Fossil Hunter qa-2 Read online

  Although Gork did a fine job keeping Afsan from stepping in front of caravans or walking off a cliff, Afsan still used his cane to feel the terrain in front of him, so as to keep his footing sure. The original stick that Pal-Cadool had first fashioned for him had been lost kilodays ago in the great landquake. This intricately carved pole had been a gift long ago from mariner Var-Keenir, who had used it himself while his tail, chomped off by the great serpent Kal-ta-goot, had been regenerating.

  Gork and Afsan made slow but steady progress. At one point, Afsan heard the clacking of claws on stone paving and asked the unknown passerby to confirm that he was going in the right direction. At last they entered the lobby of Haldan’s building, Afsan recognizing the way the ticks of his cane echoed off the stone walls. Gork seemed to remember the place too, for it picked up the pace a bit as they headed down the correct corridor, which made the traditional zigzag bends that kept other users out of sight. Afsan tucked his cane under his arm and held one hand out toward the wall, letting it bounce lightly off the wooden jambs as he counted doorways.

  He tugged on Gork’s harness to stop the animal. "It’s this one," he said. With a little groping, he found the brass signaling plate next to the door and drummed his claws on it. There was no answer. Afsan leaned in toward the wood and ran his hand over the cartouche carved into it, confirming that these were indeed the symbols associated with his daughter, a naturalist who studied animal populations. "Haldan," he called out, "it’s me, Afsan."

  Still no answer.

  He bent to stroke Gork’s side again. "She must have been detained," he said soothingly. "Well, she’s bound to come here sooner or later. Shall we go in and sit down?"

  Gork hissed softly. Afsan reached down, operated the brass bar that controlled the door mechanism, and stepped into the room. He left the door open so that Haldan would see him as soon as she approached: bad things could happen when one Quintaglio startled another in what might be construed as a territorial invasion.

  As soon as they were fully within the room, Gork began to hiss violently. "What is it?" said Afsan, crouching next to the beast. But then Afsan himself smelled it: fresh meat, the gentle tinge of blood in the air.

  "Ah, hungry, are you?" said Afsan to the lizard, scratching its neck gently. "Well, perhaps Haldan won’t mind if I give you a gobbet." Afsan flared his nostrils. The inviting smell was coming from across the room. He paused for a moment, recalling the arrangement of furniture from the last time he’d been here, then let go of Gork’s harness and, guiding himself with his cane, began toward the source of the smell. It was slightly unusual; Afsan could normally recognize any type of meat by a single whiff, but this one, although not completely unfamiliar, was something he couldn’t immediately place.

  He remembered there being a table against a wall at the point the smell was coming from, but it wasn’t a table Haldan normally would use for food. Rather, it was more of a work space. As Afsan got closer, the smell of blood became more pronounced. Unusual, he thought, since she’d hardly have killed or butchered something right in her own home, and any haunch brought from the market would have been well-drained.

  Afsan felt a slapping against his legs. Gork had come alongside. The lizard was hissing loudly, almost spitting — a strange, unpleasant sound, one Afsan had never heard his companion make before.

  He arrived at the table and bent from the waist, one arm outstretched to feel. At once he connected with something large and wet. He yanked his hand away, brought his fingers to his nostrils, inhaled the blood.

  He reached down again, tentatively, and felt the object. It was warm. Heavy. Rounded. Covered with rough skin. He ran his fingertips over it. No scales, no scutes, just rough hide. Except here — little raised dots. Strange … they seemed to form a pattern.

  A tattoo. A hunting tattoo.

  Afsan staggered back, leaning against his tail.

  It was a head. A Quintaglio head.

  Sleeping, then, surely…

  But it was wet. Wet with blood.

  Afsan struggled to control the fear rising within him, and leaned in closer. He touched the back of the head, ran his fingers lightly down the bulbous braincase, over the thick neck muscles, their corded construction obvious even through the skin, and onto the broad shoulders.

  The torso did not rise and fall with breathing.

  He slid his hand around the shoulder, feeling the articulation between it and the upper arm.

  Suddenly his hand was wet again. Just as suddenly, his fingers were inside — there was a fleshy shelf, and he felt soft tissue.

