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with sharp bangs. Once inside, John set the canvas bag on the counter. Wooden shelves of tinned food lined the back wall. A few burlap sacks leaned against the counter’s foot.
    Troy opened the bag and pulled out the two paintings.
    “I like this. Is a righteous picture,” he said. A ship listed at sea, mast broken. Giant waves smacked at it. “This other one”—Troy pointed at a sketch of the Brungstun cliffs—“I sell me cousin that.”
    “Those took a lot of work,” John said.
    “I won’t go thief you, man.” Troy reached under the counter and pulled out a gold coin.
    John sucked his breath in. “You’re too generous.” Frenchies dove along the reefs to supplement their fishing. Sometimes they found strange machines that had fallen from the sky in the days of the old-fathers and would strip them for any precious metals they could find. “You’re making carnival very sweet.”
    “Is a time to enjoy.” Troy smiled.
    “You coming to town?”
    Troy laughed. “I know I go see you there, right?”
    John chuckled with him and looked at the sacks on the floor. “I’m going to need some salt.”
    “I get you a sack. Hold up.” Troy disappeared and came back out with a hefty bag he dropped on the counter. John made to go pay for it, but Troy held up a hand. “You coin no good with me.” He smiled.
    “Thank you.” John grabbed the sack as Troy cleared his throat.
    “John … the painting. They ever help you memory yet?”
    John looked down at the burlap between his fingers. “No. Not yet.” He wondered if Troy bought his paintings out of pity. “Maybe they never will. You still buying?”
    “Anything for an old friend, John.” Troy smiled.
    John hefted the sack. “Thanks, Troy. See you at carnival.”
    “See you at carnival, John.”
     
    When John stepped back out of the shop, he paused. The two old men had stopped playing dominoes and stared at the sky over the water off the Wicked Highs. Three bloated metallic slivers crept their way back toward the Azteca side of the Wicked High Mountains, circling around the mountain chain over the reefs and rock chimneys.
    According to legend and some older folk, Nanagadans once lived on the land on the other side of the Wicked Highs. The coast over there was just as inhospitable, so no Azteca ships ever took to sea. But small airships could climb over the peaks, and larger airships sometimes skirted out over the ocean to fly over Nanagada. Dropping spies into the jungle here, no doubt. John usually saw one a month when out fishing.
    The old man nearest to John harrumphed and slapped down a domino. “They running more and more of them things these days. I already see five this month. Watch and see if Azteca warrior don’t soon start walking over the mountain to cause trouble.”
    “Them feather-clot won’t be coming over the mountain anytime soon,” his partner said. “They had a whole army that try that once on Mafolie Pass. The mongoose-men gun them down something wicked.”
    “Yeah. Maybe that true. Hey. You lose you game.”
    “What?” The other old man was startled.
    John walked out onto the sand. He knew he lived close to the mountains and that the Azteca lay on the other side. It took something like this to remind him how close the Azteca were. Sometimes, when John wondered where he’d come from, he imagined he was a Nanagadan spy who had been trying to escape from the Azteca at sea and been shipwrecked.
    That was just a fantasy, though. Thinking about Azteca made him nervous. “Come on, Jerome,” he said. “We have to go now.”
    Seeing the Azteca blimps stole any positive feelings from the day. He wanted to go home.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    People peered out their windows to see the excitement as Dihana and thirty ragamuffins marched the two blocks to Capitol City’s waterfront. A drunken fisherman paused at the street’s corner, swayed, then retreated back into the alley’s shadows when he saw them.
    The ragamuffins slowed down in