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.
The tiny waves smoothed out.
They went back to sweeping.
“Hey!” The shout echoed around them, bouncing around and skimming over the water.
“Yeah, yeah, this it.” The boats slowed down, the net wrapping around something large under the water.
Tito stood and waved an oar triumphantly. The net wrapped around a twenty-foot-long curve of smooth black wood that broke the surface of the water as they tugged the nets up.
Pepper stood up and shrugged the trench coat off. He pulled the shotgun strapped to his right thigh free, letting his eyes go combat and talk to the gun.
Colors fell away, replaced by a wash of night-vision greens.
His skin crawled. His heart doubled speed, his extra veins sang.
Pepper balanced on the transom of the boat, shotgun aimed at the smooth black wood in the nets, hardly swaying as Adamu jerked the boat forward.
When they bumped against it, Pepper sprang into the air and landed on top without a sound. There was not a visible
joint on the black curves, until Pepper leaned forward and found a lever.
He pushed it in with one hand, then pulled. The hatch opened, and Pepper ducked over it, shotgun aimed down in first, trigger almost all the way down.
Back again.
The kids stared at him. The speed was inhuman, and they were probably wondering what the hell he was.
“Nothing in there,” Pepper said.
“We sink it?” Adamu asked.
“No. I want it.” Pepper looked around at the rows of pillars and dark water. It was out there.
Now left. Be careful, he told himself. Maybe he could take the creature alive.
Get information out of it.
“The Teotl can swim?” Adamu asked.
“Maybe this one flies,” Pepper said. “Maybe it swims. I don’t know. They come in many different shapes and sizes. Depends on what they were bred for.” Some even went back into pupation to change later in life.
There was a distant splash, one audible only to Pepper’s ears.
“It’s coming.” Pepper raised a hand. “Move your boats behind me.”
They hustled to ship oars and move.
Fifteen minutes of silence on the porch passed for Dihana. She heard her name being called farther down the corridor and ignored it.
Not right now. Another five minutes, she thought.
Haidan threw the doors open. The glass pane on the right-hand one shattered, the pieces falling and bouncing off the stone.
“Haidan!” He froze in place. Dihana folded her arms.
First piece of information first. “Anandale and Grammalton aren’t responding to any messages. I think they’ve been cut off. You said we had over a week before Anandale was invaded.”
“I hadn’t heard that yet.” Haidan grabbed the doorframe. “You sure?”
“I can reach Harford. That’s it.”
Haidan bit his lip. “You know my estimate on when they would arrive was a guess. They probably using airship, dropping warrior off in the bush outside them town to cut off the wire.”
“But do they have enough warriors to attack those towns? Or just cut them off.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” His boots crunched over the glass as he walked over to the railing and swept a hand out at the city. “I want to talk about this curfew you put up.”
“Bombs, Haidan. They’re trying to take our airships, our food.”
“I know that. But you compromising things. I have agent there. You asking me where the Azteca is and if they can take a town, but the Tolteca won’t tell me nothing now. We blind and deaf in Tolteca-town. So don’t be surprise I can’t tell you nothing. And by the way, you enjoy telling me mongoose-men what to do too much.”
“I had to do something. And for all the agents you have, we were still getting hit hard. All those lost airships will hamstring us. And the grain silos they’ve destroyed …”
Haidan sat down and rubbed his eyes. “Maybe I wrong to be so vexed. But things is hazy. You want know how many Azteca marching for we? You want know what kind? The food they carry? Until you shut down Tolteca-town, people there was telling me all that. Now they don’t trust me. We can’t afford this, Dihana.”
“I know. They’ll hate me. Xippilli won’t talk to me.”
“Curfew everyone,” Haidan said. “Already I lose one mongoose-man in this. Tolteca and city people beating each other up.”
Dihana stepped closer to him. “I’m sorry.”
He bit his lip. “Curfew for everyone,” he repeated. “Not
only Azteca-looking saboteur out. You know this, you see who kill the council-them back at that warehouse.”
Dihana blinked. He was right.
She sat down on the ground, away from the broken glass, her back against the wrought-iron curlicues. “Full curfew,” she said. “Full curfew. No one out at night unless accompanied by ragamuffins or your men. No matter whether they are Tolteca, Hindi, Nanagadan, or Frenchi. Patrols during the day as usual to try and catch anything.”
“And hope we still trust enough by people-them so any strange thing get report.”
“Yeah. Hope.” Dihana sat for a long second. Hope. “I read those letters you sent.”
Haidan walked around in front of her. “Interesting piece of history,” he said softly. “What you think?”
“Your plan north?” Dihana got up, walked over to the railing. The sun had just set and the sky glowed orange. Lights started to turn on all over the city. “Those letters tore me up, Haidan. I understand what you’re pushing for. But you and I both know we just can’t cut our hands off to do this, Haidan. Three airships …”
Haidan stood with her and looked down at two mongoose-men guarding the doors. The grass had trampled sections on it from the regular patterns they walked around to make sure the building was safe.
