by Gayle Greeno
And then the naming day this afternoon. Damaris, so much like Jenret with her dark hair and blue eyes, had contrived to whisper a warning before the ceremony. “Have you talked about names with Jenret? You do understand that it’s family tradition to give the children names beginning with J.”
She thought it over, realized she’d missed the obvious. Jadrian, Jenret’s father; Jared, his dead brother, Jacobia, his sister. And Damaris had had little choice but to name Jacobia as she had, since it couldn’t be revealed that Jadrian was not her father, a shell of a man, a body with no brain after Jared had swept it clean. “I understand,” she said, patting Damaris’s hand. Understand she did, but she didn’t much care for the idea.
Thus she’d been surprised when Jenret stood stiffly in front of Harrap, Bard and Jacobia on his left, holding the girl baby, and Arras and Francie on the right, with the boy. “What do you name these children before the eyes of Our Lady and of your friends and relatives?” Harrap had asked.
He’d hesitated, longer than Doyce had thought possible, color sweeping up the back of his neck, burning his ears. Not from embarrassment, but laboring in the grip of strong emotions. At last he’d spoken. “All family traditions must expand and grow as families expand and grow. It’s been tradition for all children of this Wycherley branch to bear names that begin with ‘J,’ and to honor that I name my daughter—our daughter,” he caught Doyce’s gaze, “Jenneth. But in honor of my wife, Doyce, and my mother, Damaris, I proclaim our son Diccon. With their mother’s permission, of course.” Diccon, Jenneth, two good, solid names.
As Damaris and Inez herded most of the guests from the room after the ceremony to start the party below, Khar’s voice had issued from the closet. “It’s stuffy in here. We need fresh air. Rawn, Saam, if you please.”
In total abashment, tripping over each other and their own feet, the two ghatts had slunk into the closet. No one except Sarrett had laid eyes on the ghatten, and it dawned on Doyce that she’d never wormed out of Khar who the father was. “You don’t suppose ... ?” she asked Jenret.
Head held high, Khar marched out, amber eyes twinkling and triumphant. She looked thin as a rail, her suddenly slim sides saggy below. A surreptitious hand on her own abdomen, Doyce winced in agreement. Behind her came Rawn, careful and fussy as if he held an egg in his mouth, a coal black ghatten painted with almost circular gray-brown stripes, its tiny nose bright pink. After him came Saam, quizzical but capable, carrying a steel-gray ghatten, and again the ghatten boasted the heritage of its mother, the same circular stripings.
Mahafny gasped, laughed nervously. “She didn’t! I mean, I know it’s possible, but ...”
A slow parade of the room, the momentary laying of each ghatten in Doyce’s hands, their tiny claws working, little faces scrunched as they butted blindly against her palm, and then the two ghatts returned their charges to the closet.
“If Jenret can honor past and present, then we have as well,” Saam said, “and Khar felt it was necessary to heal the past.”
“We three have shared much together,” Rawn added, “and Khar has let us share more.”
“You’re making it damnably hard to keep the genealogy charts straight,” Mahafny sputtered, looking faintly embarrassed.
“Ghatti don’t need genealogy charts.” Khar’s tail S-curved around the closet door and she disappeared.
“Well you bloody do, now!”
Remembering the earlier scene, Doyce began to laugh, could hear Khar chuckling. “Don’t blame me if you become known as Khar of the Loose Morals.”
“Only puritanical humans could think such a thing. Didn’t notice Harrap taking it amiss, did you?”
The wind picked up outside, made Doyce wonder if they’d have snow, but on looking outside she saw the eight Disciple moons around the Lady moon were bright and full. The turn of the year, a new year. She gasped, lurched back as a dark shadow brushed the window, regained her poise as she heard a plaintive scratching.
Bursting out of the closet, Khar rushed to the window. “Hurry, it’s cold, and Koom’s so tired,” she implored Doyce. The window stuck when she tried to pull it up, her abdominal muscles too lax and weak, so she concentrated all the power she could muster in her shoulders, shoving upward so hard the window frame bit her hands.
“What’s he doing here, why isn’t he with Swan?” As she opened the window and the ghatt staggered inside, bells began to toll. Once ruddy, now rust-colored and thin, Koom dragged himself onto her lap. “I came to tell you,” he rasped, “that Swan’s dead.” Tears dripped down Doyce’s cheeks, pattered on Koom. “Thought I could beat the bells, tell you first.” He swallowed, licked his chops. “You’re to be the next Seeker General, Doyce. You and Khar. It’s what Swan wanted.”
“But, but ... it’s not what Swan wants, it’s what the Seekers decide, vote on! I’m not suitable Seeker General material, I’ve a family to raise. ”
“Would you refuse her wish, then?” His eyes searched hers, looking for doubts, looking for strength, looking for truth. “You’ll be voted in, never fear. After all, we ghatti do have a say in how our Bonds cast their votes.” He paused, eyes closing tiredly. “You’re the only one who can help knit Canderis together. You’ve done it unconsciously once, and now you must do it consciously, bit by bit, stitch by stitch. Swan knew that, prayed she could survive long enough for you to come into your powers. She died easy knowing you were ready.”
