Crystal Rain

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “Who are the officers?”

  “People I go choose.”

  “Good people? I’ll need some mongoose-men who’ll follow my orders.”

  “If you agree to go, I give up my best mongoose-man,” Haidan said.

  John looked around the room. Then he looked at Oaxyctl. “Will you come aboard with me?”

  Oaxyctl pushed the palm of his hand farther into the splintered piece of wood. “What do I know of boats?”

  “I will teach you,” John said.

  Haidan said, “I want this expedition launch within the week, before any spy in town realize what happening and try to stop it, and well before Azteca arrive at the city wall. I want momentum, I want it now.”

  Oaxyctl pulled his hand up from the table, the splinter breaking off inside his hand. “I will pack my things.” Even to himself he sounded distant.

  Gods, what a disaster.

  Ma Wi Jung. What else could he do but follow them there? The group assembled outside the door of the small apartment, John with his single bag of groceries, and nothing else to his name, and Oaxyctl with his atlatl and bundle of spears, a small bag in his left hand.

  On his way out, Oaxyctl ground the bloodied handkerchief Edward had dropped onto the dirty concrete floor with the heel of his ragged boot.

  Born under the sign of Ocelotl, he said to himself.

  Certainly.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  For several minutes Pepper stood and listened to the water. He heard the creature come up, expelling air, watching them as the boys moved their boats around, drawing attention to themselves. Pepper motioned Adamu closer and got back in the boat.

  The water remained calm for a maddeningly long time. Tiny waves lapped against the pillars. The city pipes trickled. emptying water out nearby.

  Right there. Pepper saw the dimmest of shapes beneath the water by Tito’s boat. Pepper pointed, and Tito picked up a spear from inside the boat. Like a tiny harpoonist the boy balanced on the side of the boat and slung it.

  The shape darted underneath, and Tito’s boat splintered. Water splashed out from the inside, and the kids leapt into the water.

  “Stay close to the submarine,” Pepper warned, not wanting Adamu to row them away.

  The floor underneath erupted, and Pepper stepped back. Gray skin pushed through the floor planks, and a smooth, skeletal face turned his way. Adamu bent over the oars, his back to the creature, and shivered.

  Eyelids blinked at the pair of shotguns Pepper had pointed at it.

  Treo, in the front of the boat, screamed. One snap of the razor-sharp claws later and Treo’s throat erupted blood.

  Adamu turned around, the beginning of a scream on his lips. Pepper shoved him aside with an elbow and smashed the guns against the Teotl.

  The claws turned his way.

  He couldn’t avoid them, but embraced them, firing the shotgun and throwing it aside to grab the creature’s head and head-butt it. It tried to retreat back into the water, but Pepper hung on, ripping at its eyes with his fingers.

  Three more shots later, Pepper managed to get the net around it. He was losing blood as fast as it was losing ichor, clear ooze making it slippery to drag the creature out of the boat up onto its own submarine.

  Pepper threw it down the hatch, dizzied and burning hot with combat fever. He stopped a second to grab his trench coat before the rowboat sank, leaving the kids treading water or scrambling up onto the submarine. Then he followed the Teotl down.

  He slid a knife out from his ankle strap and regarded the Teotl in front of him. Its legs were finlike around the shins and calves, but it still had feet. The hands were deadly.

  Now the screaming could begin, Pepper thought.

  He took the knife and made a few selective cuts, then pulled the claws free.

  The wailing deafened him.

  And that was the beginning.

  Pepper could hardly understand the creature’s language. He could hardly understand its physiology. Only with that understanding would he torture something, so he could tell if that thing was lying to him.

  It took time, many hours, but eventually Pepper understood the creature enough to make it cry, and then confess. It managed the spies in Capitol City. It told them what to destroy and when. And it was also hunting for John deBrun.

  It thought John was alive and well, and in the city.

  They knew about John. They knew about Ma Wi Jung. It had tortured the dead Loa to find out that John was on a mission to go to the northlands on a steamship.

