The Drowned Cities (34 page)

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.”

G
HOST 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.”

M
AHLIA STARED AT
M
OUSE
, shocked. “You set me up?”