Tool

He moved the last of the rubble into place.

“Will that keep the coywolv out?” Mahlia asked, looking at the pile of concrete and stones.

“It’s more than anyone has given me or mine,” Tool said sharply. He almost smiled when she flinched at his words.

Humans were so precious about their dead. When his own people died on distant battlefields, no one cared to gather them or bury them. If you were lucky, you were present to hear their stories, and if not, you told their stories after the battle. But you did not linger like this.

Human beings lingered. It made them vulnerable.

> Page 226, Chapter 24

“It’ll kill, though,” she said. “It’ll kill good.”

“Resist the urge to think that weapon makes you strong.”

“It sure don’t make me weak.”

“Weaker than you think,” Tool said. “Resist its swagger.”

“I don’t swagger.”

“Everyone swaggers with a gun. Look at it.”

“What about it?”

Mahlia looked down. It seemed fine. Looked clean. In good condition. Ready.

“It gives you confidence.” Tool shook the boys under his arms. “It gave these two confidence as well. And look at them now. From a position of strength to an asset of their enemy, and all it took was confidence. The swagger a gun gives when you’re following some harmless crippled girl into the jungle.”

Tool suddenly snarled. “Now look at it, again!”

Mahlia startled at the force of Tool’s words. She looked down at the shotgun. “I am! I am!”

Scrapes and scratches. Heavy black barrel. A wooden stock that had been carved by hand and hammered back on to the main mechanism.

It was painted. Lots of guns were painted, though, and this one wasn’t any different. Lots of things on it. Mostly green crosses, for Deepwater faith. The red stars of the Army of God.

“Yeah? What of it?”

It was just like every other gun she’d ever seen. Beat-up, but ready for action.

“Look,” Tool said again.

Mahlia stared at it, trying to see what Tool saw.

“The paint is chipped,” Tool said.

Mahlia glared up at him. “So?”

“So. Look.”

Sure, some of the paint had chipped off. But there was just more paint underneath. Might have been a couple of Fates Eyes, from the shape of them, under the green crosses. Sure. It could be. Something red, too. Maybe a bit of a white star on a blue background. Maybe a UPF tag…

A cold crawling moved up her spine. Mahlia’s breath snagged.

The gun gave her swagger, all right. And it had given their prisoners swagger.

And whoever owned it before that.

And whoever before that.

And before that.

And on and on and on…

She could look at the gun and see the history of hands that had held it. Soldier after soldier, making it his own. Covering it with luck symbols and charms, Fates Eyes and crosses and whatever they thought would give them the edge.

And every one of them was dead.

The shotgun didn’t care who owned it. It went hand to hand. She was just the latest in a chain that might as well have gone all the way back to the Accelerated Age when people had cities that worked and they didn’t shoot at one another all the time.

A lot of hands had held this weapon, and if it had done any of them any good, they probably still would have been holding it, instead of passing it down the line to her.

She shivered, suddenly wondering if she was a dead girl. If just holding the gun made her a ghost.

Tool growled. “You understand, now.”

> Chapter 31, page 304