Duvalier stiffened. "Val, the last time you went off on your own wildcatting, it took me and a town full of Grogs to go get you back. Let me go."
"No, you're going to be busy at the power plant, getting it back in once piece."
They worked out a plan involving Duvalier, the Wolves, and the Bears creating a diversion at the power plant, while Valentine and Brother Mark made a try for the Kurian on the bridge.
The big basement in the Legion House-as the men were beginning to call it-was something of a treasure trove. Besides a spare generator and the new communications room (inhabiting what had been before then a wine cellar; the precise climate control equipment was kind to the electronics-and the operator), it had an old bar that was now filled with boxes and odds and ends of the previous occupants, arranged like sedimentary layers in an archaeological dig. There were a few holdovers from when it was a nature center: glass cases and displays. Valentine planned to empty them and return them to the "lobby" behind the main doors, where they could post Javelin memorabilia. Above that were the stored clothes from the owner and his family, elegant suits and dresses too delicate for his men to make much use of. Then above that were piles of Moondagger clothing, uniforms and slipperlike footwear and odd Kurian icons, the most artful of which was a wooden frieze of the curve of the Earth's surface in near-silhouette, as though drawn from a picture taken from orbit, with a great nail like a railroad spike driven through it. The spike had curious etchwork in it. Valentine would have to have Brother Mark take a look at it when things calmed down and see if he could make anything of it.
Valentine found an interesting, richly woven Moondagger outfit that looked part prayer robe and part dress clothes and part military outfit. It must have belonged to some high-ranking Moondagger, judging from the beautiful knitwork around the collar and seams and cuffs. It had an attractive cummerbund or waist-wrap-he wasn't sure of the word-of a flexible material like a bandage that had numerous zip pockets. Inside, Valentine even found a little Ordnance currency.
Valentine had sought find some decent attire from the ex-owner's wardrobe, an outfit suitably impressive and redolent of status, but the Moondagger robe-uniform might serve even better.
Luckily it didn't smell-some of the Moondagger stuff was now rank and musty beyond belief.
With his clothes selected, Valentine and Brother Mark worked out a rough timetable. It was a cloudy night, as had become usual as November wore on.
He and Brother Mark put together a small truck and a canoe, tying it in the bed and on the roof and looking for all the world like they were departing for a fishing trip.
Then it was a bumpy drive with Valentine, Brother Mark, and a Wolf corporal at the wheel. He knew the roads, trails, and railroad cuts for miles around and promised to get them to the other side of Owensboro-a town that was still more or less neutral. Wolf scouts had gone into town, overcoats thrown over their uniforms but weapons carried openly, and eaten at a diner with Ordnance soldiers at another table. They both paid their bills with Ordnance currency. Kentucky might be semi-free, but it was still integrated with the Kurian Order economically.
Discussion about the quality of the apple pie available in Owensboro or the amazing coffee at the Hitch had to be curtailed when they parked above the river. Valentine and the Wolf scouted and decided they were near enough to the bridge to make it a quick trip but far enough to avoid observation from the guards. Valentine and their driver set about untying the canoe while Brother Mark set out food and thermoses. They were all in for a long, cold night.
"Cold night," Brother Mark said. His breath steamed on the riverbank in the shadow of the bridge on the northeast side. They had left the Wolf back with the truck. "So much for our In-long-lingering summer."
"Indian summer, you mean," Valentine said. "Indian summer's a good thing, especially up among the lakes in Minnesota."
The Quisling guards didn't have any dogs on this side; Valentine was thankful for that. He'd heard barking up on the bridge at the guard change and briefly worried about patrols.
The bridge itself was elegant, a delicate-looking road bridge. Two tall pylons, one at the north end, one at the south, supported the bridge with a series of cables. They looked rather like a pair of matching spiderwebs, Valentine thought. The cables weren't tied to bigger main cables such as in more famous suspension bridges such as the Golden Gate. Instead they all linked to one of the two supporting pylons.
"You near enough?" Valentine asked.
"There's a Kurian on that bridge. That's all I may determine."
"What does it feel like?" Valentine asked.
"How do you mean?"
"The mental impression they give. Is it a voice, or thoughts?"
"It's like a chill. An open window on a still winter day in an otherwise warm room. Like the heat is leaving my body and flowing toward-it."
Valentine thought it odd that Brother Mark might be describing the cold tingle that sometimes came over him when he passed close to a Reaper.
"I just need to know where to go."
"Somewhere high, is my guess. They can sense longer distances that way without the clutter of animal and vegetable life."
Valentine looked at the riverbank. The Ohio was lined with refuse, mostly bits of plastic: bags, cracked bottles with blocky lettering advertising energy and stamina, cartons that looked like they were meant to hold eggs, chunks of foam clinging together like the chunks of ice Eliza hopped across to escape slavery.
There'd been a saying among the workers at Xanadu in Ohio-he'd learned it while digging ditches: Flush it in Ohio, and it washes up in Indiana. Valentine had taken it to mean that the less competent of the Northwest Ordnance were given duties in Indiana, but it appeared the phrase had a literal truth to it as well.
Owensboro, across the river, slumbered. There were burned-out ruins on the north side near the older of the town's two bridges. The closer of the two had long since collapsed-or been destroyed to simplify the border between Kentucky and the Indiana portions of the Ordnance. The "new" bridge was a little over a mile to the west, linking a bypass road that ran around the edge of what had been the suburban part of the old river town.
The Wolf had told him that Owensboro was a lively little town, popular with shady traders who brought Kurian Order products into Kentucky and returned with legworm hides, crafts, tobacco, bourbon, and marijuana. The big conference center practically in the shadow of the old bridge was still intact, the site of a bustling flea market on "Market Saturdays" every other week.
Valentine searched the bridge. He found what he was looking for even without Brother Mark-a little cocoonlike structure high on the north pylon of the bridge.
"There," Valentine said, pointing.