“I ain’t go haggle,” Haidan said. “I ain’t go ask for two airship, then one. Forget any airship. What if I say I got a backup plan?”
“A backup?”
Haidan looked over at her with a smile. Of course he would. It was Haidan. There would be plans within plans, no doubt.
Dihana rested her hip against the wrought-iron patterns. “What is it?”
“The steamship you told me I could have, the one out in the harbor.” He smiled. “I help all your Preservationist build it. Been hoping to use it to head up coast, spy on Azteca. We design the hull flat, so it could get into shallow water. But, that same hull, I bet you, work real well in the ice.”
Dihana shook her head. “I’m not surprised. You thought about using it to go north before?”
Haidan coughed into the arm of his shirtsleeve. “Got a few modification I want make to it, thing to help it when they get into the snow. Thing I been thinking about since the last expedition came back from the north sea and I talked to them all. Could be expensive.”
“As much as an airship?” Dihana asked.
Haidan shook his head. “Manpower. I go need to take some of the Preservationist away for a bit.” He grimaced and cleared his throat, dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief that Dihana had been noticing out more and more. “Go remake the ship so they can add treads, crawl over the ice. I seen something similar use up in a lake once, been hoping to make a big one.”
“Still a big gamble, taking away resources for something so uncertain.”
“Uncertain?” Haidan grabbed her arm. “The Loa love the idea. They know something up there, always have. Now they scare. Azteca coming, and Tetol coming with the Azteca, and that mean them Loa staring death in the eye. Whatever lying north, whatever this
Ma Wi Jung
is, it a sure thing, and the Loa know it go help, or they wouldn’t be trying to help we any. Maybe it a weapon of some sort, the Loa ain’t saying nothing yet. But we need this
Ma Wi Jung
. Our old-fathers needed it in the past and couldn’t get it. We need it now.”
Dihana grabbed his arm. “Okay. Do it. Get crew. Try to find anyone willing to go that far north and you’ve got half the battle won. I’ve spent at least two meetings trying to talk scared fishermen back out to sea because they think the Azteca are hiding everywhere.”
Haidan let go of her and folded his arms. “Don’t you worry. I got a whole other surprise for you there.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Later. When thing settle and for sure. Seen? For now I must send message. Make sure me mongoose ain’t go get ambush out on the tracks. Make sure they get those two bridge between the Azteca and here destroy.
You tell everyone you can reach they
have
to leave them town for the bush.”
Dihana didn’t answer, and he didn’t wait for one. The door remained open, the shattered glass twinkling from Capitol City’s lights.
They looked like stars scattered on the ground to her.
Emil found her after the glass had been cleaned up, stopping her in the corridor with a concerned look on his face. Another Councilman hovered at the end of the passageway, waiting to hear her answer.
“Prime Minister.” Emil’s voice strained from the pleasantness and familiarity trying to be injected.
“Coucilman.”
Emil kept his distance and cocked his head. “We have a request, if you have a moment to discuss it?”
Dihana looked down the corridor at the other Councilman, who avoided her gaze. “What do you need?”
Emil spread his hands. “We want to be able to move about.”
“Can’t risk it. There is a curfew at night as well, just in case you were thinking of sneaking out.”
She watched his reaction, a slight opening of the mouth and glance back to the other Councilman. So they were sneaking out of the building. She wondered how. Bribing ragamuffins? She’d have to follow up on that.
The secretiveness, again, irked her.
“We’re setting up a mission to the north,” she told him. “A place called Starport. You know where that is?”
Emil folded his hands. “An old, old memory. That is where we had come down to Nanagada. I was just a child.” He closed his eyes.
“We are going for the
Ma Wi Jung.”
“You
know
,” Emil whispered. “You know about that?”
Dihana smiled. “The Loa are also interested.”
“Don’t matter.” Emil shook his head. “No one alive who could work it. Not on this planet. Certainly not you Preservationist, they know nothing. Is just a ship. A ship like the one we come down to Starport on. Nothing special, they
say, except that the Loa help we make it. But
there none of we that could make it work now
. The last one done dead. You understand? We done dead. I got to go.” His voice was soft. “We preparing for the worse now. We know this time might come, but we had always hope not, you know?”
Dihana let him walk past. “Emil.”
“Yeah?” He kept walking, his back to her.
“Don’t leave the building. It’s dangerous.”
He turned the corner.
They seemed broken, Dihana thought. They’d seen everything fall as far as it could. From before the time of legend, to the fall of Mafolie Pass, to seeing Capitol City come under direct attack. They were facing their own mortality, something they hadn’t done in a long time.
She could feel sorry for them. She could lose a bit of the bitterness she reserved for them.
Dihana left them to send a message to the Loa priestesses, explaining Haidan’s new twist in his planning.