The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

That happened sometimes. Not very often. Those who didn’t want to follow the rules—who didn’t care about the Coast Road and banners and the rest—could leave. They rarely did, since it meant being banned from the markets, from everything familiar, from the shelter of the road.

“Oh, not in so many words. But she was never happy, you know? Was a time I assumed she’d go and not come back.”

The kind of stigma that came from cutting out one’s implant might have had something to do with that, Enid thought. People tended not to forget that kind of thing. She shouldn’t have come back, Kellan had said.

Juni said, softly, “Not so easy to just walk away, in the end.”

Enid needed to talk to Neeve about this. Get some more details, who else might have traveled back and forth regularly, if any of Ella’s people might be willing to talk to Enid. Briefly, she wondered if there was a way to deliver Ella’s body back to them. But without any of Ella’s folk to talk to, she didn’t know where to take the body. And even if she did know, without a well-cleared path to whatever distant settlement, several people would need to take time to carry it there. And the body would never last long enough for such a trek.

Juni found something to do, grabbing a pitcher and filling it with water from the pump. “It’s not like they even do anything, up at Last House. They’re all just scavengers. Might as well be wild.”

Enid said, “Nothing wrong with scavengers. You all wouldn’t have much timber otherwise, I think.”

“But they’ll never get a banner.”

“Not everyone wants one,” Enid said. And thought of Olive, and the strange pulsing of her belly when the little one pressed out a hand or a foot. She’d call Enid and the others over to put their hands on her, to feel the movement. For a long time Enid had thought she didn’t want a banner. Now that Serenity household had one, she thought of little else.

“I suppose—” Juni started, then paused, like she didn’t actually understand at all. “I imagine we’re lucky to get any around here. This is a hard place to live. A hard place to raise babies.”

“Bonavista earned banners,” Enid said.

Juni smiled sadly. “It’s like so many other things; you always want more, don’t you? But every time we get a new case of malaria, it sets the banners back a couple more years. And I think . . . well.”

“Well what?”

“That Bonavista is still being punished for not stopping Neeve from doing what she did.”

Interesting, how few people said the words, the details of Neeve’s crime. That she cut out her implant. That she presumably wanted a child without waiting to earn a banner. If Neeve really had walked away from the Estuary, into the wild, would she be spoken of at all back here? Did they wish they could forget her?

“Could you have stopped her, do you think?” Enid asked.

Juni must have thought of that question so many times over the years. Her answer came instantly. “No, I don’t think so. I hardly knew her by then, she was gone so much. She’d gotten so quiet. So strange. People say twins are supposed to be magical—they can tell what the other is thinking, sense each other’s pain. But I don’t think I ever knew her. I hated that we looked alike. I always made sure we dressed different. So people would never mistake us.”

Enid took out her notebook and flipped to a dog-eared page, quickly read over it just to be sure she had her details right. “The old household, Bridge House, wasn’t dissolved after the investigation.” The household wasn’t held responsible; the investigators on the case had punished Neeve alone.

“No, but Bridge House folk got discouraged. Weren’t many of us to start with. Three transferred out right off.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Oh no—I like it here. This is home. Then I met Jess at the Morada market. And well, seemed a good fit. Starting a brand-new house can be an adventure. Even when you’re picking up the pieces of an old one.”

Enid nodded. “Oh yes, starting a new household is a challenge. The best kind, though.”

“You say that like you know all about it.” Juni’s smile widened, making for a bright, open expression. She seemed younger. Juni liked talking about families, Enid decided. She clung to families, after what had happened to her first one.

“I do. I helped start a household back in Haven. Serenity.” Where Enid’s family was right now, where she ought to be too.

“I heard somewhere that investigators don’t have households. You just travel up and down the Coast Road looking for trouble.”

Truth be told, investigators often cultivated that particular story. It was part of the aura. Made investigators seem even weirder than they were. Like outsiders. Enid wasn’t sure it helped.

“Oh, investigators are like anyone else,” she said.

“Have you all earned a banner yet?” Juni asked, in that eager, wide-eyed way people did whenever the subject came up.

Enid tried to hide her smile. Couldn’t. She grinned just thinking about it. “Our kid’s due any day now.”

“Oh.” Juni sighed with longing. “And you’re stuck way out here!”