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"Tell me one thing. What clued you in?"
"Something funny happened. After you spoke up for Beach Boy, Sergeant Stock here asked for Scar to be assigned to him for a day. Except he didn't call you Scar. Called you Valentine. I mentioned it to Chuckles here and she recognized the name and dug up your file."
They took him to a no-fooling jail car in a wired corner of the rail yard. It was well lit and noisy from the sound of work on the trains.
He reviewed the conversation. Whoever was feeding the Gray Baron intelligence wasn't doing a very good job of it. Or perhaps they were passing on misinformation.
Should have kept my fool mouth shut, Valentine thought. Well, he'd been playacting the laconic, insolent veteran and let it get away from him.
They let him stew behind bars for two days. Then, on the final night of the Warmoon Festival, they put him in irons again, under gunpoint from a pistol close, a shotgun at the door, and a rifle outside the bars.
"You got another fight on, buck," his guard said.
On the way to the headquarters, they saw that festivities had spilled out in front of the headquarters, where a throng of Gray Ones and some men were gathered around parked vehicles.
"Hey, the roamin' emporium's set up already," he said.
Valentine couldn't believe they'd arrived so quickly. He'd figured it would be another few days at least.
They were parked there, bold as brass in a line of thick-wheeled trucks in the vehicle loading lot between headquarters and the motor pool. Valentine recognized two of the trailers from near Brostoff's headquarters.
Frat rode on the hood of one, sitting cross-legged with yards of woven hair and necklaces of dog teeth and ear-reamers made out of shinbones. God knew where he accumulated the Grog trade goods, probably from some back room at Hobarth's Truckstart and Trading Post.
"Name's China Jack, they say," the guard said. "Sergeant Major Quince knows him from Kansas City."
Valentine wondered if this was some strange ability that went with Frat's background as a Kurian agent. As far as these men were concerned, he was somebody they knew from way back.
"I met him south of Omaha. Got a great pair of boots," the shotgun man said.
"Bought my kids a baseball and two gloves from him, couple years back, at Hannibal," the rifleman put in. "He's upgraded his vehicles since then. Used to be old truck frames pulled by horses."
Bee rode shotgun in the first truck, Chieftain in the second. Chieftain had toned down his look a great deal, and wore some greasy mechanic's overalls.
The third truck had ROOT BEER in giant black stencils on a white sheet. That had the largest crowd around it. Valentine almost smiled. The Baron's headquarters was in for a wild night.
Already, the Gray Ones were lining up to buy.
They brought him to the atrium. A temporary wire cage had been set up, the sort of thing used to keep dogs in, about eight feet high.
The Baron looked down on it from a balcony.
Again, it was mostly Gray Ones on the main floor, though in the smaller atrium there was a good deal of shoving and standing on flower beds and other interior decor of the old church to get a view. Men and Gray One elders were ringing the balcony.
The Grogs were unusually agitated, pushing each other and snarling. Some were idly digging daggers into the woodwork.
Luckily there were few women in the Baron's command. Valentine hoped Snake Arms wasn't dancing in the moonlight tonight.
They turned down the lights and some brighter spots were focused on the white floor in the cage. Valentine was led in. He saw Bee outside the cage, looking at him, fighting off paws reaching for her. She snapped her teeth at the more aggressive suitors.
Snake Arms came into the cage and began to unlock his shackles with a key. They must have figured she wouldn't kill him.
"We've arranged a special fight tonight," the Baron said. He saw a commotion next to him, caught a flash of one of the Baron's pet Reaper faces.
They threw a figure off the balcony. It pivoted neatly in fall, and landed on its feet.
Duvalier!
She had a bandage on her left hand and an ugly bruise on her chin, but otherwise looked healthy. Like Valentine, she was stripped to the waist. Unlike Valentine, she was armed, with a Kabar-style fighting knife.
