The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(35)

“Yeah, so? Come on, will you? We don’t got much time.” He looked back at the inert monster. “I ain’t taking its teeth, if that’s what you’re thinking. No way, no how. Even if it was a hundred percent dead, I wouldn’t touch it.”

“You couldn’t sell them, anyway,” she said. “It was a stupid idea.”

Doctor Mahfouz also touched her shoulder. “If we move deep enough into the waters, the soldiers won’t follow. Their dogs won’t track, and we’ll be safe. We’ll wait them out, just as we always do. But we must go.”

Safe?

The word made Mahlia want to laugh. Running didn’t make her safe. It never had, and now she was realizing it never would. She’d been as stupid as her father, who had thought the peacekeepers could never be beaten, and her mother, who had thought that a soldier from a foreign country really loved her instead of all her valuable antiques, and Doctor Mahfouz, who thought that there was good in the world.

“I promised I’d give the half-man medicine,” she said.

“That’s only ’cause it was going to kill my ass,” Mouse said. “Now it ain’t. Let’s go, already.”

But Mahlia was working through a new idea in her mind, feeling a different pulse of hope. A scheme that might serve her better than this constant running and hiding. “I said I’d help it. We made a bargain.”

“That wasn’t a real bargain!”

“It didn’t drown you, did it?”

“So?”

“Can we fix it?” she asked the doctor. “Is there a way to heal it up?”

“The half-man?” Doctor Mahfouz looked surprised. “Don’t be rash, Mahlia. That thing is dangerous. You might as well bring a coywolv into your house.”

“I already did,” she said. “Whole pack of them.” She turned and waded back into the swamp waters, heading for the monster.

The spidery roots of the great banyan tree dangled down all around, brushing her face with feather kisses as she parted them and eased into the sheltered lair the half-man had chosen for its dying place.

“This isn’t just stitching up some stray dog!” the doctor called. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

Like you do?

If it hadn’t been for her, they would have been trapped back in the doctor’s squat, waiting for Soa to cut their throats. Mahfouz was smart about doctor stuff, but he was stupid about the Drowned Cities. He couldn’t see the truth right in front of him.

Mahlia didn’t need someone who talked peace; she needed something that made war.

She scrambled up beside the mountainous creature. Hesitantly, she reached out and pressed her palm to its flesh. Flies rose, buzzing, then settled back. The monster’s hide burned under her hand. Sparse coarse hairs, boulder muscles, and blazing blood.

The heat coming from the creature’s body was astounding, fevers raging through it, burning it up. Her hand rose and fell with the bellows of the monster’s lungs, a shallow rhythm. Faint movement, but it was there, even as the furnace of death raged within.

Mahlia took out the pills that she’d stolen from the doctor’s squat and studied them, frowning.

Which ones?

CiroMax? ZhiGan? Eyurithrosan? Chinese characters she didn’t know, brand names she hadn’t used, for a patient she didn’t understand.

She looked over at the doctor, seeking guidance, but he was shaking his head. “Those are the last medicines we have. Now that the house has burned, we don’t have anything else. Come away, Mahlia. The soldiers can’t miss this place forever. And when they find us, they will make us pay for everything you did to them. We cannot bargain with them now. They won’t care anymore that we know something of medicine.”

“If you want to go, you can,” Mahlia said. “Just show me how to do the meds.”

“It isn’t just a few pills! It needs surgery,” the doctor said. “It has almost no chance of surviving.”

“But they’re tough, right? These half-men, they build them tough.”

“They build them for killing.”

Exactly.

Mahfouz seemed to read her mind. “This isn’t some fairy tale where beauty tames the beast, Mahlia. Even if you save it, it will not do your bidding. Half-men have one master only. You might as well try to tame a wild panther. It is nothing but a killer.”

“It didn’t kill Mouse.”

Doctor Mahfouz threw up his hands. “And tomorrow perhaps it will rip him limb from limb! You can’t know its mind, and you can’t control it. This creature is nothing but war incarnate. If you traffic with it, you bring war into your house, and violence down upon yourself.”

“Violence?” Mahlia held up the stump of her hand. “Like this, you mean?” She glared at the doctor. “You ever think maybe if we had guns and a monster like this, those soldier boys would think twice about coming after us? You ever think that if we had this thing on our side, we could get away from here for good?”

Mahfouz was shaking his head. “That creature brought the soldiers down on us in the first place. If you seek its company, you will shower all of us in blood. Please, Mahlia, we’ve already lost our home because of it. Is this how you want to lose your life?”

Was that what she was doing?