The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“Maybe,” Juni said, uncertain. “Sometimes. Not that often.”

“Not this far,” Jess added.

“What do you mean?” Enid prompted.

Jess sighed. “They trade with Last House,” he said fin

ally. “Not much, just a few times a year.”

Enid regarded them with interest and waited for more. There was usually more, in a conversation like this.

“I wish they wouldn’t,” Juni said. “It isn’t right.”

It wasn’t much of a thread, but it was something. “Oh?” Enid prompted noncommittally, hoping she sounded curious and not like an interrogator. Kellan was Last House, and he’d said he didn’t know the victim.

Juni continued. “It encourages those folk to come too close. Causes trouble. Look what happened.”

Jess grunted in agreement. The work out back had fallen quiet, and the rest of the household’s folk had drifted to the front, lurking not-so-unobtrusively by the corner of the house, listening in: four men and women in their twenties who’d joined up over the past ten years or so, and Jess and Juni’s teenage kid, Tom. Enid debated—should she ask them to move off, talk to each one separately, or get this all over at once? See if they supported one another or argued.

“You think it’s been a problem?” Enid prodded gently. “Folk from outside coming into the settlement? Has anyone made trouble?” She was thinking of the squatter in the Semperfi house. If the young woman had been causing what someone perceived as trouble, there might be a motive there. No one had said anything, but then they’d all been focused on the house at Semperfi.

“Not as such,” Jess said, though his gaze went distant, like he was thinking about it.

“Not that we know of,” Juni corrected. “What you need to do is talk to Last House. They could be hiding a whole tribe of refugees out there, breaking quotas . . . who knows what else. And the rest of us would never know. You want to know what’s wrong around here, ask them.” She studied the sky a moment, and sighed. “I’m sorry. We’re not usually this out of sorts.”

“It’s been a hard day,” Enid said.

Jess added, “If anyone knows that girl, it’ll be someone from Last House.”

“Kellan said he didn’t know her,” Teeg said. “You’re saying he might be lying?”

Enid would not have put it so strongly, but she waited for their response with interest.

“Maybe he is,” Jess said. “He’s a strange one.”

“They all are.” Juni frowned. “Go talk to them, you’ll see.”

Enid leaned back. “Are you saying this because of the investigation from twenty years ago?”

The woman from the old household, Juni’s former household, who’d cut out her implant had moved to Last House after the investigation. A sort of exile.

“I don’t like to talk about that,” Juni said. “I wish Erik hadn’t brought it up.”

“Just go talk to them,” Jess said quietly. “If anyone knows anything, they do.”

“We will, thanks.” Enid looked over; the others from the household had stayed quiet, but still watched, wide-eyed. They were part of a relatively new household, built on the ruins of an earlier one—they might very well be worried. She asked, “Any of you feel like running messages to Everlast?” Everlast was the first town on this section of road that had a committee and the means to pass along messages to regional.

The mood lifted. Giving people concrete jobs to replace vague worries usually did that.

“Tom can run messages,” Jess said. “How’s that sound? Tom?”

Tom, the youngest of the household at fourteen, perked up, stood at attention. “Yeah, I think so. Late enough I might have to stay the night, but yeah, I can. That okay?” He asked this of Jess.

“Sure, you’ve done it before.”

Enid said, “We just need to let the local committee know this is going to take longer than we expected.”

“I can do it,” he said, sounding so sure of himself. Like she was sending him on a quest to the other end of the Coast Road.