The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(51)

She was just like her father.

When the peacekeepers finally gave up on their fifteen-year attempt to civilize the Drowned Cities, the man hadn’t even looked back. He’d just run for his troop transport with the rest of his soldiers as the warlords flooded back into the city.

Mahlia remembered the gunfire and explosions. Remembered how she and her mother had run frantically for the docks, sure that the peacekeepers had saved berths for them. She remembered people leaping into Potomac Harbor as the last peacekeeping troop transports and corporate trading ships set sail without them. Remembered those huge white sails unfurling, clipper ships rising on hydrofoils as winds caught canvas.

Mahlia and her mother had stood on the docks and waved and waved, begging for the ships to come back, begging for her father to care, and then they’d been shoved forward into the ocean by the desperate press of others behind, all of them begging for the same thing.

Her father had abandoned her, and now she’d done the same. Mouse and the doctor had risked everything for her, and she’d just walked away. Saving her own skin, because it was easier than risking everything in return.

That’s how people get killed. If you did like them, you would’ve been dead a hundred times over.

She’d seen it often enough as she tried to escape the Drowned Cities, after the collapse of the peacekeepers. She’d seen people stand up, determined to hold on to principles. People who thought there was right and wrong. People who tried to save others. People like her mother who had died so horribly that even now Mahlia’s mind shied from the jagged memory. Only Mahlia had survived. While all the other castoffs were getting cut down by Army of God and UPF and Freedom Militia, Mahlia had taken Sun Tzu’s principles to heart, and survived.

The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders. As she stood in the cool jungle dawn, it felt like they were all there with her. School friends. Teachers. Shop owners. Old ladies. Families. Her mother. And now, Doctor Mahfouz and Mouse.

No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.

“I’m going back,” Mahlia said suddenly.

The half-man turned at her voice. In the dawn, he showed as something stranger and more alien than she had understood before. He was eating something that looked like it might have been snake, but he gulped it down before she got a good look. For a brief instant, it was like she was seeing the entire unnatural melding of his DNA: the tiger, the hyena, the dog, the man, all smashed together.

“It is too late,” the half-man said. “If there are any survivors, they will not thank you for your return. The ones you care about are dead.”

“Then I’m going to bury them.”

Tool regarded her. “You increase your danger if you circle back.”

“Why’re you always afraid of things? Don’t you want to fight? They hurt you, too, right? Why don’t you got any fight in you? I thought you were all blood and rust and killer instinct.”

Tool growled. For a second Mahlia thought he was about to attack. Then he said, “I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice.”

“What happens if you don’t get to choose the fight? What if it just comes for you?”

Tool regarded her. “Is this such a case? Do I have no choices? Is this battle preordained by the Fates?” He pointed northward. “There are more than enough battles ahead of us, and those ones at least have the merit of being to some purpose. Going back to your village is pointless.”

Mahlia glared at his mocking words. “Fine. Do whatever you do. I’m going back.”

She turned and started down the jungle trail. Tool was right, she knew. They were already dead. It was stupid to even bother. The doctor was gone. Mouse was gone. Going back wasn’t going to fix any of it. But she couldn’t stop herself.

Going back didn’t make her any less of a coward, but it was the only thing she could do to get rid of the disgust for herself that weighed in her guts. Maybe if she went back, the ghosts wouldn’t hang on her so hard. Maybe she’d be able to sleep, and not feel shame.

Tool called after her, but she ignored him.

The sky overhead was bright and blue, but Banyan Town was black.

Mahlia crouched on the jungle verge, studying the place, trying to see the hidden dangers. Sweat dripped from her chin. Mosquitoes whined in her ears, but she kept watching.

Nothing moved.

Silent fields stretched to charred, smoking rubble. Black ash coated the ground, drifts filling furrows where crops had burned. Even after a day, smoke still rose in coils, gray snakes writhing up from the ground, marking where tree roots smoldered beneath the dirt. A couple of fruit trees guttered with flames deep in their bowels, black and tortured ribbons of glowing coals clawing the sky like charred fingers, all that was left of Banyan’s orchards.

Every part of Mahlia’s survivor’s instinct told her to lie low.

Walk away. Just walk away.

But still she crouched, staring at the open expanse.

She hated how exposed the fields looked. As soon as she started to cross, she’d stand out like a flare. She kept looking for better cover, some way to sneak into the town without giving herself away, but there wasn’t anything left standing.