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Valentine, stripping off his shirt in the cramped, food-stuffed cabin, had a strange flash of Frat Carlson and Stockard sheltering in an old farm shed. If they were being tracked, the bad weather would put the pursuers off, and hopefully buy them time to rest for the remainder of the overland trip.
Valentine always thought of Saint Louis as "the Green City."
He'd seen two great ruins in his life: Chicago's downtown and Saint Louis. The buildings of Chicago's downtown, while sporting tufts of green here and there, never became too overgrown, mostly because the unfortunates dumped there cultivated every bit of useful soil. Potatoes and onions grew in the old boxes that had held trees; tomatoes grew from old sinks propped up in glassless windows.
Saint Louis could not have been more different. The Grogs did not utilize the higher floors of the city's great structures, except for thrill-seeking youths looking for risky reaches to prove themselves. They liked to see vines and bushes clinging to the sides of concrete and glassless windows bearded by kudzu and creepers. The growth sheltered insects, birds ate the insects, and hawks ate the birds. The Grogs, in turn, captured and trained the hawks to hunt waterfowl.
Valentine went ashore with Mantilla, the riverman who'd delivered letters to Narcisse when he could not visit Saint Louis himself.
They paid their usual brief homage to a fat old Grog chieftain Valentine thought of as Blueball-he painted himself in blue dye, put gold flecks about his face, and had a human slave who whitened his fangs and brushed out his hair and polished his nails to flaunt his wealth and power-and obtained a foot-pass for both of them. The price was some Kevlar liberated from the Gray Baron's stores.
Humans had to carry a token in Saint Louis, either signifying their ownership by a particular clan or tribe, or to show they passed through the city with the permission of a chief. Valentine had learned in his years of visiting Blake that certain Grogs who sold foot-passes cheap had influence only on the waterfront, or the market, and if you ventured into the city with some nobody's foot-pass you could get cuffed about and kicked back down the hill toward the riverside. Blueball was one of the more influential chieftains, being a slave trader, and his passes were recognized even in the hills to the south and the suburb country to the west.
This trip, Blueball's foot-pass was a piece of Christmas decor, some old sleigh bells on a bit of dingy leather with the red velvet flaking off. But they still chimed a merry accompaniment as he and Mantilla crossed through the market.
It was a little like Dickens, come to think of it. As painted by Maurice Sendak. Grog children gamboling underfoot while groups of females sorted and bargained and stored, trading weights of salt and tobacco and bullets for foodstuffs and goods.
Valentine looked forward to a happy day. He'd bring Blake and Narcisse with him when he left, this time.
Of course, a young Reaper at the fort would be strange for the men. He hoped that with so many other new arrivals, Blake would pass without comment, perhaps as a pale and sickly child.
"Haven't had a letter from them in a while. Haven't you been north?" he asked Mantilla as they passed through the Grog trade stalls of the riverside market. Valentine made a show of carrying his Type Three-a foot-pass was a useful necessity, but Grogs had their criminal classes, too.
"Narcisse had other concerns," Mantilla said. "She had to move back into town. The Jesuits are giving her and Blake shelter at the cathedral. She asked me to explain it to you. No other choice."
Valentine didn't like Blake being so close to people-even if most of them were unarmed slaves-and Grogs.
An old downtown cathedral, Father Cutcher's domain, stood near Cass Street off a park on the North Side. Valentine knew the Jesuit somewhat from his travels into Saint Louis over the years.
Ostensibly, he ran a mission ministering to the Grogs' slaves, offering solace to body and soul alike. He had a few sisters offering nursing and midwifery, and traders and the very few travellers in this part of the country could bed down in the mission and avoid the snake pits of the waterfront ghetto.
Valentine sniffed the incense as he entered the Narthex-it was the official Vatican stuff, not the wild spice mix his old Catholic guardian made do with on holidays.
A pair of bent old women gave their boots a glance.
"Wipe that river mud off, ye drips," one said with a hostile squint. "That's what the mat's for."
Other elderly filled the nave. The pews had been removed and replaced with rockers, lounges, and card tables. Former slaves, aged enough to be given their freedom before death takes them, but too old for a journey, washed up at Cutcher's door.
A nun directed them to Father Cutcher. They had to climb some rickety stairs to reach him in the bell tower. The Jesuit wasn't trying to pray closer to God, he was fiddling with a shortwave radio with one of his elderly.
"Leave off, Father," the electronic tinkerer said. "I think it's atmospherics, not the antenna. If it were the antenna, we wouldn't be getting anything south or west, neither."
"Major David Valentine. Captain Sebastian Mantilla."
"Sebastian?" Valentine asked Mantilla, as they trailed the old man down.
"Don't know how the old coglione ever found out. None but my old mom used that name."
Narcisse and Blake had taken up residence in an old third-floor room that was practically an attic, though it did have a view of the park. Wobble, Blake's dog, limped over to Valentine, wagging his tail and licking.
Narcisse, her head wrapped in its usual colorful turban, made a special blend of coffee for her visitors. Valentine sipped carefully, more to savor the drink than because he was suspicious of ersatz. He could taste nuts, citrus, and chocolate along with the coffee beans.
"Eats like a goddamn meal," Mantilla said.
Blake, as usual, was wide-eyed and wary for a few minutes. Narcisse put an encouraging hand on his shoulder, and suddenly he was all hugs.
"You have a magic touch, Sissy," Valentine said. "I remember that time in the Caribbean, after Captain Boul's men stomped me. Your hands on either side of my head."
