Tool stalked the rooms like a tiger, probably building one of those tactical maps that he liked to have in his mind. Noting every window and every door, every shared wall, every drop to the canals below.

Mahlia peered out a broken window. There was some kind of nest just outside, maybe hawk or pigeon, but it looked like it hadn’t been used for a while.

Tool had counseled her to watch not just for people but for animals as well. Running animals, flights of birds, all were indicators of soldiers approaching, and all of them would be savvy for the same dangers from her. If Mahlia scared a group of roosting pigeons up here, she was marking herself as surely as if she stood up and shouted.

Down in the emerald green of the canal, someone was poling a skiff. Some kind of noodle seller. She was still surprised to see that anyone lived in the Drowned Cities other than soldiers, but Tool said that armies always acquired hangers-on—merchants, children, nailshed girls, farmers, smugglers, black marketeers, drug dealers.

Armies had needs, and they found ways to make sure those needs were supplied. They’d shoot every castoff they found, but plenty of other civvies were allowed to survive. It was Glenn Stern’s patriotic duty to scrape the Army of God and Taylor’s Wolves and the Freedom Militia from the face of the earth, but he needed the support of the people within his territory to carry it off.

And people did support him. After all, they had nowhere to go, either. Just like the soldiers. They were all pinned in by border armies and impassable jungle wilderness and the sea. A bunch of crabs stuffed in a pot, all ripping away at each other.

Mahlia felt a wave of bitterness at the sight of civvies down in the canals, selling their vegetables, meat, hot noodles. They could talk to those soldier boys. Probably, they’d ratted to the soldier boys, too. Probably told the returning armies exactly where to find every single peacekeeper family in the city, currying favor in order to keep the bullets pointed away from themselves.

Mahlia stared down at them, and imagined shooting them. Paying them all back for ratting her out and running her off, for helping to kill everything she’d grown up with and depended on.

“Vengeance,” Tool rumbled behind her.

Mahlia startled. “You read minds now?”

Tool shook his head. “Your body is full of rage. Every sinew. It is easy to read. You speak volumes with a clenched fist.”

Mahlia laughed shortly. “All those people down there, they didn’t have to run.”

“And you would like to make them run the way you had to.”

Mahlia shrugged. “Sure. Teach them a lesson.”

“You believe that seeing your enemies running and afraid would accomplish something?”