But he expected little of them, as they kicked him across the street. Bones cracked.
Their plainly dressed warriors moved in between the crowd, pushing people aside forcefully to get to Tizoc. They used the butts of their guns to knock the most vicious aside. Tizoc found himself dragged by his broken arms across the road. He could barely see. He wished he could whimper.
He was forced to his knees. Black, polished boots hit the ground, throwing dust into Tizoc’s eyes. A hand grabbed his chin, and Tizoc’s broken jaw seared the inside of his throat.
“We are mongoose-men. You have terms?”
Tizoc worked his mouth, blood draining out the corners. “Are you the leader of the mongoose?”
They shook their heads. “Tell us your message anyway,” they said.
Tizoc sighed. He would not even have the honor of delivering the message to the right person.
“Thirty percent of your gold, your food, your machines, and your young will be delivered as a tithe to Huey Tlatoani, the Great Speaker, and his gods.”
The man in front shook his head. The solid locks shook against each other and his thick shoulders.
“I will die before that happens,” he said sincerely.
Tizoc nodded. “That is how it shall be.” His vision faded. Huehueteotl, honor me.
Huehueteotl?
He sighed one last bloodied breath.
PART TWO
CAPITOL CITY
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The train slowed to approach the tracks leading into Capitol City’s gaping tunnels. The chuffing echoed, and Haidan caught a glimpse of a family’s washing hung up to dry in a balcony several hundred feet over the top of the train. Things looked more crowded than when he’d left. More stalls crammed the tracks. More weary faces looked back at him.
“I forget how good it feel to be back in the city,” the old lady across from him said. “Thirty years I been gone. Now me family sending me up the tracks to be safe in the city. Azteca coming, you know?”
Haidan looked over at her and the dinged-up suitcases by her feet. The car was packed with people heading for the city. And their luggage. Crammed in every bit of free space, spilling out into the middle of the aisle. A fight had broken out at the Batellton ticket office over the last few tickets. He found it annoying that Dihana hadn’t been able to keep things silent just a bit longer. Now the mongoose would find travel more difficult.
Feet thudded onto the roof above him. Daring boys raced along the top of the train shouting at each other, thin voices pitched up against the sudden hoot of the train’s whistle.
So much energy.
He looked out at the smooth rock. If ever there was proof of the past we lost, reflected Haidan, it was here in this great stone monstrosity of a city, hollowed deep under the rock, raised over with buttresses and walls and courts, all created by the mysterious and powerful machines wielded by the old-fathers. There was nothing else like Capitol City in Nanagada, no town, no village, nothing. And Nanagadans couldn’t create another Capitol City.
Not for a few generations yet, he thought. Maybe one day, if Dihana’s Preservationists kept up their work.
And if they survived the Azteca.
“Final stop for number thirty-three engine,” the tickettaker yelled as he walked down the aisle. He sounded as if he’d come in from a town outside of the tracks, his inflection thicker than most in the city. “Capitol City Station Four. It about five o’clock. Thank you and make sure you step careful out between the car.”
Brakes screeched, metal on metal, slowing them down as the smooth tunnel walls turned into a rock platform. Ticket coves lined the walls, and Nanagadans of varying skin colors, religions, and regions were leaving the other trains that had just come in under the watchful eye of ragamuffins and mongoose-men. No one was getting back on the trains to leave. Steam floated up from under the cars and obscured the jostling crowds. Haidan stood up, briefcase held tight in both hands.
“Mommy, Mommy,” a young child screamed, pushing through the passengers with his elbows. His puffy hair bobbed as he ran. Haidan dodged the groin-height arms and let the kid through.
“Right here,” a soothing female voice said.
Haidan stepped out from between the two cars and looked around. Three mongoose-men in dress uniform, white shorts and short sleeves, gold braids on their shoulders, stood waiting for him. He caught their glances and nodded. They moved forward. Quickly in step, today, as Haidan felt rather good. No pains in his stomach, or lungs.
