Finders-Seekers Page 7

  Without a word, without a look in his direction, Mahafny circled the table and came to stand in front of the ghatt. Rawn slanted his head back. “Rawn, I apologize for startling you. I had no intention of hurting you.” Rawn’s head dipped in gracious acceptance, then snapped up at the next words. “If I intend to do bodily harm, I am generally quite successful at it; therefore, this was obviously not an attempt.” She stalked by the ghatt to the sideboard, reached behind the brandy and selected an earthenware bottle glazed in earth-browns and greens. “A little celvassy, I think, rather than brandy.”

  Jenret resumed his seat, cradled his glass. “She didn’t mean it,” he mindspoke. “She tends to be a bit gruff sometimes. Powerful stuff. ”

  Rawn hunkered down, front paws tucked comfortably inward against his chest. “She meant it, every word of it.” His mindvoice sounded calm and even. “I like her for that, if not for the sentiment. No ‘I’m sorry I fwightened the fuzzy-wuzzy widdle kitty.’ Refreshing.”

  Bottling his laughter, Jenret half.rose for manner’s sake as his aunt resumed her seat, celvassy in hand. “Rawn thinks rather more of you than he did before. You do have a way with ghatti, whether you admit it or not.” He sat, tried to find a comfortable place against the spokes and spindles, failed, and leaned forward, resting his forearms against the table. “Beware the celvassy. You know how powerful it is. It’s a wonder it doesn’t self-ignite.”

  She nodded, serious, but didn’t speak, picked up her napkin and unfolded it, refolded it, pleating and repleating it, fingers white against the bleached cloth. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped, her fingers busy. Waiting her out, he examined the dining room again, admired the wainscoting, narrow strips of blondest birch, the plaster of the upper wall tinted a faint buttercream shade, all of it chosen as a backdrop for the few good pieces of furniture.

  “Myllard would approve of a room like this,” he mused, and the thought of Myllard spun him full-circle to his worries at the Ale House over the earlier events of the day. “Are they done yet?” he asked Rawn. “Have they told her? How’s she taking it?” He took a fierce pull at his brandy, grimaced at the sting and fire; it wasn’t meant to be drunk like that, and he knew better.

  Rawn extended a paw, claws working, spoke simultaneously with Mahafny: “Yes, from what I can pick up, she has been told ...” Jenret heard as his aunt said, “So, what do you know about that Marbon woman?”

  “Strange you should ask, I was just thinking about her. The Seeker General gave dispensation for her to be told ...” he searched for the word he wanted. “Informally, I guess you could say. To hear it from friends, amongst friends, not rushed into Headquarters and forced to keep a stiff upper lip. Given the seriousness of the situation, it surprised me—that and knowing that the Seeker General never overuses ‘compassion.’ Rather like you, for that matter.” He made a face of apology. “That was uncalled for.” And his dark brows bunched in consternation. “But how did you happen to know her name, know her involvement, even if only peripherally as Oriel’s lover?”

  Mahafny’s hands stilled, napkin in a neat roll between them. “I know more than the name. I knew her well, once upon a time.” The phrase distracted her. “Isn’t that the way all the old stories begin?” she whispered to herself, then continued directly to Jenret. “I had the training of her as a eumedico some years ago. Before you were Chosen by Rawn.”

  A soft whistle escaped him, despite himself. “I never thought! Knew she had some training as a eumedico, but I never made the connection with you. Why’d she leave? That’s a rarity.”

  She took a long sip of the celvassy, obscuring her expression behind the glass. She swallowed once, convulsively, and he blinked in sympathy. One savored celvassy in tiny, ritualistic sips; drink it down like water and you’d pay for it. Her eyes watered slightly, from the drink, he had no doubt. “A ... crisis of ... faith, I guess you’d say.” The words came, each as measured as a ceremonial celvassy sip. “We all have them, now and again, but Doyce’s was worse than most. Faith and spirit have been bruised more often than most with her through the years. She tries a new life each time, changes outwardly, though I’m not sure how much she’s changed inwardly.” She leaned forward, gray eyes intent on him. “You know what it’s like to be bruised in spirit, Jenner.”

  The pet name from childhood flooded him with memories, memories he didn’t relish recalling. Mouth open to protest, he stopped. No good denying what was true.

