Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

When he didn’t answer immediately, she resisted leaning in. Grabbing the collar of his tunic and shaking until his brain rattled.

Then he shook his head. “Or maybe he just fell. Maybe . . . maybe he closed the door and fell, and it was an accident—”

“Did you see Miran there?” Enid asked. “She went to talk to him one last time that morning. Did you see her?”

“You can’t think that poor sweet girl—”

“I don’t know; that’s why I’m asking.”

Except Enid did know. She did.

“Enid. Just . . . stop. Just go home. Haven’t you done enough to wreck this town?”

“Dak. It wasn’t an accident,” she said.

His mouth hung open. “You—you’re sure?”

“I think . . . I think I might need your help for this next part. Sero deserves what little justice we can offer, don’t you think?”

She thought he was going to focus on the uniform again. Make some jab at the brown cloth and tell her once again how much damage she’d done, how much damage those other investigators had done to his young self and family. Say that one person’s death didn’t matter in a world that had lost billions. If he got up to leave and never spoke to her again, she might not have been surprised.

But he finally said, “Yes. What can I do?”

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Late that night, Enid went to the household that had managed Sero’s pyre and asked them if they had the resources for another. “I’m very sorry to have to ask you to prepare another one so quickly. I can make sure your fuel supplies are restocked from Haven. Will it be possible?”

The man who had tended the pyre before gaped at her for a moment, blinking in the light of her lantern, then nodded. “Yes, should be. We can have it ready in the morning, I think. I—I’m sorry about your partner.”

“Thank you.”

“Does the committee know? That you’ve asked for a pyre, I mean.”

Enid’s smile felt toothy, predatory. “They will.”

The next morning, Ariana was the first to find out, when Enid and the pyre-tending crew arrived to collect Tomas’s body. Enid hardly looked at Tomas before covering him with a shroud. She had said goodbye already and didn’t want to keep saying it over and over. As they left the cellar, Ariana and half of Newhome poured out of their kitchen, confused as sheep in a storm. Dak stood off to the side, wary.

Enid got between the onlookers and the stretcher and its bearers. Shielding Tomas.

“What’s this? What’s going on? Investigator Enid?” Ariana asked, hands on her hips.

“We’re burning the pyre for Tomas this morning,” she said. A wind was starting to pick up; clouds gathered on the horizon. They needed to get this taken care of before weather moved in.

“But . . . I thought . . . We assumed you would want to take him home. That you would want to carry him back to Haven as quickly as possible—that his own household would want to see his pyre. That would be more . . . proper. Wouldn’t it? We all assumed you would be leaving.” She spoke like she was trying to convince Enid. Push her out the door, even.

That was hardly surprising. The woman had requested an investigation to get at Philos, with no real understanding of what she was bringing down on her people. She might have deserved pity, but Enid didn’t feel inclined to it.

“He died during an investigation,” she said. “They’ll understand. And I’ll be finishing what he and I started.”

Ariana’s mouth opened at this. “But . . . but . . .” Gaped like a fish, she did.

Dak stepped in. “Let her do what she needs to, Ariana,” he said calmly.

Ariana stared at him with apparent disbelief, and Enid wondered what kind of betrayal she thought was happening here. Did she wonder whom Dak was working for now? “But—” she started, and her voice broke.

Enid turned her back, discouraging argument, and escorted Tomas’s stretcher to the pyre built just outside of town. The stretcher bearers carefully arranged him, and it might have been her imagination, but they still seemed to flinch from the uniform, even though the man wearing it couldn’t harm them now. Symbols, it was all symbols.

The man tending the pyre offered her the torch, which she lit from a lantern, then touched it to the fuel of the pyre and stood back to watch. The flames rose, engulfing the body until it was just a shadow, and she whispered goodbye, over and over.