When the peacekeepers had been there, they’d been all about setting up wind turbines for energy, wave generators, had even managed to create a few projects. Mahlia’s mother had taken her out to a wind turbine project right in the river mouth, huge white turbines going up like giant pale flowers. Her father had had something to do with it, but whether it had been guarding the turbines themselves, or the Chinese construction teams, or someone else, she had been too young to understand it. But now, as she looked at the open waters, Mahlia saw them again, but the turbines were all torn down.

She pointed to them. “My dad worked on those.”

“Castoff,” one of the boys muttered.

Mahlia wanted to kick him, but she held off. The man said, “They took them down.”

“The peacekeepers?”

“Warlords. As soon as China pulled its peacekeepers out, the warlords started shooting at them, trying to bring down the electric grid. It was a power-sharing arrangement that couldn’t last. UPF in charge of the towers, and Freedom Militia in charge of the conversion station, so they’d have shared responsibility.” He shrugged. “They shot each other up. UPF bombed the station. The Militia mined the turbines. And then the Army of God pushed them both out and sold the steel and composites, and the turbines all went out to Lawson & Carlson for new weapons.”

He nodded at Tool. “Bet that’s something his kind would know all about.”

Tool didn’t respond to the dig. “War breaks things,” was all he said.

His ears were pricking to the winds, and his eye seemed to gleam with interest as they cut across the waters. Mahlia watched him.

Sometimes, his strange bestial face seemed completely human, when he laughed at some bit of half-man humor or when he’d tried to show her the folly of swaggering with a gun. But now, as they approached the Drowned Cities, she was aware again of how many layers affected the creature. Part human, part dog, part tiger, part hyena… pure predator.

As they approached the Drowned Cities, Tool seemed more and more alive. His huge frame seemed to pulse with the vitality of war. The hunger to hunt.

The boatman said, “As soon as we make this bend, we’ll be in the city itself. Army of God territory. They’ll want their bribes.”

“You’ve done this before?” Tool asked.

The man nodded. “I have agreements to let me through. I bring supplies in for the captain who covers the river.”

Tool nodded. “How long before they can see us?”

“I’ll be sailing into the canals now.”

Without another word, Tool flipped over the side of the boat and into the water. The boys looked at her, suddenly speculative, started to reach for their rifles. Tool surfaced beside the boat.