  There were Azteca warships at sea north of the city. They were ready to stop the journey north and capture John. In case John used an airship, saboteurs waited with bombs to destroy the airship.

  This had been well worth the danger.

  Pepper finally moved the submarine next to the sewers so that Adamu and his “posse” didn’t have to hang off it. When he climbed out of the hatch five hours later, he stank of Teotl ichor, and one of the boys gagged and threw up when saw Pepper.

  He was covered in his own blood, ribbons of shredded flesh, and bits of Teotl. Pepper, wearing the trench coat again, pulled it closer around him, ignoring the pain of cloth rubbing exposed wounds.

  Adamu and Tito dragged Treo’s body out of the water into the sewer and looked back up at Pepper with tired eyes.

  He squatted next to the tiny body. Treo couldn’t have been more than seven. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry. That how it is for you kind,” Adamu said. “You ain’t the one that find him last year, tie up and … bloody, left to die on a street up above.” Adamu looked up at the stone overhead. “So now you give us more gold and escape in that submarine, right? I wonder why. I hear the Azteca coming. You go make a quick escape or what?” Adamu’s lips curled with distaste. Pepper said nothing. “That how it is, right?” Adamu sniffed. “You didn’t shoot that thing, you wanted it alive. The price of one boy, some boy you know nothing about, acceptable. You just like anyone else, we nothing to you.”

  Pepper took a small bundle of cloth from under his trench coat and threw it to Adamu. “It’s all gold. Melt it down before anyone sees what it all is, or they will ask questions and take it from you.”

  Adamu opened it. A crown with a panther. Jade hammered into anklets, and wristbands. All Azteca. He looked back at Pepper. “How you get all this? Who you is really?”

  “The Azteca a scary night story, right?” Pepper asked.

  Adamu nodded.

  “Well, I am the Azteca’s scary story. I have been that for a long, long time. They marching toward Capitol City. They will be here soon.” Pepper winked. “Take the gold. I don’t need it anymore. But don’t waste it.”

  Adamu swallowed.

  “I’m sorry for everything.” Pepper walked back onto the submarine. When he crawled into the hatch, he paused and looked back at Adamu. “When the Azteca come, stay inside here, stay quiet, and don’t go topside. Anyone else coming down here doesn’t understand the tides, or the sewers. They’ll drown, you’ll be safe. Use the gold to get as much food and stores as you can this week.”

  Adamu quivered as Pepper stepped farther down. “Just leave us, please,” Adamu said to Pepper’s face, all that was visible now.

  Pepper climbed down and did so.

  That was almost all the gold. And no matter how much he would have given them, he knew, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

  He looked down at the Teotl. Time to dump the body, clean the submarine, and hide it somewhere. Then go get cleaned up. Eight hours of recovery and as much as he could eat to get the repair processes in his body working overtime.

  After that, find John. Who was alive and here, it seemed.

  But first, a brief bit of rest.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  John stood at the apex of Grantie’s footbridge. This was the northernmost edge of the city, a tall arch that curved over the harbor entrance. It was the farthest point of land on Nanagada, and the ocean stretched underneath out to the h
orizon unbroken.

  Two days of preparing the ship and he still wondered if he should slip out of Haidan’s grip and join the mongoose-men on the wall of the city to fight the Azteca when they came. It looked like the Azteca had taken Anandale and Grammalton, which meant they would be on the Triangle Tracks soon. Even Haidan admitted he didn’t know how much track had been destroyed, or if his men had been able to destroy any bridges leading to Capitol City. They’d be coming soon. Weeks.

  Haidan would find out quickly enough if he left and joined the mongoose-men. How many one-handed men with hooks were in Capitol City?

  Haidan had worked hard to dispel all of John’s doubts, showing him how they would convert the ship to drive over the ice. Haidan had designed it so that the ship could travel over reefs using metal treads that ran off the steam engine, thinking he could use it to get mongoose-men into Azteca lands by sailing around the Wicked Highs to approach their coast. The ship had yet to be finished when the Azteca had come over the Wicked Highs. There was even a new compass and sextant, along with his new charts for the trip. Haidan had thought of everything possible.

