Crystal Rain (22 page)

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Authors: Tobias S. Buckell

BOOK: Crystal Rain
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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 horizon 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.
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.
 
 
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.
“We close,” Haidan told him.
“Revanche
stock. Got enough food for there and back.” He cleared his throat. Moving the hand under his chin away, he laced his fingers together to look over the top of his chapped knuckles at John. “How you feeling?”
John changed the subject. “Prime Minister Dihana will christen the boat tomorrow?” She was out meeting a group of refugees, trying to bring order and get a census of how many lay in the city’s streets and in the tents in the piers.
“And you leave the next day,” Haidan said. “Everything, charts, copies of the documents I want you to read, are in you cabin, sealed.”
“Thank you. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Aren’t you coming? Who knows this plan better?”
“I have to stay.” Haidan put the palms of his hands on the edge of the table and drummed his fingers. “I visible. The whole city know me, know my skill for leading the mongoose. If I leave, what they go think? DeBrun, you the
best sailor Capitol City ever see. You and I both know you can figure that map out and navigate that boat.”
“This is that important?” John dug the tip of his hook into the table and broke off a small piece of wood.
“The Loa think so. I believe it. Dihana believe it. We got three of the city best Preservationist ready to get on you ship. John, man, I ordering my best mongoose-man out with you: Avasa. And his best mongoose. I can’t give you anything more without hurting us here in the city bad. You understand how important I think this may go be?”
The door opened. A mongoose-man walked in and whispered into Haidan’s ear. “Okay,” Haidan said as the man left. “They here.”
Haidan let go of the table. The table lights lit him from beneath. His dreads cascading down out of seemingly nowhere.
“A Loa join we now.” Haidan leaned forward, more of his weathered face coming into the light. “They insist on it, just as they had insist on the journey. See what I mean about how important this is?”
A strange tickle ran down the back of John’s spine. Would Loa be on his ship? A strange reversal from the last expedition, a journey the Loa had protested, priestesses denouncing the attempt throughout the waterfront. The Loa themselves even came out of their six streetside buildings to stand on balconies and show their displeasure.
“This Loa tell me that it go help you. We really need that.”
“Okay,” John said. “Where the priestess?”
Wheels squeaked. A divan poked forward through the door into the electric light. A Loa’s comma-shaped body lay on the couch: a wet, pink silhouette on the purple plush. Its steeltipped tentacles dragged on the floor, pushing it forward.
“This isn’t the same Loa we speak to earlier,” Haidan noted.
“I have not the need of a translator,” the Loa hissed at them. The sound sent shivers down John’s shoulders. “My helper stays in the corridor.” The door shut. “Nor do I want any other than you to hear my words.” Clear eyes squinted in the light. The creature looked around the room by shifting its thick upper body up onto a tentacle to regard them.
“The
Ma Wi Jung
,” it rasped. “The location coordinates you have are correct. And you surmise that it can be used to stop Azteca correctly.”
“Good to know,” Haidan said. “But what is it? How can we use it to stop the Azteca? And which Loa are you?”
“The one you spoke to is dead,” the Loa said with a sigh. “It is unimportant. This expedition faces an obstacle. You must realize that you are not capable of using the
Ma Wi Jung
. Your technology, even if closely guided by us, is hundreds of years away in such regards. But my kind has an item that can be of assistance. So we must work together.”
It held up a silver cone in one of its tentacles and set it on the table. John picked it up and turned it over. “How will this help us use the old-father artifact?”
“If you follow the coordinates exactly, and dig through the ice to get to it, the entrance to the
Ma Wi Jung
is an oval door, and on the left is a square box. Place this on the box. It will take a week, maybe two, but it will be able to open the
Ma Wi Jung
to you,” the Loa said. “It will inform you when it is able to open the ship to you. You can then tell it to open the ship to you.”
“But then what?” Haidan asked. “How they go use this thing? What it go
do
?”
“I have not finished,” the Loa said. “The
Ma Wi Jung
will need more than just you can provide it to create a powerful weapon. Our device will follow your commands. You must tell it to force the
Ma Wi Jung
to come to Capitol City. Tell it, ‘Khafou, fly this device back to Capitol City coordinates.’ You must use that exact phrase. It has been precreated for you to tell it to do that. Do you understand?”
