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He didn't want to go on Mrs. O'Coombe's expedition. He wished Moytana were still present; it would have been a much better assignment for a group of experienced Wolves.
It took a direct order from Lambert to get him to agree to do it.
They talked it over across her desk. Lambert had a policy that in private, when seated, you could talk to her without military formalities and treat her as a sounding board rather than a commander. It was a tradition Valentine had always followed with his own subordinates. Valentine remembered picking it up from Captain LeHavre. He wondered if Lambert had acquired it from Moira Styachowski.
Or did it come to Lambert from Valentine, in a roundabout way?
"Take whoever you like, just none of my captains," Lambert said, signing a blank ad hoc special duty personnel sheet and passing it to him.
Damn. So much for Patel. He could have ridden the whole way.
"I was thinking two Bears. Ali." As a Cat, Duvalier was considered a captain in rank, but Valentine suspected Lambert didn't need to hold on to her. "A Wolf scouting team."
"Medical staff?"
"They have enough to do here. Our patroness said she has her own medical team."
"Why don't you take Boelnitz too," Lambert said. "He's been making himself a nuisance here. I don't know if he's filed a story yet."
"Maybe he's working on a novel," Valentine said. He observed that Lambert's desk was as clean as an Archon's shaving mirror. Lambert managed to do a tremendous amount of work-she was in the process of reorganizing Fort Seng from the top down-but there was no evidence of it except for a three-drawer file cabinet and a brace of three-ring binders. Her clerk was always buzzing in and out like a pollen-laden honeybee, keeping the binders updated.
"I'd hate to be away if that column moves south," Valentine said.
"We'll just call you back," Lambert said. "Mrs. O'Coombe can delay them with a pillar of fire, and then spread her arms and part the Tennessee for us to get away."
Valentine couldn't say why he didn't like the idea of leaving Fort Seng. How do you put disquiet and restlessness into words? Normally he'd look forward to picking up his men and getting them on the road home-that sort of thing left a better aftertaste than surviving a battle.
One more thing bothered him. Red Dog had appeared a little nervous of late, always looking around with the whites of his eyes showing and hiding under tables and stonework. He'd even been dragged out from under the defunct hot tub in the estate house's garden gazebo.
Red Dog had been a tool of the Kurians in the retreat across Kentucky, when one Kurian had somehow linked through the dog's mind to Javelin's commanders at headquarters. If Red Dog was nervous, Valentine was nervous.
"Nice work at the dinner," Valentine said. "I think when Mrs. O'Coombe had to eat what we've been living on, it encouraged her to part with her gold."
"I just think she's a deeply decent person," Lambert said. "You don't often meet one of those."
"I met one back at the war college in Pine Bluff," Valentine said. "A little stick of a thing, always dotting i's and crossing t's."
"And I remember a shy young lieutenant who was always looking at his shoes and talking about the weather when he should have been asking me to a dance," Lambert said.
"We were both too busy, I think," Valentine said.
"And now we're in a fort where Southern Command rules on down-chain, up-chain, and cross-chain fraternization will be strictly observed. And not 'strictly' in the fun, blindfold and handcuffs sense, either."
"Dirty Bird Colonel," Valentine laughed. "Hands off."
"That goes for your captain, too, Major."
"Nilay Patel and I share a love that cannot-"
"You know who I mean. I don't want Boelnitz returning to his paper with an episode of Noonside Passions ready for action."
"Yes, ma'am. But rest easy: Ediyak didn't earn that rapid rise the hard way."
Duvalier waited a beat. "You're impossible, Valentine. Anyway, let's keep it zipped up for once, shall we?"
"As long as you restrain yourself with Boelnitz. You've made time for how many interviews?"
"I don't recall him being in the chain of command," Lambert said. "And if he were, I'd just have my clerk make a new page minus his name. But point taken, Valentine. Honestly, the only thing I want to get intimate with is that hot tub, if Prist and To yonikka get if functional again."
