The Drowned Cities

26

MOUSE’S FACE BURNED, a constant reminder of his new associates: Slim and Gutty, Stork and Van. TamTam and Boots and Alil, and dozens more.

They stood around and laughed and pointed their guns at the prisoners where they lay flat on the ground with their hands on the backs of their heads, and every one of the soldiers carried the same burned brand on his cheek that Mouse carried on his own.

“You’re Glenn Stern’s now, warboy,” Gutty said, holding a pistol up to Mouse’s head. “Elite! Best of the best.”

Mouse held still, not sure what he was supposed to do. The barrel of the gun pressed behind his ear.

“Half-bar like you, there’s only one question…” Gutty went on. “Do you got what it takes?”

Mouse hesitated.

Gutty jammed the gun hard into his head, and Mouse finally understood.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes, what?” Again the pistol jab.

“Yes, I got what it takes?”

“Then say it!” Gutty shouted. “I want to hear my warboy say it proud!”

“I got it!”

“GOT WHAT?”

“I got what it takes!”

“WHAT?”

“I GOT WHAT IT TAKES!” Mouse shouted as loud as he could, sure Gutty was going to blow his brains out.

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU, SOLDIER!”

“I GOT WHAT IT TAKES!”

“YOU A SOLDIER?”

“YES!”

“YOU CALL ME SIR, HALF-BAR! YOU CALL ME SIR!”

“YES, SIR!”

“THAT’S RIGHT, HALF-BAR! SING IT OUT!”

“I GOT WHAT IT TAKES, SIR!”

Mouse was shouting so loud his voice cracked. Gutty started laughing, doubled over with hilarity. Some of the other warboys were laughing with him.

“Damn,” Gutty said. “You got what it takes, huh?”

Mouse wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, so he shouted again, “YES, SIR!”

Gutty slapped him upside the head, hard. “Shut up, maggot. You keep shouting like that, you’ll bring Army of God down on us, get us all killed.” He slapped Mouse again. “Now go get us some water. Fill our canteens.”

He tossed a bunch of plastic bottles over to Mouse, a big pile of them, all covered with pictures of Accelerated Age cars. One of them said MOTOR OIL on the side. A big yellow one read ANTIFREEZE.

“Move, soldier!”

Smoldering with fear and humiliation and adrenaline, Mouse gathered up all the bottles.

Every minute with the UPF soldiers felt like he was balancing on a slime-slick swamp log, always about to slip and drown. He clutched all the bottles to his chest, and then, with a surge of hope, he realized that he was being sent away from the camp.

Just himself.

He was a dog sent to fetch, and they didn’t take him seriously. But if he was quick about it, he could simply slip away. Disappear into the swamp, make like a lizard and disappear into the greenery.

Mouse glanced around, gauging the soldiers. They were all busy guarding prisoners. Talking with one another. Kicking back after their march. He gathered up the bottles and started off, forcing himself not to glance back, not to give away his intentions.

Don’t look sneaky, he told himself. Pretend like you’re a good soldier boy.

He walked quietly, listening to the jungle. No one was following. He was sure of it. He moved on through the jungle to where swamp water turned the ground squashy. Just a little farther. He reached the water.

Now, he thought. Run.

It was his chance. He needed to do it while they were distracted setting up camp. But something stilled him. Instead, Mouse crouched down and started filling bottles, listening to the jungle around him. Something didn’t sound right. He listened to water gurgling into the jugs, and to the jungle, trying to figure it out. It was too quiet.

With a chill, he realized that he wasn’t alone. Someone was watching him. He filled another canteen and casually let his eyes wander the greenery, as if he were simply bored and watching butterflies.

Nothing. But he was almost sure that he was being watched.

He finished filling the bottles. Straightened. Still nothing. But he couldn’t get rid of the fear that he was being watched. Mouse knew the jungle. He’d lived in it and hunted it, and foraged it, and there was someone out there.

He hefted the water bottles. Last chance to run. It won’t get any better. But he didn’t move.

Why was he so scared?

The boys back there weren’t supernatural. They were just thugs with guns. That was all. They couldn’t watch him all the time. They weren’t watching him now.

So why did he feel so afraid?

With a sick feeling, Mouse turned and started back toward the voices of the soldiers’ camp. Knowing that he was chickenshit. Knowing that he should run for it, but too afraid to risk it.

He came into the clearing and dropped the water bottles in a pile. The camp was just as he’d left it. Soldiers joking. One of them, a blond kid with an acid-burned face who he thought was called Slick, was kicking the villagers every time they looked like they were lifting their heads or looking around. Other soldiers were squatting down, eating smoked jerky. Sergeant Ocho sat against a tree, looking sleepy, holding his side where he’d been ripped up by the half-man. Nothing out of place—

Mouse froze. Lieutenant Sayle stood on the far side of the clearing, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. And he was watching him. Cold gray eyes, watching. They didn’t show a thought or a feeling, his gaunt face was expressionless, but the man’s eyes lingered.

Mouse made a hesitant salute as his skin prickled, aping what he’d seen the other warboys do. The lieutenant’s lips quirked into something like a smile, mocking, but he gave a lazy return to Mouse’s gesture of respect.

“Ghost!” someone shouted. “Hey, half-bar!” Mouse finally realized that he was being called and turned away from the lieutenant.

Gutty, the slack kid with the flappy skin on his arms and legs and belly.

“Go get us some firewood!” he ordered. “On the double, boy! We don’t keep no lazy maggots! You’re elite! Let’s see the sweat! UPF ain’t afraid to sweat! Get on it, warboy!”

Mouse tried another salute. He was as exhausted as everyone else, but he stumbled for the forest again.

Maybe this time, he’d get free.

As he headed into the jungle, he saw a pair of soldier boys emerge from the trees, liquid shadows, from the direction of the swamps where he’d just been, gathering water.

For the barest instant, they glanced at Mouse, and his gut tightened into a knot of fear as they crossed the camp, headed for Lieutenant Sayle.

They were all around, Mouse realized.

It was all a test. Every bit of it. He wasn’t crazy. There really were eyes on him.

“Make sure it’s dry!” Gutty shouted. “I don’t want no damn green wood smoking and going out!”

The jungle travel continued, warboys joking and talking themselves up, kicking the prisoners when they didn’t move fast enough. They put Mouse on guard duty, standing over people who had been kind to him.

Sometimes one of the soldiers would come over to him and tell him that one of the prisoners had disobeyed.

Mouse was supposed to kick them in the ribs, or else pour acid on their backs, to make their skin smoke. He called them maggots and worse.

He kicked them to stand up when they lay on the ground.

Made them put their faces in the dirt, when they were standing tall.

Mouse kept expecting someone to give him a gun and order him to kill one of them. He’d heard stories about how the warlords recruited. He knew what was coming, and he dreaded it.

He kicked and beat and burned the townspeople, waiting for the next horror, and the people of Banyan Town looked at him with all the hatred that they used to reserve for soldier boys.

The warboys laughed and encouraged him.

Mouse wanted to cry, to make it all stop, to just refuse, but the one time he flinched, they made him do more. They made him hit harder. He hesitated to thrash Auntie Selima with a bamboo cane the way they wanted, and so they made him do it again and again, until her back was bloody ribbons. And then they made him salt the wounds.

Mouse wanted to vomit, but he learned the lesson.

Once, he apologized to Mr. Donato after he’d kicked the man in the ribs, for being too slow getting up, but he couldn’t tell if the man was even listening.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to. I’m sorry.”

But he was too much of a coward to stop doing what Lieutenant Sayle and the others ordered him to do.

One night, in the darkness by a campfire, Mouse finally just gave up and asked when it would happen. When would they make him kill these people who had taken him in?

Sergeant Ocho had plopped down beside him and asked, “How you doing, soldier?”

Mouse stared at the prisoners, but didn’t answer.

Keep silent. Ride through. Don’t let them know what you’re thinking.

He thought of Mahlia, who tried so hard to never let her feelings show on her face. To never let anyone know what was going on inside her head. No weakness. The only way to survive amongst these coywolv was to hide all your fear and weakness. Never show anything.

But Ocho saw right through. He followed Mouse’s gaze to the prisoners.

“It’s hard to get broke in, no doubt. This is the hardest part.”

Mouse kept his mouth shut, not daring to say anything. It was another test. If he said what he was thinking, they’d come up with some new way to hurt the townspeople and him. If he showed where he was vulnerable, they’d put a knife right there and twist and twist, and then after he’d cried and hurt enough and given away another weakness, they might just decide to blow his head off.

“After we get rid of these maggots, it’ll be better,” Ocho said. Then he gave a sort of laugh and said, “Well, it’ll be clearer, anyway. When you’re shooting at Freedom Militia or Army of God, you don’t got to feel sorry for them, ’cause you know they’ll do you the same.”

Mouse looked at the sergeant. “How come you don’t make me kill one of them? You make me do everything else.”

Ocho looked at him like he was crazy. “We ain’t animals! Not like the Army of God. Godboys, they shoot you for no reason at all. They shoot you if you ain’t wearing a patriotic shirt, or if they think you don’t sing loud enough for their general, or they think you got the wrong religion. We ain’t like that. These maggots are our prisoners, now. They try to run, or they hurt one of us, then they get themselves a bullet.”

He shrugged. “But we don’t just go around wasting people.” He nodded out at the prisoners, all lying flat on the ground, shadow lumps that might as well have been corpses for all that they moved. They’d learned that movement got them kicked, so they lay still like stones.

Ocho continued, “Dead maggots ain’t any good to us. They might not look like much, but all those maggots, they’re walking resupply. Every one of ’em. We start knocking them off, we hurt ourselves, too. We gotta keep them alive, get them earning. Maggots like that work scavenge for us, we sell the scrap to the blood buyers, we get bullets to fight the war. Without these maggots here, no way we can take this place back from all the traitors and collaborators and maggots who tore this country up…” He trailed off.

“You don’t get all this, cause you ain’t with us, yet. You don’t think you’re a soldier. Don’t got the feel of it.”

He patted his rifle, then nodded out at the troops. “You got to know that these boys here, they’ll back you up. Maybe they give you all kinds of hell right now, but when the bullets start flying and you got one in the leg, they’ll come get you. They’ll get you back to camp and doctor your ass, even if all they got is a bottle of Black Ling whiskey and a shoelace to do it. As long as you’re still yelling and flopping, they’ll put it all on the line to make sure AOG don’t get their knives on you. We’re brothers. You’re our brother.”

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

Ocho laughed. “You only got half-bars, and you want them to treat you like a soldier?” He shook his head. “Nah. You got to earn that, little war maggot.

“We make the Drowned Cities, you see the real war—that’s when you show your boys that you’re worth calling a brother. You do that, and they’ll never let you down. The Colonel says it don’t matter where we come from before. Don’t matter what we did before. Here, we’re UPF. We back you up right.”

He clapped Mouse on the shoulder. “Don’t think you ain’t doing good, half-bar. Soon as we get a little blood on your prick, you’ll be golden.”

He flicked the brand that still throbbed on Mouse’s cheek. “We’ll give you some verticals to go with those horizontals. Burn you right. Let you stand tall.”

I don’t want this, Mouse thought. I don’t want to be golden with the boys. I don’t want blood on my prick. I don’t want them to burn me again.

It felt like some part of him was dying inside, but there were soldier boys all around, and wherever he turned, they were looking at him, making sure he followed the path they’d laid out.

Either he followed it, or he was dead.

Doctor Mahfouz used to talk about how everyone had choices, and when he said things like that, he made it seem so possible. And maybe for him, it had been. Mouse didn’t think the doctor would have whipped Auntie Selima or poured acid down Mr. Salvatore’s chest. He would have stood tall.

And the soldier boys would have shot his head right off and gone on to someone else without a second thought.

I don’t want to be a warboy.

But there was no escape. There was no other path that didn’t lead to death.

I’m a coward, he thought. I should stand up and fight them or run away, or something. But he was still afraid, and the soldier boys were always watching.

Three days later, they hit the Drowned Cities.

27

MAHLIA AND TOOL lived in the jungle, feeding off the dead coywolv for a week, while her torn-up arm healed and while the half-man gained back his strength.

Gradually their diet expanded. They caught fish and frogs. Mahlia ate ant eggs and grasshoppers and snared crawdads, and every day she improved.

She knew it was time to go when Tool came back with a wild pig slung over his shoulder, moving at a stride that would have made her jog to keep up. They were ready, as healthy as either of them could hope to be. That night, they roasted slabs of the pig over a fire of old cardboard boxes and timber chunks that she’d rooted out of one of the ruins.

She knew she needed to be on her way—Mouse was out there, trapped with those soldiers—but still she let days pass. It was like she was frozen in place. Here, she was safe. As long as she just lingered with the half-man, she was as safe as she had ever been since the peacekeepers left. Once she started pursuing Mouse, it would all be lost.

Memories of her escape from the Drowned Cities were flooding back. The mobs and the soldiers, the torches and dripping machetes. The cleansing of everything the peacekeepers had wrought during their years of trying to civilize the city and make the different warlords stop fighting, once and for all.

She remembered hiding in the flooded lower floors of towers and apartment blocks, after her mother had been caught. Living in shadows. Praying that no one would notice her as she moved by darkness from one swamped building to the next. Praying that she wouldn’t run across someone in those rooms as she swam and waded and crawled to the city outskirts. Night after night, she lay in darkness, watching troops set up perimeters, waiting to slip past. She’d had two hands then.

And now she was going back.

On the tenth day of her recuperation, Mahlia clambered up onto one of the great vine-covered overpasses and looked toward the Drowned Cities.

From a distance, if you didn’t listen for the warfare, the place could have been abandoned. But as you got closer, you could make out details. Trees sprouting from windows, like hair from an old man’s ears. Robes of vines draping off slumped shoulders. Birds flying in and out of upper stories.

Mahlia tried to imagine what the place must have been like without all of that. She’d seen pictures of the old Drowned Cities, the version from long before, in one of the museums the peacekeepers had been trying to protect.

Her mother had taken her to the museum, wanting to examine what other old things might be of value to foreign collectors, and Mahlia had seen the photographs. But it had all been surreal. Open roads with cars on them. No boats at all. A river that cut through the place, instead of swamping it. A different place. She’d looked at the pictures and wondered where everyone had driven their cars away to. Or maybe they were just at the bottoms of all the canals. Sleeping.

The whole museum felt a little like a cemetery. A place where you came to look at the dead. And really, the artifacts weren’t anywhere near as good as the ones that her mother kept in her warehouse.

“People value history, Mahlia,” her mother said. “Here, look at this one.” She lifted a piece of parchment, holding it gingerly. “You see these names? This meant war. When they signed this, it changed the course of the world.” She laid the parchment down again, exquisitely careful. “People will spend fortunes to touch the paper that these men touched.”

She smiled then. “No one here knows the stories behind these things, so they don’t know the value. To them, this all looks like junk,” she said, and she waved at the warehouse around them, filled to bursting with her mother’s selections.

Old flags. Paintings. The marble heads from statues of old men that had had their heads knocked off and found their way into her shop at the mouth of the river, where collectors came to buy history and scavenge.

Her mother had a tiny shop on the storefront, where she studied potential buyers. But it was the warehouse that was truly astonishing. She’d installed it in the belly of a huge building near the city center, several apartments that she’d bought and then carefully bricked up, hiding them away from prying eyes. It was there that she brought her best buyers.

When Mahlia was small, she was sometimes allowed to watch as men and women surveyed the paintings leaning against walls, the statuary of presidents, the murals chipped from government buildings and transported whole to the warehouse.

Her mother said that was how she met Mahlia’s father.

He’d had a passion for history, just like her. He’d bought little silver snuffboxes from revolutionary times, and quill pens that had signed famous documents. Handwritten letters. All sorts of things. He’d kept coming back, again and again, until her mother finally understood that it wasn’t just antiquities that her father loved. And that was where Mahlia had come from.

“You think you have a path?” Tool asked, breaking her thoughts.

Mahlia startled. For all his bulk, the half-man was silent. It was spooky to have him suddenly appear. “Yeah,” she said. “There’s a way.”

“Undetected?” the half-man pressed.

Mahlia bristled. “Well, if it ain’t, we’re both dead pretty fast, right?”

Tool smirked. “Escape is simpler than infiltration, girl. Just because you managed to flee that place doesn’t mean that you can reenter it. The direction of your passage is not the only variable. Where will you lair once you have passed within? How will you survive until you find your brother?”

“He’s not my brother.”

Tool growled at that. “Then leave him to the Fates.”

Mahlia knew what Tool was getting at, but she didn’t like his bringing it up again.

“I owe him,” she said.

“Debts are a heavy burden. Throw them off, and you walk free.”

It was tempting, for sure. Just run away. Pretend that the licebiter who had cracked the jokes and played the pranks and who had rooted up an entire nest of pigeon eggs when they were starving had never existed. That he’d never saved her from all the pain the soldier boys had wanted to slash into her.

“Can’t.” She grimaced. “Anyway, why are you helping me? Why don’t you just run off? No one’s keeping you here.”

“I have my own reasons.”

“It’s not because I saved you?” Mahlia taunted.

Tool’s bestial face swung back to regard her. “No.”

The tone of his voice frightened her, because she realized that she had no idea what drove the half-man. When they’d been foraging for food together, she could sometimes forget that he was something other than human. And then suddenly the creature would be looking at her with his huge yellow eye, and scarred face, and doglike muzzle and tiger teeth, and she felt as if she was staring into the face of something that occasionally saw her as food.

Mahlia steeled herself. “So why?”

“I have decided I have unfinished business there.”

“Since when?”

Tool regarded her for a long time. Mahlia forced herself not to look away. Finally Tool said, “When Colonel Stern held me captive, he used me to fight. I fought panthers, and Army of God captives. I fought his own soldiers, the ones who ran from battle, or who failed him in some way. Stern enjoyed that. He used to sit just outside the fighting cage and watch me kill his enemies. He cheered a great deal when I tore off a man’s arms. I think that I would like to meet him again, without a cage between us.”

“That’s impossible.”

Tool smiled at that. “And saving your friend isn’t?”

Before Mahlia could answer, he turned and swung off the overpass, dropping down to a tree. It swayed and bent with his weight, leaves rustling wildly. Mahlia listened, expecting a thud as the half-man hit the ground, but she heard nothing. It was as if the jungle had swallowed him into its belly. Disappeared without a sound.

“Tool?”

“It will take two days for us to reach the river,” the half-man called up. “If you wish to have a chance of saving your friend, it’s past time we were on our way.”

28

WHEN MOUSE HAD been younger, his family had all talked with hushed tones of the Drowned Cities’ lawlessness and decay.

His father had sometimes gone there with a skiff full of chickens in bamboo cages, to sell to the city people and to the army soldiers, but his father’s face had always been grimly set when he poled off through the swamplands, and grimly set when he returned.

He’d always gotten the money they’d needed, along with the new hoe or the new barbed wire for fencing their pigs better, but he’d never been happy about it—the going out, or the coming back.

Mouse’s brother said it was because the soldiers shook you down as you crossed their territories. If you looked at them wrong, they’d call you a traitor or a turncoat or a spy or Chinese collaborationist, and just shoot you outright.

They made up things to call you. Anything would do. They’d call you a left-hand dog. Put a bullet in your face and laugh at your body while it floated in a canal.

Mouse had felt bad that his father needed to kiss soldier boots just to get the few things that they couldn’t make themselves or get from a merchant on his sales circuit. He’d also been secretly glad he never had to go himself.

Mahlia had her own stories of the Drowned Cities, from when she’d grown up there. Her stories and Mouse’s father’s were as different as night and day.

Mahlia talked about the city’s great rectangular reflecting pool that stretched more than a mile, and the vast marble palace that overlooked it with its great high dome where the peacekeepers ran their administration. She talked of shaobing sellers who sold their sweet roasted breads to the peacekeepers. She told of company offices and clipper ships in the harbors and biodiesel rafts running the canals, jostling through floating markets that sprang up every day as farmers like his father poled their way into the city to sell. She told of green bok choy, bitter melon, red pomegranates, long pork bodies hung above the water, fresh and clean from slaughter.

But that had all been peacekeeper territory. The rules had run different in her part of the city, where the Chinese intervention had pushed the warlords out. Her life sounded like heaven to Mouse, at least until China got sick of trying to make everyone get along, and took its peacekeepers home, and let the Drowned Cities get back to its business of killing.

Regardless, Mouse’s impressions of the Drowned Cities were all secondhand. His life had been made up of his family’s flooded fields and their little home that his father had built in the second story of an old redbrick ruin. His life had been defined by planting times, and getting a mule to till the mud when the rains stopped, and thinking that if they made enough money, they might get a big old water buffalo like the Sims had, and then life would be good and easy.

A farm boy, Mahlia had called him. Just a silly little licebiter farm boy who didn’t know squat about the city.

Mouse thought about that as he stood atop a crumbling ten-story building, with a machete and a couple bottles of acid dangling from his belt, surveying his territory for Army of God infiltrators.

Now, he was more Drowned Cities than the girl who had come out of them, but he had to admit that the place looked like nothing he’d imagined.

He’d expected the city to look more… dead.

Instead, he surveyed miles of ancient buildings and swamped streets turned into canals. Networks of algae-clogged emerald waterways were dotted with lily pads and the stalks of white lotus flowers. Block after block of buildings and apartments were swallowed up to their second stories and sometimes higher, like the whole city had suddenly wandered off and decided to go wading in the ocean.

Creeping vines and kudzu covered tower faces. Trees sprouted from window ledges and rooftops, green parasols that leaned out over the waters while their roots clung tight to masonry and concrete. The shortest buildings were entirely submerged, and made for nasty snags, but many of the buildings still stood above the sea, waist deep in saltwater swamps that rose and fell with the tides, green leafy giants squatting in warm ocean waters.

UPF warboys poled through the canals on skiffs or ran along bamboo boardwalks that they’d constructed to float on the waters. Troops were everywhere, traveling over fixed bridges from block to block, moving through the city’s orleans, sometimes wading, sometimes swimming. Sometimes catching rides on biodiesel zodiacs if they could manage to snag one from the reclamation companies that paid them for access to the scavenge in their territory.

Above all, Mouse was aware of how alive the city was, and not just with gunfire and soldiers and fighting. That was all there, for sure. The slathered colors of territory and control, the troops, the echo of gunfire and artillery along the contested borders. Sector numbers were painted slapdash on buildings along with painted names for canals: Stern’s River. Easy Canal. Gold Street. K Canal. Green Canal. Peacekeeper Alley. He’d expected all that. The bullets and the buildings.

But he hadn’t expected to see flocks of birds roosting in broken windows. Or eagles wheeling overhead, diving for fish in the canals. He hadn’t expected to see a deer swimming across open water, or to listen to coywolv yipping and yowling at night, calling to one another across the rooftops.

There was war and ruin, and heat and sweat and mosquitoes and brackish water, and there was also a strange life in the Drowned Cities, as the jungle busily took back its own territory, reaching deeper and deeper into what had once been a place solely for human beings.

And then there was the scavenge.

Mouse had always thought of the Drowned Cities as a war zone, but what it really was, was a scavenge mine.

On his first day in the place, he watched a city block being torn down to raw parts. Clouds of concrete and rock dust, piles of pipes and ducts, steel and copper and iron being dragged out. Tangled heaps of wiring separated by weight and metal and color.

Some of the buildings were old, made of pink and white marble, and the marble was being mined and placed on barges, while the rest of the stone and concrete was heaved into the canals, filling up the waters and making new streets, raising the level of the city above where the tides could reach.

He’d stared at all the people swarming through the rubble. Hundreds and hundreds. They made long lines of wheelbarrows, filled with stone, and they gathered in clots around massive iron I beams that they lifted with kudzu ropes and hauled to the barges.

Dog Squad, the one Mouse had been assigned to, had guided the captives of Banyan Town into the mix of laborers.

“Get in there!” Gutty yelled. “Make yourselves useful!”

