Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1) - Page 39
Enid hid away in the meeting room, where she wouldn’t be bothered and wouldn’t be stared at. She pulled out all the records and notes about Pasadan they’d brought with them from the archives. Everything that might be relevant, just to get a rough idea of how the place was doing. Back at Haven, Tomas had identified the trouble with research before a case—one never knew what might be relevant, and so everything looked relevant. They hadn’t had much time to prepare; the notes were rough.
The town hadn’t had any quota violations, not in a decade. This was usually how a town like Pasadan got in trouble—exceeding quotas, wasting resources, misappropriating excess. Cutting down all the trees in a forest when it only needed half, tilling twice as much ground as required, exhausting farmland that might be desperately needed in another five or ten years. Not planning ahead, and not learning lessons of the past—this was the kind of trouble most towns got into, what committees and investigators tried to prevent.
Philos had been on the committee here for almost a decade—not unusual. Some towns rotated out committee members every couple of years. Some liked to keep at least one person on for longer, sometimes for life. It created institutional memory. But it also created inertia. Bad habits.
Tomas came in, knocking as he did so she wasn’t startled. “You look very serious,” he said.
“More so than usual?”
“You’ve always been serious. You like fixing things.”
Hmm. She could be accused of worse. “Did you notice that in ten years Pasadan has never had a quota infraction?”
He pulled up a chair and melted into it, pulling off his boots with a sigh. They had planned on being back on the road to Haven by now. “Really. You think it means something?”
Towns and households usually had some kind of quota blip—usually by accident, not anyone’s fault and not a big problem. An unexpected bumper crop or an enthusiastic season, the give-and-take as a place found its best balance. Folk—committees, investigators—looked for that kind of up and down. All of it normal for a dynamic system, as any system involving people was. The problems they looked for were large and purposeful—intentional rule breaking.
Pasadan’s record was ideally, predictably normal. Enid showed Tomas the numbers. If she hadn’t been looking for something to be wrong, she might not have noticed.
“So who’s hiding what?” Tomas asked.
“It’s that obvious once you shine a light on it, isn’t it? Philos is the person least happy to have us here.”
“He might just have an anxious disposition.”
“Maybe he does. But it merits a look around. You find anything?” she asked.
“Couple of things. We should keep an eye on Ariana and Philos. I get the feeling this has brought a deeper conflict to the surface. Not saying it’ll help figure out what happened to Sero, but it’s something.”
“Yeah. I talked to Kirk.”
“What’s he like?”
“Defensive. They’re all so defensive. Philos barely let me alone with him.”
“They don’t want anyone poking around.”
“Except Ariana,” Enid said, pointing. “Ariana wants someone poking around. What else did you find?”
“I’m pretty sure Miran was the last one to see Sero alive, the morning he died.”
“Really? But she would have seen him at the house. Or would she have gone to the shed? What did she see?”
“We’ll talk to her again,” he said. “Push harder next time.”
“And then there’s Dak.” She shook her head, scowled. “He’s thrown me off.”
“Yeah?” Tomas said suggestively, eyebrow raised.
“I think maybe I was a little more torn up about Dak than I wanted to admit back then.”
He had the nerve to laugh. He probably could have told her that years ago. She’d been too proud to ask.
CHAPTER EIGHT • FINTOWN
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Escape
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