The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

Erik swung the door in; the hinges creaked only a little. The floorboards inside groaned more. The dog waited, settled on its haunches, tail wagging weakly. Sensible enough to stay outside.

The interior was dark—the window frames were visible, but they’d been covered up, probably ages ago, to keep out the weather. The only light came in through the open door. Enid’s steps were audible

as she stepped on some kind of warped and stained plastic-tile flooring. It had been light-colored originally, with a kind of marbling pattern still barely visible. The walls, paneled with simple wood slats, were not original. When it was new, the walls would have been smoothed and painted. There was a front room, a doorway to what looked like a kitchen, though Enid would have been shocked if any of the plumbing worked; she hadn’t seen any cisterns outside. Sockets, switches, and some loose wiring were visible, but again she guessed that electricity hadn’t run through here in ages; the place didn’t have any solar panels or compact wind turbines—those were reserved for the household’s newer cottages, farther up the path.

The air reeked of mold, the inevitable product of damp leather and ancient wood forced together and aging badly.

The kitchen had a sink, counters, cupboards—all of them cleaned over and over until the surface finishes had worn off, so they now seemed thin and brittle. From the kitchen a short hall led off to more rooms. Interior walls that must have once been present had been taken out; the space was open now. Some furniture had come to roost here and there: a table pushed into a corner, an assortment of chairs next to it. That was it.

Erik waited for their reactions, like a kid showing off his lumpy, misshapen first attempt at pottery or woodworking. Of course you’d tell him how nice it was.

Enid took her notebook from her satchel and made notes, a list of everything she saw wrong with the place, from her first impression outside to the smell inside. Even just writing a couple of words per item, this took a while. But she wanted this documented. No one could come back later and say she hadn’t been thorough.

“You don’t use this place much, do you?” Enid asked.

“Well. We do. Storage, when we’re prepping food. We do a lot of drying and canning, and there’s space to spread out and keep things dry. Usually. I mean, when the roof isn’t leaking. We dry laundry in here sometimes. But that’s kind of the point: if we really get this place fixed up, get some really good pylons under it, get it stable—then we can sleep people here again.”

Enid kept her reaction off her face, tamping down hard on her feelings of dismay. No, no one should ever sleep here. Erik’s father, the household’s previous head, had died of a lingering illness—flu, the reporting medic thought. Enid didn’t say so, but she wondered if spending too much time in this house might have caused his health to deteriorate. Did everyone in Semperfi have lingering coughs they couldn’t explain? She wouldn’t be surprised.

The place should be dismantled for salvage, and something fresh, new, with wide windows and a very solid foundation, should be built far away from the mudslides. The other households were right, however much Enid might want to sympathize with Erik. The house had survived the last storm, but the next would likely finish it off. It wasn’t safe. Now it was her job to convince him of that, as kindly as possible. But all she could think of at that moment was this question: they’d hiked a week up the Coast Road for this?

Teeg kept his face entirely turned away from Erik to hide his look of disgust. Expectantly, he waited for Enid’s reaction as a cue to how he should behave. He seemed to be trying to silently ask, What do we do with this?

Out of a sense of duty and professional thoroughness, Enid went through the whole house. She didn’t quite know what more she was looking for. Maybe she was hoping to find a pre-Fall book that didn’t exist anywhere else—a painting or a photo album that would drive some future historian to ecstasy. An artifact that Erik and his household might have overlooked, that would make the whole case—the whole trip here—worthwhile.

In the corner farthest from the front door, she found a pile of rags. Debris, it looked like—shoved out of the way. Cringing every time the wood creaked under her steps, Enid went to poke at it with her foot. Not rags after all, but a whole blanket, threadbare, big enough to wrap around a person. Shifting the cloth uncovered more: a simple leather pouch, and, inside it, flint and steel made from what looked like salvaged scraps. No charred streaks were visible, so likely no one had tried to start a fire inside the house, for which Enid sighed in relief.

“Erik, you said no one sleeps here?”

“Of course not,” he answered, clearly shocked at the idea. He and Teeg came up beside her, looking where she looked.

“Then you’ve got a squatter.” She set the pouch on the blanket, stepped back.

Erik snarled, biting off a word. Far from surprised, he was angry. Furious.

“You know who?” Enid prompted.

“It’s got to be outsider folk. Wild folk from upriver. They spy on us, been stealing from us for years.”

Enid’s brow furrowed. “What have they stolen?” In her experience, outsider folk stayed far away from the Coast Road settlements. According to their stories, the Coast Road folk were villains, demanding tribute and stealing babies.

Erik shrugged. “Well, nothing specific that I know of. But that blanket—they must have taken that from somewhere; they sure don’t have weaving like that.”

“This looks like just one person, maybe trying to get out of the rain.” Someone who knew they wouldn’t be bothered in this sad old house. But why would such a person have left anything behind? The wild folk she’d met never had much to spare. Maybe when Erik brought Enid and Teeg here today for the tour, they’d surprised someone. Chased the person off when they came in. Enid listened for noises, anyone moving outside the house, labored breathing. Inside, there wasn’t anyplace to hide. She didn’t sense anything. Erik was glaring at the abandoned mess. “This is another reason to get this place fixed up. Get the doors and windows fixed, so we can close it off, keep it safe—”

“And make sure no one gets killed if the roof and walls fall in?” Enid asked, brow raised. “Let’s get outside, into the light, yeah?”

Outside, the sky was huge and even the briny, humid air smelled clean. A weight came off her—relief that the house hadn’t killed her. She hadn’t realized that she’d been worried until she breathed fresh air and the space over the wetlands opened up before her.

A dozen people waited outside.

She recognized Jess, Juni, Avery, several others from Bonavista and Pine Grove. She and Teeg had met the first of the area’s households on the walk up here. Bonavista was the first household on the road into the Estuary, something of a gateway to the rest of the settlement, and Jess and Juni had spotted them as they arrived, welcoming them with more enthusiasm than Enid was used to. Jess was a lean man, his skin reddened with pockmarks from old acne or illness. He had a welcoming smile. His partner, the co-head of Bonavista, was Juni, a small woman with a round face and eager manner. Avery, the head of Pine Grove, had bragged that they were under their quota for the month—no overfishing happened here. But he knew very well that Enid and Teeg hadn’t come to investigate fishing quotas. They’d all been happy to tell the investigators that Erik was mad, that the house was a wreck, that he had no business wanting to save it. She’d thought they’d been exaggerating.

Curious, the group must have followed the investigators up here, at a distance. The ones Enid didn’t recognize probably came from the households farther on. She and Teeg wanted to talk to everyone; they hadn’t gotten that far yet. The Estuary might not have had a committee, but the small-town grapevine was working just fine. They all knew that Erik had asked for an investigation, they’d gotten word that investigators had arrived, and now they wanted to come see for themselves.

So this was going to be more complicated than Enid liked. Teeg had moved up beside her and planted his staff. In their brown uniforms, a matched set, they clearly had authority here.

“Hola,” Enid said brightly. “Can I help you?”