A scrape of movement behind him. Ocho whirled, his hand going to his fighting knife, and then he relaxed. Ghost.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Is it true?” the boy asked.
“Is what true?”
“There’s treasure, I heard.”
“Yeah, there’s treasure.” Ocho pushed him out and pulled the door shut. Was surprised that it disappeared so completely. He marked the place in his mind.
Another thing to deal with.
He took Ghost and guided him away from the hidden vault. As they passed the castoff girl, Ghost stared. She lay still, eyes glazing with the drugs Ocho had fed her, trussed and bleeding.
Ocho felt him falter and gripped his arm harder, dragging him past. “Don’t look at her. She’s not your business.”
“But—”
Ocho spun Ghost to face him. Looked him in the eye. “I’m trying to keep you alive, soldier. If people think you’re unreliable, they’ll kill your ass. Won’t even think twice. That castoff ain’t anything. Just a piece of meat. Like a cow or a pig or a goat. We all got past lives. Things you might want to think about. Things you might pretend you can get back to.”
He gripped Ghost’s shoulders tighter. Got his face in close. “Don’t you think about any of that! You focus on your job, soldier. You think about your brothers. You think about us. About keeping all of us alive to fight. You think about Army of God and how they’ll do us all if we lose focus.
“Now get out there and stand patrol. We got a war on.” He shoved Ghost out the door. Nodded at Stork.
“Keep an eye on your warboy. Make sure he don’t forget who he is.”
Mouse stood outside, shaking. Mahlia was there. Right there. If he was brave, he could just walk in and—
And what? Shoot everyone? Kill Stork and Ocho and TamTam and everyone?
Stork came outside. He took Mouse’s elbow and tugged him down the floating boardwalk. “Let’s walk, soldier.”
“I—”
“You can’t go back, you know.”
“I wasn’t…”
“Sure you were.” The tall black boy smiled slightly. “Everyone thinks about it sometimes. I even tried.” He glanced at Mouse. “After I went full-bar, I tried. You can’t go back, because they know. They know what you are now. They know what you done.”
He spat into the canal. “They don’t want you. It’s like you’re bad meat. Civvies smell you a mile away, and the only thing they want to do is bury you. You might not like it, but without your squad, you’re nothing.”
He fished a hand roll out of his pocket and lit it. Took a deep drag and handed it over to Mouse. “After a while, you figure out the only people who got your back is your squad. We got you safe. We’re your brothers. We’re your family now.”
He took the hand roll back and puffed again, before nodding down the canal. “Looks like the LT found us a barge. Time to get to work.” He jerked his head toward the building. “That girl, she’s just some civvy. If she knew what you done… how much you killed… the girls you done, the bad shit you been up to…” He shrugged. “She’d rather puke than look at you.”
“But she was coming for me,” Mouse said. “She said she was coming for me.”
“Nah. She was coming for some civvy she called Mouse.” He flicked the last bit of cigarette into the green waters of the canal.
“She don’t give a damn about Ghost.”
Loading the half-man into the barge took ten of them working in concert. The bastard was dense. Like its muscles were made of concrete. As soon as they started dragging it, Ocho realized they probably should have improvised some kind of stretcher, but it was too late then, with the LT standing over them and swearing that they needed to hurry up.
So they dragged and grunted and hauled and sweated and cursed and finally got the monster dumped into the barge.
The barge was half-full of iron I beams and sharp chunks of copper tubing from some building’s plumbing, which meant the LT must have just grabbed the first barge he’d found. The sullen looks on the faces of all the bond labor seemed to confirm that. They’d probably get hell from their overseers for coming back light, but that was the way of it.
Ocho made a mental note to at least send some kind of report along with them that it wasn’t their fault. Sometimes the overseers could smuggle meds and booze and cigarettes and drugs in from the docks, and if you stayed on their good side, it was better than if you didn’t. Kept them a little content, at least.
