Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

He said, “I don’t want to be here when whoever she’s looking around for gets back.”

Enid made sure to keep her staff close and wondered if she’d actually be able to use it if she needed to. Tomas could—investigators and enforcers were trained for it.

She was feeling small right now, in a world she didn’t understand.

The baby started crying in a thin, choked way that made it sound ill. Enid watched the ragged mother try to balance the baby in one arm while stirring the soup in the kettle. She kept leaning in, going off balance, and having to rearrange the baby again. The two children were running in and out from the ruins, screaming at each other—playing. The woman shouted at them to come help her. The older one, the girl, paused and looked out for a moment, caught sight of Enid and Dak again, and fled.

Three children for one mother. It seemed luxurious. And also awful.

“Quiet, you! Just for a second, please stop!” she hissed at the baby, jostling it in her arm.

“Here,” Enid said, because she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Let me hold him while you finish the soup.”

The woman glared, suspicious, but didn’t argue when Enid shifted the baby out of her arms and into her own. She laid the child against her shoulder and whispered soothingly, humming a tuneless song into its ear. The baby quieted. Enid studied it; even it had sunken cheeks and seemed small. Not that she had much experience with babies.

They were all starving, or close to it. The sky was overcast, the clouds turning darker. Storm season had arrived, and what would happen when the first typhoon came in? Would they find a cave of old metal and concrete to hide in?

They must have had a way to survive. They must have had a system, however strange and poor it looked to Enid. But she couldn’t imagine it, not when she knew they could all be safe, not even a couple weeks’ walk away.

The woman did what she needed with the stew and took the baby back from Enid.

Enid said in a rush, “You should come with us. You should all come to the Coast Road, ’bout a week or so of foot time northeast. There’s plenty of food; they’ll take you in—”

“No. No.” The woman shook her head. “I’d never go there. They’ll take my kids away if I go there. That’s what they do: they take your kids away,” she said, and spat. Held her baby close, cooing over its soft, bare head.

If Enid mentioned the Coast Road to Star and Rook and their people, would they say the same thing? They take children. It’s horrible. These people would never ask for help, even if help meant that crying baby would live. She stared at the woman, her endlessly mended scraps of clothing, her spitting fire and awful dinner, her children running around with limbs like rails. They were all starving, not enough to die of it, but enough that their every waking thought turned to food.

Enid pulled packages from her satchel. All she had—bread, cheese, sausage, apples—and dumped it on the ground in front of the woman.

“It’s food,” she said. “Have it. Have it all.”

The two older children had come out of hiding and crept toward the fire, as if they could smell what she’d offered. For a moment, she wasn’t sure the woman would take the gift. She stared at the paper-wrapped packages and loose apples like they might attack her. Like there might be some trick. But then she reached out. She would take it all.

Enid didn’t wait to see. She turned and marched away, tears stinging her eyes, frustrated and enraged and helpless.

Dak scampered after her. “Enid. You gave her all our food.”

“We can get more.”

“You said it yourself: Coast Road’s a week away.”

“We won’t starve,” she said, and choked back a laugh. They might get hungry, but they wouldn’t starve, not like that woman and her children.

In fact, it might be good for them to go a little bit hungry. Like it was some kind of penance. Like she had to pay a price for simply existing. Make some kind of trade. She never had before—she’d taken it all for granted.

She wanted to get out of here, get back to the Coast Road, back to the familiar. It might be a rough trip—but she was glad for it. That would earn her next meal.

“Enid!”

She didn’t slow down, even as she knew her anger was irrational. She did glance over her shoulder to check that Dak was following, and he was, scrambling over vines and branches and debris that had settled on the ghost road. He kept a hand on his guitar, steadying it.

Eventually, she had to stop for a drink of water from her canteen. Dak caught up, and they rested. He stared at her, studying her. Probably wondering if she’d gone crazy, and that annoyed her.

“I told you coming out this way was a bad idea.”

“No, you said it was dangerous. It wasn’t—no one even threatened us.” She didn’t think coming to the ruins was a bad idea. She wanted to see what the place was like, and now she knew. And the people there weren’t dangerous. They were wary, and they had every right to be.

“That’s not the point. If something had happened to us, no one would ever have known.”