And found herself standing within the circle of Danivon’s arms, her face only a finger’s length from his own.
“Fringe Owldark,” he murmured. “Fringe, don’t fret so. Don’t worry so.” His hands touched her shoulders, the back of her neck and head. “Don’t gnaw over every little thing, Fringe. You can’t chew over every decision. You mustn’t feel it all so much. Don’t be sad. I don’t want you to be sad.”
“Don’t,” she thought she said. “Danivon. Let me alone.”
“I won’t let you alone,” he whispered, putting his lips to her throat at the corner of her jaw, just below her ear. “You’re alone too much.” His tongue made dots of fire down her neck, up onto her cheek. His lips covered hers. “You’re alone all the time.” And “Shhh,” he said when she struggled, only a little.
“Danivon, I don’t want this!”
“Little liar,” he whispered. “Lovely little liar. Owldark the beautiful. Owldark the perverse. Owldark … who makes me shiver, just thinking of her….”
“Danivon….”
There was no one there, no one on the deck. Most of the crew had gone fishing with the Heron Folk. The others of the sideshow were away or asleep. Only if she cried loudly would anyone hear.
She cried softly, so no one would.
Zasper, as requested, met Boarmus in the Swale. At first glance, having no other explanation for Boarmus’s eyes glaring between puffy lids, his haggard cheeks, his slightly trembling hands, Zasper assumed the Provost was ill. Zasper, much aware of his retirement from Council Enforcement, felt it was not his role to offer comment upon the Provost’s health, so he contented himself with a carefully judged, barely adequate obeisance plus the all-purpose word:
“Sir.”
Boarmus beckoned him toward the river. “An excursion boat is just leaving, Ertigon. I have it in mind to see something of the Seldom Isles.” His words were a braying whisper, as though he could not decide whether to say or not to say.
This was a puzzle. “Sir?”
“Accompany me aboard. You can offer commentary.”
“Sir.”
They were the last to board. Boarmus believed the boat would not be spied upon. The dead men hadn’t known he was coming here until just before he left. The dead men hadn’t known he would be taking a boat. If they were busy doing whatever they were doing in Panubi, probably it was safe to talk on a boat in Enarae. Maybe.
The wallowing vessel thrust off immediately and began making its slow way down into the turgid flow of the swamp river. Boarmus moved to the bow, where no one else was standing, and, drawing Zasper close to him, whispered only inches from his ear, “If you know of any benign local gods who still have any clout, old man, summon them up! We’re all in deep, deep trouble, and I need all the help I can get!”
Zasper ostentatiously wiped spittle from the side of his head where Boarmus had sprayed him and regarded the man with distaste. Enough politeness. “What are you up to, Provost?”
Boarmus gripped him harder. “Listen to me, Ertigon. I’ve something to tell you, and pray heaven we can’t be overheard, for if we are, you’re dead and so am I, and likely also your protégés, Danivon Luze and Fringe Owldark, both.”
Zasper started in surprise, glared threateningly, but kept silent. Boarmus had a twitch above his eye and his skin was gray. He looked like a man frightened half to death, not one to chivvy if one wanted sense. Whatever this was, it wasn’t of Boarmus’s doing. “Tell me,” said Zasper.
“You know about Brannigan Galaxity, Ertigon. You know about Brannigan’s Great Question Committee, you know all the members of it came here to Elsewhere.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“What you don’t know is that they’re still here.”
“Still …?” Zasper made no sense of this. “You mean, their bodies are still here?”
Boarmus leaned even closer and began whispering rapidly into Zasper’s ear, reciting his tale in a frenzy of words that tumbled over one another and had to be sorted out and rearranged by their confused listener. He went on talking for some little time. Zasper didn’t interrupt, though his eyes narrowed and his breathing quickened.
Boarmus concluded, “They were supposed to sleep. Wake up once a year and be informed, then go back to sleep. I don’t think they’ve been asleep….”
“Not recently?”
“Not … not ever. I try to imagine. What that would do to someone, some normal person. Being awake, in the Core, all that time….”
“But … even so. That wouldn’t explain—”
“Of course not!” hissed Boarmus. “It doesn’t explain anything. Nothing explains anything. I’ve tried … oh, I’ve tried, I’ve read, everything they left, all their biographies, everything. Nothing explains anything. But what’s happening … it’s coming from the Core. And they’re what was put into the Core. So somehow …”
“You say these people went in there so they could come out once the Great Question had been answered?”
“That’s what the documents say. But Chadra Hume, my predecessor, thinks they meant to come out whenever they decided conditions were right. And in the logs down there, one of the Provosts asked when they would come out and they said when they decided to.”
Zasper shook his head wonderingly. “And they’ve been awake in there, all this time.”
“They must have changed the specifications.”
“Which were designed to keep them … sane, I suppose.”
“I suppose.”
“So now they’re not?”
“I don’t know! I’m not even sure it is them. Is it just a few of them? Maybe one or two? Or is it all of them? Or … is it something else entirely, maybe using their names?”
“Can you shut it down? The Core?”
“No. There’s no way. But I think it … they know we’d like to shut it down. If it were you, you’d know, wouldn’t you? Even if you were crazy … especially if you were crazy, you’d know. You’d suspect!”
“You think they’re after Fringe and Danivon?”
“How would they get at Fringe and Danivon? Fringe and Danivon are in Panubi.
