"Fuck you, too, Virgil."
"Now just wait-"
Flanagan interrupted his lieutenant. "Okay, before we get into a pissing contest, which you'd lose and you know it, Alan, just think this deal through. Listen to what I have to say. Not only would you be doing me a big favor, and I think you owe me one after all these years, but you'd be helping your family, too. They're offering the whole family a two-year bond. Actually it's a five-year bond; they said I could go up to five if I had to. Don't look at me that way, Virgil, she's my niece and they ought to get everything they can out of it.
"Alan, I'll be honest with you. The next five years are going to be tough. You know there are new Reapers in Glarus. I've already got orders to make up lists of who is going to make the cut and who isn't. Your farm is doing good now, but what if you have a bad year? What if the cows catch something? You'd be damn glad you had that bond if something like that happens. And even if you're not on the list, maybe a vampire is passing through and happens to get hungry by your place. You know it happens as well as I do. The lists don't mean shit when they're prowling, but bonds do."
After a moment to let the threats, spoken and unspoken, sink in, the major continued. "It ain't like she'd be gone permanent. I have that from the bishop himself. Touchet is giving talks in Platteville, Richland Center, and Reedsburg, then going back through Madison. Three weeks, she'd be gone. He said he wanted some companionship on the trip. And the bond starts as soon as she shows up at the Church Center in Monroe, so she'll be safe in Madison, even. What can I say, Alan. You've got a real honey of a daughter. She caught his eye."
"Quite a time for this to happen," Carlson said. "I wonder how Saint Croix would like her disappearing with that old lech. So much for them settling down."
"Don't worry about him. Worry about your family, Alan. Saint Croix might understand, after all. I'll have a word with the bishop. Since Saint Croix is practically family, maybe we can offer him the bond, too. Even make getting married to her a condition. That might close the deal. If he's a smart kid, he'll know five years is just what he needs when he's trying to get a farm up and running."
"He's a smart kid, all right," Valentine breathed. "Smart enough to blow your ass off through the floor."
"Let's talk to Molly tomorrow," Mrs. Carlson suggested, obviously to her husband. "And maybe David, too."
Valentine counted twenty heartbeats.
"Okay, Gwen. Listen, Mike. I'm sorry I got riled. You, too, Virgil. I was just a little surprised is all. When you're a father, your little girl is always six years old. She's a grown woman; I forget sometimes. But why her? There were prettier girls at the meeting."
"Not according to Touchet. Virgil, go wait outside. Alan, if you don't mind, I'd like a private word with Gwen."
"Okay, Major. I'll sleep on it. Call you tomorrow. Good night."
"Night, Alan."
Valentine listened to the footsteps move about as Virgil was escorted to the door and Mr. Carlson retired to the kitchen. Valentine thought he heard him exchange a few words with Frat.
"Now listen, Gwen," Valentine heard Flanagan say to his sister, keeping his voice low enough for it not to travel out of the room. Not quiet enough for my ears, though, Valentine thought.
"You know I'm not the law. The law is whatever the Triumvirate says it is. This Touchet is a big wheel in Illinois, one of the biggest outside of Chicago. The New Church wants him happy, and I'm going to see that he's happy. I'm making it look like Alan has a choice in this, but he doesn't. Neither does Molly. You follow me?"
"I follow you," Mrs. Carlson said in a low tone. Valentine picked up the anger in her brittle voice. He wondered if her brother did.
"Touchet's going to have her one way or another. I know what you have to say cuts a lot of ice with Alan. So you might as well profit from it and get that bond."
"Is there a bond in it for you, too, Michael?" she asked.
"Can't fool you, can I, Sis? Maybe there is. This is pretty important. I think the Kurians want Touchet to consider moving here permanently. That is, if we can pry him away from the Illinois Eleven. They want him running the Wisconsin farms like he does in Illinois."
"We, Michael? Are you a we with the Kurians?"
"Always have been. I know which side of the bread my butter is on. I always figured I got Mom's brains. I think all you got was Dad's stubbornness."
Mrs. Carlson sighed. "Okay, Michael, you're right. I'll see what I can do."
"There, that wasn't so hard now, was it?"
"Harder than you'll ever know."
"Wow, man, you're losing it," Frat exclaimed, eyeing the mountain of cordwood.
Valentine was turning logs into firewood with his usual vigor. He stood outside one of the many little buildings budding from the barn's walls, filling the woodshed with fuel. During his stay with the Carlsons, he had chopped a little every day to keep himself exercised. Valentine did not use an ax. He preferred a saw to reduce the trunks into manageable two-foot lengths, which he could then split with a wedge. He followed his routine with robotic precision. He grabbed a length of trunk and placed it on his chopping block: an old stump that had no doubt served in this capacity for years. Then he picked up the wedge in his left hand and the twenty-pound sledgehammer in his right, gripping the latter right up under the rounded steel head. A vigorous tap seated the triangular metal spike. Then he'd step back, shift his grip on the sledge by letting gravity pull the handle though his callused fingers, and whirl it in a sweeping circle behind him, up and then down to the wedge. He would then stack the halves and quarters in a nice, tight pile.
The day's woodcutting began after a halfhearted appreciation of one of Mrs. Carlson's epic breakfasts. Everyone ate with a preoccupied detachment, as if the family dog had gone rabid and no one wanted to talk about who would have to shoot it. Molly looked drawn, her mother pale and tight-mouthed, and Mr. Carlson sported a dark crescent under each eye. Frat gobbled his breakfast like a starving wolf and fled to the backyard and his chores, taking the dog with nim. Even young Mary seemed to pick up on the tension; she shifted her gaze from her sister to her parents and back again.
Valentine decided Frat had the right idea, cleared his plate, and went outside. He had played the role of a forester the past few days and brought down several likely looking trees from the wooded hills to turn into split-rail fences and fireplace fodder.