The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(83)

“Only four more…”

It didn’t matter, she tried to tell herself as she lay shivering and whimpering. It didn’t matter whether she had one or two, or no hands. She was going to die anyway. But she couldn’t help crying.

“Call HQ,” Sayle was saying. “Get us some more soldiers. Get us a damn barge. Show some initiative, soldier.”

“We got no authority,” the soldier was saying. They were all standing around the unconscious mass of the half-man. Some of the other troops were trying to get Tool lifted up. It was almost a joke. He was clearly too heavy for them.

The soldier talking to Lieutenant Sayle said, “We got to hurry. We got the sucker roped, but there’s no telling how long till it wakes up. Until we got it chained or something, there’s no guarantee it won’t just bust loose. It’s strong now. Stronger than when we chased it before. We don’t want it waking up.”

The soldier looked familiar to Mahlia.

The one she’d saved from the coywolv, she realized. The one she and Doctor Mahfouz had stitched up. She regretted it now. Should have let him die. Should have cut him wider open, and saved everyone the trouble. She could have finished it right there in the doctor’s squat, a month ago.

Ocho. That’s right. For knifing a bunch of other soldiers who all had guns.

Lieutenant Sayle was pissed. He kept looking from Mahlia to Ocho.

“Sir?” the sergeant pressed. “We got to make this happen now.”

Sayle nodded impatiently, then stalked over to Mahlia. “We aren’t finished, girl. We’re just getting started.”

He waved at some of his other soldiers and they all headed out, leaving Ocho and another squad behind. Mahlia closed her eyes. The pain in her hand was going away. She couldn’t tell if that was because she was bleeding out… No, she couldn’t bleed out. Not just from a finger. That would have been too damn easy. Sayle wouldn’t let her go easy.

She lay still, trying not to sob. Some of the soldier boys roped her legs and her arms behind her. The stump gave them a little trouble, so they did her arms above the elbows, almost dislocating her shoulders in the process, using some kind of sticky tape that wouldn’t slide off.

Footsteps. Mahlia opened her eyes. It was the sergeant, standing over her.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked.

Mahlia summoned all her will, looking up at him, hating him. “You remember me, right?”

“Oh yeah. Crazy girl who brought the coywolv down on us. Ripped up Soa and Ace and Quickdraw.”

“Saved you, though.” She stared up at him. “You remember that? I saved you.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

The soldier boy almost looked sad.

Mahlia stared up at him, willing a connection. Willing him to see her as a person. “Let me go,” she said. “Just let me and Mouse go.”

“You crazy? I let you go, I’m dead. That boy you call Mouse?” He shook his head. “He’s already dead. Never even existed. We got a soldier name of Ghost, who might look something like someone you knew a long time ago, but he ain’t that boy anymore.”

“We could run.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” Ocho said.

“What if we could get away? The half-man could do it. He could get us out.”

Ocho smiled slightly. “Now you’re just sliding.”

It was the same as when the peacekeepers left. Just like when she’d stood on the dock with her mother, waving her arms and jumping up and down, begging for the clipper ships to sail back. It didn’t have to be this way. He could choose different.

“Please.”

The sergeant fumbled in his pocket, pulled out some pills. “Here.”

Mahlia turned her face away, but the boy grabbed her and twisted her head around. “Don’t be dumber than you already are. They’re painkillers.”

“You think that’s enough?”

“No. But it’s what I got. And it’s what I can do.”

Mahlia stared up at him, feeling stupid for hoping the warboy would have compassion for her. “Just kill me,” she said. “Just kill me and get it over with. At least do that. Don’t let Sayle get hold of me again. You owe me that much. Don’t let him do any more to me.”

The sergeant looked apologetic. “LT would cut my own fingers off if that happened.”

“I saved you,” Mahlia pressed. “You owe me.”

Ocho grimaced. “Yeah, well, no one ever said things balance out. That’s for Fates and Rust Saint worshippers.”

He forced the pills between her lips with dirty fingers and clamped her mouth shut so that she couldn’t fight them off. Pinched her nose. “Just swallow. You’ll be glad.”

She finally obeyed, staring up at him with hatred. He nodded, satisfied, and straightened. “They got opium in them. Warboys smoke it, but you can eat it. Takes the edge off, whatever ails you.”

Mahlia wanted to keep hating him, but her eyes were getting heavy, and dreaminess overtook her.

38

THE GIRL’S VOICE slowed and went blurry as the meds hit her. Opiates. Good stuff that put them all into a dream state, let them ride out the pain. Ocho looked down on her. Waved at Van. “Bandage that hand.”

“But—”