Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

“Enid, how are you?” he said, but only when he pulled back for air. She just grinned.

They picked up together as if he’d never left. Let anyone give her a hard time about Dak now; she’d face them down. This time, he planned to stay several days longer than usual.

Enid might have expected another lecture from Tomas—or maybe an apology—but he’d been away on a case. His return in the middle of a market day ended up being something of an event.

Out in the square, Dak was between sets. Enid had brought him a sandwich and sat with him while he ate, watching the people at the market stalls. He’d lean to her ear and make up stories about this or that person, and she’d laugh; if she knew the person, she’d lean to his ear and tell him if he was right or wrong. They sat hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, and she was happy.

There was a commotion, and the crowd parted as a solar car came up in front of the clinic. Tomas was driving. He parked, climbed out, and helped out the others who were with him: a young woman, a man a couple of years older than her, and a middle-aged woman. The young one was maybe a year or so older than Enid, wearing a skirt and tunic, her hair braided up around her head, and she was crying. Tomas’s hand rested gently on her shoulder as he guided her up the porch to the clinic door, followed by the other two. Folk of her household, maybe?

Dak caught her staring and caught the implications of an investigator shepherding a group of people who were all clearly unhappy.

“What’s going on there?” Dak asked.

“That’s Tomas—he’s in my household. I can ask him when he comes back out.”

“An investigator in your household? What’s that like?” He wrinkled his nose, as if the thought bothered him.

“He’s just Tomas. He gets serious when he’s wearing brown, that’s all.”

“You’d never even think about saying the wrong thing at home, I bet, with one of them around.”

She glanced at him. “It’s not like that. Not really.” She didn’t think about it most of the time—most of the time, he wasn’t in uniform. “It’s not about saying the wrong thing. It’s about not hurting people. Really, I’d be worried about disappointing Tomas even if he wasn’t an investigator.”

That evening, she broke away from Dak long enough to go home for a bit. Dak was performing in the square, and she planned to join him later. This was her chance to corner Tomas in private.

“That looked rough,” she said. “At the clinic today, with that woman.”

“Bannerless pregnancy,” he said.

Her stomach dropped. Could be a million reasons why such a thing happened, but it reflected badly on everyone: the woman, the father, their households, a whole town sometimes. It had never happened in Haven

in her lifetime, but there were stories. “Oh no. How bad is it?”

“Not too bad,” he said. “Looks like an implant failure. No one’s fault at all. The clinic’s checking it out. Once they confirm, we’ll all have to decide what to do next.”

If the implant had failed, the woman’s household would likely be awarded a banner retroactively—if they could feed an extra mouth, if they didn’t have too many mouths already. If they couldn’t support a new mouth, the woman might be asked to transfer to a household that could, that would maybe welcome a baby. If the woman wanted the banner and the baby, ways could be found to make it work. If she didn’t want the baby, there’d be a termination. No banner at all.

Enid tried to think of what she would want in that situation, and she couldn’t imagine it. Mostly, it made her fervently hope that her implant never failed so she’d never be in that situation. Dak had suddenly made her implant relevant.

“I see your boy came back.” Tomas turned the interrogation back on her.

And still, she blushed. She thought she’d be over that by now. “Yes. He said he would.”

Tomas hid a smile, indicating what, Enid couldn’t guess.

She waited for him to chastise her or offer her some token of unwanted advice. “Well?” she demanded finally. “Aren’t you going to tell me to be careful, to watch out, to not trust him?”

“No,” he said. “You already seem to know whatever I could tell you.”

She stormed out, and she thought she’d be over that by now as well.

Back at the square, where a late-market party had sprung up, she and Dak sat by themselves, eating pot pies and talking. She passed on what Tomas had said about the young woman at the clinic, about the bannerless pregnancy.

“It sounds like it’ll all turn out okay,” Enid said. “Not like those terrible cases.” She didn’t have to explain—the ones where people cut out their implants, hid their pregnancies, hoping no one would ever know. Whole households colluded sometimes, keeping pregnancies and babies hidden. But people always found out; people always seemed to know. No one ever wanted to be in that situation, a whole town or a whole region rejecting you, cutting you out because you couldn’t be bothered to play by the rules. Shamed and shunned. And the poor children who never asked to be bannerless—but people always knew. Because if you had too many babies, if they couldn’t be fed, if there was another epidemic or famine, they couldn’t take care of everyone, and the Fall would happen all over again.

Dak ran his hand up her arm, fingering that raised bit under the skin behind her bicep. “Would you ever do it? Sabotage your implant to have a baby? Skip the whole banner?”

“Oh no,” she said, horrified. What a terrible thing to do to your household—they might all be held accountable, if she tried to go behind their backs like that. If she wanted a baby, she’d work for one. “I’m not sure I even want a banner at all. Plenty of other people to worry about that sort of thing. I like things the way they are.”