The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(28)

The lieutenant looked up as she climbed through the hatch. “What you want, girl?”

“I need to fix your sergeant’s bandages. And I remember where we had some other meds,” she said.

“Other meds?” the lieutenant asked. “You holding out on us, doctor?”

Doctor Mahfouz looked surprised, but he covered well enough. “Mahlia manages our medicines.” He touched his glasses. “Because of my sight.” He nodded to her. “Go on, then.”

Mahlia looked at the lieutenant. “You want me to get the meds or not?”

He waved her on. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Mahlia went over and crouched in a shadowy corner. Started pulling half-moldy books off a lower shelf. She hated giving away the doctor’s hiding place, but she suspected that the soldiers would have found it eventually, or else forced the information from her or the doctor at knifepoint.

Behind the first row of books, more books were tucked away. These, Mahlia pulled out and started opening, revealing the doctor’s medicine supply. She extracted blister packs of pills from within the hollowed-out volumes while the lieutenant watched.

“And you said you only had a few,” the man said.

The doctor gave a quiet sigh. “It’s all we will ever have. They are very difficult to acquire, and we have little to trade. The sort of men who have black market pills aren’t the sort who care about what we have to offer.”

Mahlia ignored the hungry interest as she went through the pills. She couldn’t read much of the text on the labels, because it was all more complicated than the Chinese she had learned as a child, but the instruction diagrams were made by the peacekeepers for illiterates in the Drowned Cities, so you could mostly tell how many you were supposed to take and what it was for.

She wanted to take them all, but there was no way she could carry everything. She fingered through the blister packs. Black market meds. Old meds that had been hoarded, and new ones the doctor had paid for with great risk and expense by going to the smugglers in Moss Landing.

She took a fistful. It would have to be enough. With that done, she opened another book and found the bottle she wanted. Cloudy liquid corked inside a little green glass bottle, gleaming.

Coywolv scent.

The bottle felt like a grenade in her hand. After Mahlia’s first destructive experiment with the scent and Alejandro’s goats, Doctor Mahfouz had instructed her explicitly that she was always to ask him before using any of his medicines in the future. He’d never made a direct accusation, but he’d tucked away the scent, and the message had been clear.

Now, Mahlia held up the bottle, showing it to the doctor. “I’m going to use this, right?”

You understand? she wanted to say. You going to be ready?

The doctor looked at her, shocked.

For a second, Mahlia was afraid he would stop her, but really, he was stuck. If he told the lieutenant what was in the bottle, there was no telling what kind of punishment they’d get.

“Are you sure, Mahlia? That’s quite strong.”

“Lieutenant wants his soldier taken care of.”

“That’s not a simple medicine.”

“It’s what we got.”

Lieutenant Sayle was looking between her and the doctor, not understanding that there were two conversations happening, right in front of him.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Meds for your boy,” Mahlia said. Her eyes went to Doctor Mahfouz, daring him to rat her out.

“Let me see.”

Mahlia came over to the lieutenant, her heart pounding. Showed him the green glass bottle. He held it up to the light. “What’s in it?”

“Antibacterial. We make it, because other stuff’s hard to buy,” she said. But the lieutenant wasn’t really paying attention. His eyes had gone to the other packages of meds in her hands.

“And those?”

“You want the best, right? Peacekeeper meds. Top grade. Only a year past expiration.”

The lieutenant plucked them out of her grasp. He turned the packages over in his hands, studying the foreign script, then handed them back to her with a smile. “Very good.”

“Yeah,” Mahlia said. “The best.”

11

SERGEANT OCHO LAY STILL, watching the burn of the fire and trying to keep his mind off the pain in his ribs. When the doctor girl had come back down, she’d given him something that cushioned the pain, and it made him a little hazy. It wasn’t as good as the opiates you could find in the Drowned Cities, but it helped a little.

The watches had changed, and his boys were fed. From his sickbed, he studied them, considering them for combat-readiness.

Some of them were still jumpy and on edge from their last run-in with the half-man, but more of them were settling down. Soa was just as crazy as he always was. Van was cracking jokes, which meant he was still afraid. Gutty was sleeping, easy as a baby, always. A few of them started passing a bottle. If they’d been closer to the war lines, Ocho might have shut it down, but soldiers couldn’t stand ready all the time, and at least they were out of the heart of the Drowned Cities.

Ocho watched them pass the bottle, listening to their murmured banter and insults. The half-man had hurt them, all right, but Ocho thought their previous encounters had also made them stronger. If it came to another fight, they were ready. They knew what to expect this time.