"There is a reckoning coming!" one of the Moondaggers began to shout thickly. Valentine recognized the voice at once, their old blustering friend Last Chance. "A reckoning! This land, long peaceful-"
Ha! Valentine thought. Last Chance wasn't at the battle between the Bulletproof and the Wildcats a few years back.
"-needs to be cleansed of the filth that has washed into it. Intruders! Interlopers! Troublemakers! Trouble they brought, and death will be their reward-or something worse than death."
Duvalier made a fist and flicked out two fingers toward Last Chance with her thumb slightly up-the American Sign Language version of "asshole."
"That's not how you go about negotiating in Kentucky, beardy," the new Agenda for the Assembly said-the previous one was too sick to make the journey to the river. "You want to deal with us, you tell us what you offer and you let us make up our minds. You don't threaten."
Valentine liked the new Agenda already. Later he learned he was a man named Zettel, though most called him Mr. Zee. Formerly the clan chief of the Gunslingers and a friend of Karas, Mr. Zee, Valentine had been told, came from a family who'd once owned quarries and he'd grown up covered in limestone dust.
"We'll consider your offer and give you an answer tomorrow. Here, on the boat again. Shall we say noon?" Agenda Zettel said.
"There can be only one answer," the educated voice said. "The other doesn't bear thinking about. We both love Kentucky too much to see it turned into a graveyard."
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.