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 self-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
