Duvalier looked up at the sky, shivered. She edged closer to Valentine and stuck her hands in his pocket.
"We could go up there and kill all of them," she whispered. "Pay them back for Utrecht."
Killers who don't like killing never last long. They become drunks or careless. Duvalier liked it, as long as her targets were Quislings, the higher up in the social hierarchy the better.
Valentine had a dark part of him that liked it as well. The shadow that lurked inside him chose its time and place to be satisfied.
"The Assembly can make up its mind. It's their choice. Let's not make it for them."
A few more words were exchanged upstairs about day and night signals.
They departed. Valentine put one hand in his pocket and gripped Duvalier's with the other, making sure she accompanied him to one of the boats heading back for the Gunslinger shore.
They waited in line and ate like the rest of the Gunslingers and A-o-K troops. Chieftain and Silvertip were going back for thirds when Tikka interrupted and asked for a moment with Valentine. They stepped out of earshot.
"Mr. Zee's meeting with the Assembly representatives is civilians only, so I thought I'd track you down and talk to you."
Her dark good looks were suited for a chill Kentucky night. She sparkled like a bit of Kentucky's bituminous coal. Valentine knew that all you had to do was touch a match to her and she could generate a whole evening's worth of warmth.
"What reply should we give, in your opinion?" Tikka asked.
"Why should my opinion matter?" Valentine asked.
"I trust it, for one," Tikka said.
"I'm . . . uneasy. Everyone in the Kurian Order seems to be shouting 'surrender' or at least 'keep out' at Kentucky. I can't make sense of it. I don't mean to denigrate the land or the people, but it's not like Kentucky is filled with industries they'd miss and resources they can't get anywhere else."
"There's the coal," Tikka said. "And the Cumberland's the easiest route to the east coast in the South."
"Perhaps they are more worried about invasion than we thought. I can't help but feel there's something here very important to the Kurian Order."
"What? We know about what they did here; they weren't at all secretive about it. There are no big tracts of the country that are off-limits. A few towers in Lexington, a few more in Louisville. The legworm meat? The big plants up in Louisville fill boxcars with canned protein every day. I was told some of it even gets traded overseas."
Valentine tried to keep his mind on the possibilities in the Kurian strategy, rather than the possibilities behind Tikka's uniform shirt buttons. "Without food it's hard to grow your population. Maybe that's all it is: They don't want to lose their free-labor butchery."
"Perhaps its just geography. If Kentucky becomes a Freehold, the Free Territory extends from the foothills of the Appalachians to Mexico. That's a lot of people and a lot of resources, more than many countries in the world have." Tikka worked her fist into her palm. "The Assembly said that they wanted to hear from me before they make their final decision. Whichever way I go, I think the rest of the Alliance will follow."
"That's quite a responsibility."
"Well, if someone else made the decision and I didn't agree, it'd drive me straight into a froth."
Valentine smiled at her.
"I think we should tell them to make like a frog and boil. I'm sure they want us to disarm, get complacent, and then they'll give us the works anyway."
"It's happened before," Valentine said, meaning both throughout human history and in relations with the Kurian Order.
That night the reunited elements of the Kentucky Alliance held a celebration. All along the hillside impromptu bands started up their fiddles and guitars, or raucous parties rolled out the barrels of beer and casks of bourbon.
The locals knew how to live well. Any excuse for a celebration. The sentries and flankers were out and paying attention to their duties, so it wasn't all revelry.
Valentine didn't join in. He was tired from the trip and worried about what the Kurians were hatching in their towers, and he was in no mood for carousing-especially with negotiations at an impasse and an enemy army just across the river.
Chieftain and Silvertip were content to load up with food and settle down by Valentine and Duvalier.
"In another time," Duvalier said, "all we'd be worried about now is keeping New Year's resolutions. High-carb or lo-carb diets." Duvalier had the pinched look of someone on a no-food diet, but then her stomach gave her difficulty under the stress of field cooking.
"I've plenty of resolve. I just hope I'm granted the strength to see it through. Then another generation will get to worry about their carb intake," Valentine said.