“What are they going on about?” Curvis asked of the captain.
“They’re wonderin’ where the people are,” he said in a puzzled voice. “And so am I.”
“People?”
“The folk of Shallow. Every time we come in here they’re swarmin’ about in those little round gossle boats, but today’s like there was a sign on us sayin’ ‘plague.’ Where are they?”
The question was partially answered after some little time when a bargelike vessel moved toward them from far across the lagoon.
“What is that?” asked Danivon, pointing toward the building from which the vessel came, a sizable structure with several wings set on pilings above the water. The piazzas running the length of each floor spilled with flowering vines, like gardens piled in terraces above the water.
“Heron House,” the sailor said. “An’ that’ll be the Heron House gainder-yat comin’ to get you. Best get your bundles up.”
“Heron House?”
“You folk are goin’ upriver, so you’ll need someplace to bide until your river-yat comes. That’s it: Heron House, built and managed by the Heron family of Shallow, them that run the yats. You’ll stay there unless you fancy growing webs on your fingers and paddling upriver in gossle boats, the way most folk in Shallow do.” He looked about them at the empty water and amended his discourse. “Usually do, that is. I’d like to know what’s happened to ’em all, I would.”
So would we, thought Danivon. So would we!
They brought their bundles up, though their preparedness did nothing to hurry the approach of the gainder-yat, which took its own good time, making several lengthy stops on the way. Waiting was not unusual in Shallow, so said the Curward sailors. “Slow folk in Shallow,” they said. “Deep folk in Deep, and wearisome folk in Salt Maresh.” Even when the boat finally arrived, it stood a distance from the Curward vessel while those manning it looked them over and whispered to one another in fearful voices.
Danivon’s nose twitched painfully. Something badly awry here. The people from the hostelry were extremely apprehensive, no question. Fearful they were, but of what?
Eventually the Shallow folk decided the Curward vessel held no risk, and the gainder-yat came close enough to gather them into its capacious wide-bottomed self before wallowing away across the lagoon, its sculling oar plied by half a dozen web-fingered folk who started at every sound or movement their passengers made.
Except for a few cleared waterways leading toward the hostelry’s entry float and stairs, the lagoon was carpeted with the blue-flowered lilies. Long-toed birds ran across the pads, snatching at jewel-winged flies and being snatched at in turn by toothy gaver snouts that emerged explosively from among the leaves. From the edge of the lagoon something made a melodic thumping among the reeds, as though on a set of tuned drums.
“A new place,” cried Nela. “Bertran, a new place.” She clapped her hands, determined to be joyful.
Her twin stared morosely at the water, thinking of diving, of swimming, of disporting himself like a penguin, like a seal. Or even like one of those toothy gavers with their sleek hides and webbed feet. Alone, of course. Unencumbered. If this expedition turned out well, he might return here, alone, unencumbered. He did not speak of this to Nela. It seemed a bitter thought when she was trying so hard to seem happy.
“A new place,” he agreed, imagining the water flowing along his naked skin, imagining that skin sleek from hip to shoulder, not bulged and emerged as it was, not shared, but his own. As always, these thoughts brought a mingled feeling, part guilty pleasure, part hopeless pain. It would never happen. Though he dreamed and dreamed, it would come to nothing.
They docked at the Heron House float. Web-handed folk dressed in wraparound skirts came to take their bundles and precede them up the wide stairs to three adjacent rooms at the end of a corridor. They were told food would be served shortly on their shared piazza, at the end of which woven panels had been pulled across to give them privacy.
“Someone or something important to us is going on here, in this place,” remarked Danivon to nobody in particular as he leaned over the railing. “I can smell it. But there are no public rooms! How are we to find out what’s going on?”
“We’ll do what we planned to do all along,” said Fringe as she went to stand beside Nela and Bertran, who were already leaning across the railing. “We’ll do our sideshow business down there on the float and see who gathers.”
“What a beautiful place,” said Nela, taking Fringe’s hand and squeezing it affectionately. “Lucky people of Shallow, to have settled here.”
