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guns eyeing them.
"Get up," she snapped.
Emil did so, with a startled look.
"Take them out to the gate," she said. "Walk them out into the jungle, and
leave them there."
"Dihana." Emil started a plea.
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"To you, I am
Prime Minister
. Or
Miss Minister."
Someone coughed.
Haidan stood still and looked at them. "You want know what they was doing? We
find them . . ."
Dihana shook her head, picked her fork back up, and sipped from her glass of
milk. "They are no use to me. They don't understand the old-father's
technologies. They barely understand the history that got us here, from what
the Preservationists who talk to them have said. They hide what little they
know from me." Dihana shrugged. "Therefore they are useless."
"You got to understand." Emil put his hands down on the table. "We were
trader. Nothing big. Some of we was just young then. None of we was in charge,
or in the military fighting the Tetol. We was just here, in the city, when it
all happened. And we had never leave."
"Tell Haidan what you were doing, maybe he'll have the heart not to throw you
out of the city."
Haidan glowered at them.
"We talk to some Azteca spy here," Emil mumbled. "Give them information for
the guarantee that we ain't go be sacrifice when they come." He held his tied
hands up to his face and scratched his nose.
"What information?" Dihana asked. That they had betrayed everyone like this
did not surprise her.
They had already shaken her once before, she refused to let them affect her
again.
"We tell them you set up an expedition north again."
Dihana finished her eggs. "You're traitors." She put down her fork with a
clink. "Now you tell me how much of a traitor you are? What do you expect to
get from me?"
"No, look," Emil said. "We had talk about it a long time. We refuse to give
the Azteca anything that go make the city fall. That way, if the city win, we
okay and helping it. But if it fall . . . You see? So the first thing we had
tell them were about this trip north. It probably go fail like the other one.
It were no big secret. Only one trip ever make it, and that were because "
"DeBrun captained it," Dihana said. "He also captains this one."
"What?" The shock in Emil's voice was genuine. It made Dihana flinch. The
other Councilmen swore.
Emil's knees buckled, and he leaned against the table.
"DeBrun alive," he whispered. "He alive!" Then he looked up.
Now Dihana was interested. "What is this all about?"
"John deBrun were the leader of the fight against the first Teotl. When he
came to Capitol City, twenty year ago, we thought we was save. Until we find
out he have no memory anymore. Nothing since he wash up in Brungstun. We
thought him going north would help him get he memory back, but the mission
fail." Emil looked frustrated. "Maybe this would have help him with he memory.
But now he in trouble."
Dihana stood up. "Lock them up," she told Haidan. "Just get them out of
trouble."
Late last night Harford and Malair had gone silent. The Azteca were on the
Triangle Tracks. Now this.
She walked out to her balcony, looking down the street toward the harbor. She
could just see Grantie's
Arch, and through that, she could see a sliver of the ocean. We're tearing
ourselves apart back here in the city, she thought, and the Azteca haven't
even gotten to within firing distance of the walls.
Good luck out there
.
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PART THREE
T
HE
N
ORTHLANDS
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
They had sailed for just over a week already.
La Revanche plunged forward, taking the northern seas wave by pounding wave.
The ship lurched every few hours when a large wave smacked her from an odd
angle, but the bow, again and again, ripped out the other side of a wall of
dark wave, and water would race down the decks and drain off.
It was a rhythm, though John wished he could speed it up. Every week was a
week that the city faced the Azteca without him.
It took two days before the most vulnerable, the mongoose-men, gained their
sea legs. Another day had passed before the last of them stopped throwing up.
By that time the salt in the air coated everything.
The fine patina of crystals made a scraping sound whenever someone ran their
hand down a rail.
By now everyone had an inkling of what long sea voyages were about. Bad
weather, incredible drenching seas, and storms. Dried foods, weevily foods,
and bilge rat patrol. Cockroaches, canned vegetables, and one orange a day,
just in case. The ocean killed here, no longer a friend like behind the
protective barrier reefs just off Brungstun.
John stood on a cabin top, the steamship pitching slowly under his feet.
Oaxyctl walked up the deck and stopped next to him.
"How are you taking this?" John moved over next to him at the rail, which John
walked up and down, up and down, every day. It had been a sudden decision to
ask the mongoose-man to come, but John remembered the way Oaxyctl had been
treated on the street. That would not be repeated on this ship.
Oaxyctl had saved his life, John owed him as much as the man would accept.
"I don't think my stomach will ever forgive me."
John flexed his knees to stand straight in respect to the horizon and smiled.
Revanche gimballed under him. "Give it another week . . ."
A small rogue wave broke the ocean's rhythm, slapping the ship's side and
throwing up spray that struck them both. The water dripped from John's
waterproofed coat, but a small rivulet snuck in under his collar and trickled
down his back.
"Gods." Oaxyctl gripped the railing. "Another week."
"You'll get used to it." John folded his arms. As long as one didn't think
about all the time they were using up.
"What do you to pass time?"
"Knots."
"Knots?"
"Some men can afford books to bring with them and trade them once they're
read," John said. "Others learn crafts. Knots are a good start. Whittling fish
bones into naked women is another."
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