“Good to see you, Haidan.” The mongoose-man on the left, Gordon, sounded as if he’d grown up deep in the bush. And he had. Gordon adjusted the rim of a pair of smoky oval glasses. His bald head glittered with a sheen of sweat.
“We have an electric waiting for you,” said the muscular mongoose-man on the right. “Your wire was received a few hours ago.” They were definitely back in Capitol City, Haidan thought, where everyone around you sounds different from everyone else. The city was a mishmash of families that had lived here as long as could be remembered, as well as everyone else who lived in Nanagada. It was a chaotic mess.
It was a city.
“The prime minister, she need see you soon, okay?” Gordon said.
“Not yet.” Haidan needed to get back and caught up with city preparations. He’d ignored building Capitol City’s defenses between picking up this prize in Batellton and planning the mongoose-men’s retreat to Capitol City as the Azteca advanced. “Let’s go,” Haidan said. The three men circled him, and together they walked through the grand sloping tunnel out of Station Four into Capitol City.
A Preservationist-designed pod-shaped electric waited for them. The whip connector stood raised over the back, ready to reach up to a track to draw power. Haidan took the driver’s seat. Gordon sat next to him and unholstered a pair of pistols. He set them on his lap. “Things real tense around the city right now.”
“Good thinking.” Haidan tapped the charge dial and stared at the controls.
“There the power.” Gordon pointed at Haidan’s feet. “That how you turn it on.” He pointed at a switch by the small steering wheel.
Cramped, briefcase between his knees, Haidan flicked the indicated switch forward and pressed the accelerator. They moved out into the street, Gordon looking left and then right for Haidan. They moved away from the irregular walls of the city, honeycombed with their train and subway stops, streets and offices, into a great open-air, lozengeshaped atrium several miles in length. Capitol City itself lay inside the great walls, roads, and docks. The city’s buildings were built by later generations, after the Last War. It was a consensual conflict of cultures, refugees, and out-of-control city planning.
Haidan aimed the electric into the center of an upcoming road, looking up at the wire mesh that hung just over the street between brick buildings. He dodged families on carts, horse-drawn carts, until the whip behind them bent and made contact ten feet over their heads. Sparks flew. Now they rode off the city’s power, no need to worry about the battery.
“Everyone know Azteca coming. Lot a refugee coming in on train.”
Haidan sighed. “I know.”
“Been a riot near Tolteca-town. Things tense. Dihana asked we mongoose-men to move into Tolteca-town.”
“What?” A red open-air trolley, passengers lining the sides with baskets and bags fresh from market, slowed down in front of them. People were buying too much food. Stockpiling it. Haidan swerved around. They coasted adjacent to the power netting while Haidan looked for a chance to get the bouncing whip back in.
“She came to me in the barrack,” Gordon said.
“She overstepping.”
Gordon shrugged. “Doing the right thing.”
“Maybe.” Haidan slowed down, let an old lady cross. “I don’t want her thinking she could use mongoose-men anytime she want. Any more report on Azteca movement?”
“It all dead silent down by the mountain.” Gordon clutched the handrail in front of him as th
ey turned a corner. “I have more bad news. Brewer’s Village: they spot Jaguar scout. Didn’t say how many. I send an airship from Anandale to look.”
“From Anandale?”
“Brewer’s Village can’t be reached anymore.”
Haidan got the electric back under on another street with electrified wire mesh and accelerated. He followed the wall, making a long counterclockwise trip, the twelve-story-tall rock face to his right. “Damn,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” said Gordon. “Still ain’t go see Dihana first?”
They passed a series of apartment blocks hewn into the sides of the wall and painted yellow. On Haidan’s left a battery of wooden buildings barely got over four stories tall. He slowed the electric down, turned left, and started dogging through the streets. The mesh over their heads petered out and the electric whined along under its batteries.
“Well?” Gordon asked. He knew Haidan too well.
