by Gayle Greeno
That sharing, a personal mindlink with Khar, was wondrous. So wondrous that she never dared let herself delve as profoundly as she might. For when Khar was gone, dead, the link would be sundered, and the thought of another loss, another desertion, hurt more than she could bear. No more losses, she thought, and touched at the familiar lump of the medallion in her pocket.
To be Chosen as a Seeker Veritas meant a gift beyond riches or power, that singular sharing with Khar. True, it required embarking on a tireless search for the truth, not randomly, but in a rigorously supervised and sanctioned role as a Seeker Veritas, a Truth Seeker charged with hearing disputes to determine the veracity of the matter. The gift did not allow one to sit in judgment on one’s fellow beings, although some outsiders interpreted it that way. Why else look so dubiously at a Seeker-Bondmate pair except for the feeling of violation that their presence triggered in some, the sensation that their every thought, every feeling, whether consciously acknowledged or not, could be read, assayed, analyzed. An unfair assessment of their roles, but it happened. She’d tried to argue people out of it before. “If it’s not a formal Seeking, why should a ghatt want to busybody himself through your mind every particle of the day, or any particle of the day?” A ghatt Sought only where instructed to, as part of the ceremony.
For others, the look of the ghatti engendered fear: so close to a common house or barn cat—and yet not. Three to four times the size of an average cat, proportionately longer of limb, more solid of body, the ghatt face broadened more than a cat’s, with ears that sat a shade lower on the head, and the ear tips a little less pointed. In their coloration and their general habits they were practically identical. Too easy to make the assumption of sameness when they were anything but—with their thieving minds sucking the thoughts right out of your brain. Just as cats were sometimes accused of sucking the breath from a sleeping baby’s lips, so did the ghatti with human thoughts—or so the common thinking went. And if they did that, what was a human left with?
Yet in nearly two hundred years of formal Seeker-Bondmate service across the whole of Canderis, with thousands of individual circuits to their credit, never had there been a major rebellion against them. The true dissidents were those who refused to admit that what the ghatti read in their minds during a Seeking was what was actually there, no matter how they might try to delude themselves. And what was read there was left intact.
Well, no sense in worrying about how many cast disapproving stares their way. Never that many, and so be it, they wouldn’t change. Lady bright, it felt good to be coming off an octant-long Truth-Seeking circuit! Did the forty days seem longer now simply because she was older or because she was eager to be back with Oriel for a few brief days? Lokka picked up her feet more sharply, forgetting her tiredness, showing off for the many who greeted the trio as they rode along. Mintor the shoe-maker whooped hello as he lowered the shutters of his shop into place with a crash and slammed the bolts home.
“Some supple green leather just waiting to be boots for you, Doyce-dear,” he cried. For Mintor, pleasure came from finding the right materials to create the perfect boots and shoes for his favorites. If Mintor swore he had the right leather, she should consider it. His boots were minor works of genius—flawlessly molded to the wearer, supple, strong—and expensive.
She jingled the pouch at her side in his direction to let him hear the high-pitched chink that indicated more copper and silver than gold. Seekers drew pay, though not extravagantly. Unless she dipped into her account at Headquarters, she doubted she’d have enough. Worth it or not? “We’ll see, Mintor, and thank you for the thought,” she shouted over her shoulder.
“Almost forgot!” He ran panting for a few steps in her wake. “Rault asked that you stop by, too. Something he owes you.” He halted in consternation as if he’d said too much and hurried back to his bars and locks.
What could Rault possibly owe her, she speculated, eyebrows climbing at the idea, but nothing came to mind. Not that it would be such a bad thing to have a jeweler in one’s debt; would that she did!
Puzzling over the thought, she thumped the ghatta on her rump. The ghatta’s mood still balanced between two worlds, here-and-now alternating with abstracted worry. Blast the ghatta for her silences sometimes. Why wouldn’t Khar share her problems with her? “Rolapin stew,” Doyce began, wondering if Khar were even listening. “Myllard makes the best rolapin stew—to hear the oldsters tell it, nearly as good as the original lapin.”
