The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(69)

The boys came up with their shotgun and rifle, full of swagger and acid, thinking they knew how to fight, maybe still a little high from whatever they’d gotten up to the night before, and Tool…

The boys stood there under the trees, looking around expectantly, kind of pissed that they’d come this far, and it was like the jungle just breathed.

The leaves rustled. The two boys flew. They crashed to the ground and Tool landed atop them. He ripped their guns away and wrapped a boy under each arm.

They kicked and thrashed and flopped around, and one of them started to piss his shorts, and Mahlia almost laughed, except she remembered what it had been like to be on the other end of Tool’s attack, and she didn’t.

She got down with the boys and said, “I don’t got no money, but now I got you.” She looked at them. “I’m going to talk to your boss. See if we can work out a trade.”

They both stared at her with hatred.

Mahlia sighed. “Don’t feel so bad. Half-man teeth are what got my friend Mouse into trouble, too. It ain’t your fault.” She grabbed the one boy’s shotgun. Fiddled with it until she had it open. Checked the load.

“Take the rifle,” Tool advised. “The kick will be worse with the shotgun. You won’t be able to control it.”

Mahlia looked from one weapon to the other. “That little licebiter carries it. Why can’t I?”

“He has practice, and two hands.”

Mahlia looked from the rifle to the shotgun she held in her hand. “But I can’t miss with this.”

“If you’re close enough. Your stump will make it difficult to control.”

“I’ll brace.”

Tool shrugged.

Mahlia took the shotgun anyway. Stood up, hefting it and smiling. Damn, it felt good to hold a weapon. Not just some machete that you could never get close enough to show what for. She couldn’t ring-fight a soldier boy, but she could blow his head off just fine.

The gun felt solid in her hand, reassuring. Powerful. She could stand tall with a weapon like this.

No wonder soldier boys had so much damn swagger. With a gun under your arm, you walked tall. If she’d had a gun when the soldier boys caught her the first time, everything would have been different.

All her life she’d been ducking and running, always rabbiting, while the coywolv did all the hunting. But with this big old gun, she could stand tall.

The weapon was heavy, but she suddenly felt light, as if the weight of all of her past had suddenly fallen off, like a concrete block, tumbling away.

She grinned at the weapon in her hand. Yeah. She liked this gun, all right.

“Brace it against your shoulder when you fire,” Tool said. “The kick will bruise you.”

“It’ll kill, though,” she said. “It’ll kill good.”

“Resist the urge to think that weapon makes you strong.”

“It sure don’t make me weak.”

“Weaker than you think,” Tool said. “Resist its swagger.”

“I don’t swagger.”

“Everyone swaggers with a gun. Look at it.”

“What about it?”

Mahlia looked down. It seemed fine. Looked clean. In good condition. Ready.

“It gives you confidence.” Tool shook the boys under his arms. “It gave these two confidence as well. And look at them now. From a position of strength to an asset of their enemy, and all it took was confidence. The swagger a gun gives when you’re following some harmless crippled girl into the jungle.”

Tool suddenly snarled. “Now look at it, again!”

Mahlia startled at the force of Tool’s words. She looked down at the shotgun. “I am! I am!”

Scrapes and scratches. Heavy black barrel. A wooden stock that had been carved by hand and hammered back on to the main mechanism.

It was painted. Lots of guns were painted, though, and this one wasn’t any different. Lots of things on it. Mostly green crosses, for Deepwater faith. The red stars of the Army of God.

“Yeah? What of it?”

It was just like every other gun she’d ever seen. Beat-up, but ready for action.

“Look,” Tool said again.

Mahlia stared at it, trying to see what Tool saw.

“The paint is chipped,” Tool said.

Mahlia glared up at him. “So?”

“So. Look.”

Sure, some of the paint had chipped off. But there was just more paint underneath. Might have been a couple of Fates Eyes, from the shape of them, under the green crosses. Sure. It could be. Something red, too. Maybe a bit of a white star on a blue background. Maybe a UPF tag…

A cold crawling moved up her spine. Mahlia’s breath snagged.

The gun gave her swagger, all right. And it had given their prisoners swagger.

And whoever owned it before that.

And whoever before that.

And before that.

And on and on and on…

She could look at the gun and see the history of hands that had held it. Soldier after soldier, making it his own. Covering it with luck symbols and charms, Fates Eyes and crosses and whatever they thought would give them the edge.

And every one of them was dead.

The shotgun didn’t care who owned it. It went hand to hand. She was just the latest in a chain that might as well have gone all the way back to the Accelerated Age when people had cities that worked and they didn’t shoot at one another all the time.