Crystal Rain

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “Hope’s Loss?” Jerome squirmed.

  “East, in the middle of Nanagada, where the Tetol dropped rocks from the sky and destroyed the land. They say the land still poisoned today, and no one can live there.”

  “Oh. That why the Triangle Tracks don’t go through there to come here to Brungstun?”

  His mom looked over at him. “No,” she said sadly. “No train tracks come from Capitol City to Brungstun because of the Azteca. If they ever came over the Wicked Highs, they could get back to Capitol City before people had time to prepare.”

  Mentioning Azteca ended the tale for the night. They both fell silent, looking west back toward their house. Jerome got off the bench and stretched. His mom grabbed his waist and looked Jerome straight in the eye. “You dad been all over the world, first by road all the way along the coast to get to Capitol City, then by boat to sail the north seas. He go be okay just getting stuff out the house.” She smiled.

  Jerome nodded. But he wasn’t sure whom she was reassuring: him, or herself. “I know, Mom. He fine.”

  He left her out on the porch, looking out at the stars.

  Dad better be in town by lunch. Jerome would look him up and make sure he bought him a big, tasty meal. And maybe Jerome would show him where he was going to watch carnival from. Dad always loved carnival; he’d like the place Jerome had found to watch carnival from.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Someone knocked on the door. Dihana looked up from an expanse of opened letters. The city’s landlords were refusing to board the hundreds of mongoose-men Haidan had in the city unless they got upfront payment.

  “Come in.”

  A Councilman cautiously walked in. “Prime … Minister.” He choked on the words.

  Dihana stood up and extended an ink-stained hand. “Mr. Councilman. This is a pleasant interlude in a long day.” The man looked at her with suspicion. “I trust,” Dihana continued sweetly, “you are adjusting well to your accommodations on the Ministerial Grounds?”

  “You talking strange,” he said. “You mocking me?”

  Dihana cleared a swath of space on her desk. A few letters fluttered to the floor beside the desk. She thickened her accent, easy to do with all the bottled-up anger in her. “It was unpleasant when you had all run away like a bunch of yellow-belly when Elijah die and left me to be prime minister. I ain’t too sympathetic, seen? And I remember your name, Councilman: Emil. Sit.”

  Emil sat. “You ain’t strong enough to protect we. Elijah couldn’t protect himself, how better you go do? We too important to sit in the open just to help you.” He folded his hands and bit his lip. “We been here since the beginning. We go still be here long after you die.”

  Dihana ground her teeth. The Councilmen were hundreds of years old, just as her father had been. They should have worked with her. She could have done great things with their ancient knowledge.

  Maybe she still could.

  “You think because you have Nana in your blood you’re superior,” Dihana said. Emil looked startled. Yes, Dihana knew what kept the Councilmen almost immortal. Elijah had tried to explain Nana, but the young Dihana had been hurt and confused when he’d said she didn’t have them. “Why not?” Dihana had demanded. “Why can’t you give me Nana as well?”

  Elijah had sat stiffly on the other side of the minister’s desk. “I wish I could,” he had said. “The Loa say they can, but I don’t think they’re right, though they promise me—” She wondered later how painful it must have been for him to live knowing he’d see her die.

  “So then we should do it, we should try to make Nana again, like the old-fathers did,” Dihana had said.

  That had brought a dangerous glint to Elijah’s eye. “No. We can’t.”

  And that was how that remained. Always. Until he died. Shot through the heart by an Azteca assassin.

  “Nana wasn’t enough to save him,” Dihana told Emil. “A bullet for him was like a bullet for anyone else.”

  Emil shifted, maybe reminded of his own mortality. “We know.”

  Dihana stopped moving the letter opener from hand to hand. She pointed the silver point at him. “Why did you run? With all the knowledge you have? You could have helped.”

  Emil crossed his legs and grabbed his knees. “You bring electric light here, right? You and the Preservationist know how it work. But you think the people in the city using it know? All they know is they turn the switch on or off, or replace a bad bulb.”