“Rolapin stew....” The ghatta wrenched herself away from private thoughts, tried to participate. “Not that those oldsters ever tasted the real thing either ... long before their time.”
“No doubt it becomes tastier through generations of memory,” Doyce agreed. “But Myllard’s is still in a class of its own. How many appalling imitations have we consumed on other circuits? Nobody remembers what real lapin tasted like—they were too tame, not used to the wild when they were brought here—but the scientist who generated rolapin didn’t do us a disservice, especially when Myllard’s wife Fala is the chef. ”
At those words Lokka swung into the courtyard that marked Myllard’s Ale House, a large building grown higgledy-piggledy over its plot of land. Doyce tilted her head to admire its lavish, crazy-quilt architecture, and bit her lip to suppress a laugh. It couldn’t be missed, all three stories of it, the first of natural oak, then the next level painted peach, and the final story a sky blue, topped by a green slate roof. Fala’s favorite color, sea foam green, Myllard had confided to her once. Wings and porches and gables jutted in every direction, each touched with fanciful gilded wood carvings. She shook her head at the whimsicality of it all. No granite or marble for Myllard; it didn’t answer his inner soul the way wood did.
Forest green apron flapping around his paunch, Myllard himself came rushing out the front door, hurtling down the beam of light cast through the opening. “I told them you’d be in, said you’d be early if you possibly could,” he roared as he reached up to stroke Khar, one of the few adult non-Seekers who dared the familiarity without reaping a sheaf of scratches. He swatted Lokka’s withers and then pounded Doyce on the thigh. She winced; being friendly with Myllard was a tactile business, his sense of touch reassuring himself and his friends that they really were so.
“Edert! Edert! Take Lokka round back. No skimping, now. There s other work to do, but not while our favorite little mare is waiting.”
Khar leaped earthward light as thistledown and rubbed once in greeting against Myllard’s stout, gaitered calf. Doyce dismounted more slowly, wondering if her leg muscles really wanted to stretch. A knee popped, loud as an exploding chestnut by the fire. She looked around disingenuously, pretending the sound came from somewhere else in the yard. The muscles and joints would limber up, she knew, but it wasn’t as easy as it had been at the beginning. But then thirty-seven was old by the ways of Seekers, the age at which most went into semiretirement or returned to the lives they’d left before they’d been Chosen. And Lady willing, she and Khar had at least another seven or eight years left before retirement. After all, what other life did she have to return to?
Myllard capered around her, patting one shoulder, then the other as they started across the yard. “Parcellus and Per’la are in, and Rolf and Chak. Can’t say they waited dinner for you, inconsiderate devils, though I swore to them you’d be here.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jenret Wycherley saunter out the door and swing left, heading toward the stables. No mistaking the black garb. Rawn followed, then onyx-statue froze as he looked back over his shoulder at her and Khar. Should she shout a hello? She decided not. In all honesty, she didn’t care that much for the man. He’d trained two years ahead of her, and while they maintained a cordial work relationship, that more than sufficed. A totally vain, self-indulgent man. She wrinkled her nose at the thought, then turned her attention back to Myllard.
“Did Oriel come in early?” she asked.
Myllard stopped short, his mouth a
little, round “o” as he seemed to consider the question. One hand tugged at the tuft of faded sandy hair over his left ear, and the lines around his eyes grew deeper, more pronounced. The pause stretched painfully long, enough to make her consider why, but then he rushed ahead as if to make up for lost time. “No, no, not that I’ve seen. Did ye think he’d be in by now?”
She touched his shoulder to reassure him that he wasn’t at fault. “No, just a chance.” So Oriel hadn’t read her mind this time. Khar stiffened and pressed herself against Doyce’s leg. She reached down and stroked her head in sympathy; she wasn’t sure she wanted any other company than Oriel’s tonight. Just food and ale and bed. Still, Parcellus and Per’la and Rolf and Chak were friends, more than fellow-Seekers. It could have been far, far worse company. It could have been Jenret Wycherley if he’d seen her. Doyce made a face at the thought. She just wasn’t in the mood for his superciliousness tonight, even for the space of one casual drink, though with Jenret it was far more likely to be more than one.