The other soldiers jeered at the captives and switched at them with bamboo canes as they were led away into the scavenge operation. Mouse knew those people. Knew Lilah and Tua and Joe Sands and Auntie Selima, who had been so kind to him. Mr. Salvatore, who had lost daughter and grandson both, looked at Mouse like he was dirt as he was chivied past.

Sergeant Ocho slapped Mouse on the back of the head.

“Ow!”

“Better not look too long, half-bar. LT will think you don’t want to be a soldier boy. Maybe think you want to join the rest of the war maggots.”

Sure enough, the lieutenant was watching Mouse again, cold gray eyes evaluating. It was like he was always watching. More often than not, Mouse could feel Sayle’s eyes, dragging on him, even when he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Even when he wasn’t fantasizing about making a run for it.

Had he given himself away?

Maybe the lieutenant had seen him as they marched toward the Drowned Cities. Seen Mouse as he sat by the campfire, looking again and again to the shadows of the jungle for some way to run off. But always there’d been some other soldier with a gun nearby.

“Look away, Ghost,” Ocho said. “Those prisoners ain’t even people now. They’re just maggots. They ain’t your business.”

The soldier boys herded the prisoners down into the mess of rubble. Clouds of concrete dust roiled around them, and then they were swallowed in the work.

When Mouse finally dared to glance after them again, they were lost amongst the many ants, just a bunch of dusty dots mingled with the many. But Ocho still caught the backward look and he jammed Mouse in the ribs with the butt of his rifle.

“Last warning, Ghost. You got a ways to go before you get your full bars. Don’t give anyone a reason to think you got no semper fi.”

And to Mouse’s everlasting shame, he turned away from the scavenge workers and the prisoners and did as he was told.

Even now, it still sat badly with him. Standing at his watch post atop a building, he could see the concrete dust and hear the clatter of the recycling work half a mile away.

His cheek still ached where they’d seared Glenn Stern’s mark into his face, but the pain was fading. And even though everyone still called him half-bar, and still made him do their chores, whether it was fetching water or scraping pots, or cooking a deer they’d gunned down, they had also armed him with a machete and acid, and he stood watches with the rest.

He might have been their dog to whip around, but it was better than what the people who worked the scavenge operation were getting. He was fed and armed, and standing watch was easy work.

It frightened him to think about it. That the captives had been swallowed in that sea of labor, and that he walked free, for no good reason at all.

None of it made any sense. He hadn’t done anything one way or the other to end up where he was. The tide of war had rolled in and swallowed him up, and Banyan Town with him, and they’d all tumbled in the surf. And for reasons he couldn’t understand, he’d broken the surface and managed to breathe, while everyone else was drowning alive.

His parents had been Deepwater Christians, and they’d always told him the world might move in mysterious ways but God had a plan for them.

As Mouse stared across the clatter and roar of the recycling operations with its seething hordes of dust-covered slave labor, Mouse thought that if there was a plan, then it was a cruel and vicious one.

In the distance, gunfire chattered.

He couldn’t tell who was fighting for the territory. Could have been United Patriot Front or Army of God, or Tulane Company, or Taylor’s Wolves, or the Freedom Militia. Impossible to guess. Just more gunfire.

Gutty came up behind him and clapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon, Ghost,” he said. “We’re doing patrol. Guess who walks point?” and then he laughed, because to him, it was funny.

29

MAHLIA AND TOOL reached Moss Landing in the afternoon of the second day. Twice they had to double back and work their way around patrols that Tool sensed, and so their route was circuitous, but eventually the broad muddy swathe of the Potomac River opened before them.

Mahlia had been to Moss Landing twice before with the doctor, but each time she had remained on its fringes while the doctor went into its heart to bargain for medicines from the troops who smuggled black market goods in from the coast.

As long as there was a river, there was transport, the doctor had said. Medicines were smuggled upriver from where the big scavenge companies and their corrupt workers would sell to the troops, and guns moved downriver, magically penetrating the war lines, even though armies and refugees could not.

More guns and bullets for the struggle.

“Why do they keep fighting?” Mouse had asked once. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just stop? Everyone would make more money.”

Mahlia had almost laughed at that. He was basically repeating what her own father had said every night for years.

“They’re stupid and crazy,” she’d said.

But Doctor Mahfouz had shaken his head. “Not crazy. More like… rationally insane. When people fight for ideals, no price is too high, and no fight can be surrendered. They aren’t fighting for money, or power, or control. Not really. They’re fighting to destroy their enemies. So even if they destroy everything around them, it’s worth it, because they know that they’ll have destroyed the traitors.”

“But they all call each other traitors,” Mouse had said.

“Indeed. It’s a long tradition here. I’m sure whoever first started questioning their political opponents’ patriotism thought they were being quite clever.”

Now, Mahlia and Tool crouched in the jungle on the outskirts of town. It looked much as she remembered it. Troops on R & R. Nailshed girls. Guns and booze and drugs and laughter and screaming. Guns firing randomly, like Spring Festival fireworks going off, but all the time. The place seethed with ring fights and red rippers and white dust and bloodshot eyes watching from the shadows. Mahfouz had never wanted her to go into it, and she’d been glad to stay out.

Beyond, on the river, she could make out a few sails. Smugglers, probably, with their little skiffs. No rich ones, though. The last time she’d been here, there had also been the buzz of biodiesel zodiacs, running upriver on behalf of Glenn Stern and his UPF soldiers.

She watched the soldiers and the nailshed girls. Suddenly gasped as she caught a better glimpse of a soldier. He had a green cross tattooed on his bare chest, and now that she looked, she caught sight of a glinting amulet of aluminum strung around his neck. They were all like that. All of them with their crosses and their amulets.

“Army of God,” she whispered. She started worming backward, trying to escape. “It’s Army of God.”

Tool gripped her arm, stopping her flight. “This is a change?” he asked.

“Used to be United Patriot Front.”

“War is fluid.” Tool studied the town. “There are still soldiers on the river, and crates being unloaded on the dock. Black market goods still move on the waterway. The players have changed, but the business of smuggling remains the same.”

“Yeah, except if we have to cross back into UPF territory downriver, we’re dead.” She looked out again at Moss Landing. Rough-cut buildings scabbed inside older fallen-down and overgrown concrete and brick. The troops were singing some patriotic song about how their general would never die until the last God-haters were swept away.

“That is not why you try to flee now,” Tool observed.

Mahlia’s heart was pounding. She swallowed. “They’re the ones that caught me. Last time. The ones that took my hand.”

Tool nodded slowly. “Still, you must go down. See if the route remains open.”

“Not me.” Mahlia shook her head violently, fighting down memories of trying to break free. The soldier boys laughing as they laid her hand across the log. “They got no love for castoffs.”

A shout went up. Mahlia flinched. A couple of soldier boys stumbled out into the middle of the street, leaning on nailshed girls. They were all drunk or high. Crazy and mindless because they weren’t on the front.

UPF had been the same way, when they owned the town. Moss Landing was safe territory. R & R ground. Safe upriver from the Drowned Cities. Easy duty.

Unconsciously, Mahlia found herself reaching for a rock, prying it up, preparing to defend herself if they came her way.

She looked down and almost yelped. Her hand gripped a skull, lying buried, meat still on the face. It was past stinking, but she could make out the triple hash of Glenn Stern on the warboy’s cheek. With a chill, she realized that she and Tool were lying on a graveyard of bodies, UPF soldiers shallow-buried all around.

“Fates,” she whispered.

Tool’s bestial face showed amusement. “I thought you knew.”

Mahlia dropped the skull, wiping her hand on her hip, trying to make it feel clean, knowing it wouldn’t work.

“It’s why I chose this vantage,” Tool said. “The soldiers down there will avoid their killing ground. They will detour around the history they have made in this place.”

“You smelled it?”

“Of course.”

It made sense, but still, Mahlia felt nauseated, knowing she was lying atop piles of bodies. Her skin crawled with a superstitious need to get away, but she forced it down. She’d seen plenty of bodies. This was just a few more. And a good reminder of what the Army of God was capable of.

As if she didn’t know already.

“We got to find another way,” she said.

Tool looked at her. “Afraid?”

“Damn straight. Army of God…” She shook her head. “You can’t argue with fanatics. They’ll just cut us down.”

“How is this different from the UPF?” Tool asked. “Your plan was sound. Go to the banks. Seek a guide.”

But now Mahlia saw how risky her plan had been. Even with UPF around, it had always been Mahfouz who had gone down into Moss Landing and come back alive.

She watched the people standing around bonfires. Girls laughing in that way that made you know they were trying to keep soldiers happy but that they were scared.

A man wandered to the edge of the jungle and pulled down his shorts. Urinated. A grown-up. How many actual adults had she seen since the war started up again? The ones in Banyan Town, sure, but out of the Drowned Cities? Just the big names. The ones who ran things. Lieutenant Sayle. The face of Colonel Glenn Stern, head of the UPF. And yet here was a man. Full-grown.

Behind him, a couple of his troops stood waiting. War maggots. Didn’t even have hair on their upper lips. Mean-ass licebiters with guns, probably high on red rippers, probably crazy. One had a shotgun, the other a hunting rifle, not just machetes or acid, which meant they were probably bloodthirsty, especially if they were standing bodyguard on the grown-up. Boys with guns scared her. Guns gave them swagger, and swagger made them vicious.

Somewhere inside the town, someone was sobbing, begging and in pain. She couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. It didn’t even sound like person, hardly. Mahlia realized she was shaking. She knew that sound. She’d made exactly that sound once, when they got hold of her hand.

“I ain’t going down there. We got to find a different way.”

Tool’s huge head turned to regard her. “There is no other way, and you are the one who must go.” He nodded toward the town. “Augments like me are blood enemies to soldiers like that. They will shoot me on sight. I am their greatest nightmare. They fight my kind in the North, where the war lines bottle them up. If they see me here, they will assume I am a scout or an attacker, and they will shoot.”

“What if you were just passing through?”

“Half-men do not simply ‘pass through.’ I learned that to my cost the last time I tried,” Tool said. “Those soldiers believe that we always have masters, and we always work to our master’s purpose. My kind would have no business here, other than war with them.”

He nodded at the town. “You must go down to the waterfront, and you must find us a smuggler.”

“What do I do if someone comes at me?”

“We need a skiff and we need a person who knows how to move into the Drowned Cities. Without an alliance, we have nothing.”

“We don’t got anything to pay them.”

“Bring them to me.” Tool bared his teeth. “I will arrange the payment.”

Mahlia shook her head. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

“Be strong, wargirl. It will only get worse.”

Mahlia stared out at the town, hating what she had to do. “In the morning,” she decided. “I’ll go when they’re all hungover and sleepy and stupid. Not while they’re all sliding and crazy and looking for someone to hurt.”

Tool smiled. “A decision worthy of Sun Tzu.”

30

THE PROBLEM DIDN’T develop right away.

Mouse’s squad was deep inside UPF territory, so they should have been safe. The only things to keep an eye on were chain gangs and farmers. Mouse and all the other soldiers were standing around joking and watching as big old barges eased through K Canal, and they had no idea what was coming.

The barges were massive things, ironclad and rusty. A whole long line of them clogged the canal, with a webwork of ropes leading to the boardwalks on the sides, where people were harnessed to the ropes in long lines, leaning forward, dragging.

A few people had mules that they urged forward, but mostly, it was stringy people with dirty matted hair and torn skin, white and brown and black and tan and all of it whipped and torn by labor.

The braying and complaining of the mules and the groaning of the prisoners filled the canal and echoed off the buildings. The stink of them as they passed was almost overwhelming. Mouse stepped back as the haulers leaned against the weight of the filled barges.

The first barge just had a bunch of green logos and a Lawson & Carlson stamp. The second one, though…

“Is that Chinese?” Mouse asked.

The side of the barge had a big old logo with writing on the side, just like on the packs of medicines that Doctor Mahfouz used to dole out.

Gutty looked over. “Sure.”

The warboy went back to shaking a bottle of his acid. He squirted a little out and it smoked and hissed as it hit the boardwalk. “Bunch of the blood buyers come from over there. We got ’em all.”

He pointed at the succession of barges and logos. “Lawson & Carlson, they’re out of the Seascape. GE… dunno where. Stone-Ailixin, I think that’s from over in Europe. Patel Global, they’re Seascape Boston, too.”

“I thought the warlords—” Mouse paused, adjusting his words. “I mean, I thought we kicked the Chinese out.”

“Just the peacekeepers. If buyers got cash for bullets, we let ’em have scrap, just like everyone else. Long as they don’t try no more invading or telling us how to run a democracy or whatever, they can have as much marble and steel and copper as they want.”

Mouse frowned, thinking. Remembering Mahlia, and how everyone treated her as a castoff. And here everyone was happy to take bullets from the same kinds of people as who’d left her behind. All that patriotic talk about kicking China out of the country, and taking the country back, but they were happy to trade with Chinese companies. They’d kill castoff peacekeeper kids, but were willing to take China’s bullets?

The air whistled.

Mouse looked about, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.

Beside him, a barge exploded. Debris screamed past.

The blast threw Mouse and Gutty into a wall. A chunk of granite rained off the building above them and shattered on the barge iron. More stone showered Mouse, cutting flesh. A granite slab slammed down beside him, shattering the boardwalk and leaving a hole down to the canal waters. He stared dumbly at the hole.

Where was Gutty?

Another whistling sound. Another barge exploded. The thing started to keel over, dragging mules and workers into the water. Screams echoed as the sinking barge dragged people under.

Chaos was erupting all around. People running, diving into the water, or crawling out of it. Everyone trying to escape the kill zone. Workers thrashed in water, tangled in their harnesses. Mouse’s ears rang with the explosions. The screams seemed distant. He’d lost his hearing, he realized. Another explosion dropped into the canal, sending up a spray of water.

The 999, he realized. It had to be. The Army of God had a 999, and they were dropping shells right onto him. He stared around himself, shell-shocked. Watching all the people thrashing and frothing and drowning.

A bunch of his squad were waving him at him from a window alcove.

Cover.

He dove for them as another shell hit. Somewhere behind, rifle fire opened up. Bright red blood stained the boardwalk before him. He started to panic, checking his body, but he had all his arms and legs. Where was the blood coming from?

Another shell whistled overhead. Everyone curled into balls as it hit the half-sunk barge. It was like the sky was raining fire and there was nothing they could do.

Mouse started to panic, but Van grabbed him. “Don’t you run, Ghost! You stick with your squad, boy!”

Mouse nodded dumbly as another shell hit the building beside them. Rubble poured down.

Ocho was staring up at the buildings around them. “How’d they get our position?”

Bullets ripped down the canal. Ocho ducked behind a fallen chunk of granite. Screams of animals and prisoners filled the air. Mouse’s ears were ringing. The bullets kept coming, bouncing off the walls like the Army of God had enough ammo to last them all the way to eternity.

All he had was a machete and an acid bottle. Mouse curled lower as more weapons fire ripped around them, showering them with shrapnel. Something slashed past his ear. He felt blood running down his face.

And he was one of the lucky ones. Gutty was gone. When the granite slab came crashing down, one second Gutty had been there, and then he’d been disappeared. Smashed and drowned, Mouse guessed. Gone. Just gone.

The 999 boomed again. Mouse tried to ball himself up even tighter.

They couldn’t run or swim back the way they’d come, because the godboys had gotten a pin on them from behind as well, and so now they were sitting ducks amongst the towers, waiting for the 999 to drop a whole building down on their heads.

Ocho stood and sprayed bullets down the length of the canal with his rifle. The boy must have been protected by his Fates Eye, because he didn’t take a bullet in reply, and then he was down beside Mouse again, back pressed against the granite.

“They got a spotter,” he gasped. “We find him and shut him down, we can get some breathing room.”

He nodded toward a building across the way. “They ain’t shelling that one.”

Pook scanned the building Ocho indicated. “You think that’s where they are?”

“It’s the only building they ain’t blowing up.”

The 999 went off again, and they all flattened themselves, but the round went somewhere else. Didn’t even explode. They all laughed.

A dud.

“How we doing, warboy?” Ocho slapped Mouse’s knee. “Ready to hurt these bastards?”

Mouse couldn’t form the words. He was shaking. His face was bleeding from some bit of shrapnel that had hit him and he didn’t know where it had come from.

He realized Ocho was looking at him. He tried to speak but couldn’t say anything at all. He was surprised to see that Ocho was smiling.

The sergeant leaned close. “I got news for you, half-bar. None of us is getting out of here alive. You get it? We’re just walking dead. So don’t worry so much about surviving, right?” He slapped Mouse’s leg, grinning. “Don’t take it so serious. We’re just meat in the mill.”

Mouse closed his eyes and wanted to cry, but Pook grabbed him. “Come on, half-bar. Time to earn your verticals.”

Ocho pointed at the building across the canal. “You get your ass in there and find that spotter. Get the 999 off us, and maybe we get out of here alive. Fight another day, right? Only way out is if we shut down that 999. Otherwise we’re kill food.” He slapped Mouse on the back.

“Go on, half-bar! Hunt!”

And then he shoved Mouse into the canal, right into a hail of bullets. Mouse went down, came up sputtering. Wondering what he was going to do.

He thought about trying to swim away, to flee, but then Pook splashed into the drink with him.

“Come on, half-bar. Let’s get your prick red.” And then he was swimming for the far side.

All of Mouse’s senses were alive. It felt like he was looking in twenty directions at once. Army of God boys down the canal, shooting at them. Rubble raining down from above. Mules in the water, swimming around, braying and thrashing and climbing up on one another, and being dragged down and tangled by their harnesses.

They hadn’t seen it coming. None of them had. One second they’d been patrolling, working muscle while a bunch of civvy slave labor moved scavenge down the canal—just making sure the scavenged wire and marble and pipes and I beams all went out and bought them more bullets—and the next they were in a firefight for their lives.

Mouse made it to the far side of the canal.

Pook had an AK that he held above his head as he swam, and it slowed him, but then he made it, too. They climbed into the building through a shattered window, swimming through the interior of a swamped floor plan, hunting for a stairwell that would lead them up out of the water. Slime and heat hung heavy and the roof was only a few feet above their heads, but it was enough.

“Here!” Pook whispered. They squelched up a stairway, dripping and trying to be silent as they stepped around garbage and dead animals from who knew how long ago.

Raccoons dashed away from them, running up the stairs. Pook pulled Mouse close as they reached the first dry story of the building.

“They got to be on the south side of the building,” he said. “Looking down on us. Thought I saw some reflections, up five more stories. Stay stealthy, right?”

Mouse nodded, gripping his bottle of acid in his left hand and his machete in his right.

They stole up the stairs. Outside, another shell whistled down. Mouse was briefly glad that he was inside and not out in that nightmare, but then they hit the floor they’d been looking for and all hell broke loose.

They would have surprised the godboys completely, except that he and Pook had scared up that pack of raccoons. The animals dashed out of the stairwell, scattering like cockroaches, and the Army of God were right there in front of them—three of the bastards, leaning out the window and laying down artillery.

Another shell came booming down and the godboys all whooped when it hit, and then the raccoons came piling through.

The boys turned and grabbed their rifles. Pook dashed forward, screaming and firing. He hit one of the boys. Mouse glimpsed surprised brown eyes wide, long hair spraying, as the boy’s head whipped back, and then he went right out the window.

Another godboy took a bullet in the leg but was swinging his rifle around. Mouse ran toward him with his bottle and sprayed him like he’d been trained, right in the face, follow the stream up and down and all over, and suddenly steam was rising and burning and bubbling, the kid’s face burning off. But the boy was still shooting.

Mouse dropped to the ground as bullets flew wild. Pook slammed down beside him, blood and shattered face and surprised eyes.

Mouse tried to get his bearings. The godboy with the acid face was on the floor, flopping around and screaming, the other one was dead and gone, out the window like he’d learned to fly. Pook lay beside him with his jawbone blown off.

And then there was the radio boy. Just standing there. Staring.

Mouse and the radio boy both looked at each other, and then the godboy was scrambling for his gun, and Mouse grabbed for Pook’s rifle. He couldn’t get it off Pook’s shoulder. Bullets rained down, chipping concrete as the other boy opened fire. Mouse got Pook’s rifle up and took aim as the other gun blazed away. He pulled the trigger once.

A red stain opened on the boy’s chest. Blood spattered the wall behind him. The kid just sat down, looking surprised, and suddenly everything was quiet, except for the squawk of the radio asking for bearings.

For a long time, Mouse stared at the boy he’d shot. Blood ran from him. His eyes were staring at Mouse, but Mouse couldn’t tell if he was dead or not. He was breathing, Mouse thought, and then he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. He didn’t think he could shoot the boy again.

Mouse started to shake. He was alive. Pook was dead. The other three were dead. And he was alive. Fates. He was alive. He stood up, trembling. Amped with adrenaline. He ran his hands over himself, amazed, trying to find a bullet anywhere on him.

It was just like the Army of God boys said. They were immune to bullets. Blessed. Bullets were supposed to just bounce off them, because their general blessed them. They had amulets to keep them safe. Mouse could see the ones these boys wore, little aluminum disks marked by their priests to ward off bullets. But they were all dead and he was alive.

Mouse went over to the window. From high up, the fighting down below looked like little ants, dancing around without any purpose.

The radio squawked. “Where you want the next one?”

Mouse looked down on the fighting in the streets. He should run. This was his chance. He could run.

But he was deep inside the Drowned Cities—war lines on top of war lines, in every direction. And he was already branded UPF. If he tried to run, UPF would grab him; if he went into Army of God territory, or ran up against Freedom Militia, they’d shoot him on sight. He wasn’t just another war maggot, now. He was a soldier boy. Branded, named, and reborn.

“Where you want the next one?” the radio asked again.

He stared down at the fighting. Ocho was down there.

You want to know a secret? You’re already dead. Stop worrying about it.

Ghost picked up the radio and clicked it on. “Move it back a hundred yards.”

“What?”

“Go back a hundred yards. You’re way off.”

The 999 boomed.

Army of God soldiers started running like ants as a shell dropped behind their lines.

Ghost watched the war maggots run and scatter, and felt a rush of excitement as he walked the 999 down the street, chasing them.

It didn’t last long, but it was enough. Pretty soon, Ghost saw the godboys coming back and he knew it was time to go. It was like pranking his brother, back when he was still around. You could poke at him for a little while, but then he’d get pissed and it was time to get out of the way. When a squad of AOG started swimming the canal, it was time to go.

Ghost scanned the room. They’d been set up for a while. Must have been planning the ambush for days and days. He grabbed his dead opponent’s gun. Ammo…

He couldn’t carry it all. He fumbled through the ammo, trying to match the guns to the ammo. Whole hodgepodge. He pulled a belt of bullets off one boy, and a couple of cartridges off another, scooped them into his shirt. Time to go.

The temptation to stay there, to try to get the rest… In a sudden inspiration, Ghost grabbed the rest of the rifles and flung them out the window, then the ammo he couldn’t carry, and the radio, too, all of it sailing out the window and down, tumbling, into the canal below.

Only then did he run. He went down two flights and this time the raccoons saved him, because they came up ahead with the godboys behind, and Ghost had enough time to slide out of sight. He stealthed down refuse-strewn hallways with mice and rats and raccoons, slipping through the building, keeping the map of the place in his mind, moving and dropping down another stairwell, and then down and down and down again, until he was in the water and swimming back to Dog Squad.

The old boy, Mouse, he would have just swum right out, but Ghost stopped short of the canal, peered out at the water and the canal and the shattered boardwalks.

Boys with guns were all around, but he had a gun, too, now, and the hunt was different. He’d hunted frogs and snakes and crawdads, and if the godboys weren’t snakes, he didn’t know what was, and so he scanned the canal and the buildings up above, peeking out, looking for glints of snipers, for signs of movement, and then he saw Dog Squad running, leapfrogging as they backed themselves out of the skirmish zone, and Van caught sight of him and then Ghost was out in the water, swimming, knowing his warboys had his back and that he had covering fire.

He came out of the water, dripping, trophy rifle held high, his pockets full of bullets and who the hell knew whether they’d shoot, but one thing for sure was that Army of God didn’t have those bullets.