  The mouth? Surely not so soon. And yet, it gaped like a toothless maw. Afsan’s heart pounded as he moved his hand along the soft, slippery surface, farther and farther and even farther still…

  The throat had been slit wide open across its entire breadth. The head was propped forward, the length of its muzzle resting against the tabletop, leaving the cut yawning wide. As he touched it, the delicate balance was disturbed and the body slumped farther forward, the severed carotid arteries, too thick to simply crust over, spilling a torrent of new blood over Afsan’s hand and arm.

  Revolted, Afsan yanked his arm away, but he realized, almost as an afterthought, that there had been no signs of the remains of a dewlap sack around the cut. A female.

  He used his other hand — the dry one — to feel the leather of the sash crossing over the female’s chest. It was stiff with drying blood, but he easily found what he’d been afraid to find, the sculpted metal pin of a naturalist. It was Haldan.

  Afsan reached out to the table to steady himself and felt his own hand slice open. He pulled it back instantly. The cut wasn’t very deep, but it stung. His claws, unnoticed, had extended on their own. Afsan tapped them against the wooden tabletop and found many sharp flat pieces of broken glass.

  Afsan became aware of a sound: Gork lapping at the blood that had spilled on the floor. He groped for the lizard’s harness and yanked the beast away from the body.

  For a moment, Afsan thought to run, to try to find help, but his mental picture of the room dissolved into a swirling nothingness, a panicked abyss. He forced himself to think, to reason. Any attempt at hurrying would just result in him tripping. If he could just…

  But reason lasted only a few fleeting moments and without further thought, Afsan found himself leaning back on his tail and yelling and yelling and yelling until, after an eternity, help finally arrived.

  *21*

  The Dasheter

  In his cabin, the one that had been his father’s all those kilodays ago, Toroca examined the body of the diver by lamplight, the flame dancing to and fro as the Dasheter pitched on the waves.

  The diver was an exquisite animal, about the length of Toroca’s arm and covered in fine silver fur. At first he didn’t know what to make of it. Fur was sometimes seen on certain plants, especially fungi and molds, and on the bodies of those flying reptiles known as wingfingers. Toroca had never heard of any land-dwelling or aquatic creature having it. Yet this one did: a good, thick coat of the stuff. He stroked it, saw that it had a nap, saw how it appeared to change color from a dark silver to almost white depending on which way the individual strands were deployed. It had an oddly revolting feel, this fur: thousands upon thousands of tiny fibers, moving back and forth almost like plants swaying in a breeze. He had to fight down the sensation that the filaments might pierce his skin, or fly loose to enter his nostrils or eyes. That the fur was oily just made the sensation even more unpleasant.

  Although the body covering was disgusting, the creature’s head was fascinating. As he’d observed on the ice, it tapered to a pointed, toothed beak. Counterbalancing the beak was a long crest off the back of the skull, pointed in the opposite direction.

  The diver had flippers held, in death, tightly against its side. Rigor hadn’t set in yet, although everything was a bit stiff in these cold temperatures. Toroca gently pulled the left flipper away from the body. He was surprised to find that it was rigid only
along its leading edge. The rest of the flipper consisted of a thick mass of tissue, but seemed to be completely unreinforced by bone. In the middle of the flipper’s leading edge were three small red claws.

  That was unusual. Five was the normal number of digits, of course. Some creatures, Quintaglios and blackdeaths among them, had fewer on their feet, and blackdeaths had only two on their hands. But three on the forelimbs was a rare number. Toroca took out his scalpel and sliced into the flipper, gently exposing the inner flesh.

  Dark blood spilled out onto the worktable. He carved further into the flipper and saw that it was well padded with yellow fat. But it was the leading edge that he really wanted to see. He made an incision along the entire length of the flipper’s anterior margin, then used his hands to pull back the clammy flesh. It took a little twisting and yanking, but he soon had the bones that made up the front of the flipper exposed.

  From the shoulder to the claws, there were two long bones, obviously the humerus and the radius — the upper and lower arm bones. At the end of the radius, there were the phalangeal bones of the three red-clawed fingers that protruded from the flipper, and then running along the remaining length of the flipper, from this tiny hand to its outermost tip, four long bones.

