The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“Well, he hasn’t listened to me,” Anna said, glaring out at the man.

Enid looked at Teeg. “Have you tried?”

“Not me,” he said. “What am I supposed to say?” He had a look on his face, the one most people around here were wearing, that said they thought Erik must be crazy.

She walked over, stood between Erik and the sun, catching his attention by putting him in her shade. “Erik. Anna’s worried about you.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

“You want to maybe go home so she can look after you?”

“This is home.”

“A household’s generally made up of people, not buildings. You’ve got a good household here, Erik. Don’t blow it.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head. “My father kept this place up. Decades, he kept it up. Then he dies, and . . . it falls apart. Why can’t I keep the place up like he did? What’s wrong with me?”

“I think we’ve had this conversation already,” she said. “You know this place is no reflection on you? If it had been wiped away all at once by a massive typhoon, would you be so torn up?”

“It would have been like someone dying—that’s what you don’t understand.”

She did understand. But he wasn’t going to listen to her. “Erik—”

“It’s not that. It’s not just that. You know I’ve seen them. I’ve sat right here and watched them come down the river, doing who-knows-what.”

She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

“Wild folk. Like that girl.” His hands closed on the ax handle.

Her name was Ella, Enid almost murmured at him. “Oh?”

“You can tell they’re not like us because they keep to the river, not the road. Normal folk would come down the road.”

Outsiders were perfectly normal, of course; they just weren’t from the Coast Road. “Erik, out with it.”

He looked hard at her. “One of them could be hiding in this house, just waiting for their chance. I won’t let that happen. I’m standing guard.”

Enid said, “You know, I got a good look at that wound. It’s a good sharp blade that made it. Mart tells me the folk upriver don’t have very good knives, that they do what they can with scrap metal. To get good forged blades they come down to the Estuary to trade for them. I’m sure it’s a Coast Road blade that killed Ella. Maybe something like that ax. Are you sure you didn’t see anyone around here, five or six days ago? Someone who you decided didn’t belong? What were you doing, right after that storm? If I asked Anna, would she say you were here the whole time?”

Enid expected denials, assurances that he could never do such a thing. They didn’t come. His expression didn’t change. He said, “One of them could have stolen a blade. That’s why we have to keep watch. There’s no one else looking out for us.”

“Would someone like Ella really be a threat to you?”

Erik pursed his lips, shook his head. But it didn’t seem like a denial so much as a refusal to think of it at all. The man wasn’t any easier to talk to than Kellan. “Erik, go back home so Anna can stop worrying about you.”

Enid turned and marched back downhill.

Chapter Fourteen • the estuary

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Small Debates

A flat sandy spot behind the shed offered as good a place as any to practice, later that afternoon.

Enid rushed Teeg like someone in a rage would do, unthinking and without tactics. He stepped out of the way, pivoting, and brought his staff down on her back. Feigning a stumble, she went to one knee and imagined sprawling. The staff pressed down on her back; in a real attack, it would come down with force, and it would stay there, confounding an assailant.

Tom came out to feed Bonavista’s handful of hens, and stopped to stare open-mouthed at the two investigators, his basket wrapped in his arms. Enid didn’t mind the audience. News of their sparring certainly couldn’t hurt their reputation.