The 999 opened up again, but Dog Squad was out of the kill zone.

Ocho looked at him. “Where’s Pook?”

Ghost pointed up at the building.

“Dead?”

“Yeah. Got it in the face.”

“You’re with TamTam and Stork, then.” Ocho waved to the other warboys. “Hey, Stork! Pook’s gone. You got Ghost.”

Two boys he hadn’t worked with. One of them a little licebiter with castoff eyes and a smashed-up nose: TamTam. The other, black-skinned, tall, and gawky, and older. Ghost liked that. If Stork was older, he might not be stupid. Might not get him killed.

Stork eyed him. “Nice job with the 999.” He paused, looking at the rifle Ghost had brought back with predatory interest. “Nice gun.”

Ghost gripped it warily, knowing what was coming.

“TamTam don’t have a gun,” Stork said.

“So?”

“He outranks you.”

Ghost just stared him down. He didn’t let himself blink or show fear. He just looked back at Stork. “If he wants one, I guess he better find one,” he said.

Stork almost looked like he was going to be pissed, but then he just smiled and shook his head.

“Yeah. Guess he better.”

31

DAWN BROKE STILL and hot and wet on Moss Landing. Rain came down and soaked everything, turning everything to mud.

The place looked almost as bad as Banyan Town had looked after the UPF burned it. If the people hadn’t been puking and lying facedown but breathing, they could have been dead. Some of them were so exhausted from debauchery that they weren’t even conscious.

Mahlia stepped over the bodies. In the gray flat light of the rainy morning, Moss Landing seemed less threatening. No one wanted to be outside making trouble. No one wanted to be awake. She heard someone shouting, but they were far away. Someone else was singing an old licebiter nursery rhyme about being a soldier boy and winding up dead.

The docks were quiet. Rain pattered down on the Potomac, making rings. Rivulets of muddy water trickled around a couple of raggedy piers thrust into the brown river flow.

This close to the sea, the surge of salt water pushed its way up into the mouth with the tide, then flowed back. What seemed like years ago, Doctor Mahfouz had told her that it was a unique environment. In other places, where a river was less poisoned with war and rotting city, it would have been rich with life, teeming with fish and turtles.

Some of those animals were probably there, but Mahlia had heard that the best fishing was always for bodies. People floating down from other parts of the war, headed for the ocean. Some of them dumped, some of them floated there on little rafts. People were always snagging those.

Mahlia hesitated at the docks. One of the people on the water was a woman. She looked up at Mahlia from under a dripping rain hat. Mahlia started toward the lady, but then hesitated. Just because she was a woman didn’t mean she was safe. And Mahlia didn’t like the way the woman looked.

She had a pair of pistols strapped to her hips, and her lip was split wide, raggedly sewed back into place. And her eyes were so cold that Mahlia took a step back. The woman might as well have been coywolv.

Mahlia turned and started away and caught sight of the man she’d seen before. The one she’d taken for an officer when he took a leak at the edge of the woods.

He and his two bodyguards were tying gear down on their skiff, covering it with ripped plastic stamped with old Chinese company symbols. Mahlia even recognized an old banner that the peacekeepers had hung when she’d been young.

DISARM TO FARM, it said, in English.

She remembered the campaign. They’d been trying to resettle ex-soldiers back into the countryside, to give them seeds and land and expertise to become farmers again, and all they had to do was turn in their guns.

One of the boys stood atop the torn plastic advertisement, a shotgun held low. For a second, Mahlia thought she was going to be shot, but then the boy’s eyes passed on.

The woman was still looking at her. She climbed out of her skiff, striding toward her.

“You,” she said. “Come here, girl. Let me get a look at you.”

Mahlia started to back away, and then to run, but behind her she heard new movement.

She lifted her machete to defend herself, but the two boys moved past her, ignoring her entirely. Their faces dripped with rain, but they barely squinted as they brought up their rifles.

“Move off, lady,” one of them said. He had a head like a bullet and dark black skin. His arms and legs might as well have been sticks, but he had his hunting rifle up and aimed. The other boy was moving sideways, getting clear room. He could have been Chinese, but not like her. Not castoff. Some full-blooded patriot, born and raised in the Drowned Cities, instead of a half-breed like her. He had a shotgun.

“You leave the girl alone,” he said.

The woman’s hand eased toward her pistol, but the man called out. “They are expert shots, Clarissa. Move on.”

She looked at them all, and then she turned and went back to her skiff and untied the lines. A moment later, she was in the river, and drifting away. Looking back at them. And then disappearing into gray and rain and mist.

Mahlia looked at them all, surprised. “Thanks.”

The man shrugged it off. “You should go. She is a collector. Even without your hand, she’d be able to get a price for you, and if you had walked right up to her, she would have taken you.”

The two boys were looking at her.

“You castoff?” the darker one asked.

Mahlia wondered how to answer, but before she could form a response, the boy answered the question for her. “They don’t like castoffs here. You better get yourself clear or tag AOG, real quick, girl.”

AOG. Army of God. Of course. Tag herself. She’d been stupid. She needed an amulet, or something. And then, when she got down to UPF territory, she’d need to mark herself again. She’d have to brand her cheek, probably. Put the triple hash on herself, if she wanted to slide past without getting challenged.

“Thanks,” she said again.

But they were already securing the last of their bundles in their skiff and unwrapping their ropes.

“Hey!” she called. “You going downriver?”

“Why?”

“I want to come on, if you are.”

“You got money?”

“My friend does.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s hurt. I need help getting him down. We can buy on, if you can take us. We just want to get out of here.”

“And you want to go downriver?” Their disbelief showed.

“We got friends,” Mahlia said. “They say they got us room on a scrap ship, going out. Going north. To the Seascape.”

“First time I heard of something like that. No one gets out of here.”

“We got a friend. We just got to get there.” She hesitated. “Please. We got to get downriver. My friend’s just in the trees. We can pay. We got rice. We got machetes. We got coywolv skin.”

In a burst of inspiration, she thought of Mouse and his profiteering schemes. “I got some half-man teeth. Dog-face teeth. You can sell those, right? Lucky charms. Soldier boys love those, right?”

She almost laughed when they perked right up.

Tool took the boys so fast that Mahlia actually felt bad.

The boys came up with their shotgun and rifle, full of swagger and acid, thinking they knew how to fight, maybe still a little high from whatever they’d gotten up to the night before, and Tool…

The boys stood there under the trees, looking around expectantly, kind of pissed that they’d come this far, and it was like the jungle just breathed.

The leaves rustled. The two boys flew. They crashed to the ground and Tool landed atop them. He ripped their guns away and wrapped a boy under each arm.

They kicked and thrashed and flopped around, and one of them started to piss his shorts, and Mahlia almost laughed, except she remembered what it had been like to be on the other end of Tool’s attack, and she didn’t.

She got down with the boys and said, “I don’t got no money, but now I got you.” She looked at them. “I’m going to talk to your boss. See if we can work out a trade.”

They both stared at her with hatred.

Mahlia sighed. “Don’t feel so bad. Half-man teeth are what got my friend Mouse into trouble, too. It ain’t your fault.” She grabbed the one boy’s shotgun. Fiddled with it until she had it open. Checked the load.

“Take the rifle,” Tool advised. “The kick will be worse with the shotgun. You won’t be able to control it.”

Mahlia looked from one weapon to the other. “That little licebiter carries it. Why can’t I?”

“He has practice, and two hands.”

Mahlia looked from the rifle to the shotgun she held in her hand. “But I can’t miss with this.”

“If you’re close enough. Your stump will make it difficult to control.”

“I’ll brace.”

Tool shrugged.

Mahlia took the shotgun anyway. Stood up, hefting it and smiling. Damn, it felt good to hold a weapon. Not just some machete that you could never get close enough to show what for. She couldn’t ring-fight a soldier boy, but she could blow his head off just fine.

The gun felt solid in her hand, reassuring. Powerful. She could stand tall with a weapon like this.

No wonder soldier boys had so much damn swagger. With a gun under your arm, you walked tall. If she’d had a gun when the soldier boys caught her the first time, everything would have been different.

All her life she’d been ducking and running, always rabbiting, while the coywolv did all the hunting. But with this big old gun, she could stand tall.

The weapon was heavy, but she suddenly felt light, as if the weight of all of her past had suddenly fallen off, like a concrete block, tumbling away.

She grinned at the weapon in her hand. Yeah. She liked this gun, all right.

“Brace it against your shoulder when you fire,” Tool said. “The kick will bruise you.”

“It’ll kill, though,” she said. “It’ll kill good.”

“Resist the urge to think that weapon makes you strong.”

“It sure don’t make me weak.”

“Weaker than you think,” Tool said. “Resist its swagger.”

“I don’t swagger.”

“Everyone swaggers with a gun. Look at it.”

“What about it?”

Mahlia looked down. It seemed fine. Looked clean. In good condition. Ready.

“It gives you confidence.” Tool shook the boys under his arms. “It gave these two confidence as well. And look at them now. From a position of strength to an asset of their enemy, and all it took was confidence. The swagger a gun gives when you’re following some harmless crippled girl into the jungle.”

Tool suddenly snarled. “Now look at it, again!”

Mahlia startled at the force of Tool’s words. She looked down at the shotgun. “I am! I am!”

Scrapes and scratches. Heavy black barrel. A wooden stock that had been carved by hand and hammered back on to the main mechanism.

It was painted. Lots of guns were painted, though, and this one wasn’t any different. Lots of things on it. Mostly green crosses, for Deepwater faith. The red stars of the Army of God.

“Yeah? What of it?”

It was just like every other gun she’d ever seen. Beat-up, but ready for action.

“Look,” Tool said again.

Mahlia stared at it, trying to see what Tool saw.

“The paint is chipped,” Tool said.

Mahlia glared up at him. “So?”

“So. Look.”

Sure, some of the paint had chipped off. But there was just more paint underneath. Might have been a couple of Fates Eyes, from the shape of them, under the green crosses. Sure. It could be. Something red, too. Maybe a bit of a white star on a blue background. Maybe a UPF tag…

A cold crawling moved up her spine. Mahlia’s breath snagged.

The gun gave her swagger, all right. And it had given their prisoners swagger.

And whoever owned it before that.

And whoever before that.

And before that.

And on and on and on…

She could look at the gun and see the history of hands that had held it. Soldier after soldier, making it his own. Covering it with luck symbols and charms, Fates Eyes and crosses and whatever they thought would give them the edge.

And every one of them was dead.

The shotgun didn’t care who owned it. It went hand to hand. She was just the latest in a chain that might as well have gone all the way back to the Accelerated Age when people had cities that worked and they didn’t shoot at one another all the time.

A lot of hands had held this weapon, and if it had done any of them any good, they probably still would have been holding it, instead of passing it down the line to her.

She shivered, suddenly wondering if she was a dead girl. If just holding the gun made her a ghost.

Tool growled. “You understand, now.”

Mahlia swallowed. Nodded.

“Good. Now go and negotiate with our captain. We should go before day breaks on us fully. The town will awaken soon.”

Mahlia turned and started to go, then turned back and looked at the boys.

“I don’t want it.” She held up the shotgun. “It’s yours. Soon as we’re gone, it’s yours. I don’t want it.”

She couldn’t tell what they thought of her. Their eyes looked wide and frightened over Tool’s fist and she felt bad, but she didn’t trust them enough to tell him to be nicer. Instead, she slipped out of the jungle, stealthing through the misty streets.

The heat of the day was already starting to increase, but the soldiers were still drunk and barely moving. A nailshed girl hurried through the mud of the street, barefoot, clutching torn clothing around her. She took one look at Mahlia and her gun, and steered clear.

Mahlia wondered what she herself looked like, that a girl like that would be afraid of her. She reached the water.

The man straightened at her approach, and his hand went for a gun when he saw Mahlia carrying the shotgun.

“Don’t!” She held out her hand, holding the shotgun wide. “Don’t.”

“What’s your business, castoff?”

“Me and my friend got to get downriver. We don’t got no money. But we give your boys back if you get us down.”

“Maybe I’ll just shoot you.”

“We need you. Need you to get us past the checkpoints. Tell us where they are.”

“Who are you?”

“Just a war maggot, looking to get out.”

“There’s no way out. No one gets onto the scrap ships. They won’t take your kind, or any other. Not unless you’ve got a king’s ransom stuffed down your shorts. No one goes anywhere. The armies up north, all the battle lines. There’s nowhere to go. And not for your kind, for sure. Now where’s my boys?”

“You want them to live, you go downriver, past town. Tie up just out of sight. We’ll meet you.” Mahlia turned away.

“Wait!”

“What?” Mahlia glared at him, summoning all her threat. “What? You got something to say, old man?” She tossed the shotgun to him. “Take it. We don’t want it. You either come downriver and get your boys back, or you don’t—and you don’t.”

“Maybe I gun you down right here.”

“Fates,” Mahlia said. “I’m dead already, old man. Don’t you get it? You kill me, it don’t matter. I’m just another castoff. People won’t even blink about it, will they? They’d mourn a nailshed girl more than they’d mourn me.”

She held up her arms, stretching them wide. “I got no armor. Got nothing. You want to blow me away, you do it. No one cares.” She looked at him. “But if you care about your boys, then you come downriver, and you meet us, and you get them back, all in one piece.

“Otherwise, you got my head, and you get theirs, too.”

She turned and headed back into the jungle, not looking back. Her spine prickled and sweat gushed down her ribs. Waiting for the bullet.

A gamble. Everything was a damn gamble. Betting against luck and the Fates, again and again, and again.

She kept walking, waiting for the bullet.

32

“YOU WANT ME to carry that downriver?”

The boatman stared at Tool as he emerged from the jungle. They had rendezvoused below Moss Landing, but as Tool materialized from the shadows of the jungle, the boatman was so startled that he almost let the current carry him away.

Tool bared his teeth. “I am not here to war with you. We will pass through your life and be gone and you need never remember that we existed.”

The man just stared. He looked at Mahlia. “What are you?”

“Just some castoff,” she answered as Tool swung the two captives aboard the skiff and climbed aboard himself, making the sailboat tilt alarmingly.

“It’s impossible,” the man said. “I can’t hide a dog-face on my boat.”

Tool growled and bared his tiger teeth. “You may call me Tool, or half-man or augment, but if you think to call me dog-face again, I will tear open your chest, and eat your heart, and sail your skiff myself.”

The man recoiled. “It’s impossible. There’s no way they’ll let us pass with… with…” Mahlia could tell he wanted to say dog-face again, but didn’t dare. “You,” the man finished, finally.

Tool dismissed him. “That is not your concern. Tell us where our enemies lie. I will conceal myself at the necessary moments.”

The boatman still looked doubtful. “And you let us go, when you’re done?”

Mahlia and Tool both nodded. Mahlia said, “We’re just trying to help a friend.”

“Helping a friend?” The man looked at Mahlia, askance. “And this is how you repay our kindness? What if we hadn’t helped you with Clarissa? Where would you be, then?”

Mahlia flushed and looked away. “It ain’t personal,” she said.

“It never is with your kind. You pick up guns and you hurt and you kill and none of it is personal.” The man looked at her. “Children with guns. We aren’t even people to you.”

“Hey! I ain’t part of this war,” Mahlia said. “I didn’t ask to be in it. I didn’t ask soldier boys to come hunting after me! I ain’t part of this.”

But even as she said it, she felt stupid. Before her, two boys lay on their backs in the bottom of the skiff, bound in kudzu vines that Tool had twisted into ropes. Her captives. Her victims.

With Tool, she could just as easily cut off their hands and dump them in the water and laugh while they tried to swim. She had power over them, and she’d used it to make sure they did exactly what she wanted.

She was in, all right. All in, and going deeper.

“Just get us downstream and we’ll leave you alone,” she mumbled. “We ain’t here to hurt no one.”

The man snorted at that and seemed to be about to say more, but he caught sight of Tool’s expression and fell silent. Mahlia felt bad again. Scared boys, all tied up. A man who hadn’t done anything wrong to her, and she’d taken advantage of it.

Am I just like the soldier boys?

It wasn’t like she’d killed anyone. If these licebiters had been picked up by soldier boys, they would have been dead already, or else recruited like Mouse. No way they’d just catch and release.

The wind filled the skiff’s sails and they eased away from shore. The water reflected the light of the rising sun, turning the river into a glittering dragon that twined all the way to the Drowned Cities, and the sea.

“I can take you as far as UPF territory,” the man said bitterly. “After that, I have no influence. I don’t do trade with the river mouth. I can’t take you all the way to the sea.”

Mahlia nodded. “That’s enough. Just get us through UPF lines.”

“With the… half-man?”

“Do not concern yourself with me,” Tool said. “The soldiers will not notice me.”

“What if I give you up to them?”

Tool looked at him. “I will kill you and yours.”

Was this what she wanted? Did she want to play the same game as the soldier boys?

“Untie them, Tool,” she said. “Let the boys go. They won’t do anything. They’ve got to be free for the checkpoints, anyway.”

Tool shrugged. He unbound their captives. The boys sat up, glaring and rubbing their wrists and ankles. “Knew we shouldn’t have helped a castoff,” one of them said.

Mahlia glared at him. “Would you have let us sail, if you knew I was with him?” She jerked her thumb toward Tool. “Would you?”

The boy just glared at her.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I thought.”

Ahead of them, the river opened, showing the Drowned Cities poking up above the jungle. The buildings rose up, like bodies staggering up out of the grave. Towers and warehouses and glass and rubble. Piles of concrete and brick where whole buildings had collapsed. Swamp waters all around, mosquitoes buzzing, a miasma.

Mahlia saw it with a strange double vision. When she’d lived in the city it had been a place of play. Her school, her life with her mother and father, the collectors who came to buy antiques from her mother. Now it was burns and ruins and rubble and chattering gunfire, a map of safe territories, mining operations, and contested blocks.

When the peacekeepers had been there, they’d been all about setting up wind turbines for energy, wave generators, had even managed to create a few projects. Mahlia’s mother had taken her out to a wind turbine project right in the river mouth, huge white turbines going up like giant pale flowers. Her father had had something to do with it, but whether it had been guarding the turbines themselves, or the Chinese construction teams, or someone else, she had been too young to understand it. But now, as she looked at the open waters, Mahlia saw them again, but the turbines were all torn down.

She pointed to them. “My dad worked on those.”

“Castoff,” one of the boys muttered.

Mahlia wanted to kick him, but she held off. The man said, “They took them down.”

“The peacekeepers?”

“Warlords. As soon as China pulled its peacekeepers out, the warlords started shooting at them, trying to bring down the electric grid. It was a power-sharing arrangement that couldn’t last. UPF in charge of the towers, and Freedom Militia in charge of the conversion station, so they’d have shared responsibility.” He shrugged. “They shot each other up. UPF bombed the station. The Militia mined the turbines. And then the Army of God pushed them both out and sold the steel and composites, and the turbines all went out to Lawson & Carlson for new weapons.”

He nodded at Tool. “Bet that’s something his kind would know all about.”

Tool didn’t respond to the dig. “War breaks things,” was all he said.

His ears were pricking to the winds, and his eye seemed to gleam with interest as they cut across the waters. Mahlia watched him.

Sometimes, his strange bestial face seemed completely human, when he laughed at some bit of half-man humor or when he’d tried to show her the folly of swaggering with a gun. But now, as they approached the Drowned Cities, she was aware again of how many layers affected the creature. Part human, part dog, part tiger, part hyena… pure predator.

As they approached the Drowned Cities, Tool seemed more and more alive. His huge frame seemed to pulse with the vitality of war. The hunger to hunt.

The boatman said, “As soon as we make this bend, we’ll be in the city itself. Army of God territory. They’ll want their bribes.”

“You’ve done this before?” Tool asked.

The man nodded. “I have agreements to let me through. I bring supplies in for the captain who covers the river.”

Tool nodded. “How long before they can see us?”

“I’ll be sailing into the canals now.”

Without another word, Tool flipped over the side of the boat and into the water. The boys looked at her, suddenly speculative, started to reach for their rifles. Tool surfaced beside the boat.

“Do not think I am gone. I am here, and I am listening, and I can drown you all. Best not to be hasty in your decisions.”

He disappeared underwater again. The boat rocked oddly and the boatman grimaced. “The damn dog-face must be right under the boat.”

Like some kind of massive barnacle attached to the skiff.

The boatman hauled on his sails and his boys scrambled to pull out oars as they closed on the shore. The boatman looked around the boat, stared at Mahlia. Threw her a blue-and-gold cap with an old Patel Global logo on it.

“Pull that down. You look too much like a castoff.”

“Other people got eyes like mine. Your boy, even.”

“Other people aren’t you. Everything about you screams castoff. You’re the right age, and you look too mixed.” He glanced to where canals of the Drowned Cities were opening before them. “You have no idea how much danger you put us all in.”

They sailed into the canals. From under her cap, Mahlia eyed the city. It was different than when she’d been here last. It all had a dreamlike quality, one city on top of another city. Memory and reality, superimposed.

“The water’s higher,” she realized.

The boatman glanced over. “When were you here last?”

“When the peacekeepers left.”

“Yes. The water here is higher, then. The dike and levee system the peacekeepers tried to install was destroyed as soon as they left. The warlords wanted to flood each another, so they blew them up, and all the drainage projects and hurricane protection barriers with them. So the ocean came flooding back in. All that work to push the water out, and they just let it right back in.”

The place was worse than Mahlia had expected. Old neighborhoods were collapsed on themselves. Waterways made a maze through twisting broken buildings and rubble. Kudzu-tangled jungle and swamped buildings intertwined with brackish pools and clouds of biting flies and mosquitoes.

There were bars full of nailshed girls and drunk soldiers, rifles slung over their shoulders, shouting at one another, smashing liquor bottles. Squatters and addicts watched the river traffic with drool stringing from their lips and red eyes. Thick pythons undulated in the canals, and ravens and magpies circled overhead. Mahlia spied a den of coywolv peering from a window, three stories up.

City and jungle bled into one.

River traffic moved sluggishly. The red-starred flag of the Army of God hung bedraggled from building windows, and the face of the AOG’s general, a man named Sachs, was slathered everywhere. Pictures of him holding up the green cross to his true believers, or wielding a shining sword and an assault rifle while the AOG flag billowed behind him.

His face stared out at the populace, challenging. Even the crudest paintings of the warlord drew Mahlia’s eye. General Sachs had close-cropped hair and a scar that ran the length of his jaw. But it was his eyes, black and intense, that held her. The man seemed to inhabit his paintings, seemed alive within those eyes, and seemed to promise things.

Other people seemed to think so, too. As the populace of the Drowned Cities walked past the warlord’s various images, they made motions of supplication to him. Small gifts of food and flowers and snuffed-out candles were scattered beneath each painting, as if he were the Scavenge God or one of the Fates, but bigger.

His influence seemed to touch every neighborhood. Water sellers and nailshed girls and three-year-old children wore his political colors, and his soldiers were everywhere. In the streets and waterways. Clogging boardwalks as they smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and watched the river traffic. Army of God. Owners of the city. At least for now.

Much like the shotgun Mahlia had inspected, the walls of the city were decorated with the images of previous owners, emphasizing how quickly the tides of war shifted in the Drowned Cities.

AOG colors were slathered over other warlord faces, blotting them out. Other army flags were blacked out or painted over, but some images still peeked out. Mahlia could even make out a few peacekeeper slogans from when the cease-fire had been in effect. IMMUNIZE FOR LIFE. BEAT YOUR SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES.

Mahlia saw soldiers on a boardwalk, waving them over. They were just boys, some of them as young as Mouse, all of them armed with assault rifles and shotguns. Bony bodies and knotted muscles and scars that ripped across their bare backs and ribs and chests. All sorts of races and mixes, black and brown and pale freckled pink, and all of them as hard-eyed as their warlord. All of them full of the same hungry swagger as the UPF soldiers who had taken Mouse.

“Who’re you, girl?” one of them asked.

Mahlia didn’t answer. The boatman answered for her.

“She’s with me.”

He pulled out papers and handed them over to the soldiers. They looked at her, looked at the papers. Mahlia wondered if they could even read.

