Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

The most banal kind of gossip, but still Enid’s mouth opened and she made a startled noise. “Franie the reprobate???”

How did Franie of all people convince someone to shack up with him, much less get the go-ahead to start a household? A functional, purposeful household? Franie, who’d seemed to spend most of his childhood knocking over baskets of apples during harvests and picking fights with Enid whenever she stood up to him, who’d grown six inches in a year and put on muscle and become passionate about paper of all things.

How had Franie the reprobate managed to fall in love?

“You’re the only one who calls him that anymore,” Peri chastised her.

“Someone has to remember what he was like.” She started sweeping again in earnest, though the floor was already mostly clean—she’d swept the day before, too.

Her mother studied her. “You don’t have to do that. It can wait, if there’s something else you’d rather be doing.”

“I’m just trying to be useful,” she said, working the broom with more force than was really necessary.

“You are,” Peri said, a little sadly it seemed like. “But you’re not particularly happy, are you?”

“That’s irrelevant,” Enid muttered, digging the broom into the next corner with renewed determination.

“Do you think you’ll want a banner someday?”

“How am I supposed to know that?” she shot back, then ducked her head, ashamed at the outburst. Everyone was supposed to want a banner. To work to get a banner. Uphold your quotas, make your household and community a better place. Prove you could care for any children you brought into the world.

Enid was beginning to suspect she didn’t actually want a banner, ever. She would be happy to let someone else, someone who really wanted it, have one instead. And that meant one less thing to worry about.

But she was still lonely. The implant in her arm, which she’d had since she was twelve, also seemed irrelevant. It wasn’t like she’d made use of it.

Enid had tried to fall in love. They all had, their cohort of teenagers in and around Haven, supplemented by the teenagers who came in from surrounding villages and households for markets. They kissed. They experimented. They tried to figure out what all the fuss was about. And some of them got it. Dived into sex and came back to gatherings with flushed faces and bright eyes and tales about how great it was, how great they were; and they walked hand in hand and lost interest in their friends—and then fell out of love and hooked up with someone else, trading partners and stories, and Enid didn’t understand it. She could go through the motions, but invariably they’d all be sitting around a midwinter bonfire one moment, and the next she’d be alone because everyone else had gone off with one another and she hadn’t noticed. Maybe she was broken, she’d think. And now even Franie had figured out what to do with himself and Enid couldn’t pick on him anymore. She was getting left behind.

Lost in thought, she’d swept the same piece of floor for a full minute, and Peri sighed loudly.

“I love you, my child, but you need a job.” Peri flapped her arms as if waving away a cloud of gnats before disappearing back into the exam room.

Enid wanted to go. Just away. And when she said that, her mother and Tomas and everyone else said she should talk to the committee about courier jobs, that she should think about apprenticing with a road maintenance crew. But she resisted, like she resisted everything.

It was a week or so later when it finally happened, when everything changed—when he dropped on her like a tornado, the best worst storm.

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Enid went to Haven’s one-day-a-week market to run errands for the household: delivering eggs to be traded for what Plenty didn’t make for itself, picking up cloth from the weavers at Barnard Croft. The day was hot, sticky. Awnings and shelters had been set up along the road around the town square, and people clung to the shade they provided, fanned themselves with woven reed fans, and batted flies away from baskets of fruit and baked goods. The carts and trestle tables were spread out enough that people had space to move around, close enough that they could chat and make the day feel a little bit like a party.

At first she’d taken her time, looking over the stalls and carts for anything new, anything interesting, any new faces to say hello to. The big harvest market wouldn’t come up for a month yet, so this was the usual crowd with the usual set of bottled mead and cider, canned fruits and jams, pottery, baskets, boots, knives, clothes, and hats, and the odd bit of livestock like goats and ducks. Enid unloaded the eggs and collected the fabric, thick wool for winter blankets and jackets, which was heavy and a pain to carry around in summer heat. She’d stuffed it all in a backpack, slung over her shoulders. But the pack got heavier, her whole back turned sweaty, and she just wanted to get home.

At the edge of the market, from the open space in front of the clinic, she heard music. At first a light guitar, then singing. The voice was . . . astonishing. She’d never heard anything like it. A clear tenor, resonant, so the sound carried and became fuller and better rather than flat and more diffuse. Haven had local musicians, folk with guitars and drums and fiddles, and they’d come out for parties and markets, good enough to dance to and sing along with. But none of them sounded like this.

She drifted toward the music to see who made it, leaned up against a tree at the back of the gathered crowd, dropped her pack of cloth to the ground, and listened.

The young man at the center of attention, singing and playing as easy as anything, seemed otherworldly. Clean shaven, nut-brown skin, long brown hair pulled back in a tail. He wore a plain tunic and trousers, scuffed boots, and a bright red vest with patterns embroidered on it—no one would miss him in a crowd. He sat on a wooden stool that had been brought down from the clinic porch, guitar nestled in his lap, one foot stretched out. Like someone out of a story.

This wasn’t a boisterous party sing-along. The musician sang, and people listened quietly. In awe, even. This was art; this was beautiful. One song, a light melody that everyone knew, ended and he started another, and this one—haunting, in a minor key with a drifting chorus that told a strange story of sailors lost at sea and ghost ships returning during storms—she’d never heard before. Maybe he’d even written it himself.

She couldn’t stop listening. She couldn’t leave. Finishing another song, he caught her gaze across the heads of his audience, gave her a smile—bright, wry, welcoming—that made her feel like they’d known each other forever, and that he was here just for her. Her heart flopped over. She managed to smile back, even wave a little, though she felt goofy and crazy doing so. He’d think her silly. He’d laugh at her. She tried to smooth back her ratty hair, which she suddenly wished she hadn’t chopped so short last year in an effort to feel new and different.

But no, at his next break, when he set down his guitar by the bench and the audience drifted off, he held her gaze and came toward her. This was her chance. If she wanted to flee, she could. If she didn’t want to talk to him, preferring to nurse her burning little crush from afar, she could do that. He gave her plenty of time. But she waited, unable to control the beaming smile on her face.

He came right up to her. “Hola,” he said. Up close, she saw his eyes were a gray blue, magical.

“That was really great,” she said. “Thanks for playing.”

“Thank you for listening,” he said, and they stood for a moment, grinning at each other. “Hey—this is my first time in Haven. You think you can give me a tour of the place? If you’d like to take a walk with me, that is?”