The Drowned Cities (35 page)

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.

T
HE 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.”