The boatman said, “I have an arrangement with Captain Eamons.” He lifted a sack, offering it to them. “He will be expecting this.”

The boys looked at the sack, looked at the papers. Looked at Mahlia.

Their eyes were bloodshot. Red rippers or crystal slide. All the troops were hopped up on the stuff to give them a combat edge, but it made them crazy and wild, and suddenly she had a bad feeling about the plan.

These soldier boys, they just wanted to kill another castoff. It didn’t matter if she had the protection of this trading man or not. Didn’t matter if there was some agreement.

A castoff had no chance going into the Drowned Cities. She didn’t belong here. The warlords had demonstrated that when she and her mother fled the first time. People who had collaborated with China’s peacekeeping mission were public enemy number one. The warlords and their soldier boys had long memories for traitors.

One of the boys was looking her over. He only had one eye, which kind of reminded her of Tool, but this boy’s eye was brown and bloodshot and angry and crazy in a way that Tool, even when he seemed ready to kill, never was.

“You castoff?”

She tried to speak, but fear overtook her. Shook her head.

“Sure you are.” He looked at the boatman. “What you want a castoff for, old man?”

The boatman hesitated. “She’s helpful.”

“Yeah? How ’bout I buy her?”

Mahlia’s guts tightened. What a fool she’d been.

“She’s not for sale.”

The boy laughed. “You think you decide what’s for sale, old man?”

The boatman shook his head. Even though he looked calm, Mahlia could see sweat dripping from his temples, running down his neck. “Your captain and I have an agreement.”

“I don’t see him around.”

Mahlia thought she felt a thump through the base of the boat. Tool, either drowning, or readying himself to emerge and slaughter.

Stay down, she prayed. Stay down.

All the soldier boys were looking at her, hungry and predatory. Their little aluminum amulets of protection glinted on their bare chests. Some of them had a green cross painted on them; others had their general’s face painted there, the same one that slathered the walls, with his black skin like her mother’s and his hollow cheeks and his wild, intense eyes.

The amulets were different, though. General Sachs was still smiling, but whoever had painted him had made him look almost crazy. Mahlia couldn’t tell if it was because he wanted to look that crazy and dangerous, or because the painter just couldn’t paint worth a damn, but when she looked up at the boys, she knew she wasn’t going to ask. It didn’t matter if she thought the general they worshipped looked silly or not.

No one with a gun looked silly, in the end.

The boy looked at the boatman, then looked at Mahlia, weighing his cruelty. His troops all watched, interested. Ready for anything. Happy for everyone to end up dead.

Don’t shame him, Mahlia thought. Give him a way out. Give him some way to not lose face with his boys.

The boatman seemed to be reading her mind. “Your captain is expecting us.” He opened a sack and withdrew a dirty stack of Red Chinese paper money, with pictures of some woman on the front and a tall angular tower on the back. BEIJING BANKING CORPORATION written in Chinese and English.

Red hundreds.

“Once he pays us,” the boatman said, “there will be more on the way out.”

The soldier boys didn’t change their expressions. But the lead boy took the cash and waved them deeper into the Drowned Cities.

33

GLENN STERN’S FACE stared at Ghost from the side of a building.

The man was three stories tall, and ten stories up, and he was eye to eye with Ghost, because Ghost was sitting on top of a barracks building by a bonfire with all his warboys, and Ghost was the man of the hour.

They’d gone into an old building and found a whole bunch of old paintings and furniture, broken them up, and started a bonfire on top of the building, choosing one where they could see out across the Drowned Cities and enjoy the view.

It had been a hell of a time hauling the stuff up, but now it was all burning, and the fire was crackling and hissing, and all kinds of strange colored paints were bubbling on the canvas and going up in smoke.

Sergeant Ocho hadn’t wanted to go up so high, but seeing as they were behind the war lines, and seeing as Stork and Van and TamTam and everyone else were begging, he said it was okay.

Stork said the sergeant didn’t like getting pinned up in the towers; he’d been caught with an old squad and ended up doing an emergency jump into a canal from four stories up. Broke his leg doing it, but in the end, he’d come out okay.

Still didn’t like to get pinned, though.

So now they were up high, looking out over the city, with Glenn Stern staring at them, and they owned the place.

Far in the distance, other fires burned, beacons. Some of them UPF; others, farther away, the campfires of the enemy. Sometimes, some asshole would launch a mortar and they’d watch it arc across, but there seemed to be some kind of agreement between the troops of the different factions that you didn’t mess with each other when you did a rooftop camp at night. Skirmishing was a day job. When you cycled back for R & R, they left you alone, and you did the same. Mostly.

Tracer fire launched across a darkened street along with the chatter of a .50-caliber. Ghost was surprised to realize that he didn’t need Mahlia to tell him what the guns were. He knew them all.

Van grabbed another big painting and dropped it on the fire. It hissed as the fumes from its paints went up.

The flames cooked through the picture. Some lady, sort of lying on a wheat field, looking across the hills to a house, all the colors kind of washed-out and grayed. The colors were boring, not like the kinds of paint they decorated their guns with. Those colors really stood out.

Ghost was looking at his own gun. It had color after color on it. Bright. A green cross on a red background, a sign that the Army of God had been the last owner.

Ocho squatted beside Ghost, nodded at the gun. “You should paint it,” he said. “Make it your own.”

“With what?”

“Romey’s got some colors; he does the pictures of the Colonel sometimes.”

“Like that one?” Ghost jerked his head at the huge image across the canal.

Ocho grinned. “Not quite. But he can get some supply. You can put your mark on it. Put a Fates Eye on it, or something. Get yourself some protection. Make it yours, right? All that AOG crap’s got to go, though. No cross-kisser stuff. Fates Eye, or else UPF blue and white, you want to get all patriotic.”

“How’d they even get him up there?” Ghost wondered.

Slim looked over at the image. “Patriotic fury, right? They scaled that sucker.”

“Ropes,” Ocho said. “They dropped ropes over the side, and lowered themselves off the top. Worked for weeks on it. For Colonel Stern’s birthday. Bunch of Alpha Company put the civvies on it.”

“I still say they climbed.”

“You weren’t there,” Ocho said. “It was before you even got your half-bars.”

“Why you want to run down a good legend? Where’s your patriotic fire?”

“I’m all for patriotic fire,” Ocho said. “Especially if it’s a bonfire.” He tossed a cracked chair leg into the blaze, sending up sparks.

Ghost stared across the gap between the buildings. The people who had painted Glenn Stern had done a good job. The man looked like some kind of god. Hard and angular and his green eyes that did the same thing that Ocho’s did. Sort of green with gold flecks.

A god, or at least a patron saint. They all toasted the Colonel with their bottles, and then they all toasted Ghost, the hero of the day.

Reggie had bought three bottles of Triple Cross off the boys over in Charlie Company. They had a still that they worked, smuggling food downriver off their territory grant, and then distilling it. No one knew what went into the brew. For all they knew, Charlie Company was distilling fingernails and dogs, but they said it was all real grain. Things like ShenMi HiYield Rice, TopGro Wheat, whatever they could burn out of the fields and get away with before Army of God or Freedom Militia figured out that they’d gone raiding.

Ghost’s squad boys kept giving him shots, getting him drunker. He stared up at the image of Glenn Stern.

“You should hear him speak,” Ocho said. “He’s got fire in him. Make you believe you can walk through a wall of bullets for the cause.”

“You got the same eyes,” Ghost said.

Ocho glanced at the painting. “Nah. I don’t. You look into the Colonel’s eyes and you see it in a second. We got the same color, but our eyes ain’t nothing the same.” He shrugged. “Saved me, though.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I wasn’t Drowned Cities, originally. Not like most of these dumbass war maggots.”

A couple of the other soldiers hooted at the insult, but Ocho waved them silent, smiling. “My family were fishers. We all got blown in on a hurricane, couldn’t paddle out. UPF scooped us up.”

He shrugged. “Most of us—” He broke off. “Anyway, they thought my eyes looked like the Colonel’s, so they recruited me.” He held out his hand, waist high. “I was a maggot about this big. They liked me. Like a mascot, right? Little bit of Glenn Stern, to keep them lucky when the bullets started flying.”

“Those soldiers still around?”

“Nah. They’re dead, mostly. But the LT, he was the one that saved my ass. He likes it when he’s got a sign. There are days when all I can do is wake up and thank the Fates that I got the same colored eyes as the Colonel. If I didn’t—” He broke off, his expression turning dark.

Ghost hurried to change the subject. “How come he calls himself Colonel?”

“You think he should call himself something else?” Stork asked, an edge in his voice.

“Army of God has a general. General Sachs,” Ghost pointed out. “How come they got a general?”

“General Sachs.” Stork made a face of derision. “Hell. That man ain’t even a soldier. Never even went to war college. He’s just some crazy dude who talks fine and got a bunch of sorry-ass warboys to believe they’ll go to Heaven if they kill everyone who doesn’t bow down to him. He calls himself Supreme Eagle, too.”

Ocho broke in. “The Colonel says you can’t just give yourself a rank. That ain’t military.” He nodded across at the huge painting. “He says he won’t take a higher rank, because it’s not his place to take a rank. That ain’t patriotic. He’s fighting for the Drowned Cities, not for some kind of rank. He loves this place, for real. He’s not just here to scrape some scavenge out and run away like these other dogs.

“Someday, when we get rid of Army of God and Freedom Militia and Taylor’s Wolves and all the rest, he’s going to build it all back. Make it great again. Maybe then, he’ll be like in the Accelerated Age. A president or something, right?”

“President,” Stork laughed. “Don’t they got one of those in China? Peacekeepers were always going on about stuff like that.”

The conversation broke off abruptly as Lieutenant Sayle came up onto the roof. Everyone jumped to their feet.

“Soldiers!” The lieutenant smiled. “I’ve got good news. We’ve got a new hero in the platoon. Got to treat our boy Ghost right.” He waved to Ocho.

“Burn him in. Give him his verticals, and treat him good. We have twenty-four R-and-R before we go back out and teach the cross-kissers another lesson.”

“Burn me in?” Ghost asked.

Ocho and Stork had already grabbed Ghost’s arms.

“C’mon, Ghost. Be a man. Get your three.” Ghost started shaking at the thought of the iron again, but TamTam handed him a bottle of booze.

“Drink up, warboy. You don’t got to do this one clean.”

Lieutenant Sayle set a piece of iron in the fire. Ghost stared at it, and then he took a big swig of the booze.

The iron got hotter and hotter.

Ghost took another swig. Ocho tapped him on the shoulder. “All right, warboy, one last drink. Let’s get this done.”

The boys all grabbed him. Some of them were laughing. Ghost fought to keep himself from struggling.

“Sarge?”

“You know the drill, soldier.” Ocho took the brand from Sayle, and carried the red glowing bar over to Ghost. Knelt down in front of him, his own face fierce with its scars. “You’re one of us now, Ghost. UPF, until the sea rolls out.”

He pressed the metal against Ghost’s flesh and Ghost flailed and struggled. But they had his head and he didn’t scream even though he wanted to pass out from the pain, and then the bar was on him again. And again.

Three across, and now three up and down. His horizontals and his verticals. Full bars. A real soldier now. The triple hash of Glenn Stern’s United Patriot Front on his cheek.

The brand came away. Ghost lay on the rooftop, gasping. Someone pulled him up and then all the boys were slapping him on the back and cheering for him, every one of them with the same deep burn on their right cheek.

Ocho pulled him close. “We’re brothers now.”

The LT stood to one side, his hollow face smiling. “You did well out there, soldier. Real bravery. Even Colonel Stern has heard about how you turned the 999 back on the cross-kissers.”

He took out a glittering golden pin and placed it in Ghost’s hand. “The Star of the True Patriot. Your bravery under fire makes the UPF what it is. Keep it close.”

Ghost stared down at the gleaming pin. It was a blue star on UPF white, surrounded by gold. The other warboys crowded around, peering at it.

Got himself a star, they murmured. UPF Star.

The lieutenant clapped Ghost on the back. “Congratulations, soldier. Welcome to the brotherhood.”

And then Ocho shouted, “Who are we?”

“UPF.”

“Who we fight?”

“TRAITORS!”

“Where do we fight?”

“WHERE THEY HIDE!”

“What do we do with them?”

“KILL!”

“Who are we?”

“UPF! UPF! UPF!”

Everyone was shouting and high, and Ocho and the lieutenant were smiling. “What are you waiting for?” Ocho shouted. “Show our brother Ghost a good time!”

With a whoop, the boys all grabbed him, and lifted him to their shoulders and carried him off the roof, chanting, showing their new warboy off to the other units. Ghost was theirs.

Ghost rode with his brothers, his cheek blazing with fire that all his brothers had felt before him. One of them gave him some kind of powder to snort, and it was mixed with gunpowder and his head went wild with pleasure and insanity.

The night became a whirl of drinking and powders and celebratory gunfire, and then they were all leading him into another part of the building and there were girls there.

Ghost tried to focus, surprised. He hadn’t seen any girls since the village and he was confused by the reek of fear and sex and then his boys were pushing him forward. Someone shoved a bottle of Triple Cross into his hand, and Slim and TamTam grabbed a girl and shoved her at him, and they all were laughing and drinking while they made the girl do whatever they could think up, and Mouse felt sick but Ghost was high and burning and alive and crazed and Mouse was dead, anyway.

Mouse was just some war maggot. Ghost was a soldier, and he was alive. Even if he was dead tomorrow, he was alive tonight.

34

OCHO WATCHED HIS new warboy go into the nailshed. It was always shaky after you burned them. Sometimes they broke, right after, and you had to put them down. Sometimes they settled in.

He remembered when it had been his turn. He’d never felt anything like it in his life. Being burned in. The smell made him sick. He wasn’t like the LT or TamTam, who seemed to like the burning, but he was damned if he was going to show it.

He watched the curtain fall behind Ghost.

Sorry, warboy.

A nailshed girl came up to him, but he shook her off. “Not now.” She looked nice, but he didn’t want to be distracted. The booze and the red rippers were too much already, and they made it hard to concentrate on what was what.

He’d learned from Sayle that you needed a clear head. Sayle didn’t booze at all, straightedge warboy, but Ocho suspected that what got him high wasn’t any booze or drug or girl. It was the hurting. Sayle liked people hurt.

Sayle was the one who came up with the new way to deal with war prisoners. Chop off their hands and feet and dump them where their army could find them. Let them decide if they wanted the burden of taking care of someone who couldn’t walk or eat or crap without someone helping them.

That was Sayle.

Ocho had watched Sayle do it the first time and then Sayle had straightened and looked at the platoon and said, “That’s how we do, from now on.” And Ocho had looked at the dying boy with his bloody stumps and he’d seen the future, right there.

That was him.

Not that day, and maybe not the next, but eventually, it would all come boomeranging back at him. Fates coming howling in like a banshee. And sure enough, now everyone did it. Now you always made sure your new recruits killed their own when they got tossed back.

It taught you a lesson, Sayle said: Don’t let them catch your maggot ass.

Ocho pushed past the other troops and the girls, past the smell of coywolv roasting and headed down to the canals.

He didn’t have any place to go. Wasn’t even sure what he wanted, but he needed to think and with the R & R, he was going to take the time.

There was something that he’d been thinking about a lot, ever since the run-in with the 999.

The gun was banging away on them all the time, now.

They’d tightened security to keep spotters from getting deep in again like that. But it meant they needed to worry about more than a company of soldiers actually pushing the territory. Now a couple cross-kissers could sneak in and find a barracks tower and start raining death in on them. And that made Ocho start thinking about the endgame.

A pair of patrol soldiers called out to him. He held up his hands, careful not to make any moves while they came over. For a second he was afraid that he’d forgotten the call signs—but then they came to mind.

“Charlie Sweet Bogey.”

Tomorrow it would be something else. The call signs were coming down from above, changing fast and furious. They needed to keep switching up to keep out any more infiltrators. The order came straight from the Colonel.

Ocho doubted it would last. The Colonel would need something better to identify his own. Ocho couldn’t even get out to his own boys without almost getting his ass shot off.

It made it almost impossible, really. How were they supposed to let farmers in if they were looking for someone with a tiny little radio? They were used to looking for guns, but if it was just spotters now…

He made it to the company HQ, and checked in on the soldiers. He had downtime, but still, he couldn’t help checking in.

“About time,” someone said.

Ocho looked over at the boys. “Why?”

“Got something.”

“Another spotter?”

“You mean forward observer.”

“Right.” FO was the new term. Forward observers. Handed down from the Colonel, also. Stern had gone to war college. He knew about forward observers. Just no one expected to have to actually fight them.

“You got to see this.” One of the boys handed Ocho the squad’s binoculars.

“What am I looking at?” Ocho asked as he peered one-eyed through the single good lens.

“You’ll see. Just watch the water down there.”

And so they sat, taking turns.

Nothing moved for a long time, and then suddenly the water moved and a girl surfaced…

What the…?

Ocho squinted, looking at her.

At first, he thought she was just taking a bath, getting the sweat off, but he’d been watching that spot, and she hadn’t gone in. There was something about her…

Were the cross-kissers sneaking girls in as spotters?

Something was off. It wasn’t that she was a girl in a war zone. They were around. Here and there. If she had the kill instinct, she was in, just like any boy.

He’d commanded a killer of a girl with curly brown hair that she kept cropped real short. Pale skin and freckles, and crazy as any warboy he’d ever known. She’d gotten blown up working point for a patrol when the Army of God mined a building they’d taken and were trying to clear. Walked right into a wall of nails. But she’d been good. Smart…

Ocho froze. This girl didn’t have a hand. That was it. She was missing a hand.

You’re sliding, he thought. That’s all. Just a bad slide on the crystal ride. There’s no way. She couldn’t be here. She can’t. There’s no way.

The girl came out again, checking both ways.

Fates. It was the girl. He was sure of it. The one-handed castoff who’d stitched him up. Dark skin and Chinese eyes, and that look of a survivor. On her cheek, he could just make out the triple hash of Glenn Stern’s chosen. He had to give her credit. She was almost as sneaky as Army of God.

The girl made a motion toward the water. Ocho stopped breathing.

“Oh shit.”

“What is it?” his boys asked. “What you see?”

A huge shape was emerging from the still waters of the canal. Graceful despite its mass. The monster came out of the water and climbed onto the floating walkway. Whole and healthy. Not a sign of a war wound on it.

The half-man paused, crouched there on the edge, head swiveling left and right. Ocho couldn’t breathe. Suddenly he was right back in the jungle, the creature exploding from the leaves, slamming him with a clawed fist and sending him flying. It was huge. It was too close.

Ocho yanked the binoculars away from his face. Realized he was being stupid. They were far away. They had no idea he was here. He lifted the binoculars again.

The monster was gone.

“Dammit!”

“What?”

Ocho pointed at the distant building. “I want spotters on that tower. Every side. We know what’s in it?”

“Nothing. Old junk. Apartments.”

“Get spotters on it. And kick this up to the LT.”

“For some girl? You don’t want us to just go grab her?”

“No!” Ocho whirled. “Don’t go near her. Just watch. If you see her or the half-man come out, stay off them. Put two layers of spotters out, in case they slip by. And watch the water. They’re using the canals. Swimming under our lines or something.”

He turned and bolted for the stairs, galloping down flight after flight. The half-man was here. In the Drowned Cities. Inside their damn territory. The castoff and the dog-face.

Faster and faster. His trot turned into a flat-out run. The half-man was here. He slammed into a patrol.

“Hold!”

Their guns whipped up. Ocho skidded to a halt. “Don’t shoot!” He tried to remember the passwords. Finally remembered, dragging them from his panicked memory.

“You need help, Sergeant?” they asked.

Ocho shook his head. “No. I’m fine. Bad rippers, that’s all. Just a little shaky.”

“Don’t run like that.” They waved him past. “We got warnings to be on the lookout for infiltrators, right?”

“I look like I wave a green crucifix?” He gave them a dark look. “Get out there and patrol.”

He turned and kept going, but he was gripped with a sense of creeping horror. It was just dumb luck that his boys had picked a new pair of binoculars off the Army of God and were trying them out. Surveillance was at the edges, not this deep in.

What was that girl doing here? Every time Ocho had run into either of them, it had been bad news. And now they were here together, inside the perimeter, stealthy and deadly.

They had no reason to be here unless…

Unless they were hunting.

And if they were hunting, they either wanted revenge, or they wanted Ghost, and either way, it meant he needed to shut them down before they got any deeper.

35

CROSSING INTO UPF TERRITORY was harder than Mahlia had expected, but with Tool, it was at least possible. The half-man could sniff out the patrols, and sense them far away. After abandoning the boatman, they made slow progress across the city, moving at night.

When they reached the boundaries of the war between UPF and Army of God, where gunfire was traded every few minutes and buildings echoed with screams of soldiers trying to break through against one another, Mahlia nearly gave up. There was no way they could cross an active war line.

“We’re dead,” she said. “This ain’t going to work.”

Tool just smiled. “Do not be so easily discouraged.” He took her hand and led her into the bowels of a swamped building. “We will swim.”

“Swim where? They’ll see us.”

Tool’s teeth showed. “Come.” He drew her down into the water. “Trust me.”

He dragged her deeper into the water. Mahlia started to struggle. Tool said, “Breathe deep,” and she did, just as he pulled her down below the waterline. Warm seawater swallowed her. Distant waves and gunfire. Tool drew her onto his back, and then he was swimming.

He swam out through a broken window and into a canal, and still he swam. Water dragged at Mahlia as he accelerated, swimming hard. Mahlia clung to him and tried not to be torn loose by the pressure of the water streaming around her.

Her lungs began to heave with a need for air, but still Tool swam. She needed to breathe. Had to surface. Tool didn’t stop. The half-man didn’t seem to care. Still he swam. Mahlia started to panic. She tried to let go, to try to surface, but Tool seized her.

I’m going to drown.

She fought to surface, but the half-man pinned her arms, and kept her down. He pulled her close. His great face loomed before her. Blew a stream of bubbles in her face.

For a second, Mahlia was so surprised that she almost drowned herself. And then she understood. Tool had more than enough air for both of them. She steeled herself, and let herself exhale. Nodded to him, knowing the half-man’s plan.

Tool’s maw gaped wide, showing teeth. He pressed his mouth over hers. Breathed. Mahlia inhaled. Oxygen and carrion. Life and death, all at once. Mahlia’s lungs filled to bursting with the half-man’s breath.

Tool drew away, and motioned for her to hold on once again.

They swam.

Above them a firefight raged, but down deep in the water, they passed unnoticed. Canal after canal. Block after drowned block. They slipped through the city like fish, unremarked by the warfare that raged above.

At last, they had crossed the final battle lines, and Tool found shelter. He swam into a new building, and they surfaced to the sound of sloshing, salty waves and distant remote gunfire. Mahlia sucked clean air, desperately grateful to be breathing something that hadn’t come out of the lungs of the killer. Clean oxygen. She gulped at it, coughed, and gulped air again.

“Do you know where we are?” Tool asked.

Mahlia swam to a window. It was half above the water level, so she could see a bit of the world outside. She peered out, then jerked back with a hiss. A floating boardwalk was right outside, at eye level. People outside, straining to drag a barge, slave laborers, under the eye of UPF soldiers. The barge was full of scrap. Rolls and rolls of wire and cable. Even through the glass, she could hear the groan of the scavenge laborers.

She waited until they were past and scanned the canal again, getting her bearings. “Yeah. I know where to go. We still got a ways.”

Tool didn’t complain. He just took her on his back once again, and they swam on. Hours later, they reached the place Mahlia had been seeking.

She surfaced first, climbing out of the water and slipping inside the building. She paused, listening. Praying that it was empty. No sounds echoed other than the flutter of pigeons. No voices. No smell of human habitation. Nothing. No one. Just another abandoned building.

Mahlia returned to the canal and motioned for Tool. The half-man surfaced and followed her into the tower of Mahlia’s memories.

