by E. E. Knight
Did Frat, miserable and shaking, know how like brothers they were? An accident of birth put Valentine in the woods of the Boundary Waters, Frat in some Chicago brownfield. If Valentine had been raised up in the Kurian Zone, would he have answered the bugle call of the Youth Vanguard, done his damnedest on the physical and mental tests?
Valentine stepped behind him. His .45 had never felt so heavy.
“I want my second chance,” Frat said.
“What?” Lambert said. Valentine froze.
“You heard me,” Frat said. “I’ll put up my right hand and take the oath. Put in my years, just like the rest. Wash all this shit away.”
“He’s helped kill thousands in the clans,” Duvalier said. “Whole families wiped out. You can’t just let him walk away from that like a wet Baptist.”
Valentine wondered. A highly trained ex-Kurian agent could be a valuable asset. Had Southern Command ever taken one alive? If they had, he wouldn’t know about it.
But the virus Frat spread had killed thousands. Even though it had backfired on the Kurians, there were men, women, and children all over Kentucky who’d died in the madness, from the disease itself or the stress brought on by the change, or in the fighting.
“Let him live and you’ll lose half of Kentucky.”
Frat raised his right hand. “I freely and of my own resolve . . .”
Valentine had to make a decision. Is an ideal—a collection of words that makes everyone feel cleaner, purer—worth anything if you can just discard it at will? He’d promised every Quisling who came over a new future if they sweated and suffered and risked for the Cause.
Suppose Frat meant it and was ready to put his obvious talents to work for the new Freehold coalescing in Kentucky?
Valentine had squeezed his conscience through the keyhole of a technicality before. He pressed the pistol to the back of Frat’s head, but the man who’d helped him rescue Molly Carlson went on speaking with only the briefest of pauses.
He couldn’t do it. Cowardice or compassion?
He pulled back the gun.
“If you’re going to take that oath, take it on your feet, Frat.”
“Don’t be a fool, Valentine,” Lambert said.
“You want to shoot him?” Valentine asked. “Go ahead. It’s not so easy to do.”
“She’s right, Val,” Duvalier said. “Quisling snot’ll turn on us first chance he gets. You can’t change him no more than you can train a scorpion to quit killing beetles.”
“Maybe,” Valentine said. “But I’m also an officer. That little hearing we had may have returned a verdict, but it wasn’t sent to headquarters for confirmation. I’m ready to suspend the execution on that technicality, barring an emergency that requires me to carry out the sentence.
“We’re both hung men, Frat. We’d have nooses around our necks in civilized lands. But we’re still kicking.”
Frat looked off at the eastern horizon. “I’m not afraid of that gun. It’s those motherfuckers who need to be afraid. They said they’d protect me.”
“The piece of shit doesn’t give a damn about the damage he’s done,” Patel said. “I’ll stagger all the way to Little Rock if I have to, to get that sentence confirmed.”
“I was following orders,” Frat said. “Same as you all when you burned out Louisville. Or when the resistance killed every trustee on my block. Even my grandmother and my little sister. We all got sins worth a stone or two.”
“He’s joined up. He’ll follow a better set of orders from now on,” Valentine said.
Valentine needed air and light. He walked across the grounds of Fort Seng, Duvalier trailing carefully in his footsteps like Piglet tracking a Heffalump.
They paused on the little hill sheltering the guns and looked at the old manor house. Some soldiers were putting in new military-strength block-glass windows, yet another in the hundreds of odd jobs needed to turn an old park and former estate home into a proper military base worthy of a new Freehold.
A warm wind took over from the confused air, a fresh new gust from the southwest. The sleet fled, turning into tiny, blowing drops of rain.
“I’m ready for this winter to be over,” Duvalier said, turning her face toward the wind to take in the warmth on her freckled cheek.
“Not yet,” Valentine said. “There’s a lot to do before spring.”
