Part of her wanted to take everything back, to apologize for the knife, for the meds, for everything, as the bond of trust that she’d relied on for so long unraveled.

You in or you out?

Mahlia looked from the dying half-man to the doctor. Was she wrong? Was she stupid? Fates, it was impossible to tell.

But then she looked again at the doctor’s disappointed expression and she realized it didn’t matter. She’d already chosen, as soon as she’d raised the knife. Old Mahfouz had never hurt anything, and she’d put a knife between them. It was already done. There was no going back. It was like her father said, she was Drowned Cities, through and through. Whatever trust she’d had between her and the doctor was cut now. Cut wide and deep.

“How many pills?”

Doctor Mahfouz looked away. “Four. To start. You’ll need four. For that thing’s body weight, you’ll need four of the blue-and-white ones.”

Mahlia fumbled for the meds and started prying pills out. She’d have to grind them, feed them in water to make the thing swallow in its unconscious state. She wondered if she was in time. Wondered if it would all be a waste.

“Four, you say?”

The doctor nodded, disappointment dragging on his expression. “And then more daily, until they are all gone. Every one of them.”

You in? she wondered. You really in?

Yeah. She was in, all right. All in, whether she liked it or not.

15

OCHO LEANED AGAINST a sooty wall below the doctor’s squat, gingerly probing the wounds that he’d resewn himself. The half-man had ripped his ribs up good, but he was coming back together. The new stitches were messy and brutal, but they’d hold. No way these ones would rip out. They hurt, but they were nothing in comparison to the burn of his back.

Twenty lashes from the cane, for screwing up. Sayle stalking up and down in front of the silent soldier boys, saying, “No one fails, ever! No excuses! I don’t care if you’re stoned or drunk or you got your legs blown off or you think you’re the Colonel himself; you keep on soldiering!” And then he’d laid into Ocho.

Van came over and squatted down. “How’s your stitches, Sergeant?”

“Better than my back.”

Van smiled slightly at that. He was a skinny little war maggot, missing his ears and his two front teeth. From what Ocho could remember of the firefight with the coywolv, Van had been steady. Steady enough that maybe he deserved his full bars. Ocho decided he was going to make the boy a private. Give him a chance to really prove himself.

“You took it good,” Van said.

“I been hit worse.”

“Everyone knows it wasn’t your fault. When we found you, you couldn’t even talk.”