Fringe grunted. She’d already decided that. Such scavengers were common enough in mid-category places.
“Somebody dies in some province or other,” the man mused, as though talking to himself. “The nearest tribe sends a couple gullies along to act the part of wronged kinfolk or people owed a debt. Seldom it’s anything that will hold up to examination by the powers that be, but most people don’t risk that. Instead, they settle, just to be rid of the chaffers.” He mimed stripping one such bloodsucker from his exposed arm, making a face.
“Char Dorwalk’s adopted daughter had nothing to settle with,” she said crisply.
“Well, no,” admitted the man. “My name’s Danivon Luze, by the way.”
“Fringe Owldark,” she said, giving him her hand somewhat reluctantly, noticing that her fingers didn’t go up in flames, though she’d felt they might. She swallowed before saying in a carefully neutral voice, “What’s your classification, Danivon?”
“Outcaste,” he said. “Like you. When I’m here.”
Which meant he moved around and could be almost anything. “Where?” she asked.
He gestured expansively, ending with a snapped finger at the youth serving drinkables. When he’d been provided with a tankard and had thirstily dipped his nose, he sat back with a sigh, singing the first line of a well-known vagabond song in a pleasant baritone: “‘On this world of Elsewhere, else-where’s where I go.’”
“Do not try to hold me, dear. Tomorrow I’ll be far from here,” her mind continued the verse as he fished a border pass out of his pocket and opened it on the table between them. From the pass, his face stared up at her beside the patterns coding his essential being, physical and mental. She wished she had decoder eyes and could read them, give herself that advantage, at least. At the bottom were the words “Danivon Luze. Universal Pass.”
“Aren’t you something,” she said, half enviously. There were reputed to be fewer than one thousand Universal Passes on all of Elsewhere, and most of them were held by Council Enforcers. He hadn’t said he was an Enforcer, but he hadn’t said he wasn’t. He wasn’t wearing a badge, but then he wasn’t required to unless he was Attending a Situation. “Now that makes me mightily curious,” she said.
“As it would anybody,” he said, still comfortably.
“You’ve been observing me, you say?”
“We have.”
“We?”
“A friend and I.”
He was being too smug for her. “Am I to winkle words out of you one at a time?” she demanded, working at being annoyed. “If that’s so, I’ve no time for the exercise. No time and no appetite. You approached me, colleague. If you have something to say, say it!” Or get out of here and let her temperature settle to normal, which she devoutly wished for.
He seemed not one whit upset at her impatience. “I’m what you might call recruiting. I’ve been asked to mount an expedition. I came here to consult an old friend, and he mentioned your name. When he did, my nose twinked. So, I took the trouble to see what you’re like, how you work.” He tugged at his medallion again, a nervous habit. The thing was shiny from the touch of his fingers, the design on it blurred by long touching.
“Indeed,” she remarked, laconic in her turn. “Your nose twinked.” Damned if she’d ask him who had mentioned her name. She looked at the tabletop once more in order not to look at his nose. Not to look at him at all. Here she’d been working at making herself man-proof, and this creature had to come along to test her resolve. Well, test away, damn him!
“Well, my nose does that,” he muttered. “From time to time.”
“Have you found what I’m like?”
“We give you high marks for self-control, and for thinking on your feet. We’re not looking for any ganger-caste mavericks, out for slaughter.”
Fringe lifted a nostril at him. In truth, she felt a grudging empathy with gangers. Old Ari had often spoken of gangers knowingly and with nostalgia, though Fringe had been in her twenties before she’d admitted to herself that he knew so much about them because he’d been one.
“They do have a tendency to kill first and identify later,” she remarked. “I’ve met a few.”
Danivon smiled at her. “I know you have,” he said.
“You know too much. How much?”
“Everything. I’ve been through your Book.” He looked up and smiled at someone approaching the table. The newcomer sat down beside them without invitation.
Fringe found herself glaring at the huge, bald-headed man who had called himself Curvis. This time she was truly angry, and she snarled at both of them: “Spies, the two of you. Blood Books are private. Until I’m dead, you’ve no right!”
Curvis merely grinned. Danivon tapped the Universal Pass. “He has one of these too. They’re good for more than just getting across closed borders.”
She subsided, growling, curiosity getting the better of her. “So, what’s my balance?”
He tipped his hand to and fro, like a scale, wavering. No big debts. No big credits. In balance. Almost.
“What’s the job?” she asked.
Curvis grunted. On his chest, his pocket moved, and he unfastened it to let something tiny and furry peep out with shiny purple eyes. Danivon scratched his head and made a comical face. “Fringe Owldark, answer me a question first, will you?”
“If I can,” she said indifferently, watching the sleek little animal move out of Curvis’s pocket onto his shoulder.
“How is Elsewhere different from Everywhere?”
“You’re playing at riddles, man. I’ve no thirst for nonsense.”
“No nonsense. I’m serious. How?”
She stared at him, one finger tapping the tabletop. “Luze, everywhere else there are Hobbs Land Gods, but not here.”
“And if I said there’s a possibility the Hobbs Land Gods have come to Elsewhere? Then what, Fringe Owldark?”
She felt her pulse slow, then race, her face pale, then flush. He might as well have stuck a knife in her side, or told her she’d just been poisoned. She knew nothing about the Gods except what she’d been taught to know, taught to think, taught to feel, which was simple terror.
Those
