The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“You went up to the hills, into the wild, to talk to witnesses?” The notes said so; the question was spoken in a tone of disbelief.

“I did.”

“Was that necessary?”

Enid shrugged. “Wouldn’t have been, if Kellan or Neeve had just told me the truth. But nobody talks, not about that sort of thing. I had to dig it up.”

“Right. Well. You don’t suggest that anything be done about Neeve’s infraction?”

“I think everything’s already been done that possibly can be. There’s nothing left.” Enid suspected word would get out: the bannerless child had been discovered. Twenty years later, maybe. But the pregnancy had been discovered, and such pregnancies always would be. A useful kind of tale, that.

“Right,” the chair said. “About this next part—”

Juni burst in. “Can I appeal? Is there some kind of an appeal process? I want to tell my side of it.” The whole trip here, Juni had likely been thinking of this, exactly what to say, exactly what her strategy should be. There was always a chance for appeal, wasn’t there? She could request an investigation.

Ahn took off her glasses and stared at Juni. “You confess that you killed a young woman, direct and on purpose.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t like she was a real person.”

Enid walked out of the room at that. She might have strangled Juni otherwise, and had her own murder investigation to face. The heat of her anger closed in on her like that moment on the marsh, right before she passed out, when her vision closed to nothing. She hardly noticed the silence, the wide-eyed expressions of a dozen faces watching her go. Teeg stood, but didn’t try to stop her. She needed air, so she went to get it. Charged straight out and settled on the building’s front steps and tried not to think about what was happening inside.

A long stretch after that, Patel came outside to sit with her. Enid had been watching traffic go back and forth. A crossroads passed through Morada, where the Sierra Road met the Coast Road. She’d seen horses, dogs, wagons, and even a couple of cars. All of it nice and normal. Soothing.

“Well, she’s something,” Patel said.

“I finally see why capital punishment was so attractive back in the day. It’s not a deterrent, it’s catharsis. I just . . . I’m angry.”

“They’re trying to decide where to send her. Whether she should be exiled out of the Coast Road entire.”

Enid shook her head slowly. An indirect death was still death, and they were supposed to be better than that. “I think she should go to Desolata.”

“Oh. I like that,” Patel said.

“I put it in the report. Maybe I should tell them in person.”

“I’ll let them know, you don’t have to worry about it. And how’s our newly minted Teeg working out?”

“New as puppies,” she said. “He left me, Patel. Let me walk into the hills alone. And I don’t think he’s sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“I miss Tomas,” she said.

Patel persuaded her back inside to hear the verdict, and then went around the table for a whispered conference with the committee. They kept glancing at Juni, the perpetrator. Enid told herself she’d already left the case behind, that this didn’t mean anything. But she ought to be here to see the end of it.

The chair announced, “It’s been suggested we send you to Desolata when the next trading expedition heads out that way. You’ll go along, and they’ll leave you there.”

Juni leaned forward. “Where’s that?”

“It’s the other end of the world.”

“But why? Why are you doing this to me?”

Enid spat back, “Why did you kill Ella?”

Juni didn’t have an answer.

“You can always leave, anytime you like,” the committee chair said. “But nowhere else will take you.”