The Drowned Cities

  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 m
yself 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.