the watch base presumably slept; they too were smashed, the bedrolls and clothing strewn on the rocky ground.

  “A typhoon? A tsunami?” said Serizawa.

  Morioka smiled tightly. “Continue.”

  Serizawa turned to the third photograph and blanched. He had not eaten all day, and he had been looking forward to noodles and beef when he got home. Now his appetite fled. “Is that a … man?”

  “It was,” said Morioka. “Look at the next.”

  Serizawa flicked through the remaining photographs then placed them facedown on the desk. He could look no more. Those poor men …

  He asked, “How many dead?”

  “All of them,” said Morioka. “Twenty-seven. We lost touch with the base on sector twelve two days ago. They were due to send a boat with the month’s reports. We sent a gunboat out to investigate. This is what they found. Every building smashed, every man dead. This was no typhoon, Serizawa. No tsunami.” He leaned forward. “This is what we have been waiting for. This is what we have been preparing for.”

  Serizawa felt sick again, but not just because of the photographs. He felt sick because his work was nowhere near ready. Morioka said, “So, no ideas. Action. Swift action. I want us to be ready by the day after next.”

  “But, Science Officer Morioka…”

  “No buts,” said Morioka. He gestured at the photographs. “You want this for Nyu Edo? You want this for the people of the Californian Meiji? Your own wife and child?”

  “Of course not!” said Serizawa, shocked. “But … it might not come here. Sector twelve is a little to the south … it might make landfall el
sewhere.”

  “And it might not. We must be prepared for all eventualities. That is our task, Serizawa. If we fail … then honor will have to be satisfied. Do you understand me?”

  He did. He said, “I suppose I shall go back to the laboratory, work a while longer on those leg pistons.…”

  Morioka smiled. “Take as long as you need to, Serizawa.” He inclined his head. “The Meiji shall be indebted to you for your work.”

  * * *

  He worked until he fell forward on his worktop and slept for fifteen fitful minutes, before waking sharply from dreams that were drenched in men’s blood. The whole building was deserted, and Serizawa decided he was no use to anyone exhausted. He wound his way quickly home along the empty streets, peering out between the buildings at the dark sea and the terror that every wave brought closer to Nyu Edo.

  He tried to slip quietly into bed but Akiko said coldly, “I am not asleep. Why are you so late?”

  “Science Officer Morioka,” he said helplessly.

  Akiko turned toward him. “Haruki, you have to tell that man you are not a slave. You have a family. You are not paid to work every hour of the day.”

  “My work—”

  “Yes, I know,” she sighed. “Your work is very important. Your child is also very important, Haruki. Your wife is very important. Is this about your father? He might be hailed as the finest scientist in all of Japan, the man who has kept the emperor alive beyond his years. Let them say that, Haruki! You do not have to compete with your father! You do not have to drive yourself into a grave trying to … to trump him! Is that what you want? To be a better man than your father, or die trying?”

  He sat up in bed, suddenly gripped by a fear that rolled in like fog off the sea. He took his wife by her shoulders. “Tomorrow, you and Michi must come and stay with me.”

  Akiko shrugged him off and sat up. “Stay with you? What are you talking about?”

  “In the laboratory. There are rooms where no one ever goes. You can stay there.”

  “Do not be ridiculous.” Akiko pouted. “Why would we want to do that when we have a perfectly good home here?”

  “Nyu Edo isn’t safe,” he said. Panic was rising within him. “It isn’t safe.”

  The screen to the bedroom slid back and Michi stood in the doorway, rubbing her eyes. “What are you shouting about?”

  “We’re not shouting, Prickly Pear,” said Serizawa softly. “Go back to bed.”

  Michi ignored him and wriggled in between her parents. Akiko smoothed her hair and whispered, “What do you mean, not safe? Do you know something? The British, or the Spanish…?”

  He shook his head. “There is a place … an island. It is called sector thirty-one.”

  “A lovely name,” said Akiko. “Why does this matter to us?”

  “They keep … things there. One has gotten loose. It is headed this way.”

  Akiko snuggled down beside the gently snoring Michi. “I think you have been drinking sake with Science Officer Morioka, Haruki, not working hard. What kind of things?”

  He looked at the pale outline of the moon shining through the paper blind over the window and waited a long time before answering. Akiko had fallen back asleep, her breathing in rhythm with Michi’s. He felt flooded with love for them, and fear. He whispered, “Monsters.”

  14

  THE LORD OF THE STAR OF THE DAWN

  A group of children was playing with an inflated pig’s bladder in the shadow of the hills that sheltered the Yaqui village from the sun and the winds that could tear through the canyon, especially in the colder months. They kicked the makeshift ball among themselves, the older ones showing off their skills at passing it from foot to knee to head to foot again before kicking it on to their neighbor. Chantico watched them for a while. He had always enjoyed playing kickball, at least when he was still considered a youth. He was a man now, and he was expected to put such things behind him. He had completed the journey into manhood, had undergone the five tasks, one for each of the five worlds that made up the ania where they all lived. He had ventured out into the desert wilderness world, and he had run ceaselessly for a day and a night. He had embraced the tallest cactus in the valley and in pain found the doorway into the flower world. He had found in the night world his totem animal, which was Wo’i the coyote, like his father’s had been and his father’s before him. He had gone to sleep and woken with full knowledge of the deer song, imparted to him in the dreamworld. And in the mystical world … in the mystical world he had passed through the unbreakable rock into the place of power, deep within the bowels of the sandstone mesa that loomed over the village. There he had passed fully into manhood, and into the embrace of secrets.

