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"The truth?" Valentine asked. He refilled the glass and pushed it toward Abica. "We could have. But your brother's doing more for us back behind barbed wire."
"How's that?"
"They have spies among the prisoners. I'm sure of it. Your brother talking about what a rotten, traitorous, son of a bitch he's related to backs up all our stories."
Abica smelled the whiskey, looking more morose than his brother. Valentine thought he'd be sprayed a second time, but Abica drank it with a grimace. He shook his head. "I'm proud of Clip, sir. I'm proud of him. Dunno if I'd've done the same. I'm damn proud."
"How do you feel about yourself?"
"Like a shit."
"Welcome to the Cats, Abica."
* * * *
"You don't owe me an explanation, sir," Post said later, in Valentine's tent. Valentine sighed, exhausted and wrung out. The faint smell of his whiskey shower made him feel like a barfly at last call. "But why didn't you just let the levee breach?"
The river was under control; the water level had stabilized.
Reports from upriver said within a day it should fall. The rest of the struggle would be a holding action. Valentine wanted to be on his back in his bunk, but he couldn't be that discourteous to a subordinate, friend or no. He sat on the edge of his cot, rubbing the prickly growth on his skull. Ahn-Kha made a clattering noise outside as he fashioned an oil-drum cook-stove that could double as a water heater.
"We're being watched. No, it's not one of my feelings, it's logic. It may be Xray-Tango, or the bat-winged bastards in the tower. I don't know if they're suspicious, or just trying to figure out what kind of officer I am. But I had to go above and beyond. Xray-Tango said he liked initiative; he's getting it. Not that I'm going to cry another river if the levee falls; it's just not going to happen on my watch, or in my view."
Post looked out the tent flap. The drizzle had finally stopped. "Back on the old Thunderbolt I swore I'd never wear their uniform, or help them, again. But I'm killing myself to save racks of shells so they can be fired on my new side. It gets stuck in my craw, Val."
"Have the men said anything?"
"Not even jokes, at least in my hearing. They're scared of giving anything away. I would be too, surrounded by an army and minus a gun."
"They're working as hard as they would have if they'd been captured and put in a labor camp."
"They're better fed. I've been over to the prison camp."
Valentine shot a glance up at Post, who looked like someone had just stepped on his corns. "When were you there?"
"Day after we got here. I asked for a review of female prisoners."
Post was easier to read than a billboard at ten feet. "Your wife?"
"I always figured she headed here. It was the nearest Freehold to Mississippi."
"Will, you'll drive yourself crazy if you start searching every face for her. I've had a... person in my life. Was in my life. She's caught up in this somewhere, but if I start thinking about her, I won't be able to concentrate. I have responsibilities now."
Post looked at him sidelong. "Where was she last?"
"A village called Weening, just west of Crowley's ..." Valentine stopped.
"Only human to hope," Post said.
"Being human is a luxury, at least these days. Feelings. Attachments. They stop you from doing what's ... what's necessary. Someone called Amu told me I wouldn't be one anymore when I became a Wolf. I must have misunderstood what he was talking about."
"How long have we known each other, Val?"
"What, a year and a half? Since I came on board the Thunderbolt."
"You're the most human person I've known since my wife. Except when you do what's necessary." Post meant by this the wild night when the Reapers came up from the old Kurian submarine, and after sinking it Valentine had shot the submarines sailors struggling in the oily water. His emotions turned gray and cold whenever he remembered.
Valentine wondered if he could unburden himself. Confessing to not just the things he'd done, but worse, that he'd enjoyed, even reveled in-