“What about you?” She stroked the thin sides, the ribs so near the surface. “Will you stay... or will you go? Can you find a reason for staying? I need you, Khar and I need your advice, your wisdom, so desperately. Don’t leave us, I beg you!”
The ghatt blinked once as a tear hit him squarely in the middle of his head. “I stayed beyond my first Bond’s passing because Swan needed me and I needed her. Even though we never Bonded—I wasn’t as brave as Parm.”
“Will you go to the woods ... or to the Elders?” The question wasn’t easy for Khar to ask: some ghatti wasted away and died after a beloved Bond’s death, and Koom looked nearly ready to do so; others found a communal home, a communal mind with the Elders, some completely mind, others living a sort of half-life, existing between two worlds. Bodies of substance, minds of the skies.
“I think I’d like to stay nearby, meddle on rare occasions, if you don’t mind. Mr’rhah and Terl promise to show me how it’s done.” He levered himself upright and stepped to the windowsill. “Best I go now. You’ve a great deal of thinking to do, you two. Know that we love you— always.” With those parting words he disappeared into the night, even more shadowy and insubstantial than when he’d arrived.
Dazed, Doyce walked toward the trunk she’d had brought over from the Headquarters dormitory when she’d moved in here in the spring. It held all her worldly possessions, and very few they were, given that most Seekers’ lives traveling the circuits left them unencumbered by material possessions. Unlocking it and throwing back the lid, she began to rummage. Old clothes mostly, clothes that might fit again someday. A pink stone, a few other small but cherished mementos, some papers, odds and ends. Her hands searched frantically, eyes blind with tears, and Khar hung over the trunk’s side, wedging her nose beneath things. “Here, I think, that’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?” The rustle of tissue paper reached her ears, and at last her fingers found the folded tissue square.
There it was, the formal black dress tabard that all Seekers wore, but this one was embroidered and edged with purple and gold, sent by Francie and her mother when they’d heard of her Bonding with Khar. She’d laughed self-consciously on receiving it, knew she’d never wear it because only the Seeker General wore a purple-edged tabard. What had Francie’s note said? “Get it right this time, Doyce.”
“I’m still trying to get it right, figure things out. Blast and damn, why do I always have to get dragged, screaming and kicking, into situations I don’t want?” The tissue paper was rough, but it was the only thing she had to wipe her nose. Khar rear
ed clear of the trunk, a handkerchief draped over her head. “Here, try this.” And Doyce recognized it as one of Rolf’s. Could almost see Rolf and Chak smiling at her, amused that Swan had capped their trick of having Doyce serve as Envoy to Marchmont.
“Can we do it, Khar? Can we muddle through together?”
“Of course.” And footsteps pounded up the stairs, the door crashing behind him as Jenret burst through. “Now wipe your eyes, blow your nose.”
“Doyce, Swan Maclough just died, darling. I’m so sorry, we’re all so sorry. There’ll never be anyone quite like her.”
Khar gave a confident purr. “But there just might be someone equally good.”
The new year’s wind howled and clawed at him, threatened to rip the papers from his shaking hands. He groaned as the cold bit into his flesh through the rents in his clothes, but managed to crush the papers inside his shirt. Dirty, cold, wet, starving, he’d dodged and hidden, gone to ground like an animal at first, then furtively traveled by night, shaking with fear, hiding in ditches all the way to the capital. And then, to see that demon child capering and laughing inside, warm and safe, when Baz lay coldly dead! He’d cowered there sick, unable to move, and was thankful he had. If he hadn’t overheard outside the window this afternoon, he wouldn’t have known what the drawings meant, what they revealed. A machine to expose Resonants!
That wasn’t why he’d blindly found his way to Gaernett, though, because until this afternoon he’d no idea such a device existed. Somehow he needed a last look at the people who’d destroyed his ideals, his life, his world. Just the way a beast at bay may stare long and hard at the hunter before the crossbow quarrel ends its life. A moment of resolution, of recollection before the spirit flees. But this, this! He sped down dark alleyways, tripping over debris, painfully smashing his shoulder, scraping his cheek against a rough wall. A rowl and an indignant screech, and he nearly wet himself, legs gone rubbery, mind churning with terror. One of the ghatti, oh help, oh help me, please, though he didn’t know to whom he prayed. They’re coming after me, going to kill me! Mayhap it was for the best ... or would have been, except he had the plans. Moonlight licked the alleyway at the corner of the building and he saw it was a cat, just a cat, scavaging for food. He growled back at it, feral with rage, and the cat fled, sensing a madness in the eyes, a miasma of crazed indifference emanating from it that warned the animal that this being was beyond pain, beyond fear, on another plane entirely.
Laughing hysterically, Tadjeus Pomerol hugged the drawings to his chest and ran on. Where, he didn’t know, but somehow, somewhere, he’d find a place. His very own. He tilted his head back and bayed at the moons until the very air quivered with madness.