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handed her a little earpiece with a button on it attached to a transmitter about the size of a pack of cigarettes. She stuffed it into the pocket of her duster and instinctively checked the edge on her sword-stick. It drew blood.
    “See you at the gate,” she said, giving him a bloody thumbs-up.
    Valentine had a reputation as a sniffer of trouble, and his confidence warmed hers. She’d had a feeling of dread the past few days, but it was gone now. Perhaps the Kurians attending this conference had fled. Now she just felt like a hunter who knows where the game is waiting.
    They idled the garbage tractor and opened the hood. Valentine hung a flashlight so it shone into the engine, making his face less recognizable by contrast just in case a passing patrol was familiar with the garbage detail. She checked her “beeper.”
    The slight discomfort in her finger helped her subsume her consciousness, entering that mental state that reduced the lifesign Reapers read. She was certain they’d have a Reaper or two watching.
    That was the dangerous part. They didn’t need a clear line of sight to “see” you, so they could be lurking in a hollowed-out tree or thick patch of thorn and kudzu.
    She followed a game trail. While you could reduce your lifesign by subsuming consciousness, you couldn’t eliminate it entirely, since each of the billions of cells in your body emitted its own fractional amount. Even from a hundred yards or so she might hope to pass as a deer, if she moved in a deerlike fashion, a few steps at a time. But night was fleeing, and she needed to hurry. So she trotted, hoping that she might pass as an escaped dog or coyote. By pausing every now and then to circle a tree, she hoped to add to the illusion. There was no need to lift a leg.
    She slowly ascended the hill line opposite the hotel. When she could see the crest, she stopped and made a careful examination with her eyes, allowing them to rest on every tree stump.
    The shock of recognition hit her square in the back before her brain fully caught up. There was a Reaper on watch looking east, sure enough. From its point on the hill it could watch the main east-west highway running north of the hotel, as well as the off-road approaches from the east. Just about where she expected it.
    As a hunter, you want to know your game.
    The Reaper stood still, only its heavy cloak moving slightly in the breeze. At the moment it was looking west. Its head moved slightly at each slow respiration. Perhaps the beast part of it was exhausted and sleeping standing up, or the Kurian animating it was engaged with another Reaper. A few Southern Command personnel were missing, she understood; it was possible that one was being questioned, or worse, by a different Reaper.
    She moved crossways on the hill and restarted her ascent.
    This was the hard part of quieting your mind. She was getting into the range where the Reaper didn’t even have to see her to know she was there.
    When she spotted its head again she let herself relax into lifesign-reducing consciousness. The big problem with this discipline is you never knew how well you were doing it. It wasn’t like a flashlight where you could measure the candlepower or distance of the beam. You just had to go through your concentration exercises and hope. Not even hope—hope was an emotion that might alert it as much as fear or lust.
    From close up, it appeared to be only half awake.
    Reapers had physical needs like everyone else. It had probably been up all night chasing down Southern Command’s column, and been recalled so a fresher avatar could take over. No Kurian ever hadenough Reapers for all its duties: protection, food gathering, surveillance, and interacting with the Quislings. This one was operating on a “reduced power” mode; if it saw unusual traffic on the road it would probably rouse its master, who would in turn bring the Reaper back to full activity.
    She suspected she could sneak up behind it easily enough and