Duane, Diane - Harbinger 1 by Duane Diane

Author:Duane, Diane
Language: eng
Format: epub

THEHARBINGERTRILOGY

"And who are you supposed to be?" said Elinke.

Enda looked at her with surprising gentleness. "One who knows," she said.

Elinke looked scornfully over at Gabriel. "You make friends wherever you go, don't you?" she said. She turned to Enda and said, "Watch out for yourself. Don't trust him. He tends to kill his friends."

"Death comes to us all eventually," the fraal said, "and trust is no better than fear at warding it off."

Elinke's eyes widened a little, an old habit that Gabriel knew from of old when she had been caught a little off guard.

"Mot−toes and mysticism won't do much good either," Elinke snapped and turned away without another glance at Gabriel.

Gabriel sat down again very slowly, acutely aware of glances—some angry, some merely suspicious—from the table to which Elinke was returning. He was equally aware that some of the people there were now sitting in ways that suggested they were carrying sidearms to which they wanted ready access. They shouldn't be armed in port. They shouldn't be.

"Well," Enda said softly after a moment, sitting down again beside Gabriel. She reached out for her wine. "So that is Captain Dareyev. She is in great distress."

"She is? What about me?" Gabriel muttered. His dinner was now like lead inside him, and the glow from half of two bottles of kalwine had burned in minutes to cinders.

"Do not expect me not to see both sides of a situation," Enda observed, "or as many sides as it has. If fraal have one gift that has both complicated matters for us and made them more simple, that is it. Her distress does not only involve you, though, or the matters in which you are involved. There is something else on her mind."

"I thought you said you weren't much of a mindwalker," Gabriel said.

"I am not, compared to some, but faces are easy to read. Her eyes were not on you for much of the time while she was railing at you. Did you not notice? She was looking at someone else."

Gabriel did not say out loud that he had been having so much trouble looking directly at Elinke that this minor detail could very well have eluded him. "Really? And who would it have been, do you think?"

"I am expert at faces, but not that expert," Enda said. "You will probably find out in time." She looked at him with an expression that was unusually sorrowful, even for a fraal's face that could look mournful with great ease. "Probably we should go. You plainly are not enjoying the evening any more."

Gabriel nodded and looked up to see where the man doing table service had gone. He paid, having thumbed a couple of extra dollars' worth of credit onto the billing card before touch−ing his own card to it, and then stood up. He walked past the marines' table without a glance at them and headed out into the street. Silently, like a pale, drifting fragment of evening mist, Enda came after him.

They walked down

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