When Mahlia was young, her father and his peacekeepers had dominated the building. They’d lived in profusion. Here, Mahlia had spoken Chinese, like a civilized person. When she was out on the street, she spoke Drowned Cities, but here, she spoke Mandarin.

She had moved and blended between two worlds, and she’d done it easily. She was like her mother that way. Her mother had had the knack for crossing back and forth between cultures and worlds. She could make foreign buyers look at her and take her seriously. Trust that the antiques she sold were genuine. Get them to give her money. And she’d known how to float the Drowned Cities as well, ferreting out the things that foreigners wanted to buy. She could scavenge with the best, and then she could take her prizes to the foreign buyers and they’d seen her not as just another Drowned Cities con artist, but as a respected handler of antiquities.

“What is this place?” Tool asked.

“I grew up here,” Mahlia said. “Lots of peacekeepers used to rent apartments here. The owners had ancestors from China, a long time ago, so they knew how to rent to peacekeepers, make them happy. Make food they liked, stuff like that.”

The door to the apartment had been knocked down, furniture had been chopped up and burned. Soldiers had camped in it, and then some other animals had nested after. Pack rats maybe, from the piles of torn fluff and glittering objects in the corner.

Mahlia stood in the middle of the apartment, remembering. It seemed small in comparison to her memories. This place had been so large, and now the halls seemed short and the ceilings seemed lower. She pushed open another door and found her bed. The mattress was missing. She found it pushed up against a window in her mother’s room, burned and shot through, as if someone had used it to shield themselves from weapons fire.

Home, now torn apart completely. Bullet holes in the walls, shell casings on the floor. The stink of a latrine long dead. A few pieces of art were still on the walls, but someone had painted a green crucifix over half of them.

Tool stalked the rooms like a tiger, probably building one of those tactical maps that he liked to have in his mind. Noting every window and every door, every shared wall, every drop to the canals below.

Mahlia peered out a broken window. There was some kind of nest just outside, maybe hawk or pigeon, but it looked like it hadn’t been used for a while.

Tool had counseled her to watch not just for people but for animals as well. Running animals, flights of birds, all were indicators of soldiers approaching, and all of them would be savvy for the same dangers from her. If Mahlia scared a group of roosting pigeons up here, she was marking herself as surely as if she stood up and shouted.

Down in the emerald green of the canal, someone was poling a skiff. Some kind of noodle seller. She was still surprised to see that anyone lived in the Drowned Cities other than soldiers, but Tool said that armies always acquired hangers-on—merchants, children, nailshed girls, farmers, smugglers, black marketeers, drug dealers.

Armies had needs, and they found ways to make sure those needs were supplied. They’d shoot every castoff they found, but plenty of other civvies were allowed to survive. It was Glenn Stern’s patriotic duty to scrape the Army of God and Taylor’s Wolves and the Freedom Militia from the face of the earth, but he needed the support of the people within his territory to carry it off.

And people did support him. After all, they had nowhere to go, either. Just like the soldiers. They were all pinned in by border armies and impassable jungle wilderness and the sea. A bunch of crabs stuffed in a pot, all ripping away at each other.

Mahlia felt a wave of bitterness at the sight of civvies down in the canals, selling their vegetables, meat, hot noodles. They could talk to those soldier boys. Probably, they’d ratted to the soldier boys, too. Probably told the returning armies exactly where to find every single peacekeeper family in the city, currying favor in order to keep the bullets pointed away from themselves.

Mahlia stared down at them, and imagined shooting them. Paying them all back for ratting her out and running her off, for helping to kill everything she’d grown up with and depended on.

“Vengeance,” Tool rumbled behind her.

Mahlia startled. “You read minds now?”

Tool shook his head. “Your body is full of rage. Every sinew. It is easy to read. You speak volumes with a clenched fist.”

Mahlia laughed shortly. “All those people down there, they didn’t have to run.”

“And you would like to make them run the way you had to.”

Mahlia shrugged. “Sure. Teach them a lesson.”

“You believe that seeing your enemies running and afraid would accomplish something?”

“What? You Doctor Mahfouz now?” Mahlia didn’t like the tone of judgment coming from Tool. “Don’t give me that ‘eye for an eye makes us all blind’ talk.”

Tool’s teeth showed briefly, a cynical smile. “Not I. Vengeance is sweet.” He was squatting in the shadows, a massive statue of muscle and death. “But this place has gone beyond that. The people here don’t even remember why they revenge upon one another.”

“Doctor Mahfouz used to say living in the Drowned Cities made people crazy. Like it came in with the tide. When the water came up, so did the killing.”

Tool laughed at that.

“Nothing so mystical. Human beings hunger for killing, that is all. It only takes a few politicians to stoke division, or a few demagogues encouraging hatred to set your kind upon one another. And then before you know it, you have a whole nation biting on its own tail, going round and round until there is nothing left but the snapping of teeth. Destroying a place like the Drowned Cities is easy when you have human beings to work with. Your kind loves to follow. My kind at least has an excuse, but yours?” Tool smiled again. “I have never seen a creature more willing to rip out its neighbor’s throat.”

Mahlia was about to retort, but a 999 boomed, interrupting her. Its artillery shell buried itself somewhere to the east of them. Another followed. And then another. Tool’s ears pricked to the sounds. He began nodding slowly.

“What do you hear?” Mahlia asked.

Tool glanced over. “The tides of war. They are flowing strongly against Glenn Stern. The Army of God suddenly finds itself well armed.”

“And?”

“The UPF will not last long. If your friend Mouse is still alive, he will be in greater and greater danger. The 999 means that the Army of God has negotiated a way to bring in weapons past the sea blockades. Presumably they have made promises to share the UPF’s corpse with their suppliers, people on the outside who are rich enough and hungry enough for raw materials.” Tool shrugged. “It could be any of dozens of countries or companies. Perhaps Cycan Mining? Perhaps Lawson & Carlson. Or Patel Global or Xinhua Industrial. It hardly matters. The Army of God has sold the last scraps of their city so that they can dance on the skulls of their enemies.”

“You don’t know that’s what’s happening.”

Tool smiled. “I am ignorant of many human things, but war I know. War requires a steady diet of bullets and rifles and explosives shoveled into its open maw. None of that comes cheaply. The only thing the warlords have to offer is the scrap of this city. I very much doubt they even remember what started their fighting with one another. Now they just want the territory so that they can sell a little more scrap and buy another handful of bullets.”

Mahlia considered. “So they buy things from the outside?”

“They don’t have the intelligence or the wherewithal to make their own equipment. All of them are funded by other groups who hope to profit.”

“Those other people,” she said. “Lawson & Carlson, or whoever. Would they buy stuff from other people? Not just soldiers?”

“What are you suggesting?”

Buyers. Mahlia tried to control her excitement. There were buyers, still. Just like when she’d been young and her mother had found the rich people who wanted antiques from the past. There were buyers.

She motioned Tool to follow, then guided him down a dusty stairwell.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she said, her words a whisper. Echoing her mother’s own words the first time Mahlia had seen her coming out of her secret place.

Mahlia reached the level above the canals. Scanned the hall. It was abandoned. No one was moving about. She ran her fingers along a wall, pushing on it, feeling for the latch buttons. Pushed hard. They were stuck.

Tool reached past her. He leaned and she heard the click. A portion of wall opened. Tool cocked his head. “A secret door?”

“My mom had it built, my old man’s idea. He bribed people. You’ll see.”

Mahlia waved for Tool to follow. Past the secret door, the warehouse was large. Bigger than two apartments put together. It was dim. The only light filtered in from the outside through high-up slits with bars. Barely noticeable. Barely worthwhile to investigate. With no way into this corner of the building, it had lain undiscovered, even as all the living spaces and apartments were ransacked.

Mahlia squinted in the gloom. Treasures surrounded her. They still existed. It wasn’t just her child’s dreaming mind that remembered this place.

It was truly here.

Oil paintings in gold-leaf frames. Marble busts of old men and women. Ancient muskets. A tattered banner with a circle of white stars on blue, and bars of red and white. A head, almost as tall as her, marble and craggy, knocked from some forgotten monument and moved by barge to this secret hiding place, until a buyer could be found. Old books, moth-eaten. Bits of paper curled and torn. Manuscripts. Bits and pieces of the Accelerated Age.

Mahlia’s mother had known history, and she had had an instinct for what foreign buyers might desire. And it was all here. Still undisturbed. The valuables that she’d been sure the man who had fathered her daughter would never abandon.

Tool picked up a gray uniform of some long-forgotten soldier, and held it up to the light. Set it down carefully. Dust rose. He lifted an ancient musket, peered down its sights.

“Well?” Mahlia asked.

Tool looked over at her, inquiringly.

“Do you think we could sell it?” Mahlia asked. “Do you think this could buy us out of here? Find a buyer and smuggle out? If they smuggle in guns, maybe they’d smuggle out us. For enough money, they’d do it, right?”

Tool set the musket down, thoughtful. “Where did this come from?”

“My mom. She sold this kind of stuff. She did scavenge. But only the old stuff. And then she did a lot more of it when the peacekeepers rolled in and made the war stop for a while.”

Tool shook his head, smiling slightly. “It must have been profitable for her.”

Mahlia shook her head. “I don’t know. That was all bank stuff.”

“A bank… in China?”

Again, Mahlia shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Your father. The peacekeeper. Did he know of this trade?”

“It’s how they met,” Mahlia said. “He collected things, too.”

Tool snorted. “I’m sure he did.”

Mahlia didn’t like the tone of the half-man’s voice, like he saw things she didn’t.

“You think someone would buy this stuff?” she asked again.

Tool looked thoughtful. “Any number of people would buy it. It seems your mother was very good at what she did.”

“Yeah?”

“I see things here that were thought lost long ago. These are the sorts of objects that should live in the greatest museums of the world.” He gingerly lifted up a piece of parchment and studied it. “Some of them once did.”

“So we can sell them?” she pressed.

“Oh yes. You can sell these pieces. The problem is that for every buyer, you will find a thousand others who would cut your throat for the chance to sell it themselves. We are surrounded by the treasure of the ages, and just outside those walls, tens of thousands of soldiers all kill one another over pieces of scrap that aren’t worth a tenth of what’s in this room.”

“You think maybe there’s a way to cut a deal?” she asked. “Some way to bargain with the soldiers?”

“A delicate negotiation, when they would just as soon put a bullet between your eyes. Neither of us is the sort the warlords like to speak with. A castoff and a half-man.” Tool smiled.

“Mouse,” Mahlia said suddenly. “If we can get Mouse back. He could be a go-between.”

“You build cloud castles from dream smoke.”

“But we could do it, right? If the Fates look right on us, then maybe we could do it, right?”

Tool looked at her. Scars and thought. “Do you believe the Fates smile on you?”

Mahlia swallowed. “They got to sometime, right? Got to.”

36

GHOST WAS THROWING UP, head hung over a canal, when Ocho and the LT found him. They dragged him upright and splashed water on his face, and then waited again while he threw up some more, then led him down the boardwalk.

“I thought we had R-and-R?” he said.

Ocho almost looked guilty. “Yeah. Change of plan. We need you to go on patrol.”

“Why me?”

“’Cause I said so!” Ocho’s expression hardened. “Don’t think because you got a fancy pin from the Colonel means I don’t still own your maggot ass. I say jump, you jump, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Alil’s waiting for you.”

When they got to Alil, he tossed Ghost his gun. Ghost hefted it, still feeling nauseated, trying to focus on his boys.

“We searching civvies today,” Alil said. “Checking all the farmers and the girls, making sure they don’t got anything like a radio.” He paused. “And check our soldiers, too. If they got a radio, they ain’t ours, even if they got a brand.”

“Army of God keeps poking us,” Ocho said. He wasn’t looking right at Ghost, more looking away. Looking toward AOG territory, maybe. “We think there might be some infiltrators, so we want you to go over some of our inside sectors, check them real close. See what crops up.”

Sayle was more direct.

“I want you boys to go out and make sure none of those cross-kissers makes it through on my watch. You catch one, you send him back without his hands and feet, right? Teach them a lesson.”

“Yes, sir,” they all chorused, but Ghost still felt nauseated from the night before and the new brand on his cheek ached like crazy. No way he was going to complain about it, but still.

Ocho gave them their sector. It was odd, because it was way inside their territory, but when Alil asked, Ocho just looked at him and said, “Maybe we got some intelligence, right?”

“Seems like a small area.”

“Yeah. Keep close on it. When you finish with it, loop on it again. We got other people patrolling the rest.”

A few minutes later, Alil was leading them out over a rubble trail between two buildings, through another, and then out to the floating boardwalks.

“You doing okay, soldier?” He clapped Ghost on the shoulder. “You look like hell.”

Ghost just looked at him blearily.

Alil grinned. “Don’t worry. This is crazy-easy duty. We’re two cordons back from where we’re seeing contact. Keep your eyes peeled, though. Maybe the LT really does got a lead on something. We don’t want any more of these FOs slipping through. And don’t get overconfident. Civvies sometimes get feisty when you search them. Got stuff they want to hide.”

Ghost nodded and tried to pay attention. After their ambush with the FOs and the 999, he couldn’t afford to lose track of what was going on around him. He wouldn’t be overconfident ever again. Hell no. That’s what got you dead like… Pook?… Was that his name?

Ghost was disturbed that he’d already forgotten the name of the boy who had trained him. Tubby? No… Gutty. Right. ’Cause of his gut. ’Cause he’d been fat, once. Back when the peacekeepers were around.

“Mouse?”

Ghost turned, surprised. The voice was familiar.

Something blasted past him, piling into his friends. They went into the water with a huge splash. Ghost stood frozen, staring at what stood before him. Mahlia. Real as day. Not a hallucination. Not some hangover memory. Mahlia. For real.

“Mahlia?”

She grabbed him and dragged him into a building’s shelter, pulling him close. She was talking to him, saying things, but Ghost couldn’t stop staring at her face. She had the triple hash, right on her cheek, burned in good.

“When did you get recruited?” he asked, and then all hell broke loose.

Mahlia hadn’t expected it to be so easy.

She’d been looking out the windows of her family’s old apartment, just killing time, waiting for dark so they could start moving again. She knew she’d eventually have to expose herself and leave her lair, but not yet. She’d wait, and then she’d find Mouse’s platoon. She’d look for that Lieutenant Sayle and his soldiers. The boys all had call signs, and she could make her way to them. Lieutenant Sayle, Hi-Lo Platoon, Dog Squad. She’d be a runner. A messenger. And if that didn’t seem workable, she’d come up with something else. They were inside UPF lines now. In the dark, with a hat over her eyes, and most of the castoffs long dead, she thought she could pass.

One step at a time.

And then she saw Mouse coming down the floating boardwalk, jumping around splintered bamboo spans—him and a couple of other soldier boys, but practically alone.

She stared.

Was it him? Was it really him?

He had scars on his face, the full triple hash of Glenn Stern, just like she’d burned into her own cheek, and his ear had some kind of brownish bandage on it, but it was him. He had an AK slung over his shoulder, and she had to look at him twice more before she was absolutely sure that he wasn’t just another soldier boy, but no, it was Mouse.

He was there. Right there.

“Tool,” she whispered. “I see him.”

Quick as a knife, Tool was there, looking down. “Only three.”

“Two,” Mahlia corrected. “Mouse doesn’t count.”

Tool didn’t say anything to that. He saw the world differently. But Mouse wasn’t going to shoot them. “I’ll talk to him,” she said.

“Not with those two.”

“If he sees me, he’ll break off.”

“No. They are together. None of them will separate. They are patrolling. Even these boys know that much about their duties. They are nothing in comparison to a real army, but they have that much training at least.” He studied them. “Were either of the others at the village?”

Mahlia stared down at them, trying to remember. There’d been a lot of them. “I don’t know.”

“If they were, they will recognize you, and they will kill you.”

She couldn’t be certain. She’d seen a lot of soldiers, but she had no way of knowing how many had been there, and if they had seen her, and she’d been distracted. It definitely wasn’t the sergeant she’d worked on. Or Sayle. Or that one who had wanted to hurt her.

“I don’t think so.”

“Not good enough,” Tool said. “I will neutralize them. You get Mouse.”

And just like that they set up the ambush. It was easy. The soldier boys walked right into it.

Mahlia and Tool waited in a broken bay window of the building, a nice wide one that would let Tool move easily and that they could step right through and onto the boardwalk… waiting, waiting… and then as the soldiers came close, Mahlia called out to Mouse.

She felt a blur of wind as Tool shot past her and piled into the soldier boys. They went into the canal with a splash. Mouse turned. His gun came up.

Mahlia backed off. “Mouse?” Fates. Was he going to kill her? “It’s me. Mahlia! We’re here to get you out!”

The gun came down. Mouse looked from her to the water. A few bubbles rose.

“Mouse?”

The redheaded boy looked puzzled. He stared at the water, then back at her. In a minute Tool would have both of them drowned. Mahlia almost felt bad for them, knowing what that felt like. Being held down by a half-man while you drowned. Those two didn’t stand a chance. She pulled him into the building.

“When did you get recruited?” Mouse asked.

He was still confused, and then Mahlia remembered her own mark. “No! Fates, no!” She shook her head. “I’m just here to get you out.”

She tried to pull him with her, but Mouse wasn’t coming along as quickly as she wanted. She saw that his face was nicked and bruised, and the bandage over his ear was bloody. He’d been in battle. He was in shock, she decided. He was still staring at Mahlia, looking surprised and confused, like he was looking at a stranger.

Tool surfaced from the canal. Suddenly the buildings around them opened up. Gunfire chattered all around. Bullets peppered the concrete and stone, whizzing and ricocheting. Debris showered them.

Mouse ducked under cover. Tool leaped from the water, running for the building’s entryway, but his back was a carpet of red. For a second Mahlia thought that he was bleeding, but the blood was waving about, bristlelike.

Needles, she realized. Dozens, maybe hundreds of needles, all peppering his back. Tool shoved them both in through the window and stumbled. Kept shoving them forward, and then he toppled. Boots echoed down the boardwalks. It was an ambush, Mahlia realized. She’d thought they were hunters, but they were prey.

Mahlia grabbed Mouse. “Come on!”

She dragged him down a corridor. They weren’t far from her mother’s secret vault. If they could just get inside, the soldiers might not find it. But Mouse wasn’t running, he was dragging.

“Come on!” Mahlia shouted. “Come on!”

Boots echoed behind them. More and more. They were pouring in from all sides. Mahlia slammed up against the warehouse’s secret door, feeling for its catches, scrabbling at them, jamming them, pounding them in frustration.

The door swung open. She dove through, pulling Mouse. She heard shouts behind her. She tried to slam the door closed but a rifle jammed its way through, blocking her. Outside, the soldiers were all yelling. They slammed against the door and knocked her back. Soldier boys swarmed through, surrounding her. They grabbed her and dragged her out.

Mahlia caught a glimpse of Mouse, standing still, astonished, and then she was out in the hall, dragged kicking and screaming back the way she’d come. Before her, Tool lay on the floor, animal eye wide with tranquilizers as troops swarmed over him.

Lieutenant Sayle stepped in through the building’s huge bay window, and a fresh wave of his troops boiled in with him. He smiled coldly as his boys slapped her and shoved her forward.

Mahlia caught another glimpse of Mouse being pulled away, a look of shame and confusion on his face. Soldiers were slapping him on the back, cheering and calling him Ghost, and more warboys were coming around to point at her and laugh, and spit in her face.

Sayle stepped close, smiling.

“The girl who summons coywolv,” he said. “I have been dreaming about you.”

37

MAHLIA STARED AT MOUSE, shocked. “You set me up?”

Mouse’s eyes went from her to the soldiers, confused. “I didn’t know.” He finally seemed to be getting what was happening. He tried to push through the soldiers. “I didn’t know!”

“Get him out of here!” Sayle ordered.

A couple of soldiers grabbed Mouse and pulled him away while he struggled and tried to get back to her. Mahlia looked to Tool, hoping for help, but he was down and gone. She was on her own.

The lieutenant raised his fist and swung hard. Pain exploded in her face. She tried not to flinch and not to cry. He hit her again. She felt her nose break.

The lieutenant stood before her, gray eyes coldly alight. Mahlia tried to tear away, but the soldiers tripped her and she landed on the floor. She scrabbled to get up, but they jumped on her and held her down. Someone slammed her face into the cracked tile floor.

Lieutenant Sayle knelt down beside her. He grabbed her by the hair, twisting her head up so he could look into her face.

“You got some payback coming to you, castoff.”

Mahlia knew what was coming. It was going to be like it had been for her mother. They’d rape her and break her, make her scream until they got sick of her. Then they’d kill her. Mahlia started to pray. Knowing it was stupid, but praying anyway. Kali-Mary Mercy, Rust Saint, Fates. All the martyrs of the Deepwater Church. Anyone.

Sayle put a knee on her back, pressing her down, and then Mahlia felt something else, too, metal pricking cold against the skin of her spine. A knife.

“Maybe we’ll take your kidneys out, before we’re done with you,” Sayle said. “Harvesters give a good price for pieces and parts. Take your eyes, take your heart, take your kidneys, drain you out.” He paused.

“But they don’t need fingers, do they?”

Mahlia started to shake. Her fingers. Her hand.

She started bucking and twisting, trying to break free. Knowing it was pointless to fight, but doing it anyway.

The lieutenant put his knife against her pinky knuckle. She felt it slice through.

Mahlia screamed. She screamed and screamed and they didn’t try to muffle her. They just laughed as she bucked and writhed under their hands.

“That’s one!” Sayle crowed.

He dangled her pinky in front of her while she sobbed and tried to squirm away.

Sayle leaned close, his breath hot on her cheek. “How ’bout we go for two?”

“LT!” The shout came from across the room, interrupting.

Sayle turned, annoyed. “What do you want, soldier?”

“Need your help, sir.”

With a curse, Sayle climbed off. Mahlia lay gasping, panting. One of the other soldier boys gave her a shove with his foot.

“Only four more…”

It didn’t matter, she tried to tell herself as she lay shivering and whimpering. It didn’t matter whether she had one or two, or no hands. She was going to die anyway. But she couldn’t help crying.

“Call HQ,” Sayle was saying. “Get us some more soldiers. Get us a damn barge. Show some initiative, soldier.”

“We got no authority,” the soldier was saying. They were all standing around the unconscious mass of the half-man. Some of the other troops were trying to get Tool lifted up. It was almost a joke. He was clearly too heavy for them.

The soldier talking to Lieutenant Sayle said, “We got to hurry. We got the sucker roped, but there’s no telling how long till it wakes up. Until we got it chained or something, there’s no guarantee it won’t just bust loose. It’s strong now. Stronger than when we chased it before. We don’t want it waking up.”

The soldier looked familiar to Mahlia.

The one she’d saved from the coywolv, she realized. The one she and Doctor Mahfouz had stitched up. She regretted it now. Should have let him die. Should have cut him wider open, and saved everyone the trouble. She could have finished it right there in the doctor’s squat, a month ago.

Ocho. That’s right. For knifing a bunch of other soldiers who all had guns.

Lieutenant Sayle was pissed. He kept looking from Mahlia to Ocho.

“Sir?” the sergeant pressed. “We got to make this happen now.”

Sayle nodded impatiently, then stalked over to Mahlia. “We aren’t finished, girl. We’re just getting started.”

He waved at some of his other soldiers and they all headed out, leaving Ocho and another squad behind. Mahlia closed her eyes. The pain in her hand was going away. She couldn’t tell if that was because she was bleeding out… No, she couldn’t bleed out. Not just from a finger. That would have been too damn easy. Sayle wouldn’t let her go easy.

She lay still, trying not to sob. Some of the soldier boys roped her legs and her arms behind her. The stump gave them a little trouble, so they did her arms above the elbows, almost dislocating her shoulders in the process, using some kind of sticky tape that wouldn’t slide off.

Footsteps. Mahlia opened her eyes. It was the sergeant, standing over her.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked.

Mahlia summoned all her will, looking up at him, hating him. “You remember me, right?”

“Oh yeah. Crazy girl who brought the coywolv down on us. Ripped up Soa and Ace and Quickdraw.”

