Crystal Rain

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “They go revolt.”

  “Haidan has the mongoose-men tearing up track, looking to destroy the couple bridges between Harford and here. But when the Azteca hit the Triangle Tracks, it won’t be long before they come here. In that time the spies in Tolteca-town can do much damage. We can’t afford it.” On her side Dihana had gotten silos filled, helped the fishermen build new boats with armor and cannon on them to sustain them with fresh fish during the attack. She’d shut down banks, seized businesses, and declared emergency conditions. Every night handbills and criers circulated, explaining what she was trying to do, how they must all stand together.

  “Okay.” The ragamuffin stared straight at her.

  “Someone inform Xippilli before the command goes out, though. Give him an escort to come straight here if he wants. He’ll be angry.”

  The ragamuffin nodded and withdrew.

  Dihana turned to look at the letters. The top was just a scribbled note from Haidan: This is my little secret, and why I think the trip north is so important.

  Underneath was an older slip of paper. “Dear Stucky,” Dihana read.

  She almost changed her mind when she finished, wondering what was hidden away in the cold north of the world. A machine, a weapon … but what was the use of an archaeological expedition right now? They would either shatter the Azteca at the foot of their walls or fall to their knives. Trying to study the past now would take too long.

  And they needed all the airships to defend the city. Haidan, of all people, should have realized that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Oaxyctl navigated the warrenlike streets of Capitol City in a daze. He kept to the shadows, away from people, and followed a street-by-street pattern from memorized instructions a year old until he passed into a dingy collection of buildings.

  Tolteca-town.

  He relaxed a bit. It was like home away from home: signs in Nahuatl, occasional snatches of familiar-sounding conversation.

  It hadn’t occurred to him until this moment, but he’d been the only brown-skinned person among all the darker Nanagadans. Now he didn’t stand out as much with his straight fringe of black hair.

  Oaxyctl stopped a woman with a laundry basket balanced on her head.

  “Could you give me directions to Xippilli’s house,” he asked. Xippilli, he’d been told, was the most respected of the Tolteca in Capitol City and would be easy to ask for by name. The woman gave him instructions that took Oaxyctl straight to a two-story brownstone, where a number of Tolteca lounged around the front.

  “I am looking for Cipactli,” Oaxyctl said. “Do you know of him?”

  They looked him over. “We’ll take you to him.”

  Cipactli worked for Xippilli as an adviser, Oaxyctl determined by looking over the parchment on Cipactli’s desk. Cipactli himself came into the room, dressed in a black suit with a silver tie.

  He walked over and fiddled with the desk drawer, then looked up. “I’m sorry,” he said with an even face, “I’ve never seen you before.”

  “I am Iccauhtli,” Oaxyctl said. “New to the city. I presume to ask if you would be generous enough to show kindness to a stranger.”

  “I am sorry, my brother.” Cipactli stopped moving papers around. “I can not … offer you help. But let me give you some money.”

  He handed Oaxyctl a few coins, and something else, feathery, to Oaxyctl’s palm.

  “You are generous, my lord.” Oaxyctl snapped his hand shut. “I will not forget this.”

  Cipactli ushered him out the door.

  Only farther down the road did Oaxyctl unclench his fist and look at the coins. A tiny piece of paper lay between them, giving him Cipactli’s home address. Be here in thirty minutes, it said.

  Oaxyctl ate the paper and put the coins in his pocket.

  Oaxyctl lit a match and watched Cipactli flinch. The dim yellow light danced off the rocky walls and sturdy wooden beams. Dust patterns swirled in front of the match, disturbed by the movement.

  “Greetings, fellow quimichtin,” Oaxyctl said.

  “What is your need?” Cipactli walked farther into his own basement. “I have to be careful now. Mongoose-men are everywhere. It is tense.”

  “A god has charged me with a mission.”

  Cipactli’s mouth dropped. “I apologize. You have anything you need.” He swallowed, eyes wide. “Do you know which god?” The match went out, leaving them in the dusky dark of the basement. Cipactli fumbled around to turn on a weak electric light near the stair door.

