The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(8)

Mahlia’s father had always talked about the ancient Chinese general called Sun Tzu and his strategies, and how all the paper tiger warlords had no strategy at all—he used to joke about what garbage they were as soldiers.

Laji, he’d said. “Garbage.” Every one of them.

But in the end, the warlords had won, and her father had left with the rest of China’s peacekeeper army while the paper tigers roared their victories from the rooftops of the Drowned Cities.

Sweat dripped down Mahlia’s back, soaking her tank as she walked. Being out in the middle of the day was crazy. The humidity and heat made doing everything more miserable. She should have been hunkered down in the shade, instead of sweating her way across town with blood all over her and a baby in her arms.

Mahlia passed the shop where Auntie Selima sold black market soap and cigarettes hauled from Moss Landing, along with whatever junk she could scavenge from the suburban ruins that surrounded them. Old cups made of glass that hadn’t shattered in the fighting. Rubber tubing for moving irrigation water. Rusty wire for binding together bamboo into fences. All kinds of things.

A couple of Chinese-made sheet-metal stoves were stacked in a corner, from when the peacekeepers had been around, trying to make friends. For all Mahlia knew, her own father’s battalion might have been the ones who’d delivered the stoves out here, showing people how they burned better and hotter than an open campfire. Trying to do all that peacekeeper outreach that was supposed to make Drowned Cities people who fought one another all the time focus instead on taking care of themselves. Soft power, her father had called it, the winning of hearts and minds that was just as important as the peacekeeper ability to smash the local militias’ combat units.

Ahead, Amaya’s squat waited. It was small, scabbed into the second story of an old brick building that had tumbled in on itself. On the ground floor, Amaya and her husband had restacked the crumbled bricks to form a strong pen for their goats.

Mahlia ducked into the shade of the open ground floor. Amaya’s ladder was painted blue, and little ragged UPF talismans hung like prayer flags to Kali-Mary Mercy, thin offerings meant to keep Glenn Stern’s soldier boys at bay.

When Mahlia first saw Banyan Town, she hadn’t understood why everyone lived in the upper stories. Mouse had laughed at that, calling her a swank city girl for not knowing about the panthers and coywolv that stalked the night. Mouse’s family had grown soybeans on a farm way out in the suburban collapse of the Drowned Cities, so he had known all about living in the middle of nowhere, but Mahlia had had to learn everything from scratch.

“Amaya?” Mahlia called.

The woman appeared from behind her goat pen. One of her licebiters was slung on her back, a tiny snotty-faced creature. Another kid peeked down from the squat above, dark eyes and brown skin almost as dark as Mahlia’s, peering down the ladder, serious.

At the sight of Mahlia covered with blood and carrying the baby, Amaya’s eyes widened. She made a sign of warding, putting the Fates Eye on Mahlia, who pretended not to notice.

Mahlia held up her bundle. “It’s Tani’s.”

“How is she?” Amaya asked.

“She’s dead. The doctor wants you to take care of her baby. For Mr. Salvatore, since you’re nursing anyway. Until he can take care of it on his own.”

Amaya didn’t extend her arms to take the bundle. “I told her those soldier boys weren’t any good for her.”

Mahlia still held out the baby. “The doctor says you’ll nurse it.”

“He does, does he?”

The woman was a brick wall. Mahlia wished the doctor had come instead. He could have convinced her, easy. Amaya didn’t want the baby, and if Mahlia was honest, Mahlia didn’t blame her. She didn’t want it, either.

“We aren’t doing it any favors,” Amaya said finally. “No one needs another mouth.”

Mahlia just waited. She was good at that. When you were a castoff, it didn’t do any good trying to talk to people, but sometimes, if you just kind of waited them out, people would get uncomfortable and feel like they had to do something.

Amaya wasn’t really complaining about more mouths, exactly. She was talking about orphans. And when she said that, she really meant war maggots. Orphans like Mahlia, who had shown up in Banyan Town with a chopped-off right hand, bleeding, dying for help. No one wanted a war maggot in their midst. It meant they had to decide one way or another about a peacekeeper’s castoff, lying in the dirt in the middle of their town. Most people had decided one way; Doctor Mahfouz decided different.

Mahlia said, “You don’t need to worry about the extra mouth. Salvatore’s going to take it back as soon as it can eat on its own. And Doctor’s going to send you more food for your trouble.”

“What’s that man see in a one-handed nurse?” Amaya asked. “Is that why Tani’s dead? Because you got no hand?”

“Wasn’t my fault she got herself pregnant.”

“No. But she didn’t need a useless crippled China girl for a nurse.”

Mahlia bristled. “I ain’t Chinese.”

Amaya just looked at her.

“I ain’t,” Mahlia repeated.

“You got the blood right there on your face. China castoff, through and through.” She turned away, then stopped. Looked back at Mahlia.