She did not reply, merely uttered the all-purpose word again. “Sir!” She much wanted to ask, why me, but it was better to ask nothing, say nothing. Best not to object. Not to inquire. Not to argue. So Zasper had said, on more than one occasion. “Try never to ask a question of a superior unless you already know the answer and are doing it for form’s sake. Always be sure where you are standing before you draw a line and dare another to cross it.”
Boarmus nodded dismissively. She bowed, only the requisite bow, and left the Council Provost staring balefully after her. She could feel his eyes and believed she had given him no satisfaction, but neither any justification for anger. Zasper had been clear about that too. “Don’t let commanders play games with your head,” he had said. “If you are absolutely correct in your manner, they can’t fool with you. That means no expression at all. No insolence. No dismay. No annoyance. Nothing. Your face should be blank as a chaffer shell. You should show no feelings. Better yet, you should have no feelings.” It helped to be wearing ceremonials. The silks and leathers and flapping coattails always made her feel depersonalized anyhow.
Fringe was wrong about Boarmus. In his opinion she could not have been more perfect. Totally poised. The true and perfect Enforcer, down to her bright little boots, and very nice they were too. A provincial Enforcer just up from the provinces might have been excused for being a bit awed and stuttery at being brought before the Provost, but this one had given no sign of it. Boarmus had counted on that, on the fact she was from Enarae and that Zasper Ertigon had been her sponsor. Enarae being the kind of province it was, Enforcers from there received experience early and often. Zasper being what he was, she was as advertised. Owldark would serve his need.
“Dead men, sleep,” he muttered to himself. Perhaps he would be lucky. Perhaps they would do nothing more, nothing worse than they had done, and he, Boarmus, would need to do nothing. But if they did something, at least he would have let Danivon know.
Back in her quarters, the subject of Boarmus’s consideration stripped off her ceremonials and put them in their case. The purple coat was too fine a fabric for daily wear. She would have a heavier one made when she returned. If she returned. Since they were not going on this expedition as Enforcers, she might not need Enforcer dress—except for her badge, to identify herself if need be. She pinned it to her undertunic. “I Attend the Situation.” And so she would, whatever it might turn out to be.
Whatever old Boarmus decided it would be. She didn’t much like this business with Boarmus. It smacked of sneakiness, ordering her not to tell Danivon. A team could have only one leader; how many times had she been told that? And what did Boarmus want to hear from her he would not hear from Danivon Luze?
The transmitter cube lay on her bed, beside the bonnet, featureless, seemingly inert. She picked it up and turned it in her fingers, eyes suddenly riveted as words appeared on all faces of it at once, words brought into view, presumably, by the warmth of her hands.
“Give this secretly to Danivon Luze. Silence!”
Even as she read them, they faded, and the cube was blank once more. Her fist closed around the cube as she pushed it deep into the pack she would be carrying. Well! Boarmus, saying one thing, had done another, had engaged in misdirection, as though someone was watching him! He didn’t want anyone knowing he was sending a message to Danivon Luze. Clever fat old man. No one could have seen the words on the little cube. It had gone from his hand to hers. No one could see it where it lay now.
And, come to think of it, it had been Boarmus who had ordered Danivon not to return to Tolerance. Was Danivon in some danger? Or was it the Provost himself who was in danger?
Who? she asked herself quietly, moving slowly and deliberately, showing no outward evidence of the sudden anxiety that she felt. Who could be watching Boarmus? There was no one above the Provost, no one superior to him! Provost was as high an office as one could achieve on Elsewhere.
Inescapably, however, one had to consider that if Boarmus was being watched, perhaps those he met and talked with were also being watched, including Fringe herself.
Zasper’s tutelage had covered such possibilities. Enforcers routinely went into category-nine and-ten places where they might be watched, overheard, spied upon. She pretended unconcern. It wasn’t necessary for her to feign weariness. She got into bed fully intending to sleep at once. “Sleep when you can, pee when you can, eat when you can” was the common wisdom among Enforcers. She didn’t sleep. Instead she lay long-time wakeful in the dark, going over the stories she had heard about the girl who had been found dead, the boy who had disappeared, considering the tension in the place, wondering until the mid-hours of the morning what in the name of holy diversity was going on.
Curvis, Fringe, and the twins flew to the Curward Isles on the following morning. Danivon awaited them there, and Fringe put the transmitter cube into her pocket, ready to pass on to him. Though she approached him at various times during the day, Fringe had no opportunity to speak to him alone. Curvis always hovered at his shoulder, or one of the sailors was there, or some official concerned with loading their baggage. By midafternoon, when the five of them embarked on the Curward Industrious—a cargo ship of the Curward fleet—no appropriate occasion had presented itself.
To her dismay, no proper occasion arose at any time on the ship, a crowded vessel upon which privacy was nonexistent. The message to her had said “Secretly” not “Urgently,”