  “Watch over her, Jenner ... if you can. She needs a friend.”

  “I don’t even know her well, let alone like her very much,” he objected. “She has her own circle of friends. As do I.”

  Mahafny’s gray eyes still fixed on his, pinning him, willing him to agree. “Well, you need an equal, if not a friend, and she’s more than likely to be that—equally stubborn, and obstinate, even if she does it with a tad less flourish than you. There’s honor and loyalty in you both as well.”

  She spread her hands, napkin knocked to the floor unregarded. “I’m worried, Jenret. Terribly worried. About her, about things I don’t even know enough about to invite worry. All I ask is that you keep a friendly eye on her, aid her should she cross your path. Nothing more. Agreed?”

  “I would anyway, she’s a Seeker. But agreed.” There was more to it than that; he knew it damn well, and it upset him more than he could consciously analyze. Well, let her have her silence if she must; he was inquisitive, he was a Seeker, after all. There’d come a time when he’d unravel this, find the pull-thread, with or without her.

  They stood in the farthest reach of the lamplight at the front of the Ale House. The moon hung heavy and ripe, one day to five of its satellites’ prime, and an eerie halo surrounded it, verdigrising the silver-gold to silvery-green. “You don’t have to go,” Doyce repeated and stepped beyond the lamplight, the change so sudden she felt she’d stepped off a precipice; she shuddered, wishing her mind had selected another simile. The street lamps and torches hung few and far between as one reached beyond the city center, but she sensed the nervous energy of the ghatta at her side rather than seeing her. The ghatta loped ahead and seated herself just in front of the patch of light from the next street torch. She sat immobile, shades of black and white and silver in the weak light.

  “No, you don’t have to go. It can wait ’til morning,” the ghatta commented. “Let it be until then.”

  She caught up with the ghatta and squatted down, cupping her face with her hands, fingers behind ears, thumbs tracing along the white chin. “I have to say good-bye. Now, not tomorrow with everyone else. Now. Why not go back to the room and wait for me?”

  “Because then you couldn’t ’speak with Saam.” The ghatta’s eyes pooled with bottomless dark sorrow, pupils dilated to the limit to catch every teasing bit of light, the normal cherry pink of her nose blossom white from stress.

  “All right, then, let’s both go and get it done with. Myllard promised to leave the door unlatched.” She didn’t want to say that she was glad the ghatta was along for other reasons—despite the fact she wanted nothing more than to be alone, protection was necessary. Foolish she’d been to rush off without staff or sword, but without them, even the most desperate cutpurse would still hesitate to attack a Seeker and Bondmate. A lone Seeker without the tabard looked like any other late-night returning reveler—fair game. The ghatta pulled free from her grasp and started ahead, twitching her ears in annoyance until Doyce’s footsteps sounded behind her with no sign of hesitation.

  Khar’s senses twitched left, right, all around without a turn of her head. Every hair alive, drinking in each particle of activity or strange stillness around them. Doyce walked on behind her, aware that Khar was in charge for this journey and that all she had to do was follow. Follow and think, think and follow, as they wove through town toward Headquarters and the room where Oriel was laid out and where Saam waited, tortured in mind and body by his double loss of Bond and mindspeech.

  Oriel Faltran had been eight year
s younger than she was, nineteen to her twenty-seven when she had arrived at Headquarters for training. He and Saam had already been there a year, with another year of training before they became Travelers, Circuiters. She had been so afraid, afraid of herself, for herself, and of and for the little ghatten Khar’pern, rummaging through the corners of her mind when she least expected it, tumbling her shuttered memories with all the abandon of a kitten loosed in a basket of yarn, unraveling her thoughts, re-tangling them, unknotting things she had hidden from herself for so long. If this was what it meant to be a Seeker, she wasn’t sure she could handle it or withstand the constant contact. But to fail at this the way she’d failed at so much else—her inability to be a dutiful, docile daughter; her career with the eumedicos; her failure to save her husband Varon, her infant Briony, and her stepson Vesey from the fire, while she had survived. She’d prayed to the Lady about this new course that she’d had no choice in selecting, but she was sure of the price of success. It was always too high, and she a pauper lacking the emotional coin to pay.

