The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“Kellan. Can you tell me what you were looking for out there?”

He shook his head. “It’s not important. I just . . . She didn’t have it, so I thought it might have got dropped.”

“Teeg and I searched that area yesterday. We didn’t find anything.”

“Yeah. But I just thought . . .”

“What was it? If it turns up someplace else, maybe I’ll recognize it.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

This was starting to drive Enid just a little bit crazy. He’d been looking for something—maybe to keep her and Teeg from finding it. Accusing Kellan of hindering an investigation would likely send him into another panic, so she refrained. The next question: Was he trying to protect himself? Or someone else?

“Kellan,” she said, as gently as she knew how. “I really want to learn what happened here, and I really need your help. What were you looking for?”

His face screwed up, highlighting lines of mud still caught in the furrows at the corners of his eyes, around his nose. He heaved a shuddering breath, one last sob escaping.

“A knife,” he said.

Chapter Ten • the estuary

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Just a Knife

Kellan tried to describe the knife—“Just a knife, a normal knife!” he said; Coast Road–made, forged, with a polished bone handle and a carved flower on the end. The blade was old and well sharpened, maybe seven or eight inches long. Exactly the kind of weapon that might have killed Ella. It had belonged to Neeve at one time, Kellan said, but they traded it to Ella for leather a couple of years before.

“An expensive trade,” Enid suggested, but Kellan shook his head.

“They don’t have blades, not like that. Forged. Right? Them, they grind pieces of salvage for blades. A good knife like that? That’s treasure for them. They always have leather. And, well—Neeve . . . Neeve liked her. Ella wouldn’t have just left it somewhere; she must have dropped it.”

Or her killer had taken it, used it, kept it, Enid thought. The solution still eluded her. Ella could have been killed anywhere, which meant the knife could be anywhere. Assuming it was the knife that killed her, and not an ax, or something else.

“Why didn’t you say anything about this yesterday?” Teeg asked.

Kellan sniffed loudly, on the edg

e of sobbing again. “I barely remember yesterday. Who would do such a thing? Today I remembered, and I thought . . . if I could find the knife, if I knew she had the knife, then I knew . . . I knew that it hadn’t . . . that someone hadn’t . . .”

“That someone hadn’t used it to kill her,” Enid said softly. He nodded. “Kellan, why did you say those things about Neeve? About Neeve not belonging?”

“What?”

“When you were digging in the mud, I was asking you why, and you said some things about Neeve.”

“I . . . I’m not sure. What did I say? I wouldn’t have said anything about Neeve, I wouldn’t have!”

“This is useless, Enid,” Teeg said, scowling.

Enid frowned. Kellan might have been telling the truth. He might have spoken without even realizing it. But the way he shut down, his stare, his trembling grip on the cup of water—he was hiding something.

Yesterday Enid would have insisted that the old case against Neeve didn’t have anything to do with this new, surprise investigation, any more than it had to do with the investigation of the house at Semperfi. Now, everything about this settlement seemed off balance, all tangled up, and Enid found it exhausting.

Movement drew her attention—a young guy with a flop of black hair jogging across the bridge. Tom, off to talk to Last House.

“Kellan,” Enid said. “Mart will be here in a little bit to look after you. Can you sit here and rest until then?”

He nodded and let out a sigh. “Yeah. Thanks. Thank you.” He still looked grief-stricken.