The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

Teeg continued studying him, with an accusing gaze. “If you remember anything else you forgot to say, you’ll tell us, right?”

Kellan just stared back at him.

“It’s all right,” Enid said gently, and went around the house to look for Juni. She ran into the woman coming the other way. Juni let out a squeak and stepped back.

“You startled me!”

“Sorry,” Enid said, smiling blandly.

“I sent Tom off. It’ll be a while before Mart gets here. I assume it’ll be Mart, he’s got the sense out of that bunch.”

“Yeah, he seems a bit of a caretaker.”

“That bunch needs it.”

Enid tilted her head, inquiring, but Juni waved off the unspoken question. “Never mind.” She nodded to the front of the house, referring to Kellan. “Is that one going to be okay?”

Honestly, Enid wasn’t sure. Kellan was holding something back, and it was making him anxious and scared. But she also had the impression he was often anxious and scared, and she didn’t know how far outside normal this was for him. “I think so,” she said. “Once all this passes and things get back to normal.”

“Normal,” Juni said wryly, with a hmph. “Though I suppose this is normal for you, all this . . . mess.”

“A thing like this is never normal. I know she isn’t your favorite person, but can I ask you about Neeve?”

“If it’ll help, yeah, sure.”

“Thanks. Let’s go inside.” Enid didn’t want anyone eavesdropping.

Enid followed Juni into the house.

“Get you something to drink?” Juni asked brightly, bustling, in her element. A little like Olive in that respect.

“No, thanks,” Enid said. “Out on the marsh, Kellan said something odd: that Neeve left, that she should have stayed away. Do you know what he might have been talking about?”

“It just keeps coming back to her, doesn’t it?” Juni’s mouth twisted.

“What is it?” Enid prompted. The words were there; Juni just wasn’t saying them.

“I don’t like talking about it. It’s embarrassing, I think. What she did was so horrible, I didn’t want any of it to rub off on me.”

“You don’t look that much alike,” Enid said, and Juni chuckled. Relaxed, just a bit.

“What I didn’t say was that the contact went both ways. It isn’t just that Neeve was trading with the wild folk, inviting them down, wanting them to stay—she used to go walking up the hill. She’d be away for days at a time. She was going to see them. They’d never have come this far down the river if not for her, if she hadn’t found them first.”

“So you didn’t always have contact with them? They didn’t always come looking for trade?”

“Oh no. That was all Neeve. I don’t know that she was ever happy here, in the Estuary. Especially after what happened.”

“With the investigation, you mean. When she cut out her implant.”

“Yeah.” Distracted, Juni leaned up against the counter and faced the opposite wall, her gaze turned inward. To memories, maybe. “Just goes to show she’s always been a troublemaker. All the Last House folk, that’s how they ended up there. Mart wanted to be by himself, and then, well. He kept taking in the strays. What else would you expect?” She turned her crooked smile toward Enid, like an apology.

Grudges over something like banners, and lack of them, could last forever. Enid didn’t know what to do with this information, whether it was any more than gossip. But she tucked it away, just in case. This need to assign blame annoyed Enid, because it caused folk to make assumptions—made them think they knew exactly what was what, and that they didn’t have to actually look at facts.

Enid masked her frustration. Keep Juni talking, see what fell out. “So Neeve traveled. Made friends with the folk in whatever settlement they have upriver.”

“That’s right. They started going back and forth, then. She’d go up there, then they’d come here. I could never see why she liked them so much.”

“Did she ever talk about leaving for good? Going into the hills and not coming back?”