  “I was afraid to ask.” Oaxyctl didn’t want to think back about the rainy forest encounter. Just get it done, he thought. Get it over as soon as possible, and get out of the city before the invasion. “The invasion is close?” Oaxyctl tried to figure out how much time he had.

  “They are over halfway to the Triangle Tracks,” Cipactli said. “There are delays. The mongoose-men slow them down some. But the gods prevail. Anandale will fall in a handful of days yet.”

  “The gods prevail,” Oaxyctl echoed. He’d found paper and pen when he’d snuck in. He handed a list to Cipactli. “I need all these.”

  “You are honored to be charged by a god.” Cipactli held the list up to the small light and read it. “Who will you be torturing?”

  Oaxyctl wondered if he should tell Cipactli it was not an honor. He wasn’t even sure it was safe. The fact that other gods might disagree with his god’s need to get these “Ma Wi Jung codes” out of John, whatever those were, meant all this might end with Oaxyctl dead anyway.

  He sighed. The gods, an invasion army, and who knew what else were destined to destroy the Nanagadan’s last enclave within two weeks anyway.

  What could he do against that?

  Nothing.

  The smart man played as best he could. That was all Oaxyctl ever did. Even though the luck had never come to him, he’d survived longer than anyone had thought he would. There was only one way to survive.

  Oaxyctl cleared his throat. “Just get these items, please.”

  “I will. Stay here, and I will return.” Cipactli turned off the light and walked up the stairs, leaving Oaxyctl to brood in the dark.

  Oaxyctl’s eyes adjusted to the dark. A small, painted-over window in the far corner yielded a tiny stream of light. In between small naps Oaxyctl watched it go from pure white to orange to nonexistent by the time Cipactli returned and flicked on the electric light.

  The canvas bag he carried clinked when he set it on the ground.

  “Everything?” Oaxyctl asked.

  “Everything.”

  Oaxyctl smiled. The end was in sight. “I will need help. A few people to subdue this man and maybe bring him back somewhere like this. I act tonight. I can’t risk any more waits, it is stressful as it is making these sorts of gambles.”

  “There is a problem.” Cipactli looked far more solemn than he had earlier. “There is a curfew. It started now, with this sunset.”

  “Okay. We wait for the sun to rise—”

  “No one of Azteca origin can be out without an escort. Anytime.”

  “Then I leave now.” Oaxyctl picked up his atlatl and spears and walked forward to pick up the canvas bag.

  “There are other ways to help you, they will just take some time to put in place.”

  “No, no waiting,” Oaxyctl said. “I leave now.”

  He brushed past Cipactli and up the stairs. The Capitol City quimichtin followed him up and let him out a side door.

  Oaxyctl did not look back, but melted into the shadows.

  It wasn’t jungle, but Oaxyctl was still good at keeping out of sight. He only made a few wrong turns that left him drymouthed until he regained his bearings. He was almost back before someone spotted him.

  A mongoose-man yelled at him to stop, and Oaxyctl froze against the wall. He’d had to get out of the alleys to cross toward a street.

  Oaxyctl waited until the mongoose-man was just behind him and pushed his sleeve up to show the tattoo. It hadn’t worked before, but
it was still worth getting the mongoose-man to come within range.

  “I am a mongoose-man.”

  “Right,” the man said. “But Tolteca mongoose are in Tolteca-town to help patrol, which is where you should be.” Oaxyctl tensed as the man looked at the tattoo. “Look good. Not many Tolteca there. I respect that. Now, if you hold on, me partner pissing just around the corner. We can escort you back to Tolteca-town.”

  “Why don’t you just let me continue on my own?” Oaxyctl asked, smiling. He turned to look the mongoose-man in the eye and faced a young man. He kept his hip turned, put his left arm into his pocket, and gripped the handle of a knife.

  “I can’t do that.” The mongoose-man smiled back. “And why you alone? Where is you partner?”

  “Oh.” Oaxyctl leaned forward. “He’s just—” He grabbed the young man by the shirt, twisted him around, and slit his throat.