  A beacon ship at anchor outside the arch flashed its steady pulse out into the murky gray expanse of ocean.

  Should he do this? Captain another mission to the north when the last had failed? Haidan was persuasive. When you were with Haidan. When John wasn’t checking the steamship over, getting acquainted with it, he was left with his doubts.

  He felt as if he were running again. He’d run from Brungstun, and he felt like a coward for doing it still, even though he had had no other choice. Now he was choosing not to fight the Azteca in battle, but skulk away up north to find some mystery device.

  Where to turn? John couldn’t talk to Haidan, he was too busy supervising everything under the sun in Capitol City. Oaxyctl was crew now, and that shouldn’t have made a difference, but something funny was in the air when John tried to talk to him.

  He scratched under his wrist where the buckles irritated his skin. A faint blotch of rust scarred the tip of his hook. He hadn’t been taking good care of it, oiling it every night and drying it off.

  John turned his back to the ocean and rested his elbows on the rail and looked out over the masts in the harbor. A small dory tacked in toward the smaller docks off one of the piers. Several fires glittered on the piers, illuminating tent cities that grew larger every day.

  In the center of the harbor Haidan’s steamship rode at anchor. Long, sleek, it had three raked-back boilers. No paddle wheels. Haidan used a copy of a propeller dug out of the bottom of the harbor by one of the city Preservationist teams.

  The ship had enough coal to make the journey. Even now a small flat-bottom skiff lay next to the ship, unloading food supplies.

  John gripped the rail. They needed cannon. They needed more guns. A larger contingent of mongoose-men. And more training. John and Haidan had found all the spare fishermen and Frenchis living in town they could. He had the old deckhands drilling the green ones, showing them the ropes. Including Oaxyctl. Everyone but Haidan and John remained on the ship, ready to drop and leave at a moment’s notice.

  Some in the crew were already grumbling, missing family and women who were just within sight.

  Not a good start.

  It would have to do. Just in the two days since John had agreed, Edward had showed him pictures taken by courier airships of the Azteca pushing up the coast toward Anandale.

  Two days was no length to plan an expedition. But Haidan had anticipated much of it already. And what was the alternative? Wait until the Azteca arrived?

  John took a deep, salty breath. There is a plan, a mission, something to do. It isn’t a direct fight, he told himself, but maybe in the big picture this will hurt the Azteca.

  That made him feel better about himself. But it didn’t go far enough in filling in the hole ripped out of his center.

  Sometimes he wondered how much more he could endure.

  John sighed. Edward had also done John an extra honor, trying to help John cope with the loss in Edward’s own way. He’d named the steamship La Revanche. The Revenge, in one of the old languages that Haidan said had died out right after Hope’s Loss. A way to get John’s full support. John knew Haidan was manipulating him, but he embraced it. He wanted, deeply enough, revenge.

  So La Revanche she was. His revenge.

  The town clock, housed in the belfry over the Ministerial Mansion, gonged that it was five. He had to leave for a meeting.

  The footbridge’s grayed planks flexed.

  “Afternoon.” Someone walked forward. John half-turned to his left. The tall man, with straggly, wet, shoulder-length locks and a tattered coat, looked right back at him. “Mr. deBrun.” The man smiled. He looked like a mongoose-man.

  Maybe. A tiny pinprick of recognition stirred in John. “I’m sorry”—he frowned—“I don’t … really know who you are.”

  The man stopped. John felt that the man was a bit stunned, but nothing in the man’s face, or eyes, confirmed that. John let his hook drop to his side. This man felt dangerous. Yet John felt he wasn’t in danger. Be careful, he told himself.

  “You’re telling the truth,” the large man said. “You don’t know who I am.”

  “How should I know you?”