“Yeah.” It didn’t take long to reach the Ministerial Mansion. Guards in mongoose-gray and beige stood in front of the large steps. Floodlights bathed the front of the mansion in light as the sun dipped beneath the tall walls of Capitol City. Haidan stopped the electric. “Wait for me.”
He got out and walked up the stairs toward the large wooden storm doors.
The conference room was cramped and lit by several expensive brass-gilded electric lamps on the table. Thick wooden shutters strained against the slats holding them shut, not even allowing the slightest bit of light through.
It felt as if someone had battened down for a storm in here.
Haidan walked down the side of the oval conference table and took a seat. Dihana sat by herself at the expanse of table.
Oh, child, what is going on now?
“Hello, Haidan.” The prime minister’s long, plaited hair hung over the table. Her eyes were red from lack of sleep.
“Dihana. Bring me some understanding,” Haidan said. “Azteca marching up the coast. Gordon saying we can’t reach Brewer’s Village now. We can’t be sure how many out there, or how they had get out from between Mafolie Pass, but they sacking towns and moving quick. We need Tolteca help, and it sound like you invading Tolteca-town.”
“It was the best thing to do.” Dihana’s green eyes crinkled. “People were ready to run into Tolteca-town and take their own revenge. It would have been bad.”
Haidan scratched the table. “I calling all mongoose-men to fall back to the Tracks. Once there they burn anything the Azteca can feed themselves with. Then they must tear up what track they can, destroy bridges, and regroup here in Capitol City.”
“All that?”
“All that.” With Mafolie Pass, in the past Nanagada only had to worry about small groups of Azteca who snuck in. Small, quick, and mobile groups of mongoose-men stationed themselves all over the slopes for this reason. They had no massive defending army. Haidan was improvising. “You still thinking wrong, Dihana. Just like me not too long past. Realize: a full Azteca army coming. The whole thing. If people ain’t inside these wall, they dead. So inside these wall, things better be in some damn good shape. No sense we fighting two wars.”
Dihana bit her lip. “You’re right.” She put her elbows on the table and held her head. “What more do you need from me?”
“More airship. Can the Preservationist help?”
“They’re yours to command, Haidan.”
“Good. Because I need to swear them to secrecy.” Haidan released the catches on the briefcase he’d held by his side until now. He set it on the table and opened it up. “In Batellton you Preservationist digger found a map of the whole world.”
Haidan had grown up a poor vegetable farmer in the jungle near the Wicked Highs. When he wasn’t busy with chores, there were things in the old roots out around the newly cleared land that intrigued him. Ancient ruins. Buildings run over by vines and powerful trees. The hints of a forgotten past lay scattered in the ground beneath the ruins. Digging in the dirt, Haidan found small machines with rubber grips, handprints carved on them. Strange coins in a language he never understood. He made extra money taking the most interesting finds to Brungstun, to a mongoose-man called Jules, who sold them to Capitol City.
Eventually Haidan followed his trinkets all the way back to Capitol City. He’d led a group of mongoose-men and a fisherman, John, through the forest from Brungstun to Capitol City. Still interested in his trinkets, he’d participated in digs around the edges of the city wall, or in towns along the Triangle Tracks until Prime Minister Elijah forbade any further such activity.
Haidan had tried to talk Elijah out of it. The prime minister had refused, but been impressed enough with Haidan that he asked him to lead the Capitol City ragamuffins. Haidan turned it down, not being interested in being stuck in the city, and was instead promoted to lead the lesser force of Nanagadan bush scouts, the mongoose-men. In time Haidan came to respect Elijah’s actions. Elijah used the Councilmen to manage the day-to-day life of the city, while Haidan built up the mongoose-men to patrol the mountains against the Azteca. Both men tried to ensure their long-term survival, balancing everything constantly against the fear of the Azteca and the demands of the once powerful Loa.