“Saved you, though.” She stared up at him. “You remember that? I saved you.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

The soldier boy almost looked sad.

Mahlia stared up at him, willing a connection. Willing him to see her as a person. “Let me go,” she said. “Just let me and Mouse go.”

“You crazy? I let you go, I’m dead. That boy you call Mouse?” He shook his head. “He’s already dead. Never even existed. We got a soldier name of Ghost, who might look something like someone you knew a long time ago, but he ain’t that boy anymore.”

“We could run.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” Ocho said.

“What if we could get away? The half-man could do it. He could get us out.”

Ocho smiled slightly. “Now you’re just sliding.”

It was the same as when the peacekeepers left. Just like when she’d stood on the dock with her mother, waving her arms and jumping up and down, begging for the clipper ships to sail back. It didn’t have to be this way. He could choose different.

“Please.”

The sergeant fumbled in his pocket, pulled out some pills. “Here.”

Mahlia turned her face away, but the boy grabbed her and twisted her head around. “Don’t be dumber than you already are. They’re painkillers.”

“You think that’s enough?”

“No. But it’s what I got. And it’s what I can do.”

Mahlia stared up at him, feeling stupid for hoping the warboy would have compassion for her. “Just kill me,” she said. “Just kill me and get it over with. At least do that. Don’t let Sayle get hold of me again. You owe me that much. Don’t let him do any more to me.”

The sergeant looked apologetic. “LT would cut my own fingers off if that happened.”

“I saved you,” Mahlia pressed. “You owe me.”

Ocho grimaced. “Yeah, well, no one ever said things balance out. That’s for Fates and Rust Saint worshippers.”

He forced the pills between her lips with dirty fingers and clamped her mouth shut so that she couldn’t fight them off. Pinched her nose. “Just swallow. You’ll be glad.”

She finally obeyed, staring up at him with hatred. He nodded, satisfied, and straightened. “They got opium in them. Warboys smoke it, but you can eat it. Takes the edge off, whatever ails you.”

Mahlia wanted to keep hating him, but her eyes were getting heavy, and dreaminess overtook her.

38

THE GIRL’S VOICE slowed and went blurry as the meds hit her. Opiates. Good stuff that put them all into a dream state, let them ride out the pain. Ocho looked down on her. Waved at Van. “Bandage that hand.”

“But—”

“LT wants to torture her, not bleed her out. Not yet, at least.”

He turned away. It was better not to look at her. Better not to put himself in her shoes. That was for sad-sack half-bars who hadn’t burned in. You didn’t want to overthink. It just got you confused, and it got you killed.

Ocho turned his attention to the half-man. “Get me some more ropes. I want that dog-face looking like a damn mummy. Wrists. Elbows. Ankles. Knees. Upper body. And then double it up.”

A couple of the soldiers groaned, but Ocho snapped his fingers and they made salutes and got to work. They were lazy, but they were good boys, when it came down to it. They showed respect when it mattered.

Ocho looked at the unconscious half-man. The monster was stuffed to the eyeballs with tranquilizers. Huge amounts, and Ocho still wasn’t sure it would be enough.

Even now, it almost looked as if the creature’s one open eye was following him, even if it didn’t move, it looked like it was still there, caged by tranquilizers but entirely aware of them. Watching.

Ocho shivered, remembering how deadly it had been when it came after him in the swamps. Then, it had been underfed and wounded. Now, though? Fighting it would be like fighting a hurricane. When they’d first sprayed it with the tranqs, he hadn’t even been sure they were going to hit, it had been moving so fast.

“You serious about all this rope?” Stork asked.

“If I had my way, I’d kill it right now,” Ocho said. “If it starts to move, stick it with some more of that tranquilizer.”

“Don’t got any left.”

Ocho’s skin crawled. “We used it all?”

It was like they were tying up some kind of demon. No way this could turn out well. LT wanted it alive, but he was crazy. Always trying to climb too high and impress too many people.

Kill it now.

Ocho knew that was the best way to take care of his boys. Get rid of the thing. Chop its head off. Burn it until there wasn’t anything but ash. He felt an almost superstitious dread.

“Wrap it good, then. If it wakes up, we’re all dead.”

He turned and walked down the hall, wanting to get away. Ahead, he saw the open door, the hidden place in the wall that the castoff had been trying to get into. He peered inside. Whistled.

“Nice bolt hole.”

Paintings, statues, all kinds of stuff. Ocho eased inside, awed at the amount of loot that he was looking at, overwhelmed by the feeling that he was looking at something rare.

There were things here that Glenn Stern revered. The faces of true patriots. Images that the Colonel handed out to his boys as luck charms. Old soldiers. Fighters who’d fought the good fight over centuries for the sake of the country.

A scrape of movement behind him. Ocho whirled, his hand going to his fighting knife, and then he relaxed. Ghost.

“What’re you doing here?”

“Is it true?” the boy asked.

“Is what true?”

“There’s treasure, I heard.”

“Yeah, there’s treasure.” Ocho pushed him out and pulled the door shut. Was surprised that it disappeared so completely. He marked the place in his mind.

Another thing to deal with.

He took Ghost and guided him away from the hidden vault. As they passed the castoff girl, Ghost stared. She lay still, eyes glazing with the drugs Ocho had fed her, trussed and bleeding.

Ocho felt him falter and gripped his arm harder, dragging him past. “Don’t look at her. She’s not your business.”

“But—”

Ocho spun Ghost to face him. Looked him in the eye. “I’m trying to keep you alive, soldier. If people think you’re unreliable, they’ll kill your ass. Won’t even think twice. That castoff ain’t anything. Just a piece of meat. Like a cow or a pig or a goat. We all got past lives. Things you might want to think about. Things you might pretend you can get back to.”

He gripped Ghost’s shoulders tighter. Got his face in close. “Don’t you think about any of that! You focus on your job, soldier. You think about your brothers. You think about us. About keeping all of us alive to fight. You think about Army of God and how they’ll do us all if we lose focus.

“Now get out there and stand patrol. We got a war on.” He shoved Ghost out the door. Nodded at Stork.

“Keep an eye on your warboy. Make sure he don’t forget who he is.”

Mouse stood outside, shaking. Mahlia was there. Right there. If he was brave, he could just walk in and—

And what? Shoot everyone? Kill Stork and Ocho and TamTam and everyone?

Stork came outside. He took Mouse’s elbow and tugged him down the floating boardwalk. “Let’s walk, soldier.”

“I—”

“You can’t go back, you know.”

“I wasn’t…”

“Sure you were.” The tall black boy smiled slightly. “Everyone thinks about it sometimes. I even tried.” He glanced at Mouse. “After I went full-bar, I tried. You can’t go back, because they know. They know what you are now. They know what you done.”

He spat into the canal. “They don’t want you. It’s like you’re bad meat. Civvies smell you a mile away, and the only thing they want to do is bury you. You might not like it, but without your squad, you’re nothing.”

He fished a hand roll out of his pocket and lit it. Took a deep drag and handed it over to Mouse. “After a while, you figure out the only people who got your back is your squad. We got you safe. We’re your brothers. We’re your family now.”

He took the hand roll back and puffed again, before nodding down the canal. “Looks like the LT found us a barge. Time to get to work.” He jerked his head toward the building. “That girl, she’s just some civvy. If she knew what you done… how much you killed… the girls you done, the bad shit you been up to…” He shrugged. “She’d rather puke than look at you.”

“But she was coming for me,” Mouse said. “She said she was coming for me.”

“Nah. She was coming for some civvy she called Mouse.” He flicked the last bit of cigarette into the green waters of the canal.

“She don’t give a damn about Ghost.”

Loading the half-man into the barge took ten of them working in concert. The bastard was dense. Like its muscles were made of concrete. As soon as they started dragging it, Ocho realized they probably should have improvised some kind of stretcher, but it was too late then, with the LT standing over them and swearing that they needed to hurry up.

So they dragged and grunted and hauled and sweated and cursed and finally got the monster dumped into the barge.

The barge was half-full of iron I beams and sharp chunks of copper tubing from some building’s plumbing, which meant the LT must have just grabbed the first barge he’d found. The sullen looks on the faces of all the bond labor seemed to confirm that. They’d probably get hell from their overseers for coming back light, but that was the way of it.

Ocho made a mental note to at least send some kind of report along with them that it wasn’t their fault. Sometimes the overseers could smuggle meds and booze and cigarettes and drugs in from the docks, and if you stayed on their good side, it was better than if you didn’t. Kept them a little content, at least.

The barge rode slowly through the water. The half-man didn’t move. It might as well have been dead, they’d loaded it with so many drugs.

The barge was slow. Ocho hated how slow it was. He split his time between keeping an eye on Ghost, the half-man, and the castoff, who looked like she was starting to wake up.

He looked from her to Ghost, not liking what he saw there. She’d been insane to follow her boy. But she’d come anyway. And it pissed Ocho off.

For a little while, he couldn’t decide why it made him so mad, but he kept wanting to hit her. To punch her and shake her.

Stupid-ass doctor girl. Dumb castoff. Didn’t she know this was no place for war maggots like her? Nobody wanted a castoff reminding them how China had taken everything over for more than a decade, telling everyone what to do and how to live. Swaggering around with their guns and their half-men and their biodiesel attack boats.

She was stupid. Too stupid to breathe. And now she lay like a dead fish atop a pile of copper. Her eyes were open, watching him. Her hand looked like it had started bleeding again.

You’re just parts, he told her in his mind. Just a bunch of blood and kidneys. Maybe they pop your eyes out and give them to someone else. Harvesters are always buying. You’re just parts.

She deserved it.

So why did it bother him so much?

Ocho was smart enough to know that when you got crazy about something, you needed to think it through. Being crazy meant you did things by reflex, and it meant you made mistakes.

Sayle had been that way with the girl. Going after her, being all over her like that, threatening her. Sayle liked to hurt people, but this was more. This was all about his getting ambushed by a civvy. Pissed off about being embarrassed by a one-handed castoff.

She’d jammed them all good with her coywolv trick, and none of them had seen it coming. But then, Army of God had ambushed them last week with that 999, and that wasn’t personal. Sure, they’d chop up the next bunch of cross-kissers and dump them in a canal if they found them, but it wasn’t personal.

But the lieutenant was really stewed about the girl. This was crazy stuff coming from the LT, and it made Ocho nervous. He didn’t like being on this slow barge, with a drugged-out dog-face and an angry LT, because it meant the LT wasn’t thinking straight. Wasn’t looking at the big picture. All because of that girl.

Ocho stared at her. He couldn’t decide if he was pissed off at her because she’d tried to act like he owed her for saving him from the coywolv—which was a load of crap no matter how you sliced it. She’d sicced the coywolv on them, so saving him wasn’t anything other than bringing the scales back to even.

No… It was because she’d come all the way into the Drowned Cities, to get her boy back.

Mouse, she’d called him. She’d come all the way in. And it made Ocho want to shoot her right then and there.

No one ever tried to come for you.

Ocho sucked in his breath at the thought. He coughed, and it almost came out as a sob.

Reggie and Van looked over. Ocho stared them down, face like stone, but inside, it felt like someone had a handsaw and was cutting up his guts, ripping away.

No one had ever come for him. They’d blown into trouble, him and his uncle. And not his mom, not his dad, not his brother, not a dozen people who he’d called his friends back in his town on the coast, not a one of them had ever come looking for him, trying to get him back. They’d just let him go. That was the difference. But this castoff cripple-hand civvy girl had come all the way in.

Ocho scowled down at her limp body. See what loyalty gets you? See?

Stupid bitch. She didn’t have any survival instinct at all.

She deserved what she got.

39

MAHLIA STARED DULLY at the world around her. The opiates made the pain… not exactly go away, but made it less important. Irritating, still, but distant. She only had four fingers left.

Four out of ten ain’t bad.

It was just like the last time she’d been caught, when the Army of God had taken her good right hand. So much of it felt the same. She wasn’t even a person to them. It was all the same.

Except, that time Mouse had come to her rescue. She didn’t think that was likely this time.

Mahlia turned her head, trying to see where Mouse was. Someone kicked her. Lieutenant Sayle looked over at the noise and Mahlia froze. She didn’t want to show the man how scared she was, but she couldn’t help it. She was terrified. Just having him look at her filled Mahlia with a sick animal terror, as if she were a mouse being watched by a panther. All she wanted was for Sayle not to look at her. The man’s gray eyes held hers for a long time, promising more evil. At last he looked away. Mahlia lay still, heart pounding. Trying to make herself relax. Feeling the muddy pain of her newly missing finger.

From where she lay atop a pile of copper, she could see big buildings going by, and then the sky seemed to open up. They were out in the open, a huge rectangular lake stretched into the distance. The slaves wading around the edge of it, using floating boardwalks and rubble for purchase as they dragged the barge along. She could hear them splashing. She caught a glimpse of a white monument spiking up into the searing blue sky, right out of the center of the lake, a monolith of marble, its face yellowing in places, and cracked, but still vertical.

The scrap barge creaked as the men and women pulled on their ropes. They chanted and hauled. They were civvies. Or slaves. Or maybe just legs and arms and sweating backs.

Mahlia would have given the rest of her fingers just to be one of them.

Some of the soldier boys were standing up now, looking forward.

“There it is,” one of them said. Others stood, talking, craning their necks.

“The palace.”

“Damn, it’s big.”

“Can you see the Colonel?”

“Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t stand around waiting for a maggot like you to catch sight of him. He’s running a war.”

The palace, the palace…

Mahlia craned her neck. A huge marble building loomed into view. The palace. Marble from top to bottom. Steps marching up from the lake to its grand presence. A soaring dome stood central, seeming to touch the sky, and it was flanked on either side by broad marbled wings that encompassed more space than Banyan Town. Grand columns and intricate carvings decorated the structure, what must have taken decades of work to create.

From what Mahlia could see, the place looked even worse than when she’d been here before, when her father had taken her to see the eagles and ancient sigils of a long-dead nation.

One wing of the vast structure looked as if it had been hit by artillery, and its facade had turned to crumbling rubble. Scavenge gangs were ripping into it, men and mules dragging material out of the shattered building, skins gleaming sweat under the burning sun. They heaved at huge marble blocks, then slid them onto skids, so that they could ease them down the crumbling marble steps to the waterline, where they were being loaded onto barges.

Not far from the marble mining operation, a line of ancient marble and bronze statues stood, along with other sundry artifacts. It reminded Mahlia of her mother’s warehouse, but out in the sunshine, with a half-dozen men in tidy clothing winding amongst the wares, studying paintings and statuary, squatting to inspect tile inlays, running their hands over mahogany desks and antique chairs with curving legs, all while they adjusted their thin ties and fanned themselves with hats that matched their pale tropical suits.

Antiques traders. The sort she’d seen her mother trade with. The war continued, and the buying did as well. Mahlia stared at them dully, wondering if she could have offered them her mother’s warehouse, if one of them would have consented to smuggling her and Mouse away from the Drowned Cities and into a better life.

It had seemed like such a good plan when she’d first started to consider it with Tool. Now, it just seemed silly. She lay still, feeling the sear of the sun, and watching buyers and sellers. Fancy corporate logos were splashed on the sides of the zodiacs and skiffs that floated at the waterline, waiting to take away the buyers’ purchases. Lawson & Carlson. T.A.M. Worldwide. Reclam Industrial. One of the rafts even carried Chinese characters that she recognized from her time in peacekeeper schools. China might have given up on trying to stop the endless civil war, but some of its companies were still here, picking over history’s bones.

Mahlia watched as one of the buyers supervised a statue being loaded into a motorized skiff. Bored UPF soldiers stood around, keeping an eye on the proceedings. They finally got the statue secured, and the man and his bodyguards all climbed in. They fired up a biodiesel engine and buzzed away.

The palace loomed larger. The white dome soared overhead. It had a hole in it, from some missile, or mortar. Another new wound. It hadn’t been there when the peacekeepers had owned it; she was sure of that. She remembered standing in front of it, her and her mother, while her father snapped a picture, and at that time, it had still been whole.

Her father had said that it had been the capitol building for political bosses during the Accelerated Age. Nothing like what they had in Beijing, but still, important for its time, and when the peacekeepers intervened in the civil war, they had set up administration there, as they tried to drag the Drowned Cities out of barbarity.

Mahlia had thought the palace looked grand.

Now, though, with one entire wing being torn down and a hole in its crown, it didn’t look like much. Just easier scavenge than some of the other buildings that lined the huge rectangular lake, because at least it was up on a hill. Now, it just looked like something that would sell well when the soldier boys traded its marble for more bullets.

A whistling filled the air.

“Down!” Ocho shouted. “Down! Get down!”

Everyone flattened themselves. Another part of the marble palace exploded, right before Mahlia’s eyes.

40

INSTINCTIVELY, OCHO FLATTENED himself as the 999 round came screaming in. The palace rocked with the explosion. Debris showered the steps. People screamed and scattered.

A second later, another round came in. It missed the palace and geysered into the lake, sending up foam and froth.

Ocho straightened, trying to get his bearings. They were sitting ducks. He could see people all around the lake, flattening themselves, staring up at the sky as though they’d be able to see the next round coming and somehow dodge it.

Another shell pounded the palace’s scavenge side, spraying smoke and debris. A mule was blown down the steps toward the water, smearing red over marble as it tumbled. Ocho’s soldiers were all staring, shocked.

“Get your heads down!” Ocho said, even as the lieutenant stood up and cocked his officer’s pistol.

“Keep pulling!” the LT shouted at the barge workers. “You keep pulling or I’ll put you down myself!”

Another shell dropped out of the clear blue sky.

“They’re going after the Colonel,” Van whispered. His voice was awed.

Another said, “They can’t hit the palace, can they?”

Ocho could hear worry in the boy’s voice.

“They just did, maggot.”

He couldn’t catch sight of which soldier had asked the question, but he knew the feeling. The Army of God was going after Colonel Glenn Stern, and the heart of the city. How was UPF supposed to survive if they lost their leader? What would happen to them if the Colonel died from the shelling? What would be left of the Drowned Cities if AOG was willing to destroy its last monuments?

If Ocho thought about it rationally, of course the Army of God would try to bomb the Colonel, but still, it was unnerving. No one was safe. Not even the Colonel. Suddenly, they were all just scared little rabbits, looking for cover. But the Colonel wasn’t supposed to be like that; he was supposed to be above all that.

“Can they kill the Colonel?” Stork asked.

“Anyone can die,” the LT said. “High or low, doesn’t matter. That’s not your problem, soldier.”

Stork shut up. Ocho watched the lieutenant. Sayle didn’t look worried. He looked completely calm. As if the 999 wasn’t a threat at all. The blond man stood tall as another round came down and hit the north wing of the building. He didn’t take cover. Didn’t even flinch as the explosion rocked outward. Just watched the hit with his cold gray eyes.

“Don’t worry, boys,” the LT said, smiling. “The Colonel has a plan.” He smiled again and looked down into the barge. “Army of God won’t know what hit them.”

Ocho followed Sayle’s gaze to the unconscious half-man. What could it do? But he didn’t have a chance to question, as their barge bumped up against the steps of the palace.

TamTam and Stork and Ocho rolled out and ran to grab one of the abandoned sledges that the workers had been using to move marble. The LT pointed his pistol at the barge pullers, and put them to work rolling the half-man onto the sledge, urging them to hurry up as everyone watched the sky for more shells. Ocho sweated and swore with everyone else. It felt like they were working in molasses. Waiting for the next shell to drop right on their heads at any moment.

Finally they had the half-man secured and the workers were hauling the monster up the steps. They passed inside, dragging the half-man. Colonel Stern’s elite squads watched, interested.

Inside, it was almost cool: out of the sun, surrounded by marble halls. Ocho had never been in the palace. He tried not to stare at the gleaming marble or the vaulted ceilings with their paintings, the intricate carvings marching around their edges.

It was a strange, echoing place. He didn’t like being in it at all, not with the 999 trying to bracket them. He kept waiting for another shell to come crashing through one of the beautiful domed ceilings, but the artillery seemed to have stopped for the moment.

Was the Army of God just trying to show they could put rounds wherever they wanted, or were they trying to actually hurt them?

Either way, Ocho didn’t savor being blown to pieces. He didn’t think he was going anywhere but straight to hell when he died, so he wasn’t eager for the afterlife the way the Army of God boys were.

They followed the sledge, and finally got to a spot where Stern’s elite all wore black uniforms. Eagle Guard. The best of the UPF. Every one of them was older and more experienced than anyone except maybe the LT. Survivors. They’d grown taller than all the warboys except Stork and the LT, and they looked down on the rest of the platoon.

Ocho was surprised at how small he felt standing in front of them. Of course, he’d seen them in the past from a distance. They traveled with the Colonel when he toured the war lines, but here they were, and they were huge in front of him. Muscled and well-fed, with their black uniforms and their hard eyes.

At the sight of the half-man, though, their demeanors changed. One of them whistled in surprise. Another, the oldest of the group, a man with small crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, ran his hand over the inert monster.

“Haven’t seen one of these since we fought up north,” he said. “Nice work.”

Ocho and the rest of the boys straightened at the compliment. The older man motioned to his Eagles.

“We’ll take it from here.”

They gathered up the ropes to haul the drugged half-man away. Lieutenant Sayle waved to Ocho. “Get the girl. We’re done here for now.”

But the Eagle held up a hand. “The girl came with the half-man?” he asked. “They slipped in together?”

Sayle nodded unwillingly.

“We’ll take her, too. The Colonel will want her.”

Ocho could tell that the lieutenant wanted to argue, but he bit it down, and then Ocho caught sight of something more worrying. Ghost was staring at the girl. Ocho could practically see the gears turning in the soldier boy’s head.

He went over and grabbed the boy. “Outside, soldier,” he said. “We’re all going outside.”

Ghost resisted. Ocho gave him a shove. One of the Eagles grabbed the castoff girl and hefted her over his shoulder. She flopped limply, drugged and stupid with the opium that Ocho had given her. He couldn’t even tell if she was really there anymore.

Ocho wondered what would happen to her. Maybe she’d be better off in the Colonel’s hands. At least she was out of the LT’s control. That had to be something, he told himself. As she was carried away, limp like a sack of potatoes, Ocho tried hard to believe it, and then he tried to figure out why he cared.

41

A NEEDLE SLID into Tool’s shoulder, flooding him with endorphins and amphetamines. He came alive. Awake and alive. Ready for war.

Men all around. Many of them. Deep voices, echoing dully against hard marble walls and tile floors. Men. Adults. Not just child soldiers from the swamps. Steel and iron and gunpowder. Tobacco smoke. The smells and sounds of a war machine’s beating heart.

Tool remembered the darts hitting, thinking for a moment that they were bullets and that it would be difficult to survive so much lead, and then he’d been surprised at how little each bullet hurt… Just before the tranquilizers washed over him like a tidal wave.

Captured then. But still alive. He listened to their words:

“K Canal… Angel Company… Lost fifteen at Constitution.”

The sounds of an army besieged. It had been a long time since Tool stood in the heart of a command center, but all of it was so familiar that it might as well have been yesterday. Their words and movements told him everything he needed to know about their present circumstance.

“Artillery support… sorties into North Potomac 6.”

Tension in the adviser’s voices. Worried mutters as they relayed reports from various fronts. Fear. It was rank in the room. They were all going to die, and they knew it. The United Patriot Front found itself hard-pressed. Its Colonel was outmatched, and his soldier boys were inadequate.

Tool waited until he sensed one of military men coming close, smelled his sweat and fear, and then he opened his eyes and lunged.

He slammed up against iron shackles.

The man scuttled back, swearing. “It’s awake!”

Metal bit into Tool’s arms and ankles. He was still groggy from whatever tranquilizer they’d used on him. He hadn’t even realized he was bound.

Tool roared and lunged again, testing the chains, tearing at them. Military men flattened themselves against marbled columns and frescoed walls, eyes wide with fear. Tool strained to reach them and they shrank away, but the bonds held.

Tool lifted his hands to study the inch-thick iron that bound his wrists. More shackles clamped his ankles. All the chains were sunk deep into the floor.

