The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

art of the old Bridge House. But not as sisters. When the old household broke down, so did the records. It happened sometimes.

“Juni didn’t say anything?” Teeg asked.

Enid thought about it, everything the woman had said about the other households and what they’d find. She’d been quick to talk about Last House, bitter about the old case. But she hadn’t mentioned a sister.

“Would you say anything? If you had a twin that did what she did?” Enid said.

They were out of sight of Last House now. Curious, Enid next turned uphill, wanting to see how much farther the path went, what else might be up here.

“What’re we looking for now?” Teeg asked, using his staff as a walking stick as the way grew more rocky.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need to look,” she said.

Up the hill, away from the Estuary and the saltwater, trees and scrub got a roothold, and farther up was actual forest. Cottonwood, oak, a few pines. Stumps were in evidence—this was where the settlement harvested lumber. But they weren’t clearing the forest, which was good. They kept to the quotas they had for harvesting lumber.

Not more than a hundred yards past Last House, the path narrowed to a dirt track, then trickled out to nothing, overgrown with grasses. It was possible people came up this way, but clearly not often.

“See anything?” Teeg asked, looking around, again with that furrow in his brow like he was searching for something without knowing what it looked like.

“Just trees and wild,” she said. They were up in real hills now; the river turned shallow, rushing over rocks, cutting a narrow gulch far below. She could barely hear it from here. “Next I think we should walk up the riverside, see if she left anything behind when she washed down, or if there’s any sign of what happened.

“Like maybe a knife someone threw out of sight.”

“That would certainly be convenient for us.”

Teeg glanced up at the sky and around. “We’ll have to wait until morning. We won’t find anything in this light.”

Dusk was falling. Shadows were long, and the last bit of sunlight filtered strangely through hazy air. Enid didn’t want to wait, but he was right. All she saw was shadow.

Nightfall, and the promise of another day in this place. Even the golden light over the wetlands was starting to look ominous. She sighed.

“Right. Let’s get back.”

Chapter Seven • the estuary

///////////////////////////////////////

Ruin

By dusk, high tide meant water almost reached the road, shallow waves lapping, receding, and washing smooth the mud flats. The landscape on this stretch must change all the time, especially after a storm. Some of the rusted metal ruins, the pipes and slabs of concrete, were covered up while new ones were revealed. Kellan and other scavengers had their work cut out for them.

If Kellan hadn’t gone out on the shore today, he wouldn’t have found the body. She’d be covered with water now, and might have washed out to sea when the tide receded. No one ever would have known. And Enid was horrified to find a small part of her thinking that would have been better; there’d be no fuss then, and she’d be on her way home. But no, this was better. The truth was always better.

She still hoped that someone would come looking for the young woman, eventually.

Enid’s socks and shoes felt damp. Not wet enough to need to change. Just sticky, like everything else. Made her feel every step of the way. Not painful, but definitely annoying.

Kids were playing out by the water. Peety from Semperfi, a couple of younger girls. Barefoot, they’d run out to where the crawling surf met the draining river, splashing and shrieking with laughter. One of them had a basket, and Enid saw that they were hunting crabs, little skittering things that came out of the sand to pick at what the water washed out. The kids weren’t doing it very efficiently, spending as much time chasing and splashing one another as searching out their prey. But every now and then, one of them would shout out and rush over to drop a wriggling thing into the basket. Then they’d go back to running around with far too much energy.

Looked like fun, actually.

Solar lights were on at Bonavista, and they’d hung a lantern with a candle off the front porch. Enid wondered if this was a usual evening habit, or if they’d left the light out for the investigators to find their way. It made the last little bit of their trek easier. They’d been walking all day, with a lot of talking and thinking, and Enid was bone tired.

Juni let them into the main house and enthusiastically offered them dinner—she’d made extra. Clam chowder, which smelled rich and full of herbs. Enid’s stomach reminded her she hadn’t had anything to eat since the morning. The rest of the household, seated around the kitchen table, invited them in. Tom was missing, still out on messenger duty.

The whole place was clean, well kept, cozy. The kitchen and common area occupied the whole front half of the building. In the back, separated by a short hallway, were bedrooms, with doors on either side. All the doors and windows were open now, letting in air and sun. The kitchen had a sturdy table and chairs, plenty of counter space, pots and pans on a shelf.

Two banners hung on the wall over the front door. Squares of woven cloth, in a checked red and green, a little over a foot on a side. A deep, rich source of color, the brightest things in the room, drawing the gaze right to them. A mark of pride—you had to look at them. Neither of the banners was recent—Tom was a teen, the one before was older still, one of those strong young men collecting reeds from the riverbanks. The household had started up only twenty years before, put together from the pieces of the one that had broken up after Neeve cut out her implant. The old household’s banners would have been put away or sent off with the people who left.