“And I suppose you’ll want rolapin stew—two helpings, at least—I can tell you look hungry.” The innkeeper winked at Doyce, not his usual twinkle of shared complicity, but almost a physical tic of nervousness. What ailed the man? She looked at him more closely in the harsh light spilling out of the door, but the light and shadows made it hard to judge anything. “And while we’re at it, perhaps those two helpings on two separate plates in case it should overflow ... or someone wants to share the meal with you.”
She nodded agreeably and let Myllard shepherd her into the Ale House, Khar by her side.
The carillon in the tower of the Lady’s Bethel peeled a two-note hesitation, then a cascade of seven descending chimes, and Mahafny Annendahl slammed the heavy, leather-bound book shut, keeping one finger in her place. Should she mark it, she wondered, then shook her head, pulling her hand free. She hadn’t absorbed a jot of what she’d been reading—genotypes, phenotypes, damn that little monk puttering in his pea patch so many centuries ago on another world. It had been pretense, something to keep her occupied until dinner with her nephew Jenret. She’d considered canceling dinner after her meeting late that afternoon with Swan Maclough; the summons had been unexpected and unnerving. True, they were cousins, but cousins who had journeyed their very separate ways since childhood, one rising to Seeker General of the Seekers Veritas, the other becoming a respected eumedico, one of the Senior Staff. Friendship remained, but their respective roles emphasized the disparity of their different worlds.
The last thing she’d expected today was to hear from Swan, not with the capital buzzing with the news. Swan should have been far too busy, and she was—except that she had needed her cousin’s knowledge, both professional and personal. But now Swan’s suppositions and half-knowledge were hers, the chorus to a lament, a melody of despair she had inked in through years of research. How much of a facade could she marshal to hide it from Jenret tonight?
She rose, slid a lucifer from the emerald enameled box and struck a light, touching the wick of the candle in its silver holder, curved like a fanciful smiling fish. The box and the candlestick, she realized, were both gifts from Jenret. The presents followed no pattern that she could trace, not birth days, not naming days, nor halidays, no regular schedule. Simply whenever the spirit moved him. The giftings always a tad too extravagant for her taste and sense of propriety; they were not blood kin, just kin by marriage. Strange, to have two meetings in one day with kin and near-kin, she who had so few close relatives or friends left.
Dragging the candlestick to one side of the cherry-framed mirror, she began to work her fingers through her hair, twisting and turning the long silvered locks into a chignon. Her fingers reflected in the looking glass, darting about, long and slender and white as fish bones, skeletal fish swimming through a sea of silver hair. She reached down for the silver fastener in the jumble on top of her bureau, then tossed it back, reached into her pocket for her old leather and wood fastener, and clipped it into place, shook her head to make sure it was secure.
Well, what was she going to tell Jenret tonight? Thrusting her hands in the pockets of her white laboratory coat, she wheeled away from the mirror and walked toward the window. Or what might he tell her? Affected he might be at times, but he was no young fool; and every underling knew more about some things, certain things, than his superiors did. Best to draw him out first and see.
She leaned elbows against windowsill, rested her head on clasped hands. She’d never mentioned Doyce Marbon to him before, nor had he ever mentioned Doyce to her. No reason that he should; Doyce Marbon was one of a hundred and fifty Seeker pairs that he knew. More, if you counted those retired. But she’d mention Doyce tonight; how, she wasn’t sure, but she’d find a way, had to find one. Jenret might prove no help at all, but if he could, even inadvertently ... well, she’d cling to whatever fragile straws she could find. But shifting some of the burden on him was unfair, not unless she armed him with all she knew, or worse, suspected, and she wasn’t ready for that yet. Still so much more research to do, so many more questions to ask. Damn all that she hadn’t been able to concentrate more on her reading!
Footsteps crackled along the cindered path, and she peered down, waving at the dark-haired young man nearly swallowed by the wall’s dark shadow. No question it was he, Rawn silhouetted near his leg. She’d hoped the ghatt might stay away, that she might not have to meet those questioning eyes. Jenret swore on his honor that Rawn would never ’speak her unless she requested it, but tonight she feared things might slip past her conscious control. She waved again, palm down to forestall him coming up to her private chambers, then turned from the window and stripped off her white coat, tossed it over the chair. Somehow she didn’t want any physical reminder of being a eumedico tonight; her secret knowledge more than sufficed.
