Part 14 (2/2)

”Yes,” answered Valentine, trying to make out the lines of the little s.h.i.+p.

”Then let's go down to the beach, sir, and deliver the mail,” Harper said, kicking out his fires.

The s.h.i.+p bobbed in the small swell of the lake. The waters of Lake Michigan did not roar as they struck the sh.o.r.eline, but instead gently slapped it. The lake almost seemed playful on this idyllic summer evening, and something about the cool water in the warm evening breeze made Valentine forget the dangers of the night. The men waded out, weighed down with their waterproofed message bags, moccasins tied around their necks.

A tiny dinghy met them, its sides a bare sixteen inches out of the water.

”Climb in sideways,” a boy's voice said from the stern. ”You'll capsize me if you try to vault in.”

The Wolves threw their packs into the d.i.n.k and rolled into the little boat. It settled in the water appreciably with their added weight.

Valentine looked into the stern, at the figure with the paddle. What he had thought was a young boy was in fact a young woman dressed in shapeless white canvas. She had a round face and merry eyes, looking at her pa.s.sengers over freckled cheekbones.

”Nice night, eh, boys? Captain Doss sends her compliments to the representatives of the Ozark Free Territory and invites you aboard the yawl White Lightning,” she said, flas.h.i.+ng an impressive set of teeth.

”The what White Lightning?” Valentine asked.

”Yawl,” she repeated. ”You know nothing of s.h.i.+ps, soldier?”

”Not much,” Valentine admitted.

”It's a little thing, but seaworthy as a porpoise. A s.h.i.+p not very different from ours made it around the world with only a single man on board. Over a hundred years ago, that was.”

”Good to see you again... Teri, is it?” Harper said, contemplating his soaked deerskin breeches.

”I thought you looked familiar. Aaron... no, Randall Harper. Met you twice before, I recall.

But I didn't see you this spring.”

”I had the overland route. I don't want it again,” Harper explained.

”Well, the captain will be glad to see you. So who's this with you?”

”Lt. David Valentine. He hails from Minnesota.” She reached over to shake Valentine's hand. ”Pleased to know you, Lieutenant. Teri Silvertongue, first mate of the White Lightning. Will it be possible for you gentlemen to be joining us as guests this lovely evening?”

”I can't think of anything I'd like more, Miss Silver-tongue,” Valentine said, imitating her courteous phraseology. He wondered if Silvertongue was a nickname.

”We go by Mr. in the flotilla, man or woman,” Silvertongue corrected. ”Just as you do in the Wolves. Will you take an oar, sir?”

”I beg your pardon, Mr. Silvertongue. Sergeant Harper here didn't tell me the s.h.i.+p had a female crew, let alone how you expected to be addressed. Likes to keep a good thing to himself, I guess,” Valentine explained, shooting a glance at Harper. He paddled for the white blob outside the gentle surf.

”Oh, there's plenty of men in the Flotilla,” Silvertongue explained. ”The commodore of our fleet just has a soft spot in her heart for any woman with a sad tale. It's the only soft spot she has; the woman has steel in her backbone and flint in her heart in all other matters excepting her 'poor foundlings,” as she calls us. But yes, it's three women on the Lightning.

But it beats life on land. The Capos just want us for breeding stock, and their gunbelt lackeys seem to think they have the right to get the job started on any girl who tickles their fancy.”

”Capos?” Valentine asked.

”That's what we call the Reapers out east, handsome boy.”

The dinghy reached the s.h.i.+p, and Valentine got a good look at the White Lightning. Her lines had kind of an off-balanced beauty, with an oversize central mast set well forward and a smaller, secondary mast projecting from far astern.

Captain Doss wore a smart white semi-uniform to greet her guests. The captain had beautiful, dusky skin and the angular features of a storybook pirate queen. Her short black hair matched even Valentine's own mane in its glossy sheen.

A third woman, who helped Valentine and Harper into the White Lightning, stood over six feet tall and had the long, graceful limbs of a ballerina. ”Give me the bags up,” she said perfunctorily, and Valentine realized he had heard a foreign accent for the first time in his life.

Once on board, the White Lightning seemed smaller than it had looked from the dinghy. It was wide-waisted; the top of what was obviously the cabin area filled the middle third of the s.h.i.+p. It had a wheel to steer it-someone had spent a lot of hours carving and polis.h.i.+ng the spokes-placed in front of the rear mast. All the woodwork, save the planks of the deck and the decorative wheel, was painted a uniform light gray.

The captain introduced her crew. ”You've met my first mate, Mr. Silvertongue. My second mate, who works so hard I don't need any more crew, is Eva Stepanicz. She crossed the Atlantic four round trips before ending up in the Lakes.”

”It will be more times, once I have goods enough for my own s.h.i.+p,” she said.

”You mean gold enough?” Harper asked.

”No, sir. Goods. In Riga is agent of tradings, who pays most for paintings brought back from America. I anf here collecting arts.”

The captain smiled. ”It's hard not to indulge someone so determined. And she's a hard bargainer. I don't know a Pica.s.so from an espresso, but I think our Mr. Stepanicz has enough to start a gallery.”

”But I'm forgetting my manners,” Harper said, reaching into his haversack. ”Captain, compliments of my last trip through Tennessee,” he said, handing over a pair of elabo- rately wrapped and sealed bottles of liquor. In the muted light, Valentine couldn't read the black labels, but they looked authentic.

”Sergeant Harper, you just bought us a new coat of paint, and maybe some standing rigging.

My thanks to you, sir.”

Harper pointed to the three bags of correspondence. ”You'll also find a box of cigars for each of you in those bags. If you don't smoke them yourselves, a little good tobacco helps grease the Quisling wheels, I believe.”

”You southern gentlemen are too kind. I wish those Green Mountain Boys would show the same courtesy,” Silvertongue said, with a curtsey involving her overbaggy trousers.

”Enough playacting,” Captain Doss interrupted. ”I'd like to be anch.o.r.ed off Adolph's Bunker by midnight. You Wolves want to pay a call on Milwaukee? Get a little taste of life in the KZ?”

”We're always interested in the Kurian Zone. But would that be wise, Captain?” Valentine asked.

”Well, Lieutenant, the pathfinder look would have to go. But we've got some extra whites in the slop chest. The Bunker's a rough spot, but I've never heard of the Reapers going in there. The owner never makes trouble; in fact, I've heard he turns troublemakers over to them. I'd like a little extra muscle showing for the deal we need to do. I'll make it worth your while.”

Valentine thought for a moment. ”Is this deal anything the New Order would object to?”

”If they knew about it, Lieutenant,” Doss said, looking at the wind telltale. The tiny streamer fluttered east. ”You might say we're f.u.c.king with the Quislings.”

”Count us in, then.”

An hour later, the yawl tacked into Milwaukee's harbor. A single decrepit police boat, piloted by a Quisling whose sole badge of rank was a grimy blue s.h.i.+rt, motored alongside and illuminated the White Lightning with a small spotlight.

Captain Doss held up a hand and flashed a series of hand signals that would have done a third-base coach proud. The Quisling nodded, satisfied.

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