The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“It’s no trouble. But . . . how? How can you possibly find out what happened?”

Teeg spoke up. “Enid’s done this before. Solved a murder last year in a town called Pasadan. She’s a little bit famous for it.”

“Really?” Erik said.

“Did it in just a day, as I understand it,” he said, sounding like he was bragging. Or maybe he was reassuring himself.

Enid sighed. “Took three days. With help. And it was a completely different situation.” For one thing, they knew who the victim was right from the start in that case. And that death hadn’t been so . . . messy.

“But if anyone can do it, you can,” Teeg offered.

“We might not learn what happened, but we’ll try,” she said. It’s what investigators did, after all. “Thanks all of you for your help, for taking a look. Teeg and I will be here if you think of anything—any detail at all, no matter what, you come and tell us. Yeah?”

Happy for the dismissal, the crowd dispersed. Even Juni backed away, frowning at the body. An interruption in the normal way of the world.

That left Enid and Teeg alone, with whoever this woman had been.

“No one recognizes her,” he said bleakly.

“Makes it hard,” she said.

Ridiculously hard. The woman could be from anywhere, washed up on this stretch of coast. Might be their only play would be to make as good a description as they could, then send messages around, asking, Was anyone missing? Were there any runaways?

And along with that, anyone who’d been acting guilty? Anyone with a bloody knife tucked away?

It might not be anyone on the Coast Road who killed her, of course. Who wielded the blade that made that awful wound. If the woman had fled from somewhere, even if she’d just been exploring, she might have run into something—someone—she wasn’t prepared to handle. Something in the wild that didn’t, on principle, like anything from the Coast Road.

“So, we take her to Everlast?” Teeg asked. “No one around here seems to know anything about her—”

“We haven’t talked to everyone yet. We still have more questions.”

“Like what? Is one magic question going to reveal all?”

“It might,” Enid said, quirking a smile at him. “I want to look her over one more time, now that we’re out of the mud.”

Enid studied the body again, every inch of skin, pushing aside the tunic and skirt. Looking at every stitch of clothing. Enid took out her notebook, started a catalog, adding every detail. A whole life reduced to a list. She took the kerchief off the body, folded it up. Knitted with a ribbed pattern, distinctive—anyone who knew the dead woman ought to recognize it. They could send it to surrounding communities. The shoes were soft leather, folded over and stitched with sinew; the heel on the right was more worn than the left. Whoever made the garments wouldn’t likely have been so helpful as to embroider a name or household inside the collar. But Enid recorded what she could: brown linen overtunic, finely woven gray-blue skirt, and white shirt. No pockets, no lumps or bulges that might be a pouch, a bag, a necklace. No piece of metal or scrap of writing. She found nothing. If the young woman had had anything else on her, any jewelry or a pouch, they’d been washed away.

Enid was replacing the tunic, straightening the sleeves again, when she felt down the body’s arms. Felt again, missing something that should have been there. Looked at the skin along the upper arm, where an implant was usually placed. Most medics inserted it in the left arm, but Enid checked both, just in case. Felt, squeezing the skin and muscle, searching for the characteristic lump. Enid had one herself. Every girl got one at puberty. She paused, her mouth open, wondering. She rolled up the sleeve to double-check, searching for the scar, the place where the tiny incision would have been . . . and wasn’t. The skin was unblemished.

“What is it?” Teeg asked.

“She doesn’t have an implant,” Enid said. “Never had one.”

Which meant she wasn’t from any household on the Coast Road.

She came from the wild.

Chapter Four • the estuary

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Bonavista

This case was supposed to be easy. Enid would be gone only a couple of weeks. Her family—Sam, Olive, Berol, and the soon-to-be-born baby of Serenity household—were waiting for her. She promised them she’d be home in time.

Two years after earning its banner, a year after Olive’s miscarriage, Serenity was finally having its baby. Enid wanted to be there, to hold Olive’s hand and hear the baby’s first cry. To hug Sam and be part of what they’d all worked so hard for.

But her name had come up on the roster, and she’d promised to mentor Teeg, so here she was, a hundred miles from Serenity. Enid was happy enough to do her job and earn her keep. Someone had to do the hard work, she was fond of saying. Often as a mantra to herself, reminding her that the job usually went faster when she complained less. But given the circumstances, she couldn’t help but complain . . . at least to herself. The problem of Semperfi’s house had sounded simple. Wouldn’t take long at all.