  White-lipped, shaking so hard she could barely knock on the solid oaken door of Headquarters, she had stood there, the ghatten clutched to her chest while it batted with feather feet at the locket around her neck, then followed her thought with its mindwalking, probing and working its way through her thoughts, forcing Varon’s face to flash unbidden before her eyes.

  Her stomach heaved and her head pounded as the ghatten made her remember the time when he had given her the locket, his mother’s, and shown her the portrait inside, his baby picture. She had known then with a certainty that when they had a child, that was how the baby would look. And Briony had.

  Doyce knocked harder at the door, knuckles bruising. Lady help me, what if no one hears, what if I have to leave? The ghatten purred comfort against the base of her throat, willing thoughts of contentment at her. It wasn’t enough, not by a long patch.

  The door swung open a crack and a face peered out. The face, she realized with giddy surprise, was attempting to grow a mustache—she clung to that detail, determined to build around it, swaying on her feet with weariness. Deep blue eyes, storm-blue, medium brown hair worn ear length, a pleasant, open face except for the silly smear of a mustache trying to overcome adolescence.

  “Got a live one this time,” the voice sounded cheerful. “Door’s been creaking and groaning so much with the rain change that we tend to ignore anything but a good hearty knock. Fact is, that’s what the knocker’s for. You’ve got to be more forceful,” he bantered as he pushed open the door and stepped out. “By the Lady, what’s wrong?” he queried as he caught sight of the ghatten at her chest. “Oh, that’s the way of it, is it? Here, give over.” And with that he scooped Khar from her quaking arms, cradling the ghatten against his shoulder and clasping her with his free arm. “It gets better, it gets easier, don’t worry,” he consoled. He concentrated, brow creasing, almost looking through her for a moment. “Don’t worry, Saam will be here in a flash.” And he guided her through the door and into the entry hall.

  A steel-gray ghatt swirled around their feet, golden eyes full of curiosity and concern. She had never seen a gray that color, she thought inconsequentially, almost a blue-gray, with the sheen of carefully tempered, blued steel.

  “Novie, Saam. Take the wee tyke, can you? Take her to the nursery.” With all the joy of an adolescent obliged to babysit an infant cousin, the ghatt gingerly picked up Khar by the scruff of the neck and trotted down the hall. The ghatten rowled and kicked her feet, then hung silent as Saam shook her once. Doyce trembled as the little ghatten’s dismay and fear reached back at her, clinging in her brain.

  “You’ve got to learn to control, to guide,” Oriel chided. “They’ll wear you ragged at first, until they learn how to reach properly. They’re so inquisitive that they want to explore and learn everything. They don’t mean it, but they don’t know any better. It’s up to you to teach her restraint.”

  Doyce pulled free of his arm, though she could ill do without its support. “And why do you think I’m here?” she snapped, and sagged against the wall and fell sound asleep, her thoughts blessedly hers alone for the first time in the octant since the ghatten had ‘Printed on her.

  And so Oriel and Saam had been the first Bondmates she had met at Headquarters. In a closed society where she wasn’t sure she’d fit in, far older than the other Novies, or Novitiates, not wise enough to be at peer level with the Instructors, she felt caught in the middle, betwixt and between, except for the moments when Oriel and Saam made time for Doyce and Khar’pern. And they had made extra time, guiding Doyce and Khar, making them practice their lessons and exercises over and over again. The first time she had been able to intentionally mindspeak, “Khar, do you want to go down by the brook?” And Khar had answered back, “Now? Can Oriel and Saam come, too?” They had consciously communicated with each other!

  Oriel had smiled at them both. “Very good, but try it again on the intimate mode, not the broadcast mode. Saam and I don’t want to know everything you’re saying, do we?”

  The ghatten had launched herself at the nearly full-grown blue-gray ghatt and bowled him off his feet. “Do too!” she crowed, and Saam rolled on his back, belly exposed, paws waving in mock surrender.

  “She’s right, do too!” Oriel exclaimed and then kissed her as if he were the elder, not she.