The barge rode slowly through the water. The half-man didn’t move. It might as well have been dead, they’d loaded it with so many drugs.
The barge was slow. Ocho hated how slow it was. He split his time between keeping an eye on Ghost, the half-man, and the castoff, who looked like she was starting to wake up.
He looked from her to Ghost, not liking what he saw there. She’d been insane to follow her boy. But she’d come anyway. And it pissed Ocho off.
For a little while, he couldn’t decide why it made him so mad, but he kept wanting to hit her. To punch her and shake her.
Stupid-ass doctor girl. Dumb castoff. Didn’t she know this was no place for war maggots like her? Nobody wanted a castoff reminding them how China had taken everything over for more than a decade, telling everyone what to do and how to live. Swaggering around with their guns and their half-men and their biodiesel attack boats.
She was stupid. Too stupid to breathe. And now she lay like a dead fish atop a pile of copper. Her eyes were open, watching him. Her hand looked like it had started bleeding again.
You’re just parts, he told her in his mind. Just a bunch of blood and kidneys. Maybe they pop your eyes out and give them to someone else. Harvesters are always buying. You’re just parts.
She deserved it.
So why did it bother him so much?
Ocho was smart enough to know that when you got crazy about something, you needed to think it through. Being crazy meant you did things by reflex, and it meant you made mistakes.
Sayle had been that way with the girl. Going after her, being all over her like that, threatening her. Sayle liked to hurt people, but this was more. This was all about his getting ambushed by a civvy. Pissed off about being embarrassed by a one-handed castoff.
She’d jammed them all good with her coywolv trick, and none of them had seen it coming. But then, Army of God had ambushed them last week with that 999, and that wasn’t personal. Sure, they’d chop up the next bunch of cross-kissers and dump them in a canal if they found them, but it wasn’t personal.
But the lieutenant was really stewed about the girl. This was crazy stuff coming from the LT, and it made Ocho nervous. He didn’t like being on this slow barge, with a drugged-out dog-face and an angry LT, because it meant the LT wasn’t thinking straight. Wasn’t looking at the big picture. All because of that girl.
Ocho stared at her. He couldn’t decide if he was pissed off at her because she’d tried to act like he owed her for saving him from the coywolv—which was a load of crap no matter how you sliced it. She’d sicced the coywolv on them, so saving him wasn’t anything other than bringing the scales back to even.
No… It was because she’d come all the way into the Drowned Cities, to get her boy back.
Mouse, she’d called him. She’d come all the way in. And it made Ocho want to shoot her right then and there.
No one ever tried to come for you.
Ocho sucked in his breath at the thought. He coughed, and it almost came out as a sob.
Reggie and Van looked over. Ocho stared them down, face like stone, but inside, it felt like someone had a handsaw and was cutting up his guts, ripping away.
No one had ever come for him. They’d blown into trouble, him and his uncle. And not his mom, not his dad, not his brother, not a dozen people who he’d called his friends back in his town on the coast, not a one of them had ever come looking for him, trying to get him back. They’d just let him go. That was the difference. But this c
astoff cripple-hand civvy girl had come all the way in.
Ocho scowled down at her limp body. See what loyalty gets you? See?
Stupid bitch. She didn’t have any survival instinct at all.
She deserved what she got.
39
MAHLIA STARED DULLY at the world around her. The opiates made the pain… not exactly go away, but made it less important. Irritating, still, but distant. She only had four fingers left.
Four out of ten ain’t bad.
It was just like the last time she’d been caught, when the Army of God had taken her good right hand. So much of it felt the same. She wasn’t even a person to them. It was all the same.
Except, that time Mouse had come to her rescue. She didn’t think that was likely this time.
Mahlia turned her head, trying to see where Mouse was. Someone kicked her. Lieutenant Sayle looked over at the noise and Mahlia froze. She didn’t want to show the man how scared she was, but she couldn’t help it. She was terrified. Just having him look at her filled Mahlia with a sick animal terror, as if she were a mouse being watched by a panther. All she wanted was for Sayle not to look at her. The man’s gray eyes held hers for a long time, promising more evil. At last he looked away. Mahlia lay still, heart pounding. Trying to make herself relax. Feeling the muddy pain of her newly missing finger.
