The Drowned Cities (9 page)

Mahlia bridled at the mockery. “I’m telling the truth! Ask Mouse.”

A tired snort of amusement. “Your doctor… does he waste his medicines on monsters? When he has humans that already go begging for treatment? When war and pestilence stalk the land, and your kind already pines for help, will he spend his precious medicines on a
dog-face
?”

“He’s not like that,” Mahlia said. “He listens to me. Me
and Mouse, we can get him to come. He’ll help you. If you let us go, we’ll bring him back and he can help you.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I do not bargain with liars.”

“I’m not lying!” Mahlia felt herself starting to cry with frustration. “I got a doctor. We live with him! He can fix you! I can fix you!”

The monster just looked at her, and then she realized it was observing her missing hand. She could see the contempt in its gaze, seeming to say,
Please tell me more of your silly lies, cripple girl.

There had to be a way to save Mouse.
Could
she make Mahfouz help? Could she convince him? Mahfouz was kind. He took care of everyone. But this was a half-man.

“I can steal the medicine,” Mahlia said, finally. “I can just take it and bring it back to you.”

“Oh?”

Mahlia felt a surge of hope at the monster’s interest. “Me and Mouse. We can get you medicine. You don’t even need the doctor.”

“Yeah,” Mouse said. “I make a distraction, Mahlia gets the meds, and you get all fixed up.” He nodded vigorously.

“The two of you,” the half-man murmured. “One to distract and one to steal.”

They both nodded eagerly.

The monster snorted amusement and shoved Mouse underwater.

“Mouse!”

Mahlia plunged forward. The half-man lashed for her ankle. She tripped and barely scrabbled out of reach, watching in anguish as the half-man drowned her friend. The muddy water churned.

“Let him go!”

To her surprise, the half-man let Mouse rise again. The boy surged to the surface, retching and coughing, water streaming from his freckled face. The monster shook him once with its huge fist.

“A bargain, girl. Go find your medicines and bring them to me. If they are sufficient, I will let your friend live.”

“But—”

The half-man overrode her. “If you bring the wrong medicine, or if you bring soldiers, I will hear you coming and I will snap your friend’s neck. And if you fail to return, I will fill his lungs with mud and water. Do you understand?”

“It’ll take time,” Mahlia protested. “I can’t just snap my fingers.”

“You cannot bargain with me. My heart is the clock. Find medicine before it ticks dry, and buy your friend’s life. Fail and his corpse is all you will find here.”

Mahlia started to protest again, but the half-man’s glare froze the words in her throat.

“Run, girl. Run and pray to the Fates that you are fast enough.”

T
HE JUNGLE TORE
at Mahlia, tripping her with vines, clawing her skin with ragged leaves. Already, darkness was falling. Deep amongst the trees, the light faded fast. Shadows leaped at her. Mahlia tripped and sprawled. She scrambled up, ignoring skinned knees and painful scrapes on her palm.

The jungle’s paths twisted and crisscrossed, a confusing tangle of deer trails and coywolv hunts and wild pig runs. The darkness made it worse. How long did she have? How long until the half-man’s blood ran out?

Mahlia hit a fork in the trail. She crouched, staring at the ground, trying to see a way. Which way had they hacked their way through?

Fates, it was Mouse who liked to track things, not her. She chose the left-bending trail and pelted down it, praying
to the Fates, and the Rust Saint, and Kali-Mary Mercy that she wasn’t about to run into a minefield.

She hit open water. Tripped and plunged right in.

“Grind it!”

She slogged back out of the water, dripping and angry and scared. Doubled back, looking for the last split. She knew she needed to keep her fear in check, to keep her eyes open, to stay smart in the jungle, but even as she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t panicking, she could feel gibbering terror rising in her.

The horrors of the swamps loomed, wild and hungry. Kudzu vines became coiling pythons, dropping from above. Coywolv flitted from tree to tree, pacing her. The jungle had teeth, and suddenly it had become alien and feral.