“Lucky indeed,” said Danivon moodily. “For I doubt they were given any choice in the matter.”
“Didn’t the people who fled here settle where they liked?” asked Bertran, puzzled.
Danivon shook his head. “They were met by a Frickian army and assigned where to go by Supervisors. Since the people of Shallow already had webbed hands and feet, the Supervisors did at least give them a wet province, for which I suppose they were duly grateful.”
Fringe turned toward him, her eyebrows drawn together in a thoughtful frown. “I’d always assumed Council Supervisory was selected to run the planet after all the original Brannigan people died. Who were they then?”
Danivon snorted. “I’ve already made the mistake of asking that question. Files said it had no information. My rule has been that when Files is silent, it is better not to pursue the matter.” He laughed ruefully, almost silently. “I broke my rule and asked the question a second time. Since then I’ve been smelling trouble.” He’d been smelling something a good deal worse than that, but no point in frightening the others.
Still, he could not completely disguise his apprehension, and Fringe was stabbed by sudden anxiety. Since their first meeting she had thought of him in bold bright colors without shadows, one of the hero-type Enforcers much touted at Academy, one of those Zasper called the fireworks boys, who skated always on the edge of risk, laughing at death, fearless and puissant. What she had heard in his voice was simple fear, however, which she well recognized. With a pang of conscience, she remembered the transmitter cube in her pack. Perhaps he had good reason to be fearful. Perhaps that was why Boarmus had told her to deliver the thing privately.
Certainly a puzzle! She glanced at Danivon from under her lashes, seeing his brooding face fixed upon something distant and invisible. Despite all the rules she had set herself to live by, all her rejection of involvement, a part of her yearned to comfort him or, at the very least, share his concerns. A colleague could do that. She could offer him friendship at least.
No. It would only end in pain, she told herself sternly. Friendship wasn’t what he had in mind. Friendship wasn’t what she had in mind, either. Leave well enough alone!
You’ve survived pain before, so use that, a leering voice inside her whispered. Use it to get the job done!
She flushed guiltily as she felt Nela’s hand on her own, squeezing it.
“Your heart’s in your face, lady.”
Fringe flushed. “Not my heart, Nela. Quite a different part of my anatomy, I’m afraid. And I didn’t know it showed.” She flushed and cast a sidelong glance at Bertran.
“Berty doesn’t listen to girl talk.”
Nela and Fringe had engaged in a lot of girl talk on the voyage. Chitchat about themselves and their feelings. Bertran, who had been an unfailing listener (even with his eyes fixed on a book to pretend noninvolvement), wondered at complexities in Nela he had never known of. Complexities and affections, for Fringe was Nela’s first real woman friend, and Fringe was genuinely fond of Nela, a situation he found both ironic and amusing. Fringe should, he told himself, have been equally fond of them both, though she obviously was not. Of Bertran she was almost as wary as she was of Danivon.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Fringe replied now, compressing her lips, making a face. “I’m not going to get involved, Nela. It wouldn’t be sensible.”
Nela heard the se
lf-doubt in the words and shook her head in sympathy. “I guess I can understand. Though I sometimes think I’d give … well, a lot, just to have the chance to get involved.”
Beside her, Bertran took a sudden breath, and she came to herself with a start, aware he might well have misunderstood—or understood too well.
“Sorry,” Nela muttered, looking around desperately for something to change the subject. She pointed toward the long-toed birds stalking across the lily pads. “Remember the story we told on the voyage, the one about the turtle who wanted to fly?” she said brightly. “It’s a pity our turtle didn’t choose those birds to emulate instead of swallows. Waders, not fliers. Turtle might have done quite well as a wader.”
Now it was Bertran who flushed guiltily, aware his thoughts would have been as wounding to Nela as her words had been to him. Perhaps he should make up his mind to stay a wader himself. It might be more profitable than this endless wanting!
