The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(55)

Tool watched as the girl departed from the far side of the village. She crisscrossed the ground, trying to pick up the trail, and then headed into the jungle. One small and determined girl, stalking into the teeth of war.

Tool could respect the stubbornness, but it was difficult to respect the stupidity. A lone girl with a broken blade against an army. Tool had faced terrible odds in his life, but the girl faced worse.

What honor was there in suicide?

The boy is her pack.

Not mine, though.

With a growl, he turned in the opposite direction and started walking north to safety. He would need to be clever, but it was more than possible to penetrate the borders that Manhattan Orleans and Seascape Boston had thrown up to contain the chaos of the Drowned Cities. Though they might patrol their borders with armies full of his brethren, there were always weak points, and Tool was very good at exploiting others’ weaknesses.

Tool glanced over his shoulder, looking to see if the girl might have changed her mind, but she was gone. Swallowed up by the land.

The Drowned Cities ate its children.

You fight for yourself now. Do not mind that girl.

But still it rankled that a one-handed girl had the temerity to demand his loyalty, just as Caroa always had. People were all the same. Always demanding that others do their killing for them. Tool had slaughtered tiger guards and hyena men, but it was the humans who were most frightening. Humans had created generals and colonels and majors, people who kept their hands clean while they ordered others to cover themselves in blood.

Tool wondered if it was his loyal nature, bred and trained into him, that made him feel guilty for leaving her to her fate. Some vestige of the training that had made him so obedient to his original masters. Was that why he kept following her, trying to persuade her to leave this doomed land? Had he simply been reverting to his original conditioning? The loyal dog who would not leave its master?

Is she your master, then?

Tool bared his teeth at the thought.

But still he heard the girl’s taunting voice: How come if you’re so strong, you’re so afraid of everything?

He didn’t fear death. But he would never throw himself into pointless battle again. That was what the generals and their war machines demanded. He was not that sort of dog. Not anymore. He had fought too long, at too much cost, to allow anyone such power over him.

Are you afraid? a sly voice insinuated.

Tool snarled at the thought. I have never lost a battle.

But have you ever won?

25

PURSUING THE SOLDIERS was easy. Between them and their captives, they left a wide trail.

Mahlia slipped through the jungle, following.

The trail wound along one of the old roads, made of concrete and now carpeted with soil and leaves and vines. New trees punctured the way, poking up through cracks in its tortured surface, but still, the way was wider and more open, and the vegetation wasn’t as thick as the true forest. At times, the trail leaped into the air, arching high on concrete pylons, following the ancient expressways and byways from the time when everyone had had gasoline to burn and cars to drive.

Up high, Mahlia would pause and look ahead, seeking signs of the soldiers, but for all her speed, they seemed to move faster. And she had to slow and forage as she went.

Her feet became sore. She became thirsty. She drank from brackish water, pushing aside slime and water skippers, and always she kept alert. At times, she could hear the boom of the 999 off in the distance, the far roaring of the Drowned Cities, and it frightened her to think of what she was walking into.

But she kept going, knowing she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t. Knowing that she was doing exactly what her father had always scorned about Drowned Cities people. They were stupid and never thought strategically. They rushed pell-mell into revenge and bloodshed and war and death, even if it made no sense.

Mahlia remembered her father kicking off combat boots and cursing the Drowned Cities and its thirst for conflict. Stripping off body armor as her mother had clucked around him, cleansing wounds.

“They’re animals. Nothing but dogs, tearing at each other.”

“Not all of us,” her mother said soothingly as she helped him into a steaming bath. “Just because you’ve been here a few years doesn’t mean you know everything about us.”

“Animals,” he repeated. “You only defend this place because you don’t know how good life can be. If you’d seen Beijing, or Island Shanghai, you’d know. In China we aren’t like this. We aren’t dogs tearing at one another’s throats. We plan. We think ahead. We cooperate. But you people?” He snorted. “If you had any sense, you’d spend less time shooting at one another and calling each other traitors, and more time building seawalls.” He closed his eyes in the steaming bath. “Sha. Stupid. All of you. Too stupid to drink water even when it’s given.”

On the second day, the coywolv caught her.

She’d found a new ruin of a town, and amongst its rubble had found some sun-cracked sandals lying in the junk of the place. She remembered the wire and glass and rubble of the city. Her feet were tough, but she doubted she could walk over raw glass.

She sat on the ground and slipped the sandals onto her feet, but their plastic cracked as she walked on them, so she tossed them aside. They were too old, and too sun-broken to be any good. But she spied a plastic jug that looked good for carrying water, and there was some rope as well, and then she’d straightened.