Finders-Seekers by Gayle Greeno

Author:Gayle Greeno [Greeno, Gayle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2010-03-01T07:00:00+00:00

The rest of the morning rippled with blurred images, but still, despite her wishing she could will it otherwise, certain scenes stayed in sharp focus, frozen forever into a separateness, framed by fears that forced her to peruse them again and again, no way to avoid watching them replay themselves in her mind:

Khar clutched the little yellow-striped ghatten by the scruff of the neck, rendering it immobile in the time-old grip of a mother ghatta. He squalled and kicked, frenetic with fear, then hung limp. Khar rolled her eyes in Doyce’s direction and she inserted the pipette, managed to drip some of the diluted milk and herbal infusion into the ghatten’s pink mouth while he choked and sputtered, then swallowed. A thin stream ran off his chin, soaked his ruff and belly. Khar at last deposited the ghatten into Bard’s cupped hands, and he carried him outside, nestling him beside the old ghatt asleep in a patch of sun. Ma’ow stirred, then pillowed his massive head across the ghatten’s back in protection and fell asleep again with a deep sigh.

Mahafny and Harrap had taken charge of preparing the bodies for burial, carrying Asa’s inside the house to join the bodies of his wife and daughter. Gently they sponged them, straightened their limbs, closed the gaping wounds, smoothed the tangled hair. A labor of love for strangers destined for a journey to join the Lady, with only strangers to see them on their way.

Mahafny had called Doyce into the room where Asa lay, his body naked and a sheet drawn up barely to his hips. “Take a look at the wounds, Doyce, and tell me what you see.”

Aware of herself, of her every reaction, Doyce viewed it all, examined, felt Mahafny’s strong, thin hand pinched tight around her wrist, forcing her to concentrate, to see the how, the why, the wonder of individual bones, muscles, sinews, ligaments, their connections and interactions, what disease or injury does or does not do to the human body, its ways of compensating and coping. The old lessons, so hard-learned, rang in her head, as did Mahafny’s new commands.

“Look. There. And there.” Mahafny gestured to gashes on the chest and stomach, lowered the sheet further to show the near-disembowelment. “What do you make of it, Doyce?” Patience in her words, patience but the expectation of the correct answer the first time. No fumbling or mumbling or guessing from a prize pupil.

Moving closer. Doyce narrowed her vision, changed her angle, checked from another direction. In several locations, four deep lacerations, gashes roughly parallel to each other. Deeper as they extended downward. The surrounding skin sometimes puckered, torn with puffy ragged edges, unlike the clean sweep of knife or sword that she identified elsewhere on the body. The marks lower on the belly, deeper from a powerful force, crisscrossing each other as if the attacker had sought a new vantage from which to rake. If Asa hadn’t been wearing a heavy leather belt, the claws would have touched his vitals almost immediately.

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