All this private agonizing was interrupted by a flap-footed woman of Shallow who bustled onto the piazza to hang lamps above the long table and set it with plates and goblets preliminary to the arrival of two servitors bearing covered platters of food. They looked, so Fringe thought, like frog angels: webbed hands, wide mouths, and bright halos of frizzed hair glowing in the lamplight.
“Can you tell me who’s staying here?” Danivon asked them.
“Persons,” the woman answered, gesturing with a webbed hand. “Women from Beanfields, people from Choire and from Salt Maresh. Some prophet’s men from Thrasis. Come to buy fish or baled fye fiber, mostly.”
Danivon persisted. “Have you heard any rumors of strange things happening lately? Here or up the River Fohm?”
One of the servitors shivered, almost dropping the platter he was carrying. He was, Fringe thought, a very frightened frog angel, his face drawn and pallid.
His fellow came to take the platter from him, and they murmured together.
“Tell me!” Danivon insisted. “I know something’s wrong. What’s happened?”
“Noises,” said the second man, almost belligerently, his arm about his friend. “Noises coming from the reeds. And people go out in the gossle boat, then there is only the empty boat. His son went in a gossle boat to fish. That’s all we found, the empty boat, but there was … flesh in it.”
The other man gasped, gulped, and fled.
“Have you seen anything at all?” asked Danivon, more gently.
The woman answered soberly, “Some people have seen shining places in the reeds. Sometimes … sometimes dead people, or parts of what might be dead people. Maybe that could be gavers, but gavers don’t leave flesh neatly cut.”
The man nodded abruptly. “We hear also of dragons.”
The sideshow exchanged glances among themselves.
“Dragons?” Danivon prompted.
“We have not seen them here. The men of Thrasis bring word of dragons. They see them from their borders, off in the distance.” The servitor shivered again. “Is it the dragons, taking our people?”
“We don’t know.” Danivon shook his head. “We’d like to find out. Can you tell us anything else.”
They shrugged. Abruptly the woman said, “You asked who was staying here. I forgot the old people.”
“Old people?” breathed Fringe.
“The old woman. The old man. Very old.” She mimed a tottering ancient, stumping along with a cane. “We have never seen people so old. They ask the same questions you do. What have we seen? What do we think? They are away, just now. Soon they will return.”
“Where are they from?” asked Curvis. “What province?”
“Noplace,” said the servitor firmly. “We asked them, and they said noplace.”
He shivered again, making an apologetic gesture, then he and the woman slipped away, like frogs into a pool.
“I take it you expected that information?” asked Bertran with a curious glance at Danivon, as he pulled two chairs close together for himself and Nela.
Danivon, who had started at the word “noplace,” came to himself. “Dragons, yes. Disappearances here in Shallow, no.”
“There was that in Tolerance too,” said Fringe.
“What do you mean?” asked Danivon.
“There was a disappearance in Tolerance just before Fringe and I arrived there,” said Curvis. “And a mysterious death. Two youngsters. I’d forgotten to tell you.”
Danivon’s face paled.
“Talk about that later,” said Nela firmly. “I don’t want to hear about such things over dinner. Did you expect to hear about old people, Danivon?”
Danivon took a deep breath. “I didn’t expect to hear anything about old people, no.” He sat beside them distractedly, paying no attention to the plates they were passing about. “How do we find out more about these dragons?”
“We’ll set up the sideshow on the landing float,” repeated Fringe, watching Danivon from beneath her lashes. “People will see us from these porches and come down to see what we’re doing, and we can ask about dragons. That was the idea, after all, wasn’t it?”
Danivon looked up distractedly. “I suppose that was the idea, yes,” he grunted.
“Evening? Morning?” Curvis demanded, annoyed by Danivon’s distractions.
“Not enough light this evening, it’s already getting dim. We’ll wait for daylight. Tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow,” agreed Fringe thankfully. She longed for an evening spent alone, now that the crowded voyage was over. She would bathe, lengthily. She would luxuriate in quiet. She would wash her hair!
