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.