The Drowned Cities (3 page)

This dumb beast is not your enemy.

Tool was not some brute animal, able to think only in terms of attack or flight. He was better than that. He hadn’t survived this long by thinking like an animal. Panic and mindlessness were his only enemy, as always. Not bullets or teeth or machetes or claws. Not bombs or whips or razor wire.

And not this dumb beast. Panic only.

He could never break free of the alligator’s jaws. They were perfect clamps, evolved to lock down and never release. No one pried free of an alligator’s bite. Not even something as strong as Tool. So he would no longer try.

Instead, Tool lashed his free arm around the beast’s head, locking it in a bear hug, and squeezed. His grip forced the alligator’s jaws tighter around his own arm and shoulder. Its teeth pierced deep. More of Tool’s blood clouded the water.

In the dim recesses of its tiny brain, perhaps the alligator was pleased to have its teeth sink deeper into enemy flesh. But Tool’s other arm, engulfed in the monster’s maw, was free to work. Not from the outside, but from within.

Tool turned the shattered chunk of mangrove root and began methodically ramming it into the roof of the monster’s mouth. Ripping through flesh, driving the wood deeper and deeper.

The alligator, sensing something was wrong, feeling the
tearing within itself, tried to open its jaws, but Tool, instead of letting go, now clamped the monster tighter.

Do not run away
, he thought.
I have you where I want you.

Blood misted from Tool’s shoulder, but battle fury strengthened him. He had the advantage. He might be running out of air and life, but this ancient reptile was his. The alligator’s bite was deadly, but it had its own weakness: It lacked the muscle strength to open its mouth easily.

The mangrove root ground to dust, but Tool continued, using his claws, ripping deeper and deeper.

The alligator thrashed wildly, trying to shake free. Decades of easy killing had never prepared it for a creature like Tool, something more primal and terrifying than even itself. It writhed and rolled, shaking Tool the way a dog shook a rat. Stars swam in Tool’s vision, but he held on and tore deeper. His air ran out. His fist found bone.

With one final heave, Tool rammed his claws through the lizard’s skull and tore into its brain.

The monster began to shudder and die.

Did it understand that it had always been outmatched? That it was dying because it had never evolved to face a creature such as Tool?

Tool’s fist crushed the lizard’s brain to pulp.

The great reptile’s life drained away, victim to a monster that should never have existed, an unholy perfection of killing, built in laboratories and honed across a thousand battlefields.

Tool’s claws carved out the last of the brain meat of the ancient lizard, and the alligator fell limp.

A rush of primal satisfaction flooded Tool as his opponent surrendered to death. Blackness swamped Tool’s vision, and he let go.

He had conquered.

Even as he died, he conquered.

“T
HAT’S ENOUGH
, M
AHLIA.
” Doctor Mahfouz straightened with a sigh. “We’ve done all we can. Let her rest.”

Mahlia sat back on her heels and wiped her lips of Tani’s dying spit, giving up on breathing for the girl who had already stopped breathing for herself. Before her, the young woman lay still, empty blue eyes staring up at the bamboo spars of the squat’s ceiling.

Blood covered everything: the doctor and Mahlia, Tani, the floor, old Mr. Salvatore. Ten pints, the doctor had taught Mahlia in her studies; that was what filled a human being. And from the look of it, all of it was out of their patient. Bright and red. Rich with oxygen. Not blue like the placental sac, but red. Red as rubies.

What a mess.

The squat stank. Burned vegetable oil from the lamp, the iron spike of blood, the rank, sweaty smell of desperate people. The smell of pain.

Sunlight speared through cracks in the bamboo walls of the squat, molten blades of day. Doctor Mahfouz had asked if Tani and Mr. Salvatore preferred to do the birth outside, where it would be cooler and they’d have better air and light, but Mr. Salvatore was traditional and wanted privacy for his daughter, even if she’d been anything but private in her love life. Now it felt as though they were swaddled in the smell of death.

In the corner of the squat, tucked under a pile of stained blankets, Tani’s killer lay quiet. The infant had nursed for a second, and Mahlia had been surprised at how happy she’d been for Tani that her little wrinkled baby was healthy and that the birth hadn’t been as long as she had expected.

And then Tani’s eyes had rolled back and the doctor said, “Mahlia, come here, please” in the way that told her something was really bad but he didn’t want to scare the patient.

Mahlia had come down to the doctor where he knelt between Tani’s legs and she’d seen the blood, more and more of it, his hands covered with it, and the doctor had wanted pressure on her belly, and then he’d wanted to cut.

But they didn’t have any drugs to knock Tani out, to make the cutting easy, nothing with them but his last black market needle’s worth of heroin, and then he’d had his scal
pel out and Tani was gasping and asking what was wrong, and the doctor had said, “I need you to hold still, dear.”

Of course, Tani panicked. Doctor Mahfouz called for her father, and Mr. Salvatore climbed up the ladder into the squat, and when he saw the blood he shouted, demanding to know what was wrong, and of course he panicked Tani even more.

The doctor ordered him to her head, to hold her shoulders while he sat on her legs, and then he asked Mahlia to help him even though all Mahlia had was a right hand stump and her lucky left—which didn’t seem so lucky when she needed both hands to get the job done.