  The pig’s bladder came rolling over to him. Chantico deftly flicked it up with the toe of his slipper, keeping it aloft with his knee, then volleyed it back to the children, who applauded and whistled and begged him to stay and join their game.

  But Chantico, who had just left the abandoned mine and its eventful day of spirits and clockwork women and Texans and not even a tumble in the shadows with beautiful Inez, was a man now, and he had to put away childish things. He needed to organize a meeting of the kopolai. But first, he could see his mother and father outside their tent, and even at this distance the frowns on their faces were evident.

  * * *

  The settlement was largely composed of the wigwams belonging to the tribe’s main family groups, with the smaller tents of older children who had started families of their own dotted around the grand filial tents. There had also been a move to create more permanent wooden huts, a sign that the Yaqui thought this spot was particularly blessed. The hunting and fishing were certainly good, and the camp was well situated for defending. But the advantage was not just its location. The camp had once, centuries before, been a town or even a rudimentary city. There were stonework buildings, or at least the footprints of them, one of which had been built up again to form the meetinghouse of the tribal elders. The Spanish, back in the days when they were seeking to conquer and tame all this land, must have wiped out the settlement. That, according to Yoemyo’otui, the Old Man, meant the place was drenched in spirits. It was the Old Man who had found the place of power in the caves, and even Chantico and the others had felt the emanations rising from its rocks, felt the lives that still reverberated through the five worlds from the black stains on the flat rock that the Old Man said could be nothing other than an altar, for nothing else but sacrifice.

  “Chantico!” His father, Noshi, was standing with his arms folded in front of their wigwam, Chantico’s mother behind him. He had told them he was going with the trading party to the Spanish towns to the south; he had evidently timed his return badly. The trading party must have returned already, or were not back yet. Either way, his lie was exposed.

  “Father, Mother,” he said, bowing to both of them. He was shocked when his mother broke ranks and ran to him, hitching up her skirt, and embraced him tightly.

  “Oh, Chantico, thank the spirits,” she said. “You are alive.”

  “Of course I am,” he said. Had word reached the camp about the Texans who had tried to ravish Inez and kill him? But how? Chichijal? But that was impossible.

  “We had word from a scout of the tribe that inhabits the valley between the three mesas,” said Noshi grimly. “Our trading party … they have been slaughtered. All dead. Or so we thought.”

  “Texan raiders?” asked Chantico. All dead. His friend Ecatzin usually went out with the traders, with the moccasins his wife made. Chantico felt suddenly sick.

  His father said, “Why don’t you tell us? You were with them, correct? You will know if it was Steamtown boys. Or maybe you weren’t with the traders after all, hmm, Chantico?”

  “Thank the spirits he wasn’t!”

  “Hush, woman,” murmured Noshi. “He has lied to us.” He looked back to Chantico. “You have been spending time with Yoemyo’otui, haven’t you? The Old Man? He is wicked, Chantico. He is what the S
panish call brujo, yes? A witch-man. I do not want you wasting your time with him.”

  “He is not wicked!” Chantico pouted. “He is of the old people! He will save our tribe.”

  Chantico’s father waved his arm around the camp, at the protective wall of the cliffs, at the tall grasses in which deer grazed and rabbits burrowed, at the cold stream in which spawning salmon leapt. “Save us from what, Chantico?”

  “From those who would cause us harm,” he said. “Steamtown.”

  “Speaking of the dead, perhaps you had better go and pay your respects to Ecatzin’s mother, and the others,” said his father. “Then you can do some chores, perhaps atone for your lies and deceit.”

  Instead, Chantico went straight to find the Old Man.

  * * *

  No one knew his name anymore. They simply called him Yoemyo’otui, or the Old Man. And the Old Man didn’t give his name out. Names were power, he said, and if your enemy knew your name you might as well have put your balls in his hand and given him your knife. He pointed at each of them in turn in the circle around the pale fire deep in the caves, and he recited their names, giving their imaginary balls a twist with his gnarled hand.

  The Old Man was supposed to be able to remember Cortez taking Tenochtitlán, but Chantico had once pointed out that that would make the Old Man hundreds of years old. The Old Man had shrugged and said, “What of it?” He was Aztec, he said, purebred and, yes, if that was what people wanted to say, brujo. Witch-man. He had rattled bones and torn still-beating hearts out of living chests. No one really knew when or why the Old Man had attached himself to the tribe. He once said that it was because the Yaqui were the only people the Spanish had never properly conquered, and that the Yaqui would save the Americas from the invaders. He spoke a lot of nonsense, but he did it in an insistent, seductive manner. No one really took the Old Man seriously.

  Until Quetzalcoatl came.