  The mongoose-man burbled blood and clutched his throat. Oaxyctl guided the mongoose-man gently to the street, rolling him over onto his back, and looked into the glazed eyes.

  Then he glanced up and down the street, wiped his knife and hands clean on the mongoose-man’s shirt, and ran off before the other mongoose-man could walk around the corner.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Capitol City’s roots lay deep in the solid rock of Nanagada. Honeycombs of sewer systems, access tunnels, and large caverns lay beneath the streets. Pepper had been though them before, though this time they looked more decrepit and encrusted with age than when the city had first been built.

  To get to the sewers Pepper made his way over a few more hundred feet. Then he could watch the waters standing, instead of hanging like a damn monkey from the pier cracks. He’d done that for a few hours.

  But now he was back up in the pillars still waiting for the Teotl to show itself.

  “Easy, man, watch where you going.”

  Pepper froze.

  Outlets poured wastewater, city water, toilet water, and excess air back out along the sides of the walls that ran along the ocean. All of this was designed to continue running without machinery, though the constant sound of moving and pouring water echoed everywhere. Pepper struggled to locate the direction of the voice.

  Someone swore. The voice echoed.

  “Nothing. My net dry.”

  Pepper moved over to one of the massive pillars, trying to keep even closer to shadows.

  “How come you ain’t bailin’?” Another distinct voice complained.

  Here all the trash in Capitol Harbor came. And now it looked as if it was being scavenged. Small figures in rotting boats rowed through the brown water. Pepper relaxed, using two hands to hold himself up instead of keeping one near his gun.

  “What? That water nasty.”

  “Treo. Pick up the bucket and keep we from sinking and swimming in it already.”

  The sound of water tossed over the side of a boat echoed around.

  Pepper let go to hang by one hand, muscles straining against their locked position to hold him upside down from one single handhold. He moved over and grabbed a rusty piton hammered into the side of a great pillar, one of many that allowed the scavengers below him to string nets to strain the harbor water.

  Easier to hold.

  One of the small boats shipped oars and glided underneath him. They were children, Pepper saw. Bony children at that.

  One of them in the boat beneath him leaned over and pulled a net up out of the water. A brown fish struggled. The urchin caught it with deft hands and tossed it into the bottom of the boat. “A fish!”

  “Find some more, get we some lime to soak he in, bread it up, go be a good one.”

  They continued picking at the net while Pepper waited.

  “Uuh.” The smaller kid to the back of the boat waved his hands. “What that?”

  “It a body!” The two moved over.

  Pepper squinted. Pink flesh bumped against the small boat’s transom. The kid used an oar to poke at his nets, and more pink rolled up. Translucent eyepatches gleamed in the dark water.

  “Shit. It a Loa.”

  “What?”

  “I telling you, it a Loa.”

  A tip of metal crowned a stubby tentacle in the water.

  The kid with the oar looked around. “We need go. Everyone, we need leave,” he yelled out loud to another boat. “Quick!” His body language showed he suspected they were next. He looked around, at the water, and then at last, in slow suspicion, up.

  His eyes widened when he saw Pepper hanging ten feet above him. He fell back, grabbing for oars, mouth wide.

  Pepper made a decision. They would help him. They knew the area, they might be able to spot whatever had killed the Loa. And if a Teotl was hanging around, these children were dead. Some might die if Pepper used them as bait as he intended, but at least with Pepper they had a chance.

  Pepper let go, stopped his fall by grabbing another piton, then dropped into the aft of the boat in one smooth, quick motion. The boy held up an oar, trying to protect the smaller kid behind him.

  “Easy.” Pepper spread his hands out.

  “Look.” The boy’s hair was starting to dreadlock, his hands calloused from rowing. Dirty, holed clothes, tattered and held together with net and fishing wire, Pepper noted. “We ain’t see nothing, we ain’t telling nothing. Let we go. Please.”

  “I didn’t kill it.” Pepper leaned over and glanced at the Loa. “But I know what did.” He pushed the Loa over and pointed at the claw marks and shredded flaps of skin dangling from the Loa’s torso. “Teotl did this.” Pepper held up a hand. “See, I have no claws.”

