Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

“Yes, of course, this way.”

Enid drew the woman off from the others, moving around the cottage to an outdoor pump by the cistern. She guessed Ariana might speak more openly without Philos glaring.

Ariana filled a clay cup, and Enid asked, “Why do you think it wasn’t an accident?”

The dark-haired woman bit her lip, lowered her gaze. Deciding what to say—or working up to speaking what she’d kept to herself. “No one much liked Sero. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. He wasn’t part of any household, just lived off by himself and made do somehow. I don’t know absolutely that he didn’t just fall. But . . . it’s strange. It’s all so strange. And no one wants to talk about it. That’s mostly why—that no one will talk. And Philos has been so . . . so determined. Not that he’s ever nice, but the way he’s so set against this . . .” She heaved a frustrated breath, made an offhand shrug.

“Like he’s hiding something?” Enid suggested.

“Yes. Exactly,” she said bleakly. “You—do you think it was an accident?”

“Could have been,” Enid said honestly. “I want to look at where it happened before I decide.”

Enid finished off the cup of water and gathered the troop to move on to the next location. A few folk from the town watched, pretending not to.

“Well?” Philos demanded. “Did you find anything useful? You saw, didn’t you—he fell and hit his head. Could have happened to anyone.”

Yes, and such accidents were relatively common. A person fell from a ladder; a child fell from a tree. A man died in a storm. Accidental deaths were tragic, striking as they did like lightning, leaving survivors unprepared for the aftermath. That could be what happened here. Ariana was shocked and confused by the death, felt she must do something, that by being on the village’s committee she had some kind of re

sponsibility. So she called an investigation where none was needed, because Sero didn’t have a household looking after him and someone had to. Or she could be absolutely correct, and more was going on here.

“I have a few more questions, Philos. I’m sure you understand.”

Philos raised his hands like he wanted to argue, but Enid glanced at Tomas, who didn’t do anything at all, and the committeeman stayed quiet.

Moving down the gridded streets, they passed nicely kept cottages and workshops. The sound of a baby crying came from one house, a couple of kids laughing behind another. A productive town, then, earning banners and children, all of them cared for.

Ariana led them past all that to where a dirt path branched away from the street, leaving the grid to curve around to an isolated homestead. A small house sat up against a copse of trees and tangled undergrowth, along with a cistern and a chicken coop, weatherworn and empty. Another fifty feet along stood a shed made of rough plank board and roofed with shakes. Wasn’t much—wouldn’t stand up to a bad storm. But it would keep the sun and rain off and store tools and jobs in progress. No chimney, no windows. The double doors at the front were closed. The workshop, then, where Sero had died.

This was a man who had wanted to live alone, who hadn’t wanted neighbors. Or the neighbors hadn’t wanted him. Didn’t have a household, likely didn’t want one. It happened sometimes. Living with a household wasn’t required, but living without was . . . odd. Harder, going through the world alone. Enid got a chill, thinking about not having Sam and the others to come home to.

She tried to see the man through where he had lived. All very practical. Functional, if not particularly nice to look at. “How did Sero earn his keep, then?”

“He was a handyman, mostly,” Ariana said. “Wasn’t dead weight. Did small jobs all over the town. He did good work. It’s just that he was alone.”

“Something wrong with him,” Philos said. “He wasn’t friendly. But what can you do? Maybe he earned his keep, but he’d never earn a banner, that’s for sure.”

“Not everyone wants to,” Enid murmured.

Ariana said, “He had a power auger, from back before the Fall, and a solar battery to run it. It was his, passed down from parent to child till he got it. He took really good care of it, kept it running. Everyone asked him to work—he could do fences and foundation posts in half the time. He even went out to some of the other towns on jobs.”

That explained the neat rows of fences and fence posts everywhere in Pasadan. Sero had probably even helped with the sign along the road.

“I think he liked that machine better than people,” Philos said.

Enid couldn’t really blame Sero. A machine like that from the old days, still running, still useful? Such artifacts were becoming rarer and rarer. Things wore out. They broke, and getting the parts to fix them was tough. Such a thing was precious, and she was impressed that he’d made such good use of it.

“Who’s got the auger now?” Enid asked.

“It’ll go to community stores,” Ariana said. “Since he didn’t have a household, it belongs to everybody, now. But we left it here, until you got here.”

It wasn’t unheard of, people fighting over precious objects. Someone might have wanted to take the machine from Sero.

“He kept it in the workshop?”

“Oh, no,” Ariana said. “Something like that he kept in the house. The workshop was just a workshop.”

“Well, let’s have a look at where he died.”