Doyce and Myllard paused in the entryway, then the innkeep absently rubbed her back before heading behind the crowded counter while Doyce and Khar pushed their way between the trestles to the corner where the Seekers traditionally sat. Rolf looked up and waved, nudged Parcellus, deep in thought over a puzzle-toy. The ghatta sitting next to Parcellus and the ghatt at Rolf’s side were already aware of the newcomers. Chak rose to his feet and stretched, head and shoulders dipping down and up in an elegant, fluid motion that belied his solidity, a staid and proper gentleman ghatt, gray coat, dapper white feet and a hint of white at the ruff, a discreet jabot. He stretched up, whiskers coarse against Doyce’s hand, and then turned with a delicate greet-sniff to Khar.
If Seeker and Bond truly did assume each other’s mental signature after years of companionship, Doyce counted Rolf and Chak as living examples. Rolf Cardamon, elegantly neat, trim—too trim? she asked herself—and gray-goateed, touched her hand in brief affection and shifted so she could sit. Although in his late forties, Rolf looked at least ten years older, and she worried, not-for the first time, about his health. Skin and muscle blanched vellum-thin over his bones. Chak at twenty-six could best be described as venerable, although his age sat more lightly on him than it did on his Bondmate. Rolf and Chak, she realized with a pang, could probably manage no more than a season or two of circuits before retirement became necessity rather than choice. They’d tried retiring once before, applied for half-duty as trainers, but it hadn’t worked, and they’d petitioned to ride the circuits again. “Myllard’s just opened a cask of New Golden,” Rolf greeted her. “It’s not at all bad. Shall I get you some?” She gave him a grateful smile and turned to extricate herself from Per’la’s frenzy of affection.
Rolf and Chak might be subdued, self-contained, but Per‘la was anything but—a fluffy, long-haired ghatta the color and sweetness of a buttercream bonbon. Simply stated, Per’la loved the world and everything in it, her round peridot eyes wide with pleasure at every new happening. And at this moment, Doyce and Khar were the newest event. But that didn’t make her a distracted simpleton on the job, far from it. She’d reviewed Parse and Per‘la at several Seekings near th
e completion of their training; the ghatta held a place as one of the most discerning, sensitive ghatti on circuit, capable of delicate transmittings without losing the human nuances. Sometimes Doyce teased the ghatta that Per’la’s first tongue had been human speech, not falanese, not mindspeech.
Without meaning to, Doyce found herself staring at Per‘la’s Bondmate, Parcellus, his carroty hair wisping in all directions, in need of a trim as usual. The Lady only knew what had drawn Per’la to Choose Parse as her Bondmate. Parcellus Rudyard seemed an ill match for the ghatta, a young man of sudden intensities and equally sudden lapses, impetuous one moment, foot-dragging the next as if the two sides of himself warred over who had the upper hand. If Parcellus were truly engrossed in his puzzle, she doubted he’d have much to say for the evening, but in one of his sudden turns, he became voluble, thin, aesthete’s hands orchestrating the air, words of welcome spilling forth.
“Good to see you well, Parse,” she managed as she strove to untangle herself from Per‘la’s affections, “but Per’la’s demanded first greetings.” The ghatta wreathed herself round and round Doyce’s body, ducking under one arm, bouncing across her lap, head butting under her chin. Khar looked on, momentarily diverted, edging along the bench so that Per’la’s long, plumed tail didn’t swat her in the face.
Rolf, competently balancing three steins of New Golden from the bar, made the traditional greeting first, cutting through Parse’s chatter. “Mindwalk if ye will.” It was that greeting which threw open all levels of their conversation so that each ghatt might mindspeak with the other Seekers, not just with its Bondmate. Without invitation the ghatti were too reticent to break into another Bondmate’s thoughts unless it proved absolutely crucial. The Bond was sacred, and to trespass into the mind of another ghatt’s Bondmate and share converse displayed an unspeakable rudeness and ill-breeding.