  The boy shivered. No doubt Teotl had once been a tale told to make him behave, Pepper thought. When he’d had parents.

  A second rowboat rounded the pillar. The boy on the bow carried a spear he aimed at Pepper. “What you name? If you touch any of we, I go strike you down,” the boy shouted.

  “I wouldn’t point that at me,” Pepper warned. He turned to face the boy in front of him. This was, he discerned, the closest they had to a leader. Pepper took a gold tooth from his pocket, a fleck of brown blood still on the root side. He handed it to the kid, who snatched it.

  “I’m Pepper. What is your name?”

  “Adamu,” the kid said. Which would make the small kid he tried to protect Treo, Pepper thought, filing their voices from what he’d heard while on the pillar. “What you want from we?” Adamu asked, suspicious.

  “I want you to help me catch the Teotl.”

  Adamu looked Pepper back in the eye. Brave. “How? We small.”

  Pepper nodded. It was best to be honest. Too many people used these kids, then discarded them. They deserved his honesty.

  “I need you to be my bait.”

  Treo leaned forward and grabbed Adamu. “Please don’t do it. It dangerous.”

  “I have more gold.” Pepper patted the pocket of his trench coat.

  Adamu looked down at the dying fish in the bottom of the boat. “No. We go help.”

  “Good,” Pepper said. “Who are you all?”

  “We the posse,” Adamu said.

  “Posse?”

  “Just a name.” Adamu shrugged. He looked up as the second boat hit them. The kid with the spear jumped out, jabbed it at Pepper.

  Pepper yanked it away and snapped it in half. He took a broken end and hit the boy in the ribs with it.

  “What is his name?” Pepper asked Adamu.

  “Tito.”

  “Okay, Tito,” Pepper said as Tito, curled up in the bottom of the boat, gasped for air. “I said don’t point that at me, and I meant it.”

  Adamu bit his lip and put his hand in his pocket, fingering the gold. Another few teeth, Pepper knew, would change their world, and Adamu knew it.

  If they caught the Teotl, Pepper would make them rich.

  For a few days. Because once the Azteca came to Capitol City, chances were it wouldn’t matter.

  First, Pepper needed them to find their target.

  �
��What we looking for?” Tito asked. His mouth remained set, his eyes slit. But gold was gold. He would do what Pepper said.

  “Something under the water. A submarine,” Pepper said.

  “Like the metal one up in the museum?” Adamu asked. “They dig it out of the harbor. No one know how it work.”

  “Maybe.” Pepper shrugged. “But I’ll bet this one is made of wood.”

  “Wood?” one of the posse asked.

  Pepper nodded.

  “What about protection?” Adamu asked. “Them look like sharp claws, whatever rip up that Loa.”

  A smile.

  “The safest place for any of you is right here.” Pepper blinked. “Now come, we have to get moving.”

  Adamu sent the two boats to pick up spare nets. Ten minutes later they had rigged them with silt weights to drag the bottom.

  Pepper watched, then got in Adamu’s boat.

  Treo stood up. “Take me back. I want go back into the sewer, get out. I scare.”

  “Treo,” Adamu said. “I don’t want you out alone, getting eat by this thing.” Treo considered that for a moment, and stayed put.

  Adamu started rowing, Treo huddled in the front of the boat.

  “Where the Teotl now?” Adamu asked.

  “Probably watching us,” Pepper said. Treo whimpered. “Don’t worry. It won’t do anything yet. Not until we find its vehicle.”

  Pepper hunched over in his seat and bundled his long coat around him. He looked around the boat and whistled to himself.

  Come out, come out, wherever you are, he sang to himself.

  Come say hi to Pepper.

  After three hours of slow sweeping, Tito stood up in the other boat and threw his oar down. It clattered between the wooden benches.

  Pepper looked around at them all.

  He took another gold tooth out from the trench-coat pocket by his chest and held it over the side of the boat. He opened his hand, and it plinked into the water.