The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(80)

Tool picked up a gray uniform of some long-forgotten soldier, and held it up to the light. Set it down carefully. Dust rose. He lifted an ancient musket, peered down its sights.

“Well?” Mahlia asked.

Tool looked over at her, inquiringly.

“Do you think we could sell it?” Mahlia asked. “Do you think this could buy us out of here? Find a buyer and smuggle out? If they smuggle in guns, maybe they’d smuggle out us. For enough money, they’d do it, right?”

Tool set the musket down, thoughtful. “Where did this come from?”

“My mom. She sold this kind of stuff. She did scavenge. But only the old stuff. And then she did a lot more of it when the peacekeepers rolled in and made the war stop for a while.”

Tool shook his head, smiling slightly. “It must have been profitable for her.”

Mahlia shook her head. “I don’t know. That was all bank stuff.”

“A bank… in China?”

Again, Mahlia shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Your father. The peacekeeper. Did he know of this trade?”

“It’s how they met,” Mahlia said. “He collected things, too.”

Tool snorted. “I’m sure he did.”

Mahlia didn’t like the tone of the half-man’s voice, like he saw things she didn’t.

“You think someone would buy this stuff?” she asked again.

Tool looked thoughtful. “Any number of people would buy it. It seems your mother was very good at what she did.”

“Yeah?”

“I see things here that were thought lost long ago. These are the sorts of objects that should live in the greatest museums of the world.” He gingerly lifted up a piece of parchment and studied it. “Some of them once did.”

“So we can sell them?” she pressed.

“Oh yes. You can sell these pieces. The problem is that for every buyer, you will find a thousand others who would cut your throat for the chance to sell it themselves. We are surrounded by the treasure of the ages, and just outside those walls, tens of thousands of soldiers all kill one another over pieces of scrap that aren’t worth a tenth of what’s in this room.”

“You think maybe there’s a way to cut a deal?” she asked. “Some way to bargain with the soldiers?”

“A delicate negotiation, when they would just as soon put a bullet between your eyes. Neither of us is the sort the warlords like to speak with. A castoff and a half-man.” Tool smiled.

“Mouse,” Mahlia said suddenly. “If we can get Mouse back. He could be a go-between.”

“You build cloud castles from dream smoke.”

“But we could do it, right? If the Fates look right on us, then maybe we could do it, right?”

Tool looked at her. Scars and thought. “Do you believe the Fates smile on you?”

Mahlia swallowed. “They got to sometime, right? Got to.”

36

GHOST WAS THROWING UP, head hung over a canal, when Ocho and the LT found him. They dragged him upright and splashed water on his face, and then waited again while he threw up some more, then led him down the boardwalk.

“I thought we had R-and-R?” he said.

Ocho almost looked guilty. “Yeah. Change of plan. We need you to go on patrol.”

“Why me?”

“ ’Cause I said so!” Ocho’s expression hardened. “Don’t think because you got a fancy pin from the Colonel means I don’t still own your maggot ass. I say jump, you jump, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Alil’s waiting for you.”

When they got to Alil, he tossed Ghost his gun. Ghost hefted it, still feeling nauseated, trying to focus on his boys.

“We searching civvies today,” Alil said. “Checking all the farmers and the girls, making sure they don’t got anything like a radio.” He paused. “And check our soldiers, too. If they got a radio, they ain’t ours, even if they got a brand.”

“Army of God keeps poking us,” Ocho said. He wasn’t looking right at Ghost, more looking away. Looking toward AOG territory, maybe. “We think there might be some infiltrators, so we want you to go over some of our inside sectors, check them real close. See what crops up.”

Sayle was more direct.

“I want you boys to go out and make sure none of those cross-kissers makes it through on my watch. You catch one, you send him back without his hands and feet, right? Teach them a lesson.”

“Yes, sir,” they all chorused, but Ghost still felt nauseated from the night before and the new brand on his cheek ached like crazy. No way he was going to complain about it, but still.

Ocho gave them their sector. It was odd, because it was way inside their territory, but when Alil asked, Ocho just looked at him and said, “Maybe we got some intelligence, right?”

“Seems like a small area.”

“Yeah. Keep close on it. When you finish with it, loop on it again. We got other people patrolling the rest.”

A few minutes later, Alil was leading them out over a rubble trail between two buildings, through another, and then out to the floating boardwalks.

“You doing okay, soldier?” He clapped Ghost on the shoulder. “You look like hell.”