Free Valentine's Exile by E.E. Knight Page B

been on the Hunter Staff.
    Valentine might end up in command of one of those formations. The role was wryly appropriate; he’d been nicknamed “the Ghost” when serving in the Zulus, his first Wolf company.
    Meadows broke in on his thoughts. “Valentine, it’s official enough so I thought I’d tell you. You’re better than two years overdue for a leave. It’ll take them a while to get your training schedule worked out. When we’re done here you’ll be cleared to take a three-months’ leave. I’ll miss you. It’s been a pleasure.”
    And Valentine would miss the Razors. They seemed “his” in a way none of the other organizations he’d served with or commanded ever had. Seeing them broken up was like losing a child. “Thank you, sir.”
    He didn’t feel like thanking anyone, but it had to be said.
    He wandered back among the Razors, accepted a few congratulations with a smile, but all he wanted was quiet and a chance to think. Meadows had tried to add a sparkle to a bittersweet party, but all he’d done was ruin Valentine’s enjoyment of the festivities.
    Stow that, you dumb son of a grog. You’re ruining your enjoyment, not Meadows .
    Back in his days visiting the opulent old theater in Pine Bluff, they’d show movies now and then. He remembered sitting through part of one when arriving early for the evening’s movie; the smell of popcorn and sweat on the seats all around him, unable to shut out even the blood from a tiny shaving cut on the man next to him with his inexperienced Wolf’s nose.
    The early show for the families was a kids’ cartoon, full of bright primary colors even on the shabby little projector rigged to an electronic video-memory device. He recalled a bunch of kids’ toys in a machine, and a mechanical claw that came down and selected one of the dozens of identical toys now and then. The toys responded to the mystical selection of the claw as though at a religious ceremony.
    Life in the creaky, stop-and-start mechanism of Southern Command had never been so elegantly summed up for him. “The claw chooses!” Orders came down and snatched you away from one world and put you in another.
    Duvalier proffered a fresh, cool mug filled with colder beer. “Guess that’s it for Cat duty, far as you’re concerned, ” she said. Her eyes weren’t as bright and lively as usual; either her digestive troubles were back or she’d continued drinking. Valentine sniffed her breath and decided the latter.
    The swirl of congratulatory faces wandered off after he took the mug, offered a small celebratory lift of the brew to the north, south, east, and west, and took a sip.
    â€œDid you run down that Lifeweaver?” On second taste, the beer wasn’t quite so sharp.
    â€œNo. There was a rumor one’d been killed by some kind of agent the Kurians planted last year. Guess Kurs’ got their versions of Cats too.”
    Valentine had heard all sorts of rumors about specially trained humans in Kurian employ. That they could read minds, or turn water into wine, or redirect a thunderstorm’s lightning. Everything from mud slides to misaddressed mail was blamed on Kurian agents.
    Valentine shrugged.
    â€œThey’ll get word to us. They always do, one way or another. Right?” Duvalier asked.
    The last sounded a bit too much like a plea. Duvalier thought of the Lifeweavers as something akin to God’s angels on Earth; the way the Kurians’ estranged cousins presented themselves added to the effect. This cool and deadly woman had the eyes of a child left waiting on a street corner for a vanished parent.
    â€œMystery’s their business,” Valentine said.
    She emptied her mug. “Want to blow this bash?”
    The beer worked fast. Valentine already felt like listening to music and discussing the nurses’ legs with Post. But he couldn’t leave Duvalier