The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(45)

“You can track him, right?”

The half-man’s lips drew back, showing teeth. “You still think I’m your dog?”

“No!” Fates, it was impossible to deal with the monster. Even soldier boys made more sense. The half-man seemed like a person, but then it would turn cold and she’d think it was about to tear her apart. “Can you help me? Please?”

“If I do, do you consider our debt settled?”

“Help me get Mouse.”

“What is he to you?”

“He’s my friend.”

“Friends are easy to find.”

“Not like him.”

“You’re willing to die to save him?”

“Fates.” Mahlia looked away, feeling lost. “If he dies, I’m dead anyway. I don’t got nothing else to lose.”

The half-man looked at her, scarred and huge. It didn’t move.

“Never mind.” Mahlia turned and started back into the swamps. “Do what you want; I got to get him back. If he’s dead, I’m dead. It’s how it is.”

“Pack,” the half-man said. “He’s of your pack.”

The way the half-man said it made Mahlia think that it was more than just when you talked about dogs or coywolv running together. It was something absolute and total.

“Yeah,” she said. “Pack.”

20

THE SMOKE THICKENED about them. Mahlia cut a strip of fabric from her tank and soaked it in the swamp, bound it around her nose and mouth, and fought to keep from coughing.

The half-man didn’t seem affected at all. Even as Mahlia’s eyes teared in the smoke and she fought against sneezing and coughing, the half-man eased through the trees and pools and kudzu like a wraith. Sometimes, he would hold up a hand and she would freeze and he would sniff the air.

Three times, he motioned her off the trail and into the tangled vines of the jungle. Then they lay on the muddy ground, listening as snakes slithered through the undergrowth and then, just as Mahlia was becoming annoyed at the charade of hiding, she would at last hear footsteps and people would be on top of them.

Twice it was people from the village. She was tempted to call out, but then remembered Amaya and knew the villagers were just as much of an enemy as the soldiers.

They lay under smoke and vines and watched the shapes of the refugees rise out of the smoke, sobbing. Clutching themselves. Old man Salvatore, but not his baby. Emmy Song. Alejandro, who had given her so much trouble, hurried past with two young children Mahlia didn’t recognize and didn’t think were his. People. Old, young, children. So much like other refugees she had seen.

The townspeople had always hated war maggots and now they were just more of the same. Displaced and on the move, hoping they’d find some solace or safety. And despite all the antipathy Mahlia had for them, she found herself wishing them luck, and an easy path under the eye of the Fates.

The people fled with rice and sacks of potatoes and anything that they could carry, and it was heartbreakingly little. She watched them rise from the fog, and disappear again, and she wondered at their future.

Would they ever have a chance of settling again, or would they all end up like her, cast off and wandering, without hope of shelter ever again? Would another village take them in, or would it fight them off?

And then Tool would tap her shoulder and they would climb from their hiding place and glide deeper into the thickening smoke.

The third time Tool motioned Mahlia off the trail, he didn’t make her hide, but instead he stopped short, sniffing, and then turned and guided her back the way they’d come. She wanted to ask what he was doing, but she took her cue from his absolute silence.

Ever since they had started toward the village, he had not used his voice, and even now, as he guided her off the trail and into the tangling kudzu, and then onto another path that she hadn’t even guessed was there, the half-man didn’t say anything.

“Why?” she whispered.

The half-man motioned her sharply to silence. He mimed with his hands, as if he were holding a rifle, then held up fingers, pointing back the way they had come. Pretended as if he were squatting. Held up six fingers again, looking at her significantly.

Six soldier boys. Sitting on the trail, waiting in ambush. Without Tool, she would have walked right into it.

They eased down the new path. Mahlia’s anxiety increased. The silence was terrifying.

Suddenly Tool grabbed her and pushed her down, hand over her mouth. She tried to fight him off, but then the guns opened up and she heard people crying and screaming, and soldiers laughing and shouting, and then more shooting, and all the while, Tool lay beside her, hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t cry out and give away their position.

They weren’t more than fifty feet away. That close. She could hear someone moaning in the smoke, sobbing. She heard footsteps. There was a quick scuffle and someone cried out. The sobbing stopped.

“Dumbass civvies,” someone said. Someone else laughed. The soldiers. Right there beside her. Not more than a couple yards away. Slowly their voices moved off. Another person cried out in pain.

Tool motioned and then they were up and sneaking past, moving through the smoke, Mahlia praying that she wouldn’t cough and give herself away, and then they were past the ambush and Tool was motioning her onward, urging her faster. She hurried after the hobbling monster.