Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

But he had no true love of Nanagada, not like Xippilli, who had been taken in by them and lived in Capitol City.

Xippilli ground his teeth. Jerome alone could cause a lot of trouble. He was young, young enough to be flighty. Young enough to still hate the Azteca so much he couldn’t look beyond his past toward the great things that could be done.

Jerome might yet stop Mafolie Pass from being opened. Xippilli gritted his teeth. Jerome could stop the further liberalization of everything this side of the mountains, particularly if he traded on his father’s status to make the Nanagadans refuse to open the one place in the Wicked Highs a road could be built.

But Xippilli hadn’t wanted to think any further about that because the sky thundered and people outside the decorative tents craned their heads to stare up at the sky.

Now Xippilli got up with Ahexotl and they walked outside to look up as well.

Lights hung over the city, slowly descending to turn into a gleaming, fiery, bird-shaped machine. It dropped out of the gloom and toward one of the giant public squares near the main sacrificial pyramid.

“What is that thing?” Ahexotl asked.

“I think,” Xippilli said in horror, “the gods have returned.”

Ahexotl sniffed. “This is problematic.”

Xippilli frowned. “For you?”

“The priests will come back out from the bushes. They’ll refuse to keep using pigs and chickens. They’ll want human blood on the temple grounds. We’ll fight with the Nanagadans. My interests will suffer.”

Xippilli closed his eyes. “Not if we act first, to keep the pipiltin that exist now in power. You have warriors under your control.”

“As do you.”

Both men looked back into the tent at the rest of the powerful men inside. “Then we must meet the new gods and find out what they need. And we need to control what comes next, even if it does include human sacrifice to placate the old priests and the Teotl that will come back in from the bush to meet their kin here.”

In his life Xippilli had walked across the Wicked Highs on foot, almost dying of the cold, to reach the safety of Nanagada. There it had been free of the alien Teotl, who claimed they were gods and demanded blood on their account.

“I’ll take a delegation of the pipiltin to the square,” Ahexotl said. “You make sure our warehouses are well protected from the priesthood. We’ll need to do a lot of bribing yet tonight.”

Xippilli nodded. He’d fought Azteca from the walls of Capitol City to remain free, knowing that if they could hold them off, Nanagada could continue being a safe place. And he had come to Tenochtitlanome in Aztlan again to help reform his people, knowing that if it didn’t work, he could return to Capitol City.

But now, there was nowhere to run. Not if the Teotl dropped in numbers from the sky.

Xippilli sat in the small stone office building he’d rented not too far from the airship warehouses on the edge of the city.

“Do you believe the sun needs blood in order to rise?” he asked Ahexotl. “Particularly since human sacrifice hasn’t been fueling it for the past several years?”

“There have been ceremonies out in the bush,” Ahexotl said. “The old priests would say it is hardly conclusive.”

“But you?”

Ahexotl waved a hand. “I pay both sides gold and what they need to be satisfied. Maybe it’s true, maybe not.”

“The new gods haven’t demanded human sacrifice,” Xippilli said. “What happens if they do not approve?”

“They haven’t not demanded it,” Ahexotl said, brushing aside his bangs and straightening a gold necklace. “Our leaders fall back on old habits and tradition. They’re making an offering. You’d do well to attend.”

“It’s hard,” Xippilli said as Ahexotl pulled a formal cape around his shoulders. Outside the door a steam car waited, a driver picking his nails in the front seat.

“There is a machine that came from the sky sitting in the square, new Teotl walk the ground, and we are caught in the middle. If you would like control of your destiny, right now, Xippilli, you will come with me.”

“Okay.” Xippilli followed him out in the hot early-morning sun and shut the door behind him.

He sat in the back of the car, posture stiff, as it drove toward the center of Tenochtitlanome. A crowd milled around the central pyramid, and Xippilli followed Ahexotl as he pushed through the crowd to stand at the base of the pyramid. The tiny steps stretched up, hundreds of feet into the air.

The small figures at the apex of the pyramid moved around with deadly certainty, pulling roped victims forward to lay on the stone altar.

Xippilli looked down at the dark stone as the jade-hilted knife stabbed downward and someone screamed. He looked back up to see the priest, blood-soaked hair dark against his skin, hold the red heart up to the orange early-morning sun.

The priest’s acolytes threw the body off the pyramid. As limp as a doll it rolled, limbs flailing, all the way down the steps to land before the crowd.

They erupted in cheers, and Xippilli looked at the body. A young girl.

Ahexotl grabbed his shoulder. “They’re saying the sacrifice has been well received and that the gods are coming out of their machine. Come with me.”

They cut their way around the pyramid toward the square where the alien flying machine sat. Xippilli walked, staring up at the upswept wings and curved lines that seemed to blend into the great hull of the machine, a seed-like pod with legs that splayed out on the cobblestones.

Pipiltin milled about near the shade of one of the wings. Sullen moderate and smug old-order priests ringed the edge of the square, but the pipiltin were the ones who approached the strange craft.

“The wonderful thing about all this,” Ahexotl said as they moved past the ring of priests toward a collection of shaded divans, “is that you, me, and the pipiltin know that our gods are just creatures. More advanced, perhaps, as we once were before the cataclysm that left us in the ashes of our forefathers, but just creatures.”

“You see good things in the oddest places,” Xippilli said.

“The gods cannot read our minds, and we can bargain with them,” Ahexotl said.

“What makes you think we can bargain with them?”

Ahexotl waved his hand at the great machine. “They’re here in Tenochtitlanome, are they not? They must need something from us, or they wouldn’t be speaking with us.”

“You have a point.” Xippilli paused as a pair of Jaguar scouts stopped him.

“I’m sorry Xippilli. You must remain here. I will be using you in these days ahead, but the pipiltin, they only tolerate you.” Ahexotl looked apologetic.

Xippilli nodded. Another pair of scouts set up a stool for him, gave him a cup of sweetened fruit juice, then stood on either side of him as Ahexotl continued on.

Their new masters stirred from inside the shadows of the divans, grublike skin visible from the distance. They were surrounded by the pipiltin. Ahexotl joined them, and Xippilli watched the crowd readjust to Ahexotl’s presence.

The meeting lasted a mere fifteen minutes, then Ahexotl strode back out.

“I kept you on for this very reason,” Ahexotl said, smiling, and Xippilli suddenly felt like a rodent under the gaze of a jungle cat. He had no illusions that Ahexotl would dispose of him if he did not serve some function in the man’s calculations.

“And that is?”

“The gods want Capitol City next. They will use us as the front line in the occupation.” Ahexotl brushed past the stool. Xippilli hopped off to follow him.

“We are their chaff?” Xippilli asked.

“They are searching for one thing: any ancients that might be alive still from the days when our world used to be connected to the other worlds. They were most insistent.” Ahexotl had a spring in his step. “They have to be captured and brought to them alive.”