  Dihana understood. “You’re ignorant. In the middle of wonders, you just accepted them, never understood them. And when they were taken, you didn’t know how to bring them back.” Strung along by her father’s promises of technology from the Loa and giving him their full support. Dihana now saw them through adult eyes. “Do any of you know anything useful?”

  “Of course.” Emil straightened his back, insulted.

  Dihana picked up an opened letter and started folding it to keep her fingers busy. “What things?”

  “History, real events, explanations. We remember the real thing, not any legend,” Emil said, talking up his percieved importance.

  “Okay,” Dihana said, trap set. She put the paper down. “Talk with the Preservationists. Have them come here to you. Tell them everything you know. Everything. And I’ll be reading their notes.”

  Emil nodded. He didn’t get up though.

  “We have a favor to ask,” he said. “We missing a man. He out with the Frenchi. We want mongoose-men to bring him back.”

  “Why?” And why did they need mongoose-men to fetch him? Were the Councilmen pushing at her more? She bit down the impulse to automatically refuse them their request.

  “He ain’t a Councilman, but he know all of we. If the Azteca catch him, they go know who we all is.”

  They were hiding something. She wanted to reach over, smack the superior look off Emil’s face, and find out what. “How many mongoose?”

  “Fifty.”

  Fifty mongoose-men for one man? “I’ll think about it.” Dihana crumpled the paper under her hand into a small ball. Now to worm out what it was. “But …”

  Her door opened. No knock, but Haidan stood silhouetted in the corridor light and she bit back an annoyed order to be left alone. Haidan kicked the door closed with his bootheel. He grabbed the back of Emil’s chair.

  “Hey …,” Emil protested. “This an important talk.”

  “Not any longer.” The veins stood out on Haidan’s forearms. “Mafolie Pass been take by Azteca. Some mongoose-men from the Wicked Highs used a courier blimp to fly to Anandale. They say it a whole invasion. Brungstun and Joginstead both cut off the telegraph line. Azteca coming over, Dihana. A whole army.”

  “Oh, God,” Emil whispered. “Oh, God.”

  Dihana pitied Emil for just a brief second. Azteca in Brungstun might capture this important man the Councilmen worried about. Now they really depended on her protection. Any other day this would have drawn a smile out of her. Right now she put it aside. “Okay. What now?” She felt numb. This was crisis mode, she would show no shock, but silently she kept thinking: Azteca are coming over the mountains. Azteca are moving toward the city. Azteca.

  Haidan’s locks fell forward off his shoulders. “I order back all the mongoose into Capitol City. We need recruit more. The Loa, the Councilmen, you, me squad-leader, the head of Tolteca-town, and several other go all need meet. As soon as possible.”

  “Meet with the Loa? After that last encounter?” Emil stood up. “We refuse. We ain’t stupid.” He fumbled open the door and slammed it behind him.

  Dihana shook her head. She was living in a three-hundred-year-old nightmare. The Azteca loose in Nanagada. Not just spies and scouting parties, but hordes. The thought brought a clenching sourness to her stomach. One hundred thousand people were now vulnerable in the city. How many more in towns along the coastal roads before the Azteca ever got to Capitol City? After Joginstead came Brewer’s Village, and then Anandale, and then …

  “I headquartered in
the city,” Haidan told her. “A house from back when I had live here. Where should I put the mongoose-men coming in?”

  “Let them camp in front of the Ministry while I try and find places,” Dihana murmured. Details, just details against the fact that she would probably see Azteca camped outside the city walls. “How long before the Azteca get here?”

  “Don’t know.” Haidan looked tired. Bags under his eyes. “Five or six week. Maybe more, maybe less. Depend on how much food they carrying, if any. How long they stay at each town. And how we try stopping them. But once they reach Harford and get on the Triangle Tracks, it go be quick.”

  “We need to know,” Dihana stepped back from the edge of despair. It felt like falling, but inside her head. “There’s a new steamship the Preservationists are finishing. In the harbor. I was planning another expedition north into the ice with, but you could use to scout the coast.” It wasn’t much.