From where she lay atop a pile of copper, she could see big buildings going by, and then the sky seemed to open up. They were out in the open, a huge rectangular lake stretched into the distance. The slaves wading around the edge of it, using floating boardwalks and rubble for purchase as they dragged the barge along. She could hear them splashing. She caught a glimpse of a white monument spiking up into the searing blue sky, right out of the center of the lake, a monolith of marble, its face yellowing in places, and cracked, but still vertical.
The scrap barge creaked as the men and women pulled on their ropes. They chanted and hauled. They were civvies. Or slaves. Or maybe just legs and arms and sweating backs.
Mahlia would have given the rest of her fingers just to be one of them.
Some of the soldier boys were standing up now, looking forward.
“There it is,” one of them said. Others stood, talking, craning their necks.
“The palace.”
“Damn, it’s big.”
“Can you see the Colonel?”
“Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t stand around waiting for a maggot like you to catch sight of him. He’s running a war.”
The palace, the palace…
Mahlia craned her neck. A huge marble building loomed into view. The palace. Marble from top to bottom. Steps marching up from the lake to its grand presence. A soaring dome stood central, seeming to touch the sky, and it was flanked on either side by broad marbled wings that encompassed more space than Banyan Town. Grand columns and intricate carvings decorated the structure, what must have taken decades of work to create.
From what Mahlia could see, the place looked even worse than when she’d been here before, when her father had taken her to see the eagles and ancient sigils of a long-dead nation.
One wing of the vast structure looked as if it had been hit by artillery, and its facade had turned to crumbling rubble. Scavenge gangs were ripping into it, men and mules dragging material out of the shattered building, skins gleaming sweat under the burning sun. They heaved at huge marble blocks, then slid them onto skids, so that they could ease them down the crumbling marble steps to the waterline, where they were being loaded onto barges.
Not far from the marble mining operation, a line of ancient marble and bronze statues stood, along with other sundry artifacts. It reminded Mahlia of her mother’s warehouse, but out in the sunshine, with a half-dozen men in tidy clothing winding amongst the wares, studying paintings and statuary, squatting to inspect tile inlays, running their hands over mahogany desks and antique chairs with curving legs, all while they adjusted their thin ties and fanned themselves with hats that matched their pale tropical suits.
Antiques traders. The sort she’d seen her mother trade with. The war continued, and the buying did as well. Mahlia stared at them dully, wondering if she could have offered them her mother’s warehouse, if one of them would have consented to smuggling her and Mouse away from the Drowned Cities and into a better life.
It had seemed like such a good plan when she’d first started to consider it with Tool. Now, it just seemed silly. She lay still, feeling the sear of the sun, and watching buyers and sellers. Fancy corporate logos were splashed on the sides of the zodiacs and skiffs that floated at the waterline, waiting to take away the buyers’ purchases. Lawson & Carlson. T.A.M. Worldwide. Reclam Industrial. One of the rafts even carried Chinese characters that she recognized from her time in peacekeeper schools. China might have given up on trying to stop the endless civil war, but some of its companies were still here, picking over history’s bones.
Mahlia watched as one of the buyers supervised a statue being loaded into a motorized skiff. Bored UPF soldiers stood around, keeping an eye on the proceedings. They finally got the statue secured, and the man and his bodyguards all climbed in. They fired up a biodiesel engine and buzzed away.
The palace loomed larger. The white dome soared overhead. It had a hole in it, from some missile, or mortar. Another new wound. It hadn’t been there when the peacekeepers had owned it; she was sure of that. She remembered standing in front of it, her and her mother, while her father snapped a picture, and at that time, it had still been whole.