  A friend, a companion, a lover, she had never expected any of this after Varon’s death. But her relationship with Oriel had unfolded with a sweet harmony that left her breathless. Each on their individual circuits after both had finished training, leaving messages for each other in towns they would pass through, hoping that their leaves would match. Engaging in a little good-natured finagling with some of the other Seekers to make sure that they would. Their times together swelled rich with sharing, or at least Oriel’s sharing. Of late he had begun to speak about what they would do in a few more years when semiretirement came and they no longer both rode circuit. Couldn’t he just let it be, let things flow? To face the end of a fourth life frightened her more than she could begin to acknowledge to Oriel or herself. And she knew the life Oriel so willingly offered her—after all, she’d tried it and failed: Varon’s and Briony’s and Vesey’s deaths proof-positive of that. She’d been avoiding Oriel’s question, avoiding thinking about the difference in their ages, avoiding answering him.

  The bronze statue held pride of place in the center of the Headquarters’ courtyard, old bronze with the patina of years mellowing its surface, tempering the edges, muting the curves. The bronze portraiture of a young man sprawled in comfort against a tree stump while a ghatta stood with front paws balanced against his raised knee, the expressions of both hinting at the revelation of some hidden, private humor. Matthias Vandersma, founder of the Seekers Veritas, and the first Bondmate of them all, Kharm. She’d always counted it as luck that the ghatta’s name sounded so similar to Khar’s.

  As had generations of Seekers before her, she stopped to touch the bronze ghatta’s head and Matthias’s elbow; both spots satiny smooth and bright from years of surreptitious touches. There was no luck left, but she touched anyway out of habit, the metal cool and sleek against her fingers.

  Now it was too late to answer Oriel at all.

  And again Doyce found herself in front of the heavy oaken door, come to say good-bye to Oriel, not to greet him. She knocked, jarring her knuckles, in remembrance of that first time. She would say farewell, just as she had to so many others through the years: her mother, back turned in rigid denial as Doyce had trudged off down the dusty cart track toward Gaernett and her hard-won right to join the eumedicos; the eumedicos who had ultimately expelled her, who now when most saw her, crossed to the other side of the street; Varon, Briony, Vesey, gone beyond reach of farewells, explanations, apologies. She thought she’d learned how to say it, to do it, to survive it, but it seemed new each time.

  The door swung open without a sound, Sarrett and T‘ss poised behind it, haloed by the entr
y light. Everyone called them the most beautiful of the Seeker-Bond pairs and, some whispered behind their backs, the coolest, most restrained, only their exceptional looks on display, emotions camouflaged. But Sarrett’s white-blonde hair hung disheveled, her eyes puffy and pink-rimmed, her clothing rumpled. T’ss, so white that the paleness of his skin stood out through his fur in contrast to his dark tiger stripes, leaned against her leg, head slumped, blue eyes listless.

  “Oh, Doyce!” Sarrett cried out, and then began to weep again, noisily, messily, pulling herself up short with obvious effort and dragging a crumpled, sodden handkerchief across her eyes. “Sorry, sorry, Doyce.” She swallowed, laboring to choke the tears down. “It’s just that we all miss him so, already. He’s in the ‘Tiring Room. I’ll take you there.”

  She evaded the hand seeking her elbow. “No, it’s not necessary. I know my way.” The sharpness in her tone took her aback; she hadn’t intended it, or mayhap she had. Sarrett pulled back, rebuked, and Khar rubbed hard against Doyce’s leg, forcing mind contact.

  “Think beyond yourself. Others loved him, too,” the ghatta chided.

  The words and tone stung uncomfortably. It was something Oriel would have said—had said—on another occasion. What loss had she been lamenting, holding it selfishly tight to herself as if others couldn’t comprehend? She reached for Sarrett’s hand. “I’m trying to be brave. It’s not working, though. Would you go with me, at least to the door?” Sarrett’s smile gleamed, genuine as a child’s, something Doyce had never noticed before. She suspected Oriel had.

  Oriel had noticed everything, she now acknowledged in retrospect: Rolf’s and Chak’s real fear of growing old, Parcellus’s worry over his flightiness and his dependence on Per‘la. And she knew why Byrta and M’wa had felt compelled to recite their stories solo without the aid of their Bonds and Twins: Oriel had been the only one who had cared enough to know M‘wa and P’wa and to be able to tell them apart, to know whether Bard or Byrta had begun or finished a sentence and to allow each to speak complete thoughts as individuals, to know they were similar but not one and the same. And what had he noticed about her? she thought wistfully as she and Sarrett started down the hall, gray-polished marble floor reflecting a ghostly pair. T’ss and Khar followed after, touching at shoulder and hip, tails swinging low, heads low.