The doctor set to work by the flicker of the single vegetable-oil lamp and the burn of candles, and Mahlia was forced to lean close, using her eyes to tell the older man where to set the scalpel. With her guiding voice, she helped him make the bikini cuts low across Tani’s belly. The cuts that he’d taught her from his medical books, because he couldn’t see so well, with Mahlia handing him the implements as quick as she could with her one good hand until they were in Tani’s belly and found where the blood was coming from.

By then Tani’s struggles had stilled. And after that, she was gone, with her belly cut open like a pig’s, and old Salvatore holding his daughter’s limp shoulders, and blood all over the squat.

“That’s enough, Mahlia,” the doctor said, and Mahlia
straightened from trying to rescue-breathe for the poor dead girl.

Salvatore was looking at them, accusation in his eyes. “You killed her.”

“No one killed her,” Doctor Mahfouz said. “Birth is always uncertain.”

“That one. That one killed her.” Salvatore pointed at Mahlia. “You should never have let her anywhere near my girl.”

At the man’s accusation, Mahlia palmed a bloody scalpel into her good hand, but didn’t show anything on her face as she turned to face him. If Salvatore made a move, she’d be ready.

“Mahlia…” The doctor’s voice held warning. He always knew what she was thinking. But Mahlia didn’t put down the scalpel. Better safe than sorry.

“Castoffs like her are bad luck. Got the Fates Eye on them,” Salvatore ranted. “We should have run her off when we had the chance.”

“Mr. Salvatore, please.” Doctor Mahfouz was trying to get the man to calm down. Mahlia didn’t think it would work. The man’s daughter was dead on the table with her belly cut wide and there Mahlia was, standing right in front of him, the perfect target for blame.

“Bad luck and death,” he said. “You were a fool to take that one in, Doctor.”

“Please, Salvatore. Even Saint Olmos calls for charity.”

“She kills things,” Salvatore said. “Everywhere she goes. Nothing but blood and death.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“She put the Fates Eye on Alejandro’s goats,” Salvatore pointed out.

“I didn’t touch them,” Mahlia retorted. “Coywolv got them, and everyone knows it. I didn’t touch them.”

“Alejandro saw you looking at them.”

“I’m looking at you,” Mahlia said. “That mean you’re dead, too?”

“Mahlia!”

She flinched at the doctor’s shocked remonstration. “I didn’t do nothing to your girl,” Mahlia said. “Or any goats.” She looked at the grieving father. “I’m sorry about your girl. Wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

She began picking up the stained medical implements while the doctor kept trying to soothe Salvatore. Mahfouz was good at that. He knew how to talk people down. In all her life, Mahlia had never seen someone who was so good at making people stop bickering, sit down, talk, and listen.

Doctor Mahfouz was gentle and calm in an argument, where most people went off and started shouting. He brought out the good. If it hadn’t been for him, Banyan Town would have run her off long ago. They might have let Mouse stay, even though he was a war maggot, too. But a castoff like her? No way. Not without the doctor talking words like
charity
and
kindness
and
compassion
.

Doctor Mahfouz liked to say that everyone wanted to be good. They just sometimes needed help finding their way to it. That was when he’d first taken her and Mouse in. He’d said it even as he was sprinkling sulfa powder over Mahlia’s bloody stump of a hand, like he couldn’t see what was happening right in front of him. The Drowned Cities were busy tearing themselves apart once again, but here the doctor was, still talking about how people wanted to be kind and good.

Mahlia and Mouse had just looked at each other, and didn’t say anything. If the doctor was fool enough to let them stay, he could babble whatever crazy talk he wanted.

Doctor Mahfouz gathered up Tani’s baby and poured it into the grieving grandfather’s arms.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Salvatore demanded. “I’m no woman. How will I feed it?”

“ ‘It’ is a ‘him,’ ” the doctor said. “Name
him
. Give your grandson a name. We’ll help you with the rest. You are not alone. None of us are alone.”

“Easy for you to say.” Salvatore’s gaze went to Mahlia again. “If she had two hands, you could have saved her.”

“Nothing could have saved Tani. We might wish otherwise, but the truth is that sometimes we are powerless.”

“I thought you knew all the peacekeeper medicine.”

“Knowing all and having the necessary tools are two different things. This is hardly a hospital. We make do with what we have, and none of that is Mahlia’s fault. Tani is the victim of many evils, but Mahlia is not the beginning of that chain, nor the end. I am responsible, if anyone is.”

“If your nurse had two hands, it would’ve helped,” Salvatore insisted.

Mahlia could feel the man’s gaze on her back as she dropped the last of the clamps and scalpels into Mahfouz’s bag. She’d have to boil everything when she got back to Mahfouz’s squat, but at least she could get out of here.

She snapped the bag closed, using the stump of her right hand to stabilize it while she worked the clasps with the fingers of her lucky left.

The bag’s leather was stamped with the Chinese characters of the peacekeeper hospital where Doctor Mahfouz had trained before the war started up again.
.
was an Accelerated Age word for
the Drowned Cities
.
was for
China
. And she could pick out other characters as well:
friendship
and
surgery
, the character for
courtyard
.