Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Capitol City’s so-called gods were worried. The Teotl had struggled to wipe them out as well, now their more powerful brothers from space had arrived. The Loa had every reason to fear what would come next.

Their human delegates would be moving all throughout the city to prepare for this. And they’d sent a Vodun acolyte to get John.

“There is little time,” Sister Agathy said, looking at John.

The prospect of speaking to the alien creatures in their dens made John sick to his stomach. Hundreds of years of death and manipulation lay at the feet of the Teotl and Loa. It never went away, except for the few brief decades when John had lived in Brungstun as a fisherman, his memories erased.

That felt like a second childhood.

He really missed fishing.

Sister Agathy took John’s hand, and he sighed and followed her away from his apartment and deeper into the panicking city.

Jerome deBrun watched as the Azteca priest prepared his squealing sacrifice. The priest stank, his hair matted into long clumps of black, foul-smelling snarls due to the blood that remained on him. Two younger acolytes held the sacrifice down, its limbs tied with rope.

“Thank God it a pig,” Thomas, from Grammalton, whispered to Jerome. Jerome nodded back.

The pig squealed loudly, the priest held up his stone knife, and Jerome looked down at the muddy floor. This would have been how they killed his mother ten years ago. He bit his lip until he tasted his own salty blood.

When he looked back up, the priest held a beating heart up toward the sun, blood streaming down his hands into his face.

“We give this gift,” said the priest haltingly, unused to translating the words for his audience. “To the sun.”

To make sure it came up again. Right. Jerome sighed.

Behind the priest a large pen with barbed wire held eighteen more pigs, rooting in the dirt, scuffling around. Jerome wondered if they heard their companion’s squeals and could understand their fate.

“They going kill all eighteen?” Thomas asked.

“Yes.” Thomas needed to quit asking questions he should already know the answer to.

The pen’s wall stretched too high to hold in just pigs. Jerome’s mother, as well as other people from Brungstun, must have been locked in a pen like that once.

But that was past. Jerome let out a deep breath.

“They having a reception for all the delegate them after all this.” Thomas leaned in. “You go come, or lock youself in you room early again?”

Jerome took a deep breath and almost gagged on the scent of blood. “Maybe.”

“They say we go meet the pipiltin there,” Thomas said. “You know what they is?”

“Noblemen, businessmen, the people that run the place other than the priests.”

Jerome stared past the priest at the city of Tenochtitlanome and the tips of all its buildings. The delegation, all twenty in stiff-starched black suits soaking up the heat, stood on the flattened-out apex of a pyramid five stories tall at the center of a plaza.

The city ran outward from the pyramid, city streets like spokes from a hub, layers of Tenochtitlanome radiating outward from the core. Thousands of Azteca milled about around the pyramid, staring up at the apex.

Smoke curled up from several marketplaces out near the rim, and from house yards. And people packed the streets everywhere, moving quickly about their business.

“Remind me of Capitol City,” David said from Jerome’s left. He hailed from a small settlement near Batalun.

Jerome shook his head. “Only pigs for eating get killed in Capitol City.”

David shook his head. “At least it ain’t us.”

People kept repeating that. “As if that cancel out all that had go on before,” Jerome spat. Probably a bit too loud; an acolyte looked at him.

“You know Tolteca good people,” David said. “Lot of them never believe in human sacrifice, all this time. Lot of them had to get over the mountains to come to Capitol City to escape all that, and others could never escape, had to stay here. Now they in charge. Now they rule. It all good.”

“Sure,” Jerome said. “Sure.”

He spat on the ground. The mongoose-men who had traveled with the delegates from Capitol City stood at rigid attention, their faces glistening with sweat and khaki uniforms sopping with it. Nanagada’s best bush warriors, wasting their time in the heat.

A local chief of the new pipiltin held the reception in a tented platform on the edge of Tenochtitlanome. Here the roads petered out into jungle, and lower-class Azteca followed donkey carts into the city or carried large bales of wheat on their backs.

Newly acquired electric lamps swung from poles, lighting the interior now that the sunlight faded.

Chiefs stood around in traditional padded-cotton armor, their hair carefully combed forward and fringed, with feathers twined throughout.

“Hi-lo.” An Azteca woman with lightly tanned skin and bangs over her eyes smiled at Jerome. He held a glass of fermented something, too strong for him, and considered her plain white cotton dress. She chewed something rubbery in her mouth. A prostitute for the delegates’ pleasure.

Jerome looked down at the drink and walked back over to the bar. “You have any beer?”

The man stared at him, then held up another mug of the foul-smelling fermented stuff.

“Clot it.” Jerome took a breath and drained it. He almost gagged, but it warmed him up. He grabbed another and downed it. And then another.

“Take it easy.” Xippilli sat next to him and intercepted the next mug. “This goes straight to your head.”

Jerome glared at him. Xippilli looked a bit fuzzy in the strong electric light. “What you all about?”

“This is a place to be seen, Jerome, not to get drunk.” Xippilli pointed out a series of Azteca chiefs. “Those are very powerful, and rich, men.”

“The worse kind.” Jerome looked back at Xippilli. “You know how many of them rip through Brungstun?”

“Yes.”

Jerome grabbed Xippilli’s arm. “Which one of them over there was in Brungstun? Tell me.”

“Let it rest.” Xippilli shook his head. “You can’t kill them, they’re a part of all this.” He raised his cup and waved it all around. “They’re at least willing to help move us to moderation, they see the direction things go. Without their support we wouldn’t even have this.”

“We don’t need it.”

“You agreed to represent the town of Brungstun in these negotiations, Jerome.”

“You know I can’t say no. What they go say if I don’t? John deBrun, look, he son refuse to stand for the town. No, I know what they all expect.” Jerome grabbed another mug before Xippilli could intercept.

“If we open a road through Mafolie Pass in the Wicked Highs, trade will triple as we’re able to easily cross from Aztlan to Nanagada, both civilizations will be able to know each other. You were given a great honor by your town, a tribute to what your father did.”

“I ain’t John!”

“On that”—Xippilli pulled away from Jerome—“we both strongly agree.”

“I representing Brungstun, trust me.” Jerome watched him leave. Xippilli, despite his protests, was really no different from the people he’d run from. He’d crossed the Wicked High Mountains and trekked all the way to Capitol City for a new life. Yet here he stood, walking over to a nearby chief, and laughing. Talking to murderers.

Brungstun, first town on the other side of the Wicked High Mountains, had been the first overrun when the Teotl launched the invasion of Nanagada. They’d poured over the mountains into his town. Why should Jerome help make it easier for the Azteca to do it again?

He’d make sure any way over the Wicked Highs remained closed.