The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(44)

Abruptly the half-man said, “It seems your brother Mouse has found his own cause.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look and see.”

Mahlia turned to look behind her. Mouse was gone, disappeared into the thickening smoke.

19

MAHLIA AND MOUSE, Mouse and Mahlia.

She’d been the one who’d always been good at keeping them from getting killed; he’d been the one who’d always been good at keeping them alive. She’d kept them out of the bullets, using everything she’d ever gleaned from her old man about Sun Tzu and warlords.

Mouse had been the one who knew how to dig for ant eggs under a rock, or knew how to go hunting for crawdads. How to catch a frog. They didn’t have anything in common, not really, but they’d been a unit. A tight little unit. And because they’d been tight, they’d survived.

While people were running across the fields ahead of Freedom Militia, she’d grabbed Mouse and held him low while the bullets flew overhead and mothers and fathers and kids and grandmas all flopped in the weeds.

You didn’t rabbit when they had all the guns; you played dumb and you played dead, and you lay with your face beside some bleeding dead woman and wiped her blood all over you and Mouse, and then you lay like the dead until they’d walked right over you.

You lay like stone, with your blood pounding in your ears and your eyes open and staring straight into the sun like the true dead while soldier boys stepped over you and macheted the ones they’d only wounded.

She’d done that. She’d saved his licebiter ass when he didn’t know enough to lie low.

And then, when the Army of God bagged her and she hadn’t seen it coming, when they’d chopped one of her hands off already, and were going to do the other, while they were all laughing, Mouse had been the one who’d eeled up to their camp and started throwing rocks—rocks against bullets, of all the crazy things—and while the soldiers all ran and grabbed for their weapons, she’d run the other way, blood pouring from her stump, but still, alive and running, alive when she would have been chopped down to nothing but stumps and hung off a tree the way the Army of God liked to do with all the nonbelievers.

And then they’d found the doctor and he’d fixed up her stump, and it had all settled. Except that Mouse was an idealist.

Mahlia peered back into the thickening smoke. “Mouse!”

She couldn’t make out a thing beyond a dozen meters. Where was he?

“Grind it.” She started back through the bog.

“You’ll die if you follow him,” the half-man said.

Mahlia realized that the monster had been watching her closely. “You knew he was running?” she demanded.

“I assumed that he had some purpose.” Tool’s ears twitched. “He only now has turned his path definitively away.”

“So can you tell where he is?” Mahlia asked. “You can track him?”

Tool listened for a moment. “A few hundred meters, perhaps. He moves quite quickly.”

Mahlia turned and shouted again. “Mouse!”

No response. Mahlia grimaced. “He’s good in the swamps. We gotta go catch him before he does something stupid.”

“He already has,” Tool said. “And he will die because of it. And you will die, too, if you follow him. There are patrols moving toward us now. Many ants marching.”

“But you’re fast,” Mahlia said. “Just go after him.”

“You remind me of General Caroa, in miniature. Always demanding more of your troops. You think it is easy for me to walk? Let alone run?” He hefted his makeshift staff. “You think I carry this for pleasure?”

Mahlia cursed Mouse. They were supposed to stick with this old war monster and it was going to get them away from the Drowned Cities for good. Not just living in the swamps, but all the way out. North. To those places like Seascape Boston and Beijing that weren’t swallowed by war. With the half-man, it was possible. He’d be able to sense the patrols, to work them through the battle lines. And now Mouse was turning around and going back to town?

Mahlia looked to the half-man. “You can tell where the soldier boys are, right? You can tell where the patrols are?”

Tool nodded slowly. “I can.”

“Then help me go get Mouse.”

Tool snorted. “I’m not so eager to die that I will walk into an enemy position with neither weapons nor support.”

“I saved you.”

“And I am grateful.”

“Why won’t you help?”

“Why should I throw my life away, when it has just been reclaimed?”

Mahlia wanted to scream at the brute monster. “Because I’m the one who saved you! Without me, you’d be dead already. Mahfouz and Mouse would have let you bleed and die. I gave you every med the doctor had to get you up and walking.”

“So you believe I owe you.”

“You do! You owe me big-time. And you know it.”

Tool slowly squatted, bringing them eye to eye. “Perhaps I do owe you. Perhaps my honor even demands that I pay you back in some way.

“But listen to me, girl. If you come with me now, you have a chance to survive and leave this place. I will take you with me, and I can help you escape.” He straightened. “Or you can return and try to save your friend from his own foolishness.”