The scrap barge creaked as the men and women pulled on their ropes. They chanted and hauled. They were civvies. Or slaves. Or maybe just legs and arms and sweating backs.
Mahlia would have given the rest of her fingers just to be one of them.
Some of the soldier boys were standing up now, looking forward.
“There it is,” one of them said. Others stood, talking, craning their necks.
“The palace.”
“Damn, it’s big.”
“Can you see the Colonel?”
“Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t stand around waiting for a maggot like you to catch sight of him. He’s running a war.”
The palace, the palace…
Mahlia craned her neck. A huge marble building loomed into view. The palace. Marble from top to bottom. Steps marching up from the lake to its grand presence. A soaring dome stood central, seeming to touch the sky, and it was flanked on either side by broad marbled wings that encompassed more space than Banyan Town. Grand columns and intricate carvings decorated the structure, what must have taken decades of work to create.
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.
Her father had said that it had been the capitol building for political bosses during the Accelerated Age. Nothing like what they had in Beijing, but still, important for its time, and when the peacekeepers intervened in the civil war, they had set up administration there, as they tried to drag the Drowned Cities out of barbarity.
Mahlia had thought the palace looked grand.
Now, though, with one entire wing being torn down and a hole in its crown, it didn’t look like much. Just easier scavenge than some of the other buildings that lined the huge rectangular lake, because at least it was up on a hill. Now, it just looked like something that would sell well when the soldier boys traded its marble for more bullets.
A whistling filled the air.
“Down!” Ocho shouted. “Down! Get down!”
Everyone flattened themselves. Another part of the marble palace exploded, right before Mahlia’s eyes.
40
INSTINCTIVELY, OCHO FLATTENED himself as the 999 round came screaming in. The palace rocked with the explosion. Debris showered the steps. People screamed and scattered.
A second later, another round came in. It missed the palace and geysered into the lake, sending up foam and froth.
Ocho straightened, trying to get his bearings. They were sitting ducks. He could see people all around the lake, flattening themselves, staring up at the sky as though they’d be able to see the next round coming and somehow dodge it.
Another shell pounded the palace’s scavenge side, spraying smoke and debris. A mule was blown down the steps toward the water, smearing red over marble as it tumbled. Ocho’s soldiers were all staring, shocked.
“Get your heads down!” Ocho said, even as the lieutenant stood up and cocked his officer’s pistol.
“Keep pulling!” the LT shouted at the barge workers. “You keep pulling or I’ll put you down myself!”
Another shell dropped out of the clear blue sky.
“They’re going after the Colonel,” Van whispered. His voice was awed.
Another said, “They can’t hit the palace, can they?”
Ocho could hear worry in the boy’s voice.
“They just did, maggot.”
He couldn’t catch sight of which soldier had asked the question, but he knew the feeling. The Army of God was going after Colonel Glenn Stern, and the heart of the city. How was UPF supposed to survive if they lost their leader? What would happen to them if the Colonel died from the shelling? What would be left of the Drowned Cities if AOG was willing to destroy its last monuments?
If Ocho thought about it rationally, of course the Army of God would try to bomb the Colonel, but still, it was unnerving. No one was safe. Not even the Colonel. Suddenly, they were all just scared little rabbits, looking for cover. But the Colonel wasn’t supposed to be like that; he was supposed to be above all that.
“Can they kill the Colonel?” Stork asked.
“Anyone can die,” the LT said. “High or low, doesn’t matter. That’s not your problem, soldier.”
Stork shut up. Ocho watched the lieutenant. Sayle didn’t look worried. He looked completely calm. As if the 999 wasn’t a threat at all. The blond man stood tall as another round came down and hit the north wing of the building. He didn’t take cover. Didn’t even flinch as the explosion rocked outward. Just watched the hit with his cold gray eyes.
“Don’t worry, boys,” the LT said, smiling. “The Colonel has a plan.” He smiled again and looked down into the barge. “Army of God won’t know what hit them.”