  Four extraordinarily long phalangeal bones.

  The bones of a fourth, vastly extended finger.

  It was the same structure as in a wingfinger’s wing, the structure that gave those flying reptiles their name.

  Toroca rolled the corpse over and pressed his own fingers into the corpse’s belly. They came up against a hard plate of bone.

  A breast plate.

  Suddenly the head crest made sense. Just like those in some flying reptiles.

  This beast was a wingfinger.

  A water-going wingfinger.

  A wingfinger that swam through the cold waters the way its equatorial cousins flew through the air.

  Toroca staggered back on his tail, the lamp flickering, the timbers of the ship groaning.

  How does a wingfinger come to be a swimmer? How does a flyer take to the water?

  What caprice of God was this?

  *22*

  Capital City: Haldan’s apartment

  Var-Gathgol, the undertaker, felt out of his depth. It was bad enough that blind Afsan was here. Senior palace officials always were difficult to deal with. But now the Emperor himself had arrived. Gathgol had no idea how to behave in front of such important people.

  Dybo was standing near Afsan — altogether too near, really; such easy proximity was uncomfortable even to watch. Gathgol had hoped to simply slip in, bundle up the body, and take it away in the wagon he had left outside the apartment block.

  But someone — Gathgol thought perhaps it was the building’s administrator — had told him not to touch the corpse.

  It was, indeed, an unusual set of circumstances.

  Suddenly Gathgol felt a frightened rippling at the tips of his fingers. The Emperor himself was gesturing at him. At first Gathgol froze, but the waving of the Emperor’s arm became impatient and that spurred him into motion. He hurried across the room, taking care to avoid the pieces of broken glass on the floor.

  "You’re the undertaker?" said the Emperor.

  Gathgol bowed rapidly. "Yes, umm, Your, Your…"

  "Luminance," said Dybo absently.

  "Yes, Your Luminance. I cast a shadow in your presence."

  "Do you know Sal-Afsan, a savant and my advisor?"

  "By reputation, of course," stammered Gathgol. He tipped his body toward the blind one, then after a moment said, "I’m, uh, bowing at you." Afsan’s muzzle swiveled toward him, but that was his only response. Gathgol felt like a fool.

  "And you?" said Dybo.

  Gathgol was now completely confused. "I’m, uh, the undertaker. I’m sorry. I thought you wanted…"

  Dybo made an exasperated sound. "I know what you do. What’s your name?"

  "Oh. Gathgol. Var-Gathgol."

  Dybo nodded. "How exactly did Haldan die?"

  Gathgol gestured at the table. "Her throat was cut open by a jagged piece of mirror."

  Afsan’s head snapped up. "Mirror? Is that what it is?"

  Gathgol nodded. "Yes, mirror. That’s, um, glass with a silvered backing. You can, ah, see your reflection in it."

  Afsan’s tone was neutral, perhaps that of one accustomed to such gaffes. "I appreciate your explanation, Gathgol, but I’ve not been blind my whole life. I know what a mirror is."

  "My apologies," Gathgol said.

  "How could a mirror cut one’s neck open?" asked Afsan.

  "Well, the glass is broken," said Gathgol. "The pieces have a sharp edge — beveled, almost. A large section was drawn across her neck, quite rapidly, I should think."

  "I don’t understand," said Afsan. "Did she trip somehow? I’ve felt with my walking stick for an obstacle but can’t find one."

  "Trip, savant? No, she didn’t trip. She was probably seated on that stool when it happened."

  "Did the mirror fall off the wall, then? Had it been mounted poorly? Was there a little landquake today?"

  Gathgol shook his head. "A piece of art hangs on the wall above the table, savant. It’s still there now. A still life of some sort."

  "A still life." Afsan nodded. "But then how did the accident happen?"

  Gathgol felt his nictitating membranes fluttering. "It was not an accident, savant."

  "What do you mean?"

  Could a genius of Afsan’s rank be so thick? "Good Sal-Afsan, Haldan was killed. Deliberately. By an intruder, most likely."

  "Killed," said Afsan slowly, as if he’d never heard the word, moving it around inside his mouth like an odd-tasting piece of meat. "You mean murdered?"

