Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

“I don’t want you to guess; I want you to look. Could it have been anything else?”

The man sighed, then peeled back Tomas’s brown tunic, moved aside a pendant he’d worn on a thin cord. Enid looked over the medic’s shoulder. Were there any patches on Tomas’s skin, like the tranquilizers? Any needle marks? Any odd infected cuts? She watched Tull, making sure he was really looking, not brushing off the job because he thought she was crazy.

“What about that flushing, there?” Tomas’s skin across his neck, part of his chest was red. It didn’t look normal.

“It’s pretty common to see that with heart attacks,” Tull said tiredly.

“There isn’t a poison or something could have caused a symptom like that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really have experience with poisons—”

Impatiently, she said, “Then are there any other signs? Just to confirm it wasn’t something else?”

“Well, yes. But based on how you said he was acting—it was a heart attack. Maybe a stroke or some kind of brain injury. These things happen. If you took him back to Haven, the clinic there is much better equipped—”

She shook her head. They didn’t have time. And if Tomas had been murdered, she wanted to be here to find who had done it. “Heart attack’s caused by a blockage, right? Can you do an autopsy?”

His face, already pale, blanched further. “I—I’ve never done one—”

“But you’re qualified to perform surgery, yes? You’ve been trained. You’d recognize healthy organs compared to unhealthy ones. You could tell.”

“Investigator Enid, I’m not sure it . . . it will help.”

He’d been about to say another word. Something like “worthwhile,” or “useless.” But she needed to know. Relenting, Tull searched through the cabinet for tools. Scalpels, forceps, a bone saw, a pile of rags. She helped him entirely pull off Tomas’s brown tunic, which she clutched folded in her arms. His chest still looked like it was burned. Across the skin, a scattering of curling hair was turning gray. His sternum, the curve of his rib cage, were visible. She remembered that time when she was twelve, that storm, the body caught up in the smashed building. It hadn’t looked real, either, and Tomas was looking less real by the moment. What were they even doing here?

Enid had to close her eyes a moment. This body lying here wasn’t Tomas anymore. This was a puzzle to be solved. Another investigation. This was necessary.

Tull studied every inch of him, touching joints, pressing his throat, his abdomen, any place that might show symptoms. The places where diseases might reveal themselves. Enid thought when he cut, he would start with the stomach, but he didn’t. He went to the chest, the heart. His first suspicion. Enid held her breath at the incision. Looked away when blood welled up. It didn’t flow quickly, like it should have.

The medic was careful. Probably wasn’t easy, having Enid watching him while he cut. His actions were precise, methodical. The actions of someone who wasn’t used to doing this. Wasn’t habit for him, cutting into people.

The cracking of ribs made Enid wince. Maybe this was a mistake . . .

Tull straightened, wiping his bloody hands on a rag, which quickly turned crimson. His gaze met hers. “Would you like to see?”

“What? You found something? What is it?”

Tull prodded with the end of the forceps above the meaty fist of the heart. No longer Tomas’s, she reminded herself. A series of small rubbery tubes branched out, veins and arteries, a visceral red, even now. He’d only been gone an hour . . .

“It’s blocked,” Tull said, pressing against one of the thick lengths of what must have been an artery reaching up from the muscle. The tissue didn’t give, when it seemed like it should have. Gently, he sliced into it, just a little, to show a tiny pearl of a yellowish deposit. She wasn’t a medic but that definitely didn’t look right. Her own heart seemed to clench in sympathy.

He said, “A blockage like this is what causes heart attacks.”

She sounded resigned when she said, “But he was young!” Younger, at least. Early forties was still young, even after the Fall.

“Some people are prone to it,” he said. “We used to be better about fixing things like this. I’m really sorry.”

The muscle seemed washed out, a grayish pink instead of vibrant. But she had no way to judge; this was the first time she’d seen under a person’s skin. But she couldn’t argue with what Tull had shown her.

Even if they’d been home at Haven, the medics couldn’t have saved him. The heart was a physical thing, a machine, and they didn’t have the spare parts anymore to fix a thing like that. She knew enough to guess what was wrong with him; but no one knew enough anymore to cure a heart gone bad. And so the loss felt compounded. A hundred years ago, she could have saved him.

The medic folded back bone and skin. Now, Tomas looked like he’d been torn into with a knife, like he’d been given a deadly wound. And would that have made her feel better, if he really had been murdered and she had someone to blame? She hated this town so much, she wanted Tomas’s death to be murder so she would have someone to blame. How wrong was that?

“Thank you, Tull. Just . . . thank you.”

“You want me to stitch this?”

The gesture seemed futile. What was the point of putting Tomas back together? He’d still be dead. But then, if she had to carry him back to Haven and his house there, maybe a closed wound would be cleaner. Neater.