The floor around him was covered with intricate colored tiles as ancient as the building that housed them, but here at his feet, there was new gray concrete. And his iron shackles were embedded in it.

Tool could sit or squat, but he could not rise to stand fully erect. He tested the chains again.

“You cannot escape.”

Tool recognized the speaker instantly. The man’s face looked down on the canals all across the UPF’s territory. Tool had been forced to salute that face each time he entered the ring fights. How long ago was that? It seemed as if it had been years, and yet it was only weeks since he had fought against men and coywolv and panthers at the behest of the Colonel. Only weeks since he had fought free. And now, he found himself the Colonel’s prisoner once again.

Tool growled. “You think these small chains will hold me, Colonel?” He set his feet and leaned against his bonds. His muscles bulged.

The concrete began to crack around his feet. Everyone stepped back, horrified. A few of the soldiers pulled out pistols and pointed them, but Glenn Stern just smiled and waved them off.

Tool bared his teeth and pulled harder, every tendon straining, muscles tearing. Concrete popped and cracked and turned to dust around the chains. Tool’s skin began to shred, but the manacles neither broke nor slipped.

“You’ll rip your hands off if you keep doing that,” Stern said.

Tool let himself relax and studied his bonds again. The chains weren’t only embedded in concrete; they seemed to be connected to something larger below, something stronger than stone.

“They’re looped around the steel beams of the basement supports,” the Colonel explained. “It took quite a lot of work to dig up all that stone and marble, but it seems that I anticipated you adequately.”

“You planned to capture me?”

“If you recall, I already did capture you. I’d hoped to speak with you weeks and weeks ago, but then you escaped.”

“How inconvenient for you.”

The Colonel shrugged. “I suppose. But I have you now, and apparently I judged your capacity correctly.”

As they spoke, the rest of the Colonel’s staff began daring to move. The bustle of the command center slowly resumed, hushed conversations as they leaned over desks and discussed their maps and troops. But Tool noticed how they all looked to the Colonel with increased respect. He hadn’t flinched in the face of Tool’s threat, while everyone around him ducked for safety.

Colonel Glenn Stern might not have been the finest tactician, but he was a leader. It was no surprise that people followed. He had a faith in himself that appeared unshakeable. People would follow him, even when he was wrong or foolish.

Tool had met similar leaders in his time. Men and women who commanded through the force of their personality and whose words drove their followers forward in frenzied waves. In Tool’s experience, they created armies with a great deal of passion, and very little competence.

Tool settled back, accepting that he could not escape by brute force. He surveyed the command bunker, parsing it for clues that would help him survive this new challenge, seeking the cracks in Glenn Stern’s army.

The room was ancient. A chamber filled with marble columns and fading frescoes on the vaulted ceilings. Statues lined the walls, men and women cast in marble and bronze, but they had been pushed aside to accommodate the war room and its functionaries.

“Pardon the accommodations,” the Colonel said. “We’ve found it expedient to decamp from the upper chambers.” An explosion echoed above. The entire building seemed to shake, and the bare electric bulbs strung across the ceiling flickered. “The crypt is stable,” the Colonel explained. “Now that they’ve dropped so much rubble down on top, it will be difficult for them to reach us, but it’s not an ideal location.”

Tool assessed the group’s assets. A few computer screens flickered and glowed, most likely charged by the same solar systems that kept the lightbulbs glowing, and that hadn’t yet been bombed out of existence. The computers would likely be gathering information from the Colonel’s battlefields and providing connection to the outside world where he traded his scavenge for the bullets and explosives that kept him in the war.

When Tool had still warred on behalf of his patron, tablets and computers had connected them to ancient satellites hurtling overhead, to gliders and drones that described the tactical realm, and allowed them to rain fire down from above. Here, there were only a few electronic devices. The rest of the place was dominated by dozens of chalkboards hanging on the walls or set up on stands, scratched with numbers. Other parts of the room were papered with maps of the Drowned Cities, its coastline and jungles, hand-inked by soldier surveyors, and tacked with small nails, each painted red or green or blue, to describe the larger battlefield and the UPF’s many enemies.

A quick glance at the boards reinforced what Tool already suspected about the Colonel’s position and chances for survival. The number of inexperienced child soldiers that the UPF was using only served to confirm it. Some of the children even stood in the command center itself, gawky and thin in comparison to their larger and better-fed leaders.

Tool’s eyes fell on a lump of a person, lying chained to one of the columns in the room.

Mahlia.

The Colonel followed his gaze. “You seem to have fared better than your compatriot.”

“What do you want, Colonel?”

“You’re quite a puzzle. It took a long time for us to discover what you were, and how you survived so long. Questions we had to ask.” The Colonel nodded at Tool’s neck, where a code was stamped. “We had to go all the way back to your country of origin, and then trace forward. Quite a lot of effort.”

“You know nothing about me.”

Stern wasn’t deterred. “I’ve only seen an augment throw off its conditioning once. It was one of those beasts that the peacekeepers used. A common breed, not like you. It lost its entire platoon, then turned coward and ran from battle. It harried us for a little while, but even that one only survived another year. Suicidal, it seemed. It lost all its tactical sense. It couldn’t die on its own, but it wanted to die, I think.

“It could have escaped us entirely, if it chose, but instead it lingered here, returning again and again to the site of its last battle. We gunned it down in the end. When your kind becomes masterless, you have a difficult time surviving. And yet here you are, years past your expiration date.”

“What do you want?” Tool asked.

“I want to win a war.”

Tool said nothing, waiting. The man wanted to talk. Powerful men enjoyed their power. Tool had known generals who liked to talk for hours. Colonel Glenn Stern didn’t disappoint.

“I want the 999s shut down.”

Tool bared his fangs. “Send a strike team.”

“Ah. Yes,” Stern said. “Actually, I’ve sent three. The Army of God has been good enough to return my soldiers to me, but without their hands or feet. We know where the guns are, generally. We think there are two. But they’re determined to protect them.”

“You want me to go,” Tool said. It wasn’t a question. It was obvious.

“For starters, yes. Lead a strike team.”

“What makes you think I can succeed where your soldiers have failed?”

“Come, now. We’re both professionals.”

The Colonel came closer to Tool, squatting so they could speak closely. Tool measured the distance between them, but Stern remained just out of reach.

“I do what I can with the clay I have,” the Colonel said. “But this is very rough clay. Children? Farmers from the jungles? We can mold them, but they are weak material. Fired by war, to be sure, and clever enough, but they are small and they have fought on only one battlefield in their entire lives. We both know that nothing in the Drowned Cities compares to you. I am at war, and you are one of the finest war machines that mankind has ever devised.” He leaned forward. “I propose an alliance between us; I want your expertise to bolster my patriotic effort.”

“And for myself?”

“Let’s be honest, half-man. You need a patron. Alone and independent as you are, it’s only a matter of time before a cleanup squad catches wind of you and puts you down for good. You need protection as much as I need a war leader.”

“I’ve had enough of patrons.”

“Don’t misunderstand me. I propose to hire you, proper. You will forge my war effort into something more than this wasteful detente. Something that can cleanse the Drowned Cities. With your help, I smash the Army of God, and Taylor’s Wolves and all the rest of the traitors. I can cleanse this place, and rebuild.”

“And then?”

Glenn Stern smiled. “And then, we march. We reunite this country. Make it stand tall once again. We march from sea to shining sea.”

“The savior and his war beast,” Tool said. “The obedient pet.”

“My strong right fist,” Stern replied. “My brother in arms.”

“Let the girl go.”

The Colonel glanced over at Mahlia. “Why would you want her to leave? This friend of yours? This girl who you feel some loyalty to? I think it better if we keep her as an honored guest.”

“A hostage.”

“I am not a fool, augment. As soon as you are released, you are dangerous. I do not pretend to know why you work on this girl’s behalf, but I am more than happy to have leverage in our bargaining. Her life is, without question, the cost of your good behavior.”

The building shook with another explosion. Dust rained down.

The Colonel looked up at the ceiling with a grimace. “General Sachs seems to have decided that he’d rather see me dead than preserve the capitol building.”

He looked at Tool. “You see the sorts of barbarians I fight? They care nothing for this place or what it once was. They care nothing for its history. I seek to rebuild, and all they seek to do is to tear down and scavenge.”

“I’ve spent time in your arenas,” Tool said dryly. “Your patriotic talk rings hollow.”

Stern grinned, unapologetic. “I didn’t know you had value then. By the time I discovered what you truly were, you were effecting a rather daring escape. Now I know. And now I offer you a bargain.”

Tool looked over at Mahlia. She lay bloodied and bruised, almost lifeless. Stern waited. Tool could feel his eagerness. All Tool’s life, men like Stern had found a use for him. The half-man was, as his name implied, useful. Something men sought to wield, again and again.

Another explosion echoed down from above. Stern didn’t move, waiting.

“Don’t bother,” Mahlia croaked suddenly, breaking Tool’s thoughts. “He’ll just kill us later.”

Stern frowned. “Be quiet, castoff. This is a discussion for adults.”

“He’ll just kill me when you’re dead,” she said. “He’ll use us up, just like they use everyone up.”

“Not so different from any other leader,” Tool said. “Generals are in the habit of using up all the people around them. It’s their job. It’s what they do best.”

Stern nodded seriously. “We’ve both walked those paths.”

“I never turned children to war,” Tool said.

“Only because you fought on the side of wealth,” Stern retorted. “You think I want to fight with children? This was not my preference. The Army of God started the practice. Or else it was the Revolution Riders, or perhaps it was the Blackwater Alliance. It’s hard to remember where these things began, but I assure you, it was not my choice. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let our effort die because I failed to use every tool at my disposal. And any general worth his rank would do the same. If all you are given is a rock, you still must strike with it.”

“I thought you were a colonel.”

“Don’t split hairs with me. If you don’t like the ugly cast of this war, then help me end it. With your help, the war ends, and the children go back to innocence and toys. What say you? I offer you an honorable fight, and a rank that befits your considerable skill, and your friend lives in safety. With me, you are no longer a fugitive, but the commander of an army. What say you to that?”

Tool studied the man, considering his options, but again Mahlia’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Ask him if he wants to give me back my fingers, too,” she slurred. “As long as he’s making promises, ask him if he’s got my fingers.”

42

MAHLIA HAD BEEN watching the conversation for some time. Through the haze of opiates and her own pain, she watched them, faced off against each other. Two monsters. Two killing creatures, bargaining and testing each other.

As the two of them bargained, Mahlia felt an increasing anger. They weren’t talking about saving Tool and Mahlia—not really. They were talking about more war and more killing. Changing the tide of blood so that it would swamp the Army of God, instead of the UPF. And if she and Tool wanted to survive, they had to help. Tool would slaughter and leave bodies in his wake, just as he was designed to do.

She remembered how Tool moved through jungles and tore apart coywolv. A monster. A killing creature. A slaughter demon. She remembered Doctor Mahfouz, what seemed like a million years before, urging her to let Tool die.

If you heal this thing, you bring war into your house.

At the time, she’d thought Mahfouz only meant that the soldiers would come looking for her, that she was putting herself in danger.

But now, as she watched the half-man and the leader of the UPF barter, she thought she saw what Mahfouz had been trying to tell her. She wasn’t just bringing war into her house—her house was becoming a house of war. Mouse was recruited, full-bar-branded, a soldier boy now, no different from any other UPF killer, and if she and Tool wanted to survive, they would join as well.

If men like Glenn Stern and the rest of the grown-ups in this room had a use for you, you could live a little while. But you were just a pawn. Her. Mouse. All those soldier boys who’d been hand-raised to shoot and knife and bleed out there in the Drowned Cities.

Mahlia leaned against the pillar, watching the Colonel and his advisers, and finally, she thought she understood Doctor Mahfouz and his blind rush into the village.

He wasn’t trying to change them. He wasn’t trying to save anyone. He was just trying to not be part of the sickness. Mahlia had thought he was stupid for walking straight into death, but now, as she lay against the pillar, she saw it differently.

She thought that she’d been surviving. She thought that she’d been fighting for herself. But all she’d done was create more killing, and in the end it had all led to this moment, where they bargained with a demon of the Drowned Cities, not for their lives, but for their souls.

“Fight the patriotic fight,” Stern said. “Smash the Army of God.”

But what he meant was keep on killing. If you wanted to stay alive, you had to keep on killing.

Mahlia was done with it. Done with being shoved around and threatened. Done with the bargaining that always said that if she wanted to live, someone else had to die. Done with armies like UPF and Army of God and Freedom Militia, who all claimed that they’d do right, just as soon as they were done doing wrong.

“Ask him if he’ll give me my fingers back,” Mahlia croaked. Her throat felt dry from the drugs and it was almost too much effort to speak, but she managed.

“Long as he’s making pretty promises, ask him if he’s got my pinky somewhere. He gonna sew me back together? He gonna get my hand back from the Army of God? Gonna make it all right?”

One of the Eagle Guards strode toward Mahlia, but Stern waved him back.

“Did you say something, young one?”

Through the muffled distance of opium, Mahlia watched the man crouch over her. He wasn’t as big as his pictures. Not that imposing at all. But then he leaned close, and Mahlia imagined that she could smell death rising from him.

“Did you say something to me?” he whispered.

Mahlia wondered if she would have been frightened of him if she weren’t so drugged, but as she looked up at him, she felt very little at all. He was a monster. A man made powerful because he strung words together in pretty ways. A man who could get his face painted three stories tall, and get a bunch of war maggots to worship it.

Mahlia cleared her throat. “If you got my hand somewhere, then we can do business.”

The Colonel laughed. “You think you dictate for your friend?”

“Nah.” Mahlia let her head lean back against the column. “He’ll do what he does. I can’t control him.” She looked dully up at the Colonel. “But that don’t mean I got to agree, and it don’t mean I got to go along.”

“Even if it meant you could go free? Run on to some distant place? Run to Seascape Boston? Manhattan Orleans? Maybe Beijing and your father’s people there?”

“You ain’t going to let us go.”

“After your friend wins the war for us, I will.”

Mahlia thought about that for a little while, finding her way around the edges of the man’s words.

Finally she said, “No one ever wins, here. Bunch of dogs fighting over scraps of something… you don’t even know what it is.”

For the first time, Stern looked irritated. “I fight to cleanse this place, and revive a country. You have no right to question the sacrifices we make.”

“I bet the guys who started this war said stuff like that, too. Bet they sounded real nice.” She let her voice fall to a whisper. “You know something, though?” She let her voice fall lower. “You know what I realized?”

Glenn Stern leaned close, intent. Mahlia gathered her strength, and spat full in the man’s face.

“I still want my fingers back!” she shouted.

The Colonel reared back, yelling and wiping spittle from his eyes. He glared at her. “You—”

Quick as a cobra he slapped her. Once, twice, thrice. Mahlia’s head rocked back, her face flaming. Stern struck again. Pain exploded between Mahlia’s eyes as he pounded her already broken nose. A spike of obliterating pain. Blood gushed down her face.

Mahlia cried out, despite the painkillers. She was almost blind with hurt, but still she forced herself to meet the man’s gaze. “That what you got?” Her voice cracked. “That all?”

“You’d like more?” Glenn Stern raised his hand again.

A low growl filled the marbled room, heavy with threat. They both turned at the sound. The half-man was watching them both.

“I do not accept your offer,” Tool said. “I will not war on your behalf.”

Glenn Stern looked from Mahlia to Tool, and back again. Mahlia smiled.

Stern said, “You’re playing a dangerous game, girl.”

“’Cause you’ll hurt me some more?” Mahlia let her head roll back against the column. “That was always the way it was going to be. You got your war and I’m just meat in the gears. So hurry up, old man. Grind me up.”

Suddenly, Lieutenant Sayle appeared. “I have a solution, I think.”

Mahlia didn’t like the way he smiled as he murmured into the Colonel’s ear. Glenn Stern’s expression hardened as he listened. He turned to Mahlia.

“You want fingers, girl? I can get you fingers.”

43

OCHO AND THE REST of the platoon were huddled in a corner of the palace, a huge round room surrounded by more columns and statuary. Ammunition and weapons were stockpiled all around, watched over by more Eagle Guards.

Every once in a while, another round from the 999s whistled in, and Ocho kept expecting a shell to just come smashing through and hit the ordnance and blow them all up, but so far the rubble overhead seemed to be protecting them.

He crouched beside Ghost. The boy was staring at the marble and tile floor. All sorts of intricate patterns covered it, decorative knots and geometric tangles running along the floor to where they were hidden under crates of weaponry.

“You okay, warboy?”

Ghost just shrugged. Ocho didn’t like the look on Ghost’s face. Too doubtful, too withdrawn, too haunted.

He’d thought that the boy was fully recruited, but now he was wondering. Using him for bait to get the half-man had been a risk. But now that it was over, the boy should have been pulling back together. It wasn’t like every soldier in the platoon hadn’t had to prove loyalty at one point or another.

“I saved her,” Ghost said. “Long time ago, I saved her from the Army of God. When they cut off her hand.”

“Best not to think about that. She ain’t with us. She ain’t a brother,” Ocho said. “Don’t spend your nevermind worrying about civvies. They ain’t us.”

“We were all civvies.”

Ocho tapped his cheek. “We ain’t now. We’re above them. Don’t put yourself down on their level, soldier. We’re UPF. You stand tall.”

“Sure.”

“I mean it, soldier,” Ocho said. “You’re something now. We brought you up, ’cause we could tell you were special. Now you got a place and you got brothers who will throw down for you. Don’t go throwing that off for some castoff war maggot.”

He was about to say more, but he was interrupted by the arrival of Lieutenant Sayle.

“Sergeant,” Sayle motioned for Ocho. “You’re needed. Bring the recruit.” He waved at Ghost.

Ocho slapped Ghost on the back. “Come on, soldier. Time to get back to work.”

They followed the lieutenant down a marbled hall and were stopped by a pair of Eagle Guards. “Drop your weapons,” one of them said.

“Say again?” Ocho asked.

“Leave your guns here.”

Ocho tightened his grip on his rifle. “I don’t disarm for no one.”

“Disarm, Sergeant,” Sayle said, his voice hard. “It’s for a purpose.” He surrendered his own sidearm as well.

Reluctantly, Ocho stripped off his rifle and bandoliers and motioned for Ghost to do the same.

As soon as they were disarmed, they were led down another hall, past more Eagle Guards, and then into a huge room, full of columns and soldiers and chalkboards. The murmur of strategy surrounded them.

Ocho realized that they were in the heart of the UPF’s war room. From here, all orders issued. The lieutenant led them between the carved columns that held up the vaulted roof. They came around a column and Ocho gasped.

Colonel Glenn Stern stood before him, smiling. Ocho jumped to attention and saluted, jabbing Ghost to do the same. The Colonel returned the salute with a quick nod.

“Sergeant,” he said, “I’ve heard good things about you from the lieutenant.” Ocho stammered thanks but the Colonel’s gaze had fallen on Ghost.

“This is the one?”

“Yes, sir,” the LT said.

“Good.” The Colonel motioned for them to follow. They navigated amongst more columns, threading between them to the far side of the room. Ghost sucked in his breath. “Hold him, Sergeant,” Sayle ordered.

Ocho looked from Stern to the girl before them, uncertain.

“Hold him!” the lieutenant shouted, and Ocho did as he was told. He grabbed Ghost’s shoulder as the LT did the same on the other side.

Ghost started to struggle.

“Don’t,” Ocho warned. “LT’s got a plan.”

They muscled Ghost forward. The half-man was chained, ankles and wrists locked down, lengths of chain as thick as Ocho’s arms disappearing into poured concrete.

Even captured, the monster was a frightening sight. Not far away, the doctor girl lay roped to her own pillar. Blood smeared her face and her skin was blotched with bruises.

“Mahlia?” Ghost asked.

“LT?” Ocho asked, uncertainly. “Are you sure—”

“Steady, soldier,” Sayle said.

Glenn Stern was standing over the girl, smiling. “It’s time you learned your choices have consequences, girl.”

The doctor girl was looking from Stern to Ghost. “Mouse?”

“What are you doing?” Ghost asked them, looking from Stern to Sayle to Ocho. “What’s going on?”

“One last time,” the Colonel said to Mahlia. “Your friend wars on our behalf, or you suffer the consequences.”

The girl shook her head.

“Mahlia?” Ghost asked. “What’s going on?”

Ocho was wondering the same thing. There was a terrible tension in the room. The smell of blood was strong. The girl huddled against the pillar. The half-man was growling, low and warning. Ocho had seen similar scenes, but this one filled him with unease.

Glenn Stern turned to Sayle and Ocho. “Put him on his knees.”

“LT?” Ocho asked.

The lieutenant barked at him, “Do it, soldier!”

Reflexively, Ocho responded to the order. Glenn Stern produced a knife. “You want this for the boy?” he asked Mahlia.

The girl was staring in agony. At first, she’d looked like she wasn’t even there, so drugged and out of it, she’d seemed, but now she was straining forward. “Don’t touch him!”

“Mahlia?” Ghost asked again, his voice cracking. He was starting to fight now, but Ocho and the lieutenant held him. The half-man was growling, louder, deep in his throat.

Ocho knew what was coming, and yet his mind refused to believe it. It felt as if someone else was holding Ghost. Someone else was forcing the soldier boy to hold still as he finally realized the boy was about to be a blood sacrifice.

Is this me? Am I doing this?

Ocho’s mind felt like it was molasses. Ghost struggled, but Ocho was stronger. He thrust out his warboy’s hand, sickened, as Stern seized the boy’s fingers.

“You want this?” the Colonel shouted.

The knife flashed and Ghost howled. Blood poured onto the tiles. And there was a finger, too. Right there on the floor. Ghost shrieked and bucked. Ocho held him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the finger.

Am I doing this?

“What’re we doing?” Ocho shouted. “He’s our boy!” No one seemed to hear him, though. Ocho wondered if he’d said anything at all.

Had he just turned coward and shut up? Did he imagine that he’d protested?

Ghost was still thrashing against Ocho’s restraining hands, and Stern was scooping up Ghost’s finger. He waved it in Mahlia’s face as she and Ghost sobbed.

“Is this what you want? You want more fingers? You want them all?”

“Let him go!” Mahlia screamed. She fought against her ropes. Ghost bucked against Ocho’s grip. Glenn Stern stalked back to him. The blade flashed again. Red on the floor. Blood and bright as rubies. Brighter than the sun.

It didn’t make sense. Ghost was their boy. Ocho had recruited him. He was theirs. UPF forever. Full bars. The Colonel might have been vicious to the Army of God, or Taylor’s Wolves, or civvies, but not—

Sayle’s voice whipped Ocho with command. “Hold his hand, Sergeant! Stand strong!”

The Colonel didn’t see it coming. Ocho himself was surprised.

One moment Ocho was holding Ghost, fighting to keep the boy from twisting away as the Colonel went after another trophy—and they were all jostling and wrestling now that the boy knew what was coming—and the next moment, Ocho had his own knife in his hand.

He sunk it deep into the Colonel’s kidney. In and out, just like he’d been trained. Warm blood poured over Ocho’s hand.

The Colonel gave a gasp. The man’s own knife fell to the floor with a clatter.

Without Ocho to restrain him, Ghost popped free of Sayle, screaming, and dove for the Colonel’s blade where it lay on the tile.

A couple of Eagle Guards were running forward, shouting, trying to figure out what was going on, calling for backup as they ran. Ghost scooped up the Colonel’s blade in his good hand and lunged for Stern. The man didn’t even dodge as the boy sank his blade.

Glenn Stern’s eyes were wide, surprised, his hands trying to reach around to the hole in his back and then reaching around to the front where Ghost had just stuck him. Ocho wasn’t even sure if the man was there anymore, or if it was just some lizard part of his brain, still making his hands move, while he bled out…

More Eagle Guards were charging into the room, but they were all zeroing in on Ghost. They fired and bullets ricocheted, missing. The LT was pulling his own knife, staring at Ghost and the Colonel. Ghost jammed the knife into the man’s belly again. Mahlia was screaming and struggling to get out of her ropes, and the half-man was roaring, and the LT… He was staring right at Ocho.

