The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(12)

“Salvatore said something else, too.” She held up the stump of her right hand, with its puckered and mottled stub of brown skin folded over. “He said Tani would still be alive if the doctor had more hands to help.”

“Yeah? Think he’s right?”

“Probably.” Mahlia spat over the edge. Watched her saliva do cartwheels to the ground. “Me and the doctor work good together, but a stump ain’t no hand.”

“If you want to complain about what you got, you can always go back and ask the Army of God to take your lucky left. They’ll finish the job.”

“You know what I mean. I ain’t complaining that you saved me. But I still can’t do anything delicate.”

“Better than me. And I got all ten fingers.”

“Yeah, well, you could do all this doctor work if you tried. You just got to pay attention and read what the doctor tells you to.”

“Not hard for you, maybe. I get twitchy just looking at all those letters.” Mouse shrugged. “Maybe if I could read up here, up high, you know? But I don’t like being down in the squat, with the lantern and all that. Don’t like being closed in, you know?”

“Yeah,” Mahlia said.

She had the same feeling herself sometimes. The chest-tight feeling of the Fates setting you up and getting ready to kill you off. It made it hard to focus on a book, or even to sit still. Maggot twitch, some people called it. If you’d seen much of the war, you had it. Some more. Some less. But everybody had it.

The only time Mouse seemed really at peace was when he was out in the jungle, fishing or hunting. The rest of the time he was twitchy and nervous and couldn’t sit still and damn sure couldn’t pay attention. Mahlia sometimes wondered what he would have turned out like if he’d been able to grow up on his parents’ farm, if a warlord’s patrol had never had a chance to kill his family. Maybe Mouse would have been real calm and still, then. Maybe he could have read a book all day, or been able to sleep inside a house and not be afraid of soldier boys sneaking up in the dark.

“Hey.” Mouse tapped her. “Where’d you go?”

Mahlia startled. She hadn’t even realized she’d drifted away. Mouse was looking at her with concern. “Don’t go off like that,” he said. “Makes me think you’ll just tip right off.”

“Don’t nanny me.”

“If I didn’t nanny you, you’d be dead by now. Either starved or chopped up. You need Momma Mouse to look after you, castoff.”

“If it wasn’t for me, you’d have been picked up in a patrol years ago.”

Mouse snorted. “ ’Cause you’re all Sun Tzu stra-tee-gic?”

“If I was strategic, I would have figured out how to get out of this place. Would have seen everything falling apart and got out while there were still ships to sail.”

“So why didn’t you leave?”

“My mom kept saying there were supposed to be boats for us, too. For dependents. Just kept saying it. Saying that there were supposed to be enough boats for everyone.” Mahlia made a face. “Anyway. She was stupid. She didn’t think strategic, either. And now there’s no way out of here.”

“You ever think about just trying to go north? Sneak across the border?”

Mahlia glanced at Mouse. “Coywolv, panthers, warlords, and then all those half-men up there to hold the line? They’d be picking our bones before we even got close to the Jersey Orleans. We’re stuck; that’s the fact. Like a bunch of crabs boiling in a pot.”

“That’s Mahfouz talking.”

“ ‘Crabs in a pot, pulling each other down while we all boil alive.’ ”

Mouse laughed. “You got to say it like he does, though. All disappointed.”

“You should have seen how he looked after I pushed up on Amaya. Talk about disappointed.” Mahlia waved the stump of her hand with irritation. “Like if I was nice and polite, they’d think I was some kind of gift from the Scavenge God.” She snorted.

Mouse laughed. “You going to sit there feeling sorry for yourself, or you going to tell me something I don’t know?”

“Is there something to say? Some fish jump out of a basement and I miss it?” Mahlia poked Mouse. “What’s the news, maggot? Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”

Mouse looked sly; then he nodded toward the Drowned Cities. “They’re fighting again.”

Mahlia burst out laughing. “That’s like saying the cities are drowning.”

“I’m serious! They’re shooting something different. Something big. I was wondering if you knew it. It’s a big old gun.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Well, maybe you should listen, right? Show some patience. They been blowing it off all morning. It’ll come again.”

Mahlia turned her attention to the horizon, studying the wreckage of the Drowned Cities where it poked up above the jungle. Distant iron spires, stabbing the sky. In some of them, beacon fires burned. A haze of smoke hung over the city center, brown and heavy. She listened.

A far-off rat-a-tat of gunfire, but nothing interesting. Couple of AKs. Maybe a heavy hunting rifle. Background noise, that. Skirmishers in the jungle or maybe target practices. Nothing—