  “It was a long, long time ago.” One of the man’s eyes looked translucent and rheumy. A torn piece of his coat flapped in the wind.

  John stiffened. This was someone who’d known him before he had lost his memory. And he’d recognized him first. Just a tiny prick of it, but something, nonetheless. This was new.

  “Who are you?” John stammered, not sure what to ask. This was the biggest clue to his past life ever, just standing in front of him.

  “Incredible.” The man laughed.

  “How did you know me?” John wanted to seize the man by the large coat. “What was I? You must talk to me.”

  The man shook his head. “This changes just about everything. You really don’t remember anything?”

  John rifled through his head, hoping for a name to go with the feeling. Nothing came. It had been there once though. It was like something on the back of his tongue.

  “Please, can I buy you a meal? A drink?” John asked.

  “This was not quite what I had planned.” The man folded his arms. “You are a planning a trip. A northerly one. I could help you.”

  Suspicion crept up on John. He’d felt this man to be dangerous at first. It was gone now, but he should still trust that instinct. Some people would try to sabotage their expedition: Azteca spies and sympathizers. An industrious person could have found out John had amnesia when he’d washed up in Brungstun easily enough, and be using that to manipulate him now.

  If John’s past included Azteca, who knew what might be happening here? What was a faint memory of feeling, or whatever it was that had happened when he’d seen this man at first, when compared to everything else he had just been through?

  “What are your sailing skills?” John asked, trying to get the man to speak more so he could recapture something, anything, that would help him figure out how to better handle this encounter.

  “I’m good in the cold. And I fight very well.”

  The back of John’s neck prickled. “I’m sorry.” John made another hard decision and hated it. He raised his hook, readying himself for anything. “I am just advising an old friend on outfitting a ship. I think you heard wrong, there is no trip north, whatever you may have heard. But if I hear of anything, I would like to help you. What did you say your name was?”

  “Pepper.”

  “If you left me an address, I could get back to you. I want to know about my past. If you knew me before I lost my memory, you can help me …” If Pepper wasn’t a spy, this was a big risk, turning away what might be an old friend. John’s heart thudded. He couldn’t believe he had to do this. Turn away a clue to his past for fear of disclosing this mission north. But the Azteca who’d killed his family must pay first.

&
nbsp; He was committed to going north. Something deep inside him felt that it was the best course of action. But then, he’d pushed himself north before, following some forgotten ancient impulse within himself.

  Pepper shook his head. “That won’t work, John. I know you’re leaving very soon, so now you’re playing with me. Risky on your part, but I understand your caution. Let’s deal anyway. You bring me aboard La Revanche, and as we sail, I tell you more about your past.”

  John bristled at the manipulation. Pepper could read him well.

  “You could be lying,” John said. If Pepper had met him any other time but right before the invasion, right before the trip north, everything would have been different. “You could say anything, and how would I know?” John ground his teeth. “I’m very sorry I don’t remember you. I want to remember who you are, but I can’t.”

  Besides, what if Pepper got him alone in some room in Capitol City and tortured him for information about La Revanche instead of giving him information about his past? John couldn’t take that risk. Just hearing that he had been alone on Grantie’s Arch would have made Haidan angry.

  “So am I, but don’t worry about it too much.” Pepper reached out his hand. John shook it. “I’m going to go now. To better times?”

  “To better times,” John echoed, puzzled.

  Pepper turned around. He limped back down the footbridge the way he had come.

  If he had been an old friend, then John had done the man a disservice.

  Maybe turning him away had been a mistake.

  John looked reluctantly down at the timepiece on his waistband, a present of Haidan’s. Damn. He was late.

  When he looked back up, Pepper was nowhere to be seen.

  That was when John realized that Pepper had spoken in the same accent that John did.

  Alone on the bridge, John punched the empty air and swore.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  John watched Haidan cup his chin in his right hand, elbow on the chair’s wooden arm, and sigh. The windows had been pulled shut. Only a series of electric lights in the middle of the table lit the area.