John and Haidan nodded.
“Please repeat the command phrase,” the Loa said. John repeated it. The Loa settled farther into its couch. “Good. Make sure you stand inside the doors when you say this. You will return to the city where we can share the power of the
Ma Wi Jung’
s functions with you.” It shifted its flabby body. “Remember, you cannot control the
Ma Wi Jung
without us. Only together can we use
Ma Wi Jung
as a weapon. If you try
to do this by yourselves, or hide
Ma Wi Jung
from us, you will certainly suffer.”
Haidan leaned forward again. “The Councilman Emil told Dihana
Ma Wi Jung
is a ship, one that can fly up past the sky,” Haidan said to the Loa. “I listen to you speak, and it sound like you believe the same thing. Is that what this thing is?”
The Loa shifted. “I think so.”
“Then how it go make a weapon?”
“If you had something that could take you anywhere in the world in minutes,” the Loa said, “how would you use it as a weapon?”
John leaned forward while Haidan thought about that. “What exactly is this?” John held up the cone from the table.
“I was born to be master of languages for my kind and nothing more,” the Loa explained, almost out of breath with the sentence. It spoke as if it was not accustomed to so much effort. “My memory dims with the years, but I remember almost three hundred years. Some of us were grown for the purpose of breaking into ancient machines and controlling them. They are the Kha. That was in the long years before I was created, when there were machines to be controlled, and fought, and used. But no one has ever needed Kha since then, and so they died. Only our master breeders kept the templates, in case they were ever needed. We have nourished and raised this Kha ever since the old prime minister died. We teach it what little we know, we expose it to the ancient ones among us who still remember things. It will crack open the
Ma Wi Jung
when you arrive using old memories we have kept for it. It will let you in.”
“And bring the machine back to the city?” Haidan asked.
“Yes. Then we can study and use this machine to save us. We will do this together. We must examine this machine together. You must use the Kha to bring it here, or we will all die when the Teotl attack. And you must do this soon. Already one of us has been killed this week. It is untenable.”
The tentacles stirred, their metal tips clinking against the cement floor, and the wheeled chair rolled out of the room.
“Something ain’t right.” Haidan leaned forward in his chair to look closer at the cone of metal in John’s hand. “They been fighting metal technology for as long as anyone can remember, now they want help us bring it back. Strange change of mind.”
“I imagine they want to survive.” John had been transfixed watching the Loa. A second memory returned to him. Distrust. It sat ugly in the pit of his stomach. “They’re staring death in the face.”
“Yeah. And they refuse to let us guard them. Something up.”
“They’ve been part of Capitol City for as long as anyone can remember.” John puzzled through the question himself. “You might disagree with their advice, but haven’t they always helped the city?”
“Common interest,” Haidan said. “The Loa don’t want be invade and that’s the only thing I can pin them down on. True, they ain’t like we, and we don’t know what they thinking, and we need be careful out there, but they still want the Azteca away from the city. I think that the only thing we can trust from them.”
“So this is probably genuine.” John stood up. He wanted to get out to the ship, check it over, make sure all was well. He needed to hide the Loa’s Kha somewhere safe with the other papers he would use to guide the mission north. And he wanted to get in motion before his own doubts and second guesses could begin. “We should get moving, then.”
“Yeah.”
John reached out with his good hand, keeping the Kha in the crook of his elbow. Despite the metallic sheen, it felt as warm as his own body. “You’re right though. If the Loa want this that bad, it probably is going to be one hell of an adventure.”
Haidan stood up and grabbed John’s good hand. “Good. I need you navigation and captain skills. You the best. We lucky you made it to the city.”
“The north won’t be an easy place on men.” John let go
of Haidan’s hand and gestured at his hook.
Haidan looked at the leather straps. “Neither was Hope’s Loss when you and me had pass through there. I lucky to still be alive.”
They looked at each other, remembering others who had died in the jungle from whatever it was they had walked into.
Only John hadn’t been affected.
“At least,” Haidan said thoughtfully, “we got a chance now. Before I were spitting in the dark, hoping this would help we. Total long-shot plan. Now I know for sure it a good thing. You could make all the difference, John, if this thing go let we hurt the Azteca something good.”

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