She shrugged. “Not why I’m here, Zasper.”
He raised an eyebrow. She leaned forward and told him about Danivon’s offer. “Yesterday this happened,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it overnight. You give him my name, Zasper?”
“Well, I knew him when I was at Tolerance,” he admitted, choosing to admit no more than that. “Some call him a wonder boy with fireworks for blood.”
“But not burned out yet,” she murmured. Oh, no, Enforcer Luze was far from burnt out!
“No, not so far’s I know. ’Course, he was only a kid when I left there, but friends from Tolerance tell me he’s fatal hands with bells on. He gets results.”
“Flaming ego?”
“No. Not that I’ve heard. Not one to walk over bodies in spiked boots. No more than any of us.”
Sometimes walking over bodies was part of the job. Not all Enforcers worked for the Council, but no Enforcer could work against it, such was the rule of the Craft. Adam-the-man could hire any Enforcer he liked to protect him against all threats except those posed by Council Enforcers. If CEs came looking for him, other Enforcers stood aside. When a CE lifted his hand in salute and recited a complaint and disposition number to confirm he was Attending the Situation, other Enforcers were expected to remember pressing business elsewhere. Sometimes afterward there were bodies to walk over.
“I’ve heard whispers about that Panubi dragon business,” said Zasper. “Interesting. What do they offer?”
Fringe told him and he whistled between his teeth. “Couldn’t do much better than Council Enforcer and twice standard! Plus an annuity.”
She snorted. “If I survive.”
“There’s always that.”
Down on the floor below, Bloom was shrieking at a croupier, his truncated form erupting out of the swarm like a jumping fish from roiling water. Strictly speaking, Bloom’s legs were not category seven. He’d imported them from some nine or ten province in defiance of the ban against higher category imports, but nobody in authority seemed to care.
Fringe touched the service button and a voice said, “Yah?”
“Black ale,” Fringe muttered. “Two.”
Black ale had been what Zasper offered her when she had come begging his sponsorship at the Academy. It had been what she offered him the day she graduated, after he pinned the Enforcer’s badge on her shoulder. It was part of their relationship. She turned half away from the hubbub below and said musingly, “There’s this giant goes around with Danivon Luze, you seen him?”
Zasper nodded. “Curvis. I know him. Sometimes a little … rigid. Mostly reliable.”
“He said Luze smells out who he’s going to work with.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.” Zasper grinned to himself. “Smells out all sorts of things, like who’s bluffing and who’s not.”
She waited, but he offered nothing more.
“You’re not saying much, Zas! I come to you for help, and you don’t say pollywhop. Just sit there smirking.”
Two sealed pods slid onto the table from the service hatch, popping lids and extruding handles as they arrived.
He shrugged and went on smiling. “What’s to say, girl? Tell you to send him packing and stay safe here? Tell you to go for the prize? Tell you you’re Fringe Owldark, all grown-up, got to make up your own mind? What?”
“Well, hell, something, Zasper!” She put her nose to her mug and drank. “Did I ever tell you how I got the name Owldark?”
He cocked his head. “Thought you made it up.”
Grinning, she told him about the time Jory had named her. “Did you ever catch sight of her, Zasper? I used to tell you about her. She told me I was one of her people. I keep expecting her to show up again, but she never has.”
He frowned, finding the story ominous without being able to say why. “Sure she was a woman?”
“Looked like a woman. She had something with her, though, something that could have been a glob. Something shadowy. Maybe that’s what reminded me of her. What Danivon said. Monsters in the shadows, nobody knows what they are. He says the Gods may be here on Elsewhere.”
“That scares you?”
“You know it does!” She swallowed painfully, shuddering a little. “Having those things eating your soul, doesn’t it scare you?”
Zasper waved that away with one hand. “Every few years, somebody says the Gods are here on Elsewhere. Whether they are or not makes no difference to what you’re going to do, does it? Want me to tell you again what your trouble is, you don’t trust who you are. Hell, you know that already! How many times we talked about that? All the time second-guessing yourself. Remember the story I used to tell you? The one about the warrior maid and the gylphs?”
“I remember,” she said, making a face. Zasper had dwelt on that story overlong and overoften. Poor weighted-down heavy-armored warrior, envying the magical gylphs their power of flight, not satisfied to be herself but not willing to take off her protective armor, either.
“You’ve always told me you thought you were born for something special,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the whoops of laughter from below. “And either that’s true or it isn’t. If it’s true, likely you’ll find out when something like this comes along. If you duck it when it comes, what does that mean?”
Fringe diddled, drawing pictures on the tabletop with one wet forefinger. “I’m not ducking, Zasper. I don’t mind the thought of dragons, not if that’s what they are. The idea of Gods scares me spitless. When I hear there’s a possibility of that, I sort of shrivel. Like there’s no hope, no reason to go on.”
She looked at Zasper to see if he understood what she was saying. “But even if I’m scared, I swore to protect diversity and humanity, and the only diversity and humanity that’s left is right here on Elsewhere. I believe in it. It makes more sense than anything else I was ever taught, so I can’t just let them come on and take us over if maybe we could stop it. And besides, it may not