Her father had said that it had been the capitol building for political bosses during the Accelerated Age. Nothing like what they had in Beijing, but still, important for its time, and when the peacekeepers intervened in the civil war, they had set up administration there, as they tried to drag the Drowned Cities out of barbarity.
Mahlia had thought the palace looked grand.
Now, though, with one entire wing being torn down and a hole in its crown, it didn’t look like much. Just easier scavenge than some of the other buildings that lined the huge rectangular lake, because at least it was up on a hill. Now, it just looked like something that would sell well when the soldier boys traded its marble for more bullets.
A whistling filled the air.
“Down!” Ocho shouted. “Down! Get down!”
Everyone flattened themselves. Another part of the marble palace exploded, right before Mahlia’s eyes.
40
INSTINCTIVELY, OCHO FLATTENED himself as the 999 round came screaming in. The palace rocked with the explosion. Debris showered the steps. People screamed and scattered.
A second later, another round came in. It missed the palace and geysered into the lake, sending up foam and froth.
Ocho straightened, trying to get his bearings. They were sitting ducks. He could see people all around the lake, flattening themselves, staring up at the sky as though they’d be able to see the next round coming and somehow dodge it.
Another shell pounded the palace’s scavenge side, spraying smoke and debris. A mule was blown down the steps toward the water, smearing red over marble as it tumbled. Ocho’s soldiers were all staring, shocked.
“Get your heads down!” Ocho said, even as the lieutenant stood up and cocked his officer’s pistol.
“Keep pulling!” the LT shouted at the barge workers. “You keep pulling or I’ll put you down myself!”
Another shell dropped out of the clear blue sky.
“They’re going after the Colonel,” Van whispered. His voice was awed.
Another said, “They can’t hit the palace, can they?”
Ocho could hear worry in the boy’s voice.
“They just did, maggot.”
He couldn’t catch sight of which soldier had asked the question, but he knew the feeling. The Army of God was going after Colonel Glenn Stern, and the heart of the city. How was UPF supposed to survive if they lost their leader? What would happen to them if the Colonel died from the shelling? What would be left of
the Drowned Cities if AOG was willing to destroy its last monuments?
If Ocho thought about it rationally, of course the Army of God would try to bomb the Colonel, but still, it was unnerving. No one was safe. Not even the Colonel. Suddenly, they were all just scared little rabbits, looking for cover. But the Colonel wasn’t supposed to be like that; he was supposed to be above all that.
“Can they kill the Colonel?” Stork asked.
“Anyone can die,” the LT said. “High or low, doesn’t matter. That’s not your problem, soldier.”
Stork shut up. Ocho watched the lieutenant. Sayle didn’t look worried. He looked completely calm. As if the 999 wasn’t a threat at all. The blond man stood tall as another round came down and hit the north wing of the building. He didn’t take cover. Didn’t even flinch as the explosion rocked outward. Just watched the hit with his cold gray eyes.
“Don’t worry, boys,” the LT said, smiling. “The Colonel has a plan.” He smiled again and looked down into the barge. “Army of God won’t know what hit them.”
Ocho followed Sayle’s gaze to the unconscious half-man. What could it do? But he didn’t have a chance to question, as their barge bumped up against the steps of the palace.
TamTam and Stork and Ocho rolled out and ran to grab one of the abandoned sledges that the workers had been using to move marble. The LT pointed his pistol at the barge pullers, and put them to work rolling the half-man onto the sledge, urging them to hurry up as everyone watched the sky for more shells. Ocho sweated and swore with everyone else. It felt like they were working in molasses. Waiting for the next shell to drop right on their heads at any moment.
Finally they had the half-man secured and the workers were hauling the monster up the steps. They passed inside, dragging the half-man. Colonel Stern’s elite squads watched, interested.
Inside, it was almost cool: out of the sun, surrounded by marble halls. Ocho had never been in the palace. He tried not to stare at the gleaming marble or the vaulted ceilings with their paintings, the intricate carvings marching around their edges.
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