Mahlia peered back into the thickening smoke. “Mouse!”

She couldn’t make out a thing beyond a dozen meters. Where was he?

“Grind it.” She started back through the bog.

“You’ll die if you follow him,” the half-man said.

Mahlia realized that the monster had been watching her closely. “You knew he was running?” she demanded.

“I assumed that he had some purpose.” Tool’s ears twitched. “He only now has turned his path definitively away.”

“So can you tell where he is?” Mahlia asked. “You can track him?”

Tool listened for a moment. “A few hundred meters, perhaps. He moves quite quickly.”

Mahlia turned and shouted again. “Mouse!”

No response. Mahlia grimaced. “He’s good in the swamps. We gotta go catch him before he does something stupid.”

“He already has,” Tool said. “And he will die because of it. And you will die, too, if you follow him. There are patrols moving toward us now. Many ants marching.”

“But you’re fast,” Mahlia said. “Just go after him.”

“You remind me of General Caroa, in miniature. Always demanding more of your troops. You think it is easy for me to walk? Let alone run?” He hefted his makeshift staff. “You think I carry this for pleasure?”

Mahlia cursed Mouse. They were supposed to stick with this old war monster and it was going to get them away from the Drowned Cities for good. Not just living in the swamps, but all the way out. North. To those places like Seascape Boston and Beijing that weren’t swallowed by war. With the half-man, it was possible. He’d be able to sense the patrols, to work them through the battle lines. And now Mouse was turning around and going back to town?

Mahlia looked to the half-man. “You can tell where the soldier boys are, right? You can tell where the patrols are?”

Tool nodded slowly. “I can.”

“Then help me go get Mouse.”

Tool snorted. “I’m not so eager to die that I will walk into an enemy position with neither weapons nor support.”

“I saved you.”

“And I am grateful.”

“Why won’t you help?”

“Why should I throw my life away, when it has just been reclaimed?”

Mahlia wanted to scream at the brute monster. “Because I’m the one who saved you! Without me, you’d be dead already. Mahfouz and Mouse would have let you bleed and die. I gave you every med the doctor had to get you up and walking.”

“So you believe I owe you.”

“You do! You owe me big-time. And you know it.”

Tool slowly squatted, bringing them eye to eye. “Perhaps I do owe you. Perhaps my honor even demands that I pay you back in some way.