“The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.”

“The thought burrowed into her heart as darkness fell. It coiled in her guts as she wedged herself amongst the boughs of a tree to sleep. And in the morning, it woke with her and clung to her back, riding on her shoulders as she climbed down, hungry and exhausted from nightmares.”

“Maggot twitch, some people called it. If you’d seen much of the war, you had it. Some more. Some less. But everybody had it.”

“Tool wondered if the girl was going mad. It happened to people. Sometimes they saw too much and their minds went away. They lost the will to survive. They curled up and surrendered to madness.”

“She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.”

“No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.”

“Tool glanced over his shoulder, looking to see if the girl might have changed her mind, but she was gone. Swallowed up by the land. The Drowned Cities ate its children.”