Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

“I’m afraid I can’t. You know how it is, you walk around and see people . . . they’re like part of the scenery.” He didn’t even have to think about it.

She took a chance. “Can you remember what you were doing in the morning four days ago?”

He never stopped with that smile, even now. “You’re interrogating me.”

Her lips curled. “Just asking a few questions.” She wondered what Dak saw when he looked at her now? Not that she ever really knew.

“As it happens, I was away. Playing for the market at Porto. Only got back the next day and heard about the accident then. If I knew anything, I would tell you. You know I would.” There it was, alibi established, so smoothly he could pretend he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

“I know,” she said. He blinked at her, then reached for his guitar.

“You’ll come hear me play, won’t you? I think it’s about time for some music.” He rested the instrument on his lap and picked a couple of strings, tuning as he did. The notes whined. She remembered that sound.

“Not tonight, I’m afraid.”

“Well, then. I’m sure we’ll have other chances to talk. Maybe after the unpleasantness is done.”

“Maybe.” She stood to see him out to the door.

“It’s really good to see you, Enid,” he said before leaving. “Sunshine in a storm. Oh—” He fumbled at the collar of his tunic for a moment and drew out a pendant on a string—a piece of sea glass, the one she’d given him, that she’d found the first time she’d seen the ocean. With him. “I still have it. Remember?”

She was amazed that he hadn’t given it to someone else on the road. That he hadn’t just lost it. “I do. You kept it.”

Hers was sitting on a shelf at home, in the room she shared with Sam.

“It’s one of my favorite things. Night, Enid.”

When he was gone, Tomas ducked into the room. “That was unexpected.”

Enid rubbed her face and sighed. “What are the odds? I can’t even imagine!”

“You’re not happy to see him?”

“I . . .” She paused. She honestly didn’t know what she was thinking. What she ought to be thinking. “I’m curious about what he’s been getting up to. He always had such a clear picture of himself and it wasn’t so . . . domestic.”

“Or he put on a good show of it before,” Tomas observed, settling into the chair Dak had occupied.

Yeah, there was that. “That’s a depressing thought. The show’s what I liked about him.”

She had never asked Tomas if he had a lover in every town, the way he’d so confidently told her that Dak did, back in the day. She didn’t really want to know. Tomas had stayed with Plenty, back at Haven. Part of a legacy. The household had earned half a dozen banners during his adult life, and he’d fathered one of the resulting children. She also understood that he was the father of a boy at a household up north—they’d earned a banner, and the mother asked him, and he obliged. Enid didn’t know the details. As far as Enid knew, he didn’t have any kind of partnership like she and Sam did, or Olive and Berol, and he traveled too much to be close to his children—couldn’t be said to be their father in any way but biological. A lover and a father were two different things. Her own biological father, Zen, was part of Plenty. He repaired windmills for most of the surrounding communities and traveled a lot. He hadn’t been around much when she was growing up, and she hadn’t really missed him—she had plenty of other people looking out for her. Folk like Tomas, in fact. But maybe she’d inherited her wanderlust from him.

With a household, a kid always had family. More than enough family sometimes, as Enid thought of her own crowded childhood and that overwhelming urge she’d felt sometimes to flee. She liked her own small cozy household just fine, and when Serenity’s kid finally came, it would have four parents. And probably want to flee just like she did.

She took a long drink of cider and got out her notebook. “We need a timeline of what happened. Who saw what when. This is a tangle; we’ve got to keep it straight.”

They worked backward from when Sero’s body was discovered. They had holes to fill in, to get as close as they could to the definitive last time he’d been seen by witnesses. Earlier that morning, possibly.

Witnesses said Miran had been there that morning. She might have misremembered when she was last there, or might have been lying. She said he’d been doing work at Sirius household; that might be their starting point. From the time of death, Enid worked the timeline forward to the call for an investigation and her and Tomas’s arrival. A full day had passed, near as Enid and Tomas could figure. There’d been a debate before Ariana had sent a courier to the regional committee. It had arrived two mornings ago. Which meant Pasadan had had four days to clean up evidence and hide witnesses. But no one had bothered checking for footprints and blood around the shed. Loose threads still waited to be pulled.

They needed to talk to Philos and Ariana again, find out how deep their argument ran. This business over Sero might just have been the latest bout in a long-running conflict. She also wanted to see Miran and the rest of Sirius household, and to find Miran’s friend Kirk. He might be a reason to go check out the party after all. Or they could leave it till morning—the truth had waited this long.

“We’ve got our list to talk to in the morning, then,” Tomas said, shutting his notebook.

“We do.” She leaned back, already tired. “No one is happy about us being here. Not even Ariana. They all just keep saying that no one liked Sero, as if that explains everything. People are horrible,” she said, even though she didn’t mean it. Saying so was cathartic sometimes. Tomas quirked a smile.

“It’s likely we won’t have to push for more than a day or so, and guilt will pull someone out. They won’t be able to take us poking around anymore.”

“One can hope. But it’ll depend on who they’re more scared of. Us, or everyone else in town looking at them to keep quiet?”