  “May be useful,” Haidan said. “We need everything. Councilmen, businessmen, fishermen, ragamuffin, Loa, we all need to plan together. We need to agree on how we release this information. We need calm while getting organize before the word get out.”

  Dihana sighed. “You’re right. But, though I hate agreeing with Emil, I don’t want to involve the Loa in any discussion.”

  Haidan let go of the chairback. “If you all can’t use the Loa like the Loa use you,” he ground out, “then you might as well just wait for the Azteca to come and rip you heart out on a stone in market square.” He backed away. “You tell me when that meeting go happen, okay? Or I take all me men and head out deep into the bush, become a mongoose biting the heels of the Azteca, because this city the only place we can break that tide for sure.”

  The door slammed shut.

  “Haidan?” He was angry. Maybe a bit scared. And that made her even more scared. Dihana swept every single letter off her desk. None of that crap mattered right now.

  Azteca were coming.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Down Brungstun’s Main Street one of the town’s few steam cars pulled a large float coated in strips of multicolored cloth. Men on top drummed steel pans, the music echoing off the sides of the houses and warehouses they passed. Horses pulled more floats behind them, and costumed dancers followed.

  Along the sidewalk wooden booths sold patties. Or curried chicken. Or johnnycake. Or sandwiches. Jerome could buy bush tea, maubi, malt … the list went on.

  Jub-jub pranced down the street, covered in black paint, demanding money from the crowd. Along the procession’s side Jerome spotted moko jumbies on their tall stilts. One rested against a balcony, taking a break from his frenzied dancing down the street and talking to some women watching the parade.

  Too bad Dad wasn’t here yet to enjoy it. Mom said he’d show up for at least some of the celebration later this morning.

  Jerome bought a brown bag of tamarind balls and popped one in his mouth. The sweet sugar coating dissolved. He puckered his lips as he sucked on the sour part and wandered along. A woman danced right past him, stiff feathers from her peacock costume sticking out all over from her back, bouncing around as she shook herself down over the cobblestones. She headed for the waterfront toward the judges.

  Jerome wasn’t going with the parade toward the waterfront. Jerome had a goal in mind: the tall four-story warehouse and store called Happer’s. From the top he and his friends could see the whole town.

  A piece of patty hit his shirt, staining it brown. Jerome brushed off meat flecks and looked up. “Why you got to be always testing me?”

  “Easy target, man. Easy easy.” Swagga’s cheerful face looked over the edge of Happer’s, way up on the roof. He looked proud. Jerome picked up a nice oval pebble lying by the street side and pocketed it for when Swagga wouldn’t expect it.

  Happer’s had an iron fire-ladder on the alley side. Jerome grabbed the first rung and pulled himself up carefully, checking to make sure the rungs wouldn’t pull out from the green concrete wall, and climbed up to the rooftop.

  “Finally.” Swagga gave him a hand up and over. Jerome looked around. Other friends, Schmitti from school and Daseki from half a mile down the road, sat on a tablecloth. They had ham-and-cheese sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade.

  “That you mum’s cloth?” Jerome asked Schmitti.

  “That he bumba-clot,” Swagga yelled. They all burst out laughing. None could cuss more wicked than Swagga.

  “You want a lemonade?” Daseki asked.

  “Yeah.” Jerome walked over. The unpainted concrete rooftop already shimmered with heat. But the view made up for the lack of shade. Daseki poured a glass of lemonade. Jerome sipped it and walked over to the other side of Happer’s so he could see the carnival parade. “You won’t believe what all happen to me last night.”

  “What?”

  Jerome held the lemonade between both hands and told them about the mongoose-man who’d died in his kitchen, and how he’d run to get Auntie Fixit. By the time he was done the lemonade tasted way too sweet. He looked at the bottom of the glass and saw clumps of sugar.

  “Man,” Daseki said. “Everything cool happen to you. You father have a hook, you mom cook well, and someone fall into you garden last night.”

  “The post master had tell my dad the telegraph ain’t working before we had gone sailing, so we can’t warn anyone in Joginstead that some Azteca scout around. And everyone has to stay in town,” Jerome finished.

