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She rose and pointed to the large-scale local map. "Right now they're working on getting a better ferry in place between Henderson and Evansville. As you directed, I broke up our old company and made them NCOs over the new formations, five men to a platoon. So if you add them in, you have the makings of a decent battalion."
"Now tell me what's happened in the interwhiles," Valentine said.
"For a start, we're broke," she said, making a gesture that gave Valentine a pang for his mother: the casse of French culture, a little motion like breaking a stick. "Evansville is a rat pile, and everyone's hoarding: food, fuel, everything from sewing thread to razor blades. Bloom asked, in her darling vigorous way, for the men to sacrifice 'valuables' or they'd have to do a thorough search of the camp to gather non-Basic Order Inventory that might be traded or sold. Of course the implied threat was that if they didn't contribute some gold and whatnot that they'd picked up on the marches, she'd search thoroughly for all of it.
"We had a few of our recruits go over to Evansville in search of a good time. Vole and a couple of his cronies. They never came back. I don't know if they deserted or the Evansville people quietly strung them up in some basement. I think the latter's more likely."
"Any good news?"
She slipped back to the desk. "Not much. Supplies are running short-food and dispensables anyway. The leg shavers among the women are sharing one razor between us."
"Opposition?"
"The Moondaggers are long gone. Kentucky doesn't have a Reaper east of Lexington, from what the Wolves tell us. Memphis sent up a couple of armored trains from the city, evacuated what's left of the Moondaggers and prominent Quislings in eastern Kentucky. The rest are holed up in the bluegrass region with what's left of the Coonskins. But anything that rides legworms is settling in for winter quarters, with the nights getting colder and their worms egging and piling up.
"Can I ask, sir, what's going to happen with us?"
"You're going home."
"We'll see about that."
"Just between you and me, Southern Command has written off Kentucky. They're sending some NCOs and transport to decide what's worth salvaging and what isn't."
"Lovely. There go our guns, sir."
"We'll see about that. By the way, Ediyak, where'd you pick up the tschk gesture?" Valentine asked, making the casse breaking motion with his hands.
Ediyak's eyes widened. "The . . . oh, that."
"You grew up in Alabama, right?"
"Yes, sir. I grew up poor as dirt in a little patch of kudzu called Hopper where a girl was expected to be married at fifteen and nursing her way through sweet sixteen," she said, her accent suddenly redolent of boll weevils and barbecue.
"So you picked that up after you got out?"
"Yes, sir. Why so interested?"
"How did you get out?"
"Church testing. They had this extraordinary idea of putting me on the public broadcasts," she explained, her hand fluttering about her breast like a dove looking for a perch. "A sagging old Archon with my picture said I had the perfected look. If by 'perfected' they meant half-starved and iron-deficient, I'm guessing they were right. I went to school for two years learning about lapel microphones and makeup and phonetic pronunciation, a dusty duckling among graceful swans, learning to dress and talk and give the appearance of being cultured even if I was to the outhouse born. Then they decided I didn't look right next to the other news broadcasters because I was too small. I tried out for Noonside Passions, rehearsed with a few of the principals, but didn't get a continuing role. I did six episodes before they had me die in childbirth, giving my poor daughter to sweet little Billy, who'd only just learned to shave himself. They told me she'd grow up in no time and fall in love with him. They do get a little ripe on that show, don't they? But I'm getting away from the story of my brush with fame. I left the show and let myself be recruited into military communications."
"Is that where you saw the gesture? On the show?"
"I believe it was from a friend, a very good friend I made on Noonside Passions: one of the writers, a Frenchman. He'd gone to an ecole something-or-other and was in New York picking up some tips for the French version of the show."
Relief washed down Valentine's spine like cool water. Ediyak didn't seem like the Kurian-agent type, but then Kurian agents that penetrated Southern Command spent years working at not being the Kurian agent type.
She had seemed discomfited about the mention of the show, though. Or the gesture.
At their first evening meeting after Patel's promotion that had leaped him all the way over lieutenant in a single, overdue bound, they held an informal party. Congratulations flowed along with some bottles of bourbon of mysterious provenance.
Alessa Duvalier appeared in the middle of the chatter and pours.
She didn't look agitated, just tired and with that pained look she wore when her stomach was bothering her. Valentine took her long coat anyway, noting the mud smears and the river smell on her. The waters of the Ohio didn't need a Wolf-nose to detect.
"Where have you been?"
"Bloomington," she said.