  "Yes."

  "Murdered. Somebody took her life?"

  "Yes, savant."

  "But surely it was dagamant, then — a territorial challenge of some sort, an instinctive reaction."

  Gathgol shook his head. "No. This was planned, savant. We’ve gathered up all the shards of the mirror. They don’t form a complete rectangle. Somebody brought a large jagged piece of mirrored glass here, probably approached Haldan from behind, and, with a quick movement, slit her throat. The mirror was still partly in a wooden frame, and that gave it rigidity, as well as something for the assailant to hold on to without risking cutting his or her hands."

  "Murder," said Dybo, who was looking quite queasy. "I’ve never heard of such a thing."

  "I haven’t heard of one in modern times," said Gathgol, "but when I was apprenticing to be an undertaker, my master taught me a little about such things. Of course, she said I would never need to know this, that the knowledge was only for historical overview, but … yes, there are stories of murder from the past. Myths about the Lubalites and so on."

  "Murder," said Afsan softly. And then, a few beats later: "But how? Surely the demon responsible, whoever it was, couldn’t have opened the door and sneaked up on Haldan. She doubtless would have heard the approach and turned to face her attacker."

  "It is puzzling," said Gathgol. "But I’m sure of the cause of death. I mean, it’s obvious."

  "Well," said Dybo, "what do we do now?"

  "We find the person who did this," said Afsan flatly.

  Dybo nodded slowly. "But how? I don’t know anyone who has experience with such matters." He turned toward Gathgol. "Do you know how to do it, undertaker?"

  "Me? I don’t have the slightest idea."

  Afsan spoke softly. "I’ll do it."

  Dybo’s voice was equally soft. "My friend, even you…"

  Afsan’s claws peeked out. "I will do it. She was my daughter, Dybo. If not me, who?"

  "But Afsan, friend, you are … without sight. I will assign another to the task."

  "To another, it would be exactly that: a task. I — I can’t explain my feelings in this matter. We were related, she and I. I’ve never known what import, if any, that had, whether she and I would have been friends regardless of the od
d circumstances that led to her knowing that I was indeed her father, she in truth my daughter. But I feel it now, Dybo, a — a special obligation to her."

  Dybo nodded; Gathgol saw that he and the savant were old friends, that Dybo knew when to give up arguing with Afsan. "Very well," said the Emperor. "I know that once you sink your teeth into a problem, you do not let go."

  Afsan took the comment easily, Gathgol saw — a simple statement of fact, something both Afsan and Dybo knew to be true. But then the savant’s face hardened. "I swear," he said, "I will not give up until I have found her killer."

  Rockscape

  Rockscape at sunset. Pal-Cadool, straddling one of the ancient boulders, his long legs dangling to the ground, loved the sight: it was one of the rare times when he still pitied Afsan. The sun was no longer a tiny blazingly white disk; it had swollen and grown purple. From here amongst the ancient boulders the sun would set behind the Ch’mar volcanoes to the west. Their caps, some pointed, some ragged calderas, were stained dark blue. Above the sun, along the ecliptic — a word Afsan had taught Cadool — three crescent moons were visible, their illuminated limbs curving up like drinking bowls.

  The lizard Gork needed no more cue than this that night was coming. It had already curled up at Afsan’s feet, sleeping, its body pressed against the savant’s legs so that he would know where the lizard was. Afsan was perched on his usual rock, his face, coincidentally, turned toward the glorious sunset spectacle that he could not see. It would soon be time for him to go back indoors.

  "I don’t understand," said Afsan slowly, interrupting Cadool’s reverie.

  Something Afsan didn’t understand? Surely, Cadool thought, there was nothing he could do to help in such a circumstance. Still, he asked, "What is it?"

  Afsan’s head was tilted at an odd angle. "Who," he said at last, "would want to kill Haldan?"

  Cadool wished Afsan would let go of this problem. It pained him to see Afsan so distraught. "I don’t know who would want to kill anyone," said Cadool, spreading his arms. "I mean, I get angry from time to time, angry at other people. But the hunt is supposed to purge those emotions. It certainly does that for me."