The Lifeweaver switched to his telepathy. It gripped Valentine's hand to make a more secure connection. Valentine, you have saved me. In ways you cannot imagine.
Don 't fool yourself, he thought back. We're not out of it yet.
The audacity of this... It is worthy of your father. Once a rat passed through the Zoo, but she was so sickened by the goings-on she barely touched my mind before hurrying away.
How well did you know my father?
I trained him, Valentine the Younger. I invoked him as a wolf and saw in him the potential to be a great Bear. He and others forged Southern Command out of a few camps in the mountains. The worst days. But the Kurians grew to know and hate your father. He killed five of them. Not Grogs, not Reapers. Kurian Lords. They had a fortress in Saint Louis, suspended from the arch like a spider's egg sac. He stole a small plane and parachuted onto it. When he finished, no Kurian within ever drank another aura.
I never knew this, Valentine thought back after a moment.
He was the best of men, beyond our design.
Design?
He once had a family in the FreeTerritory, but they were swallowed in a battle that raged years before your birth. He sought solace in the remoteness of the north, and I never met him again. I hope he found some measure of happiness before he died.
He did, Valentine responded.
They made their way through the pier, checkpoints and all, with the same simplicity granted by Rho's Reaper aspect. Guards looked busy elsewhere, and port officials sprang into action, driving their work gangs into greater and greater efforts. Valentine urged them on, sensing a Reaper approaching from behind.
What had been Chicago's Navy Pier was now only an ill-lit and deserted utilitarian warehouse for merchandise moving into and out of Chicago by water. The great concrete pier sprouted wooden docks like leaves from a branch. Valentine found a responsible official by searching out the most well-maintained uniform.
"You there," he said, stepping from behind the Reaper. "Is there a ship here, the White-something-or-other?"
"Whitecloud, sir?" the officer said briskly. "She left this evening. Just under two hours ago. Probably halfway to Milwaukee by now."
Valentine's disappointment may have helped with the act. He thought for a moment. "Is it possible to still catch her?"
"Yessir. We have a fast motorized patrol boat. She could catch up in an hour."
bring it, the Reaper said, searching the dark horizon of the lake.
"Uh, follow me, sir," the man stammered. "There's only a skeleton crew. If you want more men for boarding, the White-cloud is pretty big, crew of a dozen or so-"
"I think we'll be enough. The woman there just needs to go on board and identify someone. There's a terrorist on board," Valentine explained.
The port official walked them down a long, narrow wooden dock extending into the lake, held up by thick wooden pilings. The warped wood creaked under their feet.
Ahead they could see a long, low shape. The aged speed-boat gleamed in the distant reflected light of Chicago. Valentine prayed that they would still get away with no one questioning a Reaper's orders.
The Reaper.
The real Reaper was somewhere close.
Valentine tried to hurry the other three along by trotting out ahead toward the boat, his hackles rising like a wary dog's. Rho seemed to blur, but his Reaper aspect re-formed.
They've found me. They are homing. I give off life sign like a firework, Valentine the Younger, the Lifeweaver thought to him.
"The Reaper grew closer. Valentine knew it was just behind them now.
The port official scuttled up the gangway. He began speaking to a pair of figures on board. Valentine pressed the pistol into Molly's hand. "Keep this in your coat pocket," he whispered. "Don't let them take you alive."
The Reaper approached. Its cold shadow was at the jetty, moving down the boards.
Valentine drew his parang, turned, and went to meet it.
When Valentine was fourteen, he had read Livy. Tonight his was the role of Horatius at the SublicianBridge. What had seemed heroic now felt suicidal, with two meters of genetically engineered death moving toward him at cheetah speed.