Mahlia leaped over rotten mossy logs, and nearly tripped again. Had she come this way before? She didn’t remember deadfall from their journey out.

Where was she?

There was no way she’d make it to town and back to Mouse before full dark. She’d have to come back by lantern light. Could she even find her way? They’d wandered so aimlessly as they hunted for food, and Mahlia had paid less attention than she should have, never thinking that she’d be coming back in the dark—

Abruptly, jungle gave way to cleared fields.

Mahlia sobbed with relief. She was on the far side of town from where she’d intended, in the fields where everyone tilled crops because the ground was more open, but at
least she wasn’t lost. Mahlia skirted the dark liquid square of a basement pond and dashed across the fields, weaving around the fins of old crumbled walls that broke the earth.

Ahead of her the town beckoned, oil lamps coming on, familiar yellow glows, soft and comforting. Mahlia slowed, pressing at a stitch in her side. She’d never been so glad to see Banyan Town. Habitation. The sound and smoke of cylinder stoves crackling. The smell of spices. Candles burning beside little metal reflectors, making everything bright as she ran through.

Ahead of her, the doctor’s squat loomed in the darkness.

Please be there. You have to be there. Don’t be gone on some house call. Be there.

A human shadow stepped out from behind a ruined wall, blocking her path.

“Where you running, girl?”

Mahlia skidded to a stop. More shadows materialized before her, malevolent ghosts rising out of the darkness.

Soldier boys, a whole squad of them.

Mahlia turned and plunged back toward town, but a dog lunged from the shadows, snarling. She leaped back. Hunted for a new path of escape. The dog stalked her, growling, herding Mahlia back toward her captors.

More soldier boys emerged from the darkness. Guns gleamed dully. Bullet bandoliers and scars draped their bare chests. Ugly triple-hash brands scored their faces. UPF for sure. Colonel Glenn Stern’s for life. Some of them had blue bandannas tied around their heads, as if the brand
wasn’t enough. The boys came closer. Eyes bloodshot with red rippers and crystal slide studied her with snakelike hunger. Mahlia scanned the darkness for a way to run, but the soldiers were all around. A perfect ambush.

One of them came up and grabbed her. He twisted her arm behind her back. She felt him scrabbling for her missing hand, and then he laughed.

“Got a stumpy, here!” he said.

His fingers probed at her stump. “Can’t even cuff her.” The others laughed. Mahlia struggled to get away, but the soldier jerked her around.

“I do that to you?” he asked, gazing at her stump. “How’d I miss your other hand, girl?”

This close, his loyalty brand stood out strong, pale ropy scars against brown skin. Three across, three down. UPF, through and through. Spikes pierced his lower lip. Three in a row, gleaming. Mahlia wasn’t sure if they were for decoration, or if they were some other official thing that the Colonel did to his recruits.

“Was that me?” he asked again, but before she could answer, he straightened, surprised.

“Check out her eyes!” he called. “Got us a collaborator, here! Pretty little peacekeeper girl.” Mahlia tried to bolt again, but he yanked her back and pulled her into a tight embrace, twisting her arm so hard it almost dislocated.

“Not so fast,” he whispered in her ear. His voice had gone cold, dripping with new menace. Before, she’d been a
toy to him; now she was something less. “I got plans for you, castoff.”

Castoff.
His words ran through the rest of the soldier boys like an electric current.
Peacekeeper. Castoff.
Mahlia knew how this would go. First there would be screaming and then there would be blood and then at the end, if she was lucky, she would be dead.

She fumbled for her knife, but with her good hand twisted behind her back, it was pointless. Seeming to sense her intention, the soldier pulled out her knife. Brought it up to her neck.

“What you doing here, collaborator?”

Mahlia felt sick. Already, a part of her mind was preparing for what was about to happen. It was going to be just like when the Army of God got hold of her. Different army, same story. They were all the same, in the end.

