The piece of equipment was a shoulder fastening, its leather strap cut close to the buckle.
Eli laid it on the table without reaching for an ability. The family watched his hands. A daughter had brought her father and an older evacuation photograph, hoping one would make sense of the other. In the photograph, people crowded beneath an awning while a hunter with a torn cloak stood partly out of view.
“He got me down the stairs,” the father said. “I remember the voice.”
“And the cloak,” his daughter added.
“Yes.”
The recovery sleeve said the fastening had been found with material from that evacuation. It did not establish who had worn it. Eli looked at the cut strap, the rust in the hinge, the source number written before the bag had been moved to the storehouse.
“My talent identifies a dead person from remains,” he said. “It can’t tell me who owned this.”
The daughter’s face fell before she gathered it back into politeness. “We thought if it had belonged to someone—”
