"Dad?" Valentine found himself saying without even thinking about it.
The shape blurred again and became a hawk-nosed, deep-eyed old man with a tuft of white hair at the temples. "Sorry, Valentine the Younger. I was thinking of your father. My control isn't what it was," it said in a croaking voice.
Molly grabbed at the bars behind him. "David, we don't have much time. Those two drunks just took off!"
Valentine helped the Lifeweaver to his feet. "Sir, we have to move. Can you walk?"
"I would love to walk. Run even, Valentine. But I fear I won't be able to go far."
"I'll see what I can do. Now let's see what you can do," Valentine said, explaining his plan. "But we have to hurry."
Somewhere, somehow, the Reapers knew. He felt them coming.
Following a Reaper through the crowds made negotiating the press of humans a simple task. People parted for the Reaper like the Red Sea before the Israelites. Valentine and Molly only had to stay a respectful distance behind the flowing cape.
"Open your stride a little more," Valentine said in a low tone. The Reaper complied, almost goose-stepping into the street. "That one, the cab," Valentine added.
A dirty yellow lump of dented metal sagged to one side on a broken suspension. The Reaper stepped to the driver's side, reaching up to tap at the window, and paused, finding no window to tap on.
i need your ride, the Reaper breathed down at the driver. The grizzled driver looked up and lost perhaps two pounds while staring at the death's-head face gazing down at him.
Valentine and Molly climbed in, and the young woman sagged against Valentine the instant they were seated on the badly sprung bench. The Reaper joined them, squeezing into the backseat. The driver did not offer to have the Reaper sit up front.
"Where to, sir?" the driver asked, the effort to sound normal sticking in his throat.
the great pier, the Reaper said as Valentine pointed to his small map, which was illuminated by the streetlights shining into the car.
"Be there in five minutes, sir." The driver started his car. Valentine wondered if the man's hair had always been that gray. The taxi began to roll, engine sputtering as diesel fumes leaked into the car.
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?"