  “Yeah,” Schmitti said. “We staying here tonight with me cousin.”

  They compared notes about how many Azteca might be around. It seemed weird. Unreal. But the adults didn’t seem to think it was too much of a threat. They said scouting parties were all that could come over the Wicked Highs, and if everyone stayed in town, the mongoose-men and ragamuffin around town and in the bush would protect them. Carnival went on. In the distance the raucous clash of four or five different steel-pan bands playing different tunes floated up. Most of the parade had already turned around and was making the final leg down the waterfront to pass in front of the wooden stands the judges sat in.

  Schmitti held up a leather bag. “You want go play some marble?” Schmitti had taken Jerome’s best marble last week. “I be easy on you.”

  Daseki snorted. “Don’t fall for it, he too good.”

  Jerome noticed a pillar of smoke rising from the forest outside Brungstun. Someone burning space for a new farm, he thought. That time of year. Had to be. He sat down to lose his next favorite marble.

  “Swagga, you go play?” Daseki asked.

  Jerome pulled the pebble from his pocket. He winged it, hard, and it struck the wall along the edge. Swagga jumped into the air and everyone laughed. “That’s for the patty you throw down on me shirt,” Jerome said. “And you lucky I didn’t aim at you. You coming to play?”

  Swagga shook his head. “No. Come over and look at this here, man.”

  Daseki sighed elaborately and they all went over to the edge.

  “What you see?” Schmitti asked.

  Swagga pointed. Jerome looked down. The man Swagga pointed out walked down Hilty Street into Brungstun from the south. He wore a long coat. Shoulder-length dreadlocks straggled out of a black top hat.

  “You ever see him before?” Daseki asked. “He look real serious.”

  “No. He look Frenchi, though.”

  The man had light brown skin. Not as light as a Frenchi, but definitely not like that of anyone in Brungstun. It reminded Jerome of his dad.

  “I bet you he from up near Capitol City,” Schmitti said.

  “Then why he coming in from the south on Hilty road, uh?” Swagga asked.

  Schmitti sucked his teeth loudly.

  “Man, don’t schoops me like that,” Swagga said. “He ain’t from here: he looking all around them building like he new.”

  The man looked up at Happer’s, and they all dropped down to the ground as one. Daseki’s eyes were wide. “You think he see us?” They weren’t supposed to be up here. Their mothers would get
real angry.

  “I dunno,” Jerome said. “I hope not.” The man in the top hat and coat made him nervous. He looked around. The heavy wooden trapdoor down into Happer’s was bolted shut from the inside so thieves couldn’t get in. And neither could they. The only way down was by the fire ladder.

  “Someone look over,” Swagga ordered. Jerome bristled. Swagga was a friend, but sometimes …

  Swagga sighed. “You all yellow-belly.” He pulled himself up over the wall and glanced over, real quick, and crouched back down. “He coming up the ladder!”

  “We in trouble! He got tell we parent we was up here and we all go get in trouble!” Schmitti started shivering. His dad was famous for a good hiding. Swagga grabbed the bag of marbles and gave them to Jerome.

  “You have the best throw,” Swagga said. “Maybe if you hit he hard, he go leave to look and tell someone we up here instead of coming up and seeing who we is. Then we can run.”

  “Yeah.” Jerome swallowed.

  Daseki nodded and whispered, “Bust he in he head good, Jerome.”

  Jerome took a deep breath, then leapt up. He leaned over the edge. The brim of the man’s hat wasn’t even ten feet below him. Jerome leaned in and threw the leather bag as hard as he could.

  The man’s head snapped up and he caught the bag in his left hand. Jerome looked down at gray eyes as the marbles made a scrunching sound.

  “Oh, man,” Jerome said, jumping back from the small wall. “He go kill we dead.” Something cold in the man’s eyes made him stop worrying about his parents finding out and made him wish he were anywhere but on the roof of Happer’s.

  Schmitti started to cry. “Swagga, what we should do?”

  Swagga backed away from the wall, going the other direction from Jerome. “Split you-self up. Maybe he only catch one of us, and the other three can run down the ladder.”