Mahfouz was like her mother had been, insisting that the soldier boys could be reasoned with, that they could be bribed with the art and antiques that she’d collected, and that they could be safe, even if the peacekeepers had left and the warlords were taking control again.

As troops had swamped the city, she’d clutched Mahlia close and insisted that Mahlia’s father was coming back for them. And then when he didn’t, she’d insisted that they could always bribe passage on a scavenge ship, even though there wasn’t a single one left in the harbor.

Reality was all around her, but she couldn’t see it. She just kept pretending.

“Come on, maggot!”

Mouse was perched on a low tree branch, looking back, a small shadow amongst the looming trees and tangling vines.

“We should go, Mahlia.”

The doctor stood waiting, expectant in that way adults acted when they thought they were in control. Mouse waved for her to get her ass moving, but Mahlia didn’t budge.

Running.

She was always running. Like a rabbit chased by coywolv. Always hunting for some new safe bolt hole, and every time, the soldier boys found her, and forced her to rabbit again. The doctor was wrong. There was no place to hide, and she’d never be safe as long as she remained close to the Drowned Cities.

She looked back at the dying half-man. Amongst the shadows of the banyan roots, the creature was nothing but a black hump blended with thicker shadows. Coywolv bait. Just another skeleton that someone would someday find and wonder what its story was.

Mouse jogged back to them. Gave her arm a tug. “Come on, Mahlia. Them soldiers ain’t going to sleep after how you did them.”

She didn’t move. “The half-man let you go?”

“Yeah, so? Come on, will you? We don’t got much time.” He looked back at the inert monster. “I ain’t taking its teeth, if that’s what you’re thinking. No way, no how. Even if it was a hundred percent dead, I wouldn’t touch it.”

“You couldn’t sell them, anyway,” she said. “It was a stupid idea.”

Doctor Mahfouz also touched her shoulder. “If we move deep enough into the waters, the soldiers won’t follow. Their dogs won’t track, and we’ll be safe. We’ll wait them out, just as we always do. But we must go.”

Safe?

The word made Mahlia want to laugh. Running didn’t make her safe. It never had, and now she was realizing it never would. She’d been as stupid as her father, who had thought the peacekeepers could never be beaten, and her mother, who had thought that a soldier from a foreign country really loved her instead of all her valuable antiques, and Doctor Mahfouz, who thought that there was good in the world.