Pale gray eyes blazed with understanding as he took in Ocho’s bloody hands, realizing that he had a traitor in his midst, even as everyone else was distracted by the captive boy who still drove the knife into Glenn Stern.

Ocho didn’t give the lieutenant a chance. He took a quick step up to the man and drove his blade into Sayle’s gut. Did it again, to make sure.

The lieutenant gasped. “Why?” But Ocho didn’t have time for him. He slapped the man’s blade away and shouted for a medic, and then he turned as weapons chattered on full auto.

Bloody holes spattered up and down Ghost, small perforations in the front, big gaping wounds in the back. Chips of stone whizzed past Ocho as bullets missed and ricocheted, and then a mob of Eagle Guards fell upon Ghost.

Roaring and screaming. The ratcheting of automatic weapons. Blood mist in the air, a whirlwind of viscera and bones and bodies. Men seemed to disappear before Ocho’s eyes, replaced by sprays of blood on the walls and columns.

In their rush to aid the Colonel, some of the Eagles had strayed into the half-man’s reach. They simply came apart in the monster’s grasp and then the monster had their weapons, and the rest of the Eagles were dying as well, gunned down with terrifying marksmanship.

Ocho dove for the ground and crawled behind a column, wishing he could find shelter. The half-man roared and fired, emptying clips. Men were screaming. A body tumbled down beside Ocho. He grabbed for the man’s weapon as more Eagles boiled into the command center. They were ducking and dodging behind columns, snapping shots, but the half-man seemed to anticipate them. Every time a soldier showed himself, he took a bullet in the face.

Ocho belly-crawled behind a desk, hoping to make it to the door. He just had to get out…

He glimpsed the girl, still tied. Trying to lie flat as bullets whizzed around her. She was sobbing and trying to reach Ghost where he lay in a spreading pool of his own blood.

The half-man’s weapon clicked empty.

Ocho wasn’t sure if the other soldiers realized it, but the half-man was a sitting duck now. With a curse, Ocho took his rifle and leaned out, and then, with a prayer to the Fates, he slid his rifle across the floor, right to the monster.

The half-man caught it. Locked eyes with Ocho.

What am I doing?

But it was already done. When Ocho put the knife in the Colonel it was done. There was no going back now. Ocho crawled across to where the Colonel lay in a heap. He rolled the man over and started going through his pockets. The man flailed at Ocho, but Ocho shoved his hands away.

“Fight the good fight, soldier,” Stern whispered.

“You got the key?” Ocho asked. “You got the key, Colonel?”

The Colonel looked at him. “You’ll keep the fight going? You won’t let the traitors ruin everything?” he gasped.

“UPF forever,” Ocho said. “That’s right. But you got to give me the key if we’re going to fight. Gotta get that dog-face free.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You…”

But Ocho had found the key for himself by then. He pulled it from the man’s breast pocket and hurled it toward the half-man as a blow like a fist hit him in the leg and spun him.

Ocho gasped at the numbness. He’d been shot. Keep moving. Don’t be an easy target. He crawled toward Mahlia. He got out his knife, started sawing at her ropes. They gave under the razor edge, but when she got free, she went after him, beating at him with her stump, clawing at him with her last fingers.

“I didn’t do it!” Ocho tried to fight her off. “It’s not my fault!”

But she wasn’t listening. Bullets whined and zipped around them. He threw himself flat, but Mahlia was stumbling to her feet. Ocho reached for her, but with a bullet in his leg, he couldn’t prevent her from standing upright.

“Get down!”

Stone and marble and bullets ripped around her, a maelstrom of death, but she seemed unaware, uncaring. Like she wanted to die. She ran through the whirlwind, slid down beside Ghost.

Ocho pressed his hand to the bullet in his thigh, praying that it hadn’t hit an artery. Fates, it hurt.

Suddenly, he felt something big rush past him, wind and movement. Ocho whipped around, but it was already gone. Before him, chains lay abandoned. Unlocked. The half-man was running free.

A roar reverberated through the crypt, a challenge that penetrated Ocho’s bones and made him want to piss himself for fear. Gunfire chattered. Screams, high-pitched and terrified. More gunfire. The soldiers were trying to get a bead on the half-man. Ocho could barely keep track of the monster as it ducked between columns.

More gunfire. Six shots, fast and even. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. Six electric lights shattered, plunging the place into gloom. The monster was taking out the lights now, too. Ocho thought he caught a glimpse of the half-man moving again. A shadow of death, there and gone. Someone was shouting orders, trying to get rallied, and then the man just started screaming and screaming. Another bestial roar numbed Ocho’s ears. Fates, it was loud. Louder than war.

Mahlia wasn’t paying attention to any of it. She was down on her knees beside Ghost, sobbing. Cradling her warboy to her.

“Mouse,” she said. “Mouse.”

The boy wasn’t going to make it. Ocho didn’t even have to look close to know it, but still she held him to her, his blood all over her arms and legs and body.

Ocho dragged himself over to them. He grabbed a dead Eagle’s pant leg and slashed it with his knife. They had real uniforms, he thought inanely. He’d never had a real uniform. More gunfire echoed distantly, followed by the cries of soldiers begging for help.

“We got to get out of here,” Ocho said. He cut another strip of cloth and bound up his bleeding leg. When she didn’t listen to him, he tugged her shoulder.

“We got to get out, before they come back.”

Mahlia whipped around, her face a mask of rage. “You did this! This is your fault!”

Ocho held up defensive hands. “He was my boy, too! We were brothers.”

“He wasn’t anything like you!”

Ocho started to stutter out an apology, but then a wave of his own anger engulfed him.

“None of us asked for this!” he shouted. “None of us! We were all just like him. Every maggot one of us.” He dragged himself up against a marble column, set weight on his leg, wincing. “None of us were like this,” he said again. “We aren’t born like this. They make us this way.”

Mahlia opened her mouth to retort, but Ghost coughed and she turned her attention to her warboy. Ghost’s eyes were glazing, but he reached up to her. Pulled her toward him. Mahlia sobbed and cradled him close. It looked to Ocho like Ghost was trying to say something to her, whispering and coughing blood as he tried to talk.

Ocho turned away. What was he doing? He needed to get the hell out of here. Once the Eagles rallied, he was dead meat. He scooped up another abandoned rifle and started hunting for ammunition. He doubted the half-man—

A shadow fell over him.

Ocho looked up and gasped. The half-man loomed over him, his bestial face a mass of scars and battle lust. Blood drenched the monster’s features. Ocho was suddenly aware of how many bodies littered the command center. How quiet everything had become.

The half-man had killed them all. Every last one of them. The ones the monster hadn’t shot, he’d torn to pieces with his bare hands. Ocho had known the half-man was dangerous, but this was beyond anything he could have imagined.

The monster growled at Ocho and kept moving, dismissing him as unimportant, even though Ocho held a rifle.

What had he unleashed?

44

“MOUSE,” MAHLIA WHISPERED.

She cradled him in her arms. He seemed small. He’d always been small. But now, broken and torn, he was tiny. And pale. Much paler…

Blood loss, some part of her doctor’s mind told her. He was losing all his blood. She kept running through procedures that might help, trying to find some solution to the pool of ruby that spread all around them, slick and sticky.

Direct pressure, surgery. Plasma. IVs that she didn’t have. Painkillers. Raise the legs. Treat for shock. Airway, breathing, circulation. Stabilize. Operate.

All of it useless. She didn’t have the tools. All of Doctor Mahfouz’s teachings were useless.

Mouse reached up and touched her face. “How come I always got to do the rescuing around here?” he whispered.

Mahlia clutched him to her. “I’m so sorry.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Mouse tried to talk. Coughed. “Can’t believe you followed me.”

“I had to.”

“No.” He shook his head, smiling tiredly. “That’s how I do.” He trailed his fingers through her tears, pushed at her chin, joking like he always had. “You’re supposed to be the smart one.” He coughed again, and blood stained his lips. He grunted in pain. “Should’ve listened to you, huh?”

A shell came down, shaking the building.

“I’m going to get you out,” Mahlia said.

“If you knew what I done, you wouldn’t say that.”

“I don’t care what you done. I’m getting you out of here.” She tried to rise, but Mouse reached up and pulled her close, surprisingly strong. Holding on to her like a vise as he stared into her eyes.

“You got to get out,” he whispered fiercely. “Get out and don’t ever come back.” His expression was fiercer than she’d ever seen. “You got to promise me not to die,” he said, and then he smiled at her, and his breath went out, leaving Mahlia clutching an empty body.

Tool crouched down beside her. “It’s time to leave. Long past time.”

Mahlia didn’t look up. She just held Mouse. “He’s dead.”

The half-man was silent for a moment. “I lost all of my pack as well. Remember him. Tell his story.”

“That’s not much.”

“It’s nothing. It’s what we have.”

The soldier sergeant, the one called Ocho, limped over. Mahlia could feel him looking down on her. “Get up, girl. You don’t get up, you die.”

“What do you care?” she said. “You’re the one who was trying to kill me.”

The soldier gave an exasperated sigh. “And now I’m the one that’s trying to save your maggot ass.”

The building rocked with another explosion. More followed. The ceiling rattled as shells crashed down in quick succession. Ocho and Tool looked up at the ceiling.

“Damn,” Ocho said. “That’s starting to sound serious.”

“The Army of God will be preparing an assault,” Tool said.

Ocho laughed at that, his expression grim as he scanned the command center. “They don’t need to bother. It looks like you just about killed every single one of the command staff. They can roll in anytime and we won’t know what hit us.”

Tool growled agreement. “The UPF is headless. I left no commanding officers.”

Another artillery round hammered into the building. Masonry fell from the ceiling.

“I got to get to my boys,” Ocho said suddenly. “They’re dead if they don’t got someone to tell them what to do.”

“Indeed,” Tool rumbled. Mahlia was surprised to see the half-man hold out a huge hand to Ocho. “Thank you,” he said.

Ocho looked at the half-man with an expression of shock on his face. For a second, Mahlia thought he was going to flinch away. But then he took the offered hand, his own smaller one disappearing in Tool’s grip.

The sergeant looked down at Mouse, then at Mahlia again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him,” he said. “I tried. If I’d known what they were going to—” He broke off, took a ragged breath. “Anyway, I’m sorry.” He turned and limped toward the door.

Mahlia watched the sergeant go. He was just a kid. They were all just kids. All of them waving guns and killing one another, while a bunch of men who claimed they were older and wiser pushed them around. Maggots like Lieutenant Sayle and Colonel Stern and General Sachs.

He was just some kid who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. A kid who turned out to be useful to men who didn’t give a damn about him, except to make sure he did what he was told. Just like Mouse.

“Hey!” she called to him. “Soldier boy!”

Ocho turned. “Yeah?”

An idea was forming in her mind. A gamble. A big one. It wasn’t the way she’d imagined it, but she thought it could work. She could make it work. She just needed to believe, and reach out to this soldier boy.

“You want to get out?” she asked. “Get out for good?”

She held her breath, praying that she wasn’t just some civvy to him. That he didn’t see her as a peacekeeper castoff or a traitor, any more than she saw him as a soldier. They were just two people, victims of something bigger than either of them. There weren’t any sides, and there weren’t any enemies.

She just needed to make him believe it, too.

“Out of here?” The sergeant smiled. “No way any of us is getting out. There’s nowhere to go, and no one to take us. Blockades all around. AOG gunning for the triple hash.” He touched his cheek. “There’s no way out, not for any of us.”

“Scavenge companies go in and out,” Mahlia said.

“We ain’t scavenge.”

“What if I know where we could get some?” she said. “Rich stuff. Can you get us to the blood buyers? Can you get us and some scavenge to the docks?”

“That treasure room of yours?” Ocho hesitated, then said, “I can’t leave my boys.”

Mahlia almost gave up on the idea. The thought of all of Ocho’s other troops scared the hell out of her. She swallowed. She was gambling, again. Gambling big.

“Can you lead them?” Mahlia asked. “Can you get them to follow you? To follow me? Can you give us protection?”

Tool looked at her with sudden surprise and respect as he figured out what she was planning. Another rumble of artillery rocked the building. Ocho looked up at the cracking ceiling, then at Mahlia.

“They’ll follow me,” he said. “If they’re still there, they’ll follow.”

Mahlia’s heart was beating faster. She was going to do it. For real. She was getting out. She hugged Mouse close, one last time, and let him go.

45

CHAOS REIGNED IN the palace. Artillery fire rained down. Soldiers milled in groups, unsure of what they were supposed to do.

A few Eagle Guards were still around, trying to organize, but it seemed that Tool had destroyed everyone who had witnessed what had happened in the command center. And now, under fire, people were scrambling, more concerned for their own skins than anyone else’s.

Ocho led them into the rotunda, leaning against Mahlia and limping. His soldiers straightened and started to raise their weapons when they saw the half-man and the girl, but he waved them down.

“Where’s the LT?” they all asked, staring.

“He’s replaced,” Ocho said.

“By who?” Stork asked.

“Me,” Ocho said. Then he pointed at Mahlia and Tool. “And them. We’re all together now.”

There was a long silence. Ocho held Stork’s gaze until the taller boy nodded acquiescence.

“Good.”

Ocho started outlining orders to the platoon, organizing them all. He sent some to gather ordnance while he had someone strap his leg better, and then he had them all moving, a gathered knot of protection with Mahlia and Tool at their center.

Mahlia watched in awe as his platoon marched them right through the heart of the UPF. Soldiers ran hither and thither, preparing for a final battle that they couldn’t win, but no one had time for an armed platoon that seemed to have orders. They made it outside, squinting in the bright sunlight. Down the length of the lake, Mahlia could see the mouth of the river and the sea. Her goal, beckoning.

Another artillery round came screaming down. The dome of the palace shattered, crumbling inward. Soldier boys screamed and scattered in all directions, but Ocho kept his command, ordering them all down the stairs for the water. Ahead, Mahlia saw blood buyers struggling to load scavenge into their zodiac rafts.

She pointed at them, and Ocho nodded and shouted more orders. Everyone changed course, preparing for a fight, but then Tool pushed into the lead.

It was like watching a hurricane. One moment he was with her, the next he was among the blood buyers and their guards, hurling them aside. By the time Mahlia and the soldier boys reached the rafts, guards and blood buyers were thrashing in the water or running for their lives, all of them disarmed and harmless.

Mahlia and the soldiers piled into the zodiacs and fired them up. Tool leaped aboard. Mahlia’s zodiac tipped threateningly under his weight, but then it was upright again and they were buzzing up the length of the lake, following Mahlia’s directions, then cutting off into the canals.

All around, the city seethed with movement. People preparing for the Army of God’s assault. Civvies running for cover, grabbing last belongings. Soldiers setting up defensive positions.

To Mahlia, it was so much like the last time the warlords came, when they’d swamped the place that she’d grown up in, that she couldn’t help but feel terror at the approaching violence. She remembered troops storming from building to building, hunting every single person who had collaborated. Dragging people out onto boardwalks and executing them. Her mother trying to help her hide before the soldier boys burst in on them.

And now it was going to happen again. Another wave of violence as the UPF collapsed and new warlords rushed to fill the vacuum.

Ahead, her old apartment came into view. Mahlia pointed. Ocho nodded. “Yeah. I thought so.”

The zodiacs slowed. Nearly two dozen soldier boys piled out and dashed into the building. Mahlia pressed the hidden places in the wall, praying to the Fates…

It opened.

Before her, the warehouse lay waiting. Her mother’s collection. Her father’s hoarding. All of it still there. None of it looted yet. Stern hadn’t had a chance to do anything with this news. Or maybe the lieutenant had never reported it. It was all here. Paintings and statuary and ancient books. The treasure trove of a dead nation.

“Round it up,” Mahlia said. “Get as much as you can. Whatever fits.”

They grabbed great armfuls of scavenge. Old muskets. Uniforms of blue and gray. Banners with circlets of stars on blue backgrounds. Yellowed parchments. Everything that they could find that was light and could be loaded into the zodiacs.

“Is this going to work?” Ocho asked as they heaved more pieces of art and history into the zodiacs where they bobbed beside the boardwalk. “You think we can really buy out?”

Tool answered for Mahlia. “With your soldiers to escort, and Mahlia to bargain with the blood buyers, it will. You will win free.”

Mahlia looked over at Tool. Something in his tone worried her. “You will, too,” she said. “We can all get out like this. There’s plenty here to buy us all out.”

“No.” Tool shook his head. “They will not welcome my kind. I must go another way.”

“But…” Mahlia hesitated. “What will happen to you? You can’t stay here.”

Tool almost smiled. “Let me be the judge of that. The Drowned Cities may not be a place for you, but to me…” He paused and sniffed the air. “This smells like home.”

With a chill, Mahlia remembered what the Colonel had said when he had them trapped, about half-men not being able to live without a patron.

“You’re not going to try to die?” she asked. “Like that other one? Like that other half-man? Keep circling back until you die?”

Tool’s fangs showed in a feral smile, and he crouched beside her. When he brushed her cheek, it was surprisingly gentle.

“Do not fear,” he rumbled. “I am no victim of war. I am its master.” He glanced to the canal and the civilians. The soldiers rushing about like an ant’s nest, kicked and frantic. His ears twitched, and his nostrils flared.

“The UPF will die, but its soldiers will need safe haven. They will hunger for a leader.” Tool’s low growl sounded of satisfaction. He looked at Mahlia again. “I have fought on seven continents, but never for territory of my own.” He scanned the buildings. “Where you see terror, I see… sanctuary.”

He straightened. “Go. The Army of God is only blocks away, and other warlords are stirring as well. It will be a long time before you can return to this place.”

“What are you going to do?” Mahlia asked. “You’re going to die.”

Tool laughed. “I have never lost a war. I will not lose this one. These soldiers are wild and untrained, and they have never fought a true war. By the time I am finished with them, they will roar my name from the rooftops.” He gave another growl of satisfaction.

Mahlia stared up at Tool. For the first time she thought she saw him true: not a mix of creatures, but a singular whole, built entirely for war. Entirely at home.

Gunfire echoed down the canals. A few shots, then more. A cacophony of weaponry that broke her thoughts and sent the warboys all scrambling into the zodiacs.

“Go!” Tool said. “Quickly! Before you lose your last opportunity! Go!”

“Come on!” Ocho said frantically. “Come on!”

When she hesitated still, Tool simply lifted her into the zodiac and set her amongst the troops. The soldier named Stork gunned their engine, and then they were speeding away from the half-man.

Mahlia looked back. Tool held up a hand in farewell, and then he turned and plunged into the canal, disappearing entirely. Mahlia stared after his disappeared form, wishing him well.

46

THE ZODIACS RIPPED down the canal, leaving frothing wake behind. Ahead, gunfire echoed.

“Here it comes,” Ocho muttered.

“We going to make it?” Mahlia asked.

“It’ll be close.” The zodiac’s engine whined higher as Stork ran the thing full out. Ocho pushed Mahlia down, covering her with his body. Bullets zipped and whined overhead. The UPF boys were all flopping down, lying low, returning fire. Shell casings rained down on Mahlia as guns chattered.

They shot across the leading edge of the AOG, running a gauntlet of bullets, firing all the while, and then they were past, and Ocho was shouting for his soldiers to report.

Mahlia straightened, trying to get her bearings. A soldier boy with missing ears was frantically patching holes in the side of the zodiac, blocking the air loss. Mahlia leaned over to the kid. “How can I help?”

“Put your hand over this,” the boy said, showing her a hole. “Cover this one, too. I got tape somewhere.”

Mahlia awkwardly pressed her stump and her bandaged left hand over the tiny hissing holes while he rummaged through their treasures. He came up with a bag, stripped it open, and found tape.

“Last time we used this, I think it was on you,” he said, grinning. Mahlia stared at him, trying to figure out if he was a threat, but the kid was like a puppy that couldn’t control itself. He was practically bouncing up and down.

“I’m Van,” he said as he slapped tape over the holes. Bullets started wailing overhead again, but Van didn’t stop smiling. Just kept doing his job like it was the best thing in the world to be ripping down a canal with enemies closing in on them.

He was crazy, she decided.

But then, as she looked around at the other soldier boys, she realized they were all like Van. It was like they were alive with energy. Everything they did felt eager.

They were getting out. All of them. They were leaning into the wind, eyes brighter and more alive than anything she had ever seen. A whole pack of soldier boys, all pursuing a future that they thought they’d never be allowed to have.

Ahead, UPF sentries saw them coming. They lifted their rifles, but Ocho threw up UPF colors. The sentries lowered their weapons and waved them on. Mahlia and the soldier boys shot past, three boats in a row.

Mahlia watched the checkpoint sentries, thinking how odd it was to simply whip past them like this. She wondered if any of them caught sight of her, and if they wondered what a castoff was doing, running with the UPF. And then they were past the final checkpoints, and they hit Potomac Harbor, and Mahlia stopped caring forever about what the UPF or any of the warlords thought.

Open water stretched before them, blue and wide, sunlight glittering on the waves. All across the harbor, clipper ships were readying their sails, preparing to flee. Some were already moving, their white sails billowing, filling with wind. She watched as one of ships rose on its hydrofoils and cut across the waters for the high seas.

It was beautiful, like a gull breaking into flight.

“Now what?” Ocho asked.

Mahlia scanned her choices. Pointed. “That one.”

It was rich. Sleek and fast. A shining white hull and sails that were only now unfurling. A wealthy blood buyer, glutted on scavenge and now escaping as the violence once again overcame the city.

“You sure?” Ocho asked.

“They’re just like the people my mom used to trade with.”

Ocho gave the order, and their raft angled across the waves, chasing for Mahlia’s chosen destination. She stared up at the gleaming ship as they approached, remembering how she’d stood on the Potomac docks years before, begging and desperate for the peacekeeper ships to return.

You’re not begging this time, she thought. You’re buying.

“Is this going to work?” Ocho whispered as they closed on the clipper ship.

“Yeah, it’ll work. Put up that old flag. The one with the stars in a circle, and the red and white stripes.”

“That old burned thing?”

“Yeah. That’ll get their attention. They’ll want it, for sure.”

Their zodiac hurtled across the waves, flying its ragged banner. Sure enough, the clipper ship’s sails that had been unfurling halted, and started rolling themselves back up.

Mahlia could see people on deck, looking down on them with binoculars. Watching them. They’d want what she had to sell. Her heart beat faster. It was going to work. It was really going to work.

“Keep your guns down, boys,” Ocho said. “Try to smile and look friendly.”

Mahlia almost laughed at that. Ocho seemed to catch her humor, but his smile faded, almost as soon as it showed.

“You think they’ll take us? Really?”

“They already are.”

“No. I mean…” He touched his cheek and his brand. “They’ll know what we did, right? They’ll know what we are.”

Mahlia looked at him, and once again, saw that other part of him. The part that was other than a soldier. Some part of whatever the sergeant had been, before the Drowned Cities had swallowed him up. The scared kid who’d been beaten and whipped and shoved around so long he’d almost lost every bit of his humanity. He was right there. A whole other person, trying to believe.

She started to answer, to try to tell him that everything would be okay. They could buy respect. They could go someplace where no one had even heard of the UPF or the Drowned Cities or the Army of God. Where none of it even existed. Beijing, maybe. Or Seascape Boston. Or farther even. They could disappear from everything that they’d been.

Somewhere they’d find a place, she wanted to say.

But then she looked down at her own hands, her missing right and the bandage on her left, and she wondered the same thing herself. What good was anyone going to find in a doctor girl who had only four fingers?

Finally she said, “One step at a time, soldier boy. We’ll take it one step at a time, and we’ll figure it out.”

They swept up beside the clipper ship and it loomed over them. Someone threw a rope ladder down, and then soldier boys were scrambling up the ladder and climbing aboard. They went up one by one, and then the ladder was in front of Mahlia.

She took a deep breath, then reached up and hooked her arms through the rungs. The soldier boys helped her, shoving her higher, and then she was lifting free of the zodiac, climbing.