A balance that was destroyed when Elijah died. The Council broke apart when Dihana inherited the prime ministerial position. The Councilmen felt they should have voted one of themselves to prime minister, and in between their infighting over a candidate and opposing Dihana as prime minister, riots raged throughout Capitol City for two weeks. Haidan had helped her order the ragamuffins out in the streets to break the violence and hunt down the Councilmen who’d started it.
The Loa gave up on the city’s leadership and disappeared into the basements of their street temples as Dihana took over. They offered her no help, and she’d handled everything on her own, with only Haidan by her side. She’d never forgotten or forgiven the Loa for that. And once Capitol City settled into calm, Haidan left for the bush, worried more about the Azteca than the petty machinations of the Councilmen or what the Loa might be up to. He regretted that focus. But right now, he didn’t regret his constant interest in the past. And in maps.
In all his years of living here, Haidan had seen maps of Capitol City’s streets, of the sewers beneath it, and many recent maps of the lands from the Wicked Highs on east. Haidan collected maps. Part of his rise to general was due to his well-planned ambushes and patrols. He used topography to gain an upper hand on Azteca who tried to infiltrate.
Yet none of those maps Haidan had seen were maps of the entire world.
In the briefcase a piece of paper lay sandwiched between a pane of glass and a polished square of hardwood. Haidan laid the map on the table.
“Fisherman know that far enough north it get cold like when you go up a mountain. Of three expedition you funded, only one touch the northland. We know nothing about the land west of the Wicked Highs except what the Tolteca talk about. We hardly understand the world.” Haidan smiled. “But right here I got a complete map of the sea between Capitol City and the northland. Right down to the smallest little island.”
She moved closer, chair creaking as she stood up to lean over. Haidan put his palms flat on the table and pushed the map toward Dihana. The lamps glinted against the protective glass behind her.
On the map’s lower corner Nanagada stretched out from the Wicked Highs onward. A small dot marked the northern peninsula tip, and the words Capitol City had been written next to it. Down near the mountains, in even smaller handwriting, were the words Brun’s Town.
Haidan wet his lips. “Some villager digging a well in Batellton hit a bunker deep beneath the ground. We know the old-father had make Batellton a temporary headquarter during Hope’s Loss. They were getting ready for some serious battle on the ground, when all the machines stop working for everyone.” Haidan looked up at Dihana. “I think this a document one of the old-father actually wrote on while settling Nanagada.”
“Incredible,” Dihana whispered. “But why is this important
now?”
Haidan caressed the glass. He’d been hoping for detailed maps like this for a long time. His first hope had been to use them to take the fighting to the other side of the Wicked Highs. But now that Azteca marched toward them, he had something more ambitious in mind. Something based on old history few knew.
“There’s something more: Starport,” he said. “That was where we old-father land, before the Tetol froze the north and fought us away. You read what the Preservationist write. There’s something there, tough like the machines sometime we find in the ocean that still work, left by we old-fathers.” His voice rose. “You must trust me. There’s proof, and I know how to get there. We might find something. We know some machine that survive come down out the sky, legends say so. They say some old-fathers could never leave because the Tetol waited above for all of them. Those machine might still work. They might still help. And I think I know where a working machine might be.”
“How will you get there?” Dihana asked, leaning back in her chair. “The last expedition I sent almost starved to death, couldn’t get past the ice, and then most died getting back.”
“We get there quick.” Haidan spread his arms. “By airship over sea. It possible with this map.”
“Haidan … the cost.” Dihana shook her head.
“Very hard right now. I know. That why I need you help.”
Dihana sighed. “Plan this expedition, but nothing more.”
“Good.” Haidan put the map back in his briefcase. “There someone who can help.” He snapped the case shut. She had been avoiding this, he knew. “We need talk with the Loa.”
Dihana folded her hands over each other. Her lips pinched out a straight line. “You think that is necessary?”
“Don’t got enough resources for anything we planning. The priestess and all the god them living in this city been accumulating plenty of that. The Loa exist here, they need protection too.”
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