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.”
37
MAHLIA STARED AT MOUSE, shocked. “You set me up?”
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.
38
THE 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 i
n 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.”