“What’s a peacekeeper girl doing way out here?” he asked. “This town protecting you?” Mahlia didn’t answer. She struggled to twist loose, but the soldier was bigger and stronger. “Why don’t you answer? Huh? Someone get your tongue? Or you just stubborn?” A pause then. “Castoff think she’s too good to talk to us?” The knife came up to her cheek, touched her lips. “Here. Lemme get that tongue out.”

With a wrench of panic, Mahlia almost tore free.

“Hold her, boys!”

Hands seized her, pinning her arms, gripping her head,
forcing her to stare at the soldier who loomed over her. Dirty fingers forced her mouth open. Mahlia tried to bite them.

“Wooo!” the soldier shouted gleefully. “Castoff’s got some spirit!” But he didn’t let up. He pinched her cheeks until her mouth opened. Slid the blade inside. Mahlia tasted steel against her teeth.

“Didn’t know there were collaborators hiding out here,” the soldier said. “Thought we cleaned you all out.”

“Lay off her, Soa.”

At the new voice, the soldier glanced over his shoulder.

“Just getting answers, Lieutenant.”

A new shadow rose out of the darkness. Angular, hollow-cheeked. Tall and skeletal. Pale as death. A pink scar split the man’s nose, ragged. Gray eyes and wide pupils.

“What answers are you getting?”

“She won’t say.”

“Then we don’t have answers, do we, Private?”

“I ain’t started cutting, yet.”

“So you’re starting with her tongue?”

“Gotta start somewhere.”

There was a pause. For a second Mahlia thought there would be violence between them, but then the lieutenant just laughed. He laughed and Soa grinned, and she didn’t know if it was all a joke, or if they were going to start cutting, or if it was a game, or if this was just the beginning of the cat and mouse that would still end with her blood in the dirt.

The lieutenant shone a tiny hand-cranked LED light in
her eyes. Bright and painful. She squinted. He lowered the light a little and leaned close to study her with his gray bloodshot eyes. She guessed he might be in his late twenties. Experienced. Twice as old as some of his troops. A real Fates-playing old war dog.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

Soa was nodding. “Castoff, right?”

Mahlia summoned her voice. “I ain’t Chinese. I’m Drowned Cities.”

The lieutenant pinched her cheeks between clawed fingers. Turned her head this way and that while his troops kept her from struggling.

“Half,” he said. “For sure, you’re half. And you’re the right age, all right. Some peacekeeper nailed your old lady, left you behind.” He cocked his head. “Don’t got much use for collaborators.”

His gaze went to the village. “Don’t got much use for places that keep collaborators, either. Someone needs a lesson.”

“Leave her alone!”

At the voice, Mahlia’s knees almost buckled with relief. Doctor Mahfouz was pushing between the soldier boys. Familiar salt-and-pepper beard, broken eyeglasses tied together with bits of kudzu fiber that he had woven himself. Short and slender in comparison to some of the soldier boys. Nut-brown skin and gentle eyes and pure determination as he forced past the soldier boys, ignoring the danger he was in. It was as if he didn’t even notice that he was
surrounded by boys with guns and scars and a hunger for violence.

But they noticed him, all right. One of them grabbed him. “Slow down, doctor man. Traitors ain’t your business. You get back to doctoring.”

Doctor Mahfouz didn’t even slow. He just turned to the lieutenant, speaking with absolute authority.

“Lieutenant Sayle, that girl is my assistant, she is no traitor, and if you want your soldier to live, I need her help. Now leave her alone. We deal in healing and peace, here. If you want our best efforts, you will do the same. Those are my rules, in my house. We don’t deal in bloodshed here.”

The lieutenant’s gaze went from Doctor Mahfouz to Mahlia.

“That right?” he asked her. “You know doctoring? Got some Chinese medicine up your sleeve? Peacekeeper fix-me-ups?”

Mahlia opened her mouth but didn’t know how to answer. Anything she said would encourage him. She closed it, just waiting to see what would happen, knowing she didn’t have any influence. It was up to this Lieutenant Sayle and whatever decision he’d already made. She was alive or she was dead. Whatever she said to this UPF lieutenant wasn’t going to change a thing.