Will you now? her conscience demanded. And what about the transmitter cube Boarmus gave you for Danivon?
This fretted her, making her sorry she had remembered it. Danivon was sharing a room with Curvis, however, so she couldn’t simply take it to him. But soon they would go upriver in a boat no less crowded than the Curward vessel had been. No privacy there!
She dithered, wondering how to get him alone without being obvious about it. Well, shit, he was an Enforcer and so was she! There were all those covert Enforcer signals she had learned and almost never used. All she had to do was wait until Curvis was out of the room.
Though Curvis seemed determined not to leave the room. He stuck to Danivon like glue. When he did leave at last, Danivon was right behind him.
“Danivon,” Fringe said, getting him to turn in the doorway. “Sleep well.” She made the surreptitious gesture that requested a private meeting.
“Good night,” he answered absently, eyes on her hands, his surprise betrayed by one soaring eyebrow.
Well, so much for secret signals, she reflected sourly. Probably he hadn’t used the damned signals any oftener than she had. Anyone watching his face would have wondered what was going on. She turned, then blushed to find Nela’s speculative eyes upon her.
The tap at her door came late.
“You wanted to see me?” he said softly when she let him in, casting a quick look around the room to see if they were alone.
She had looked over the room as best she could, without obviously searching it, but there was no way to tell for sure that there weren’t spy eyes watching. So, if she were to pass the cube along secretly, as Boarmus had ordered, it would have to be done in the guise of something else. She’d planned the most misleading thing she could think of: an embrace, a hug, maybe even with some kissing and fondling.
“I thought it was time we got to know one another better,” she said throatily, purposefully seductive.
His mouth fell open. “Well.” He stared for a moment, then grinned. “What took you so long, Fringe Owldark?”
She moved toward the chair by the window, barely able to keep herself from snarling at him. The monstrous ego of the man! She took a deep breath and turned, ready to utter the next flirtatious phrase she’d rehearsed, only to find herself against him, her chin pressed into his chest. She tried to step back, but his arms were around her. She started to say something, but his lips were on hers. S
he had planned on this happening, but not so quickly….
Everything inside her loosened in an unfamiliar way and she couldn’t remember what she’d been going to say. He half dragged, half carried her toward the bed and they fell onto it together, arms and legs already entwined, tangled in their clothing, she dizzy, trying to think of words that would get her out of this, he busy finding flesh to touch. When she thought of something at last, his mouth was still on hers; she couldn’t breathe, then didn’t want to breathe.
After which she forgot about breathing or speaking or doing anything. Anything that needed doing was doing itself. The room was washed by dim ripples of torchlight reflected from the water outside. The only sounds she could hear were the cry of a night bird, the sob of her own breath, the murmur of Danivon’s voice saying not-quite words. Then everything went to pieces in mirrorlike shards, inside, outside, the sky breaking apart, her thought shattering into splinters that didn’t connect to anything. He said something urgently, but she couldn’t tell what it was. The room rocked on the wavelets, gently, as though it floated.
After a long, quiet time, she opened her eyes and stared through the window at the stars, half in wonder, half in anger. She’d planned this! She’d planned to do this, well, not exactly this, but something like this. But she hadn’t planned … hadn’t planned for the sky to come apart. Damn it. Why had that had to happen! Why had she done it? Why had she thought she could pretend … then pretend she hadn’t?
Angry tears filled her eyes, and she wiped the wetness away with one hand as she reached for her pack with the other, feeling automatically for the comb she’d made sure was there on top, next to the cube Boarmus had given her. Her hand came out, the cube hidden in her palm, the comb in her fingers.
“Danivon,” she said huskily, her voice seeming to come from some unfamiliar place inside her.
“Fringe,” he whispered, inviting her, drawing the word out, making a caress of it.
She refused to understand him as she put her lips against his ear. “Boarmus gave me a message for you.”
He started, but she held him down with her full weight, keeping him from moving, afraid that if he moved …