The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“That’d sure make this easier. So—do you think it was a knife or an ax?”

“Bone’s scored but not broken. I’d think an ax would have cracked bone, just from the force of it.” Enid sat back, sighed. “Let’s not make that call. Not yet.”

Chapter Eleven • the estuary

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

Pyre

In the old days—the pre-Fall days—cities had refrigeration. Morgues and lockers where investigators could store bodies indefinitely. In books Enid had seen pictures of these places, so formal and clean, complicated yet organized. If investigators found a piece of evidence later, they could go back to the body and see if it matched up. Barring that, they had photographs. In either case they didn’t have to remember—they could look again.

Enid, however, had to take notes. Pages and pages of notes, hoping she recorded every vital detail, guessing which scrap of information might be important later. In this case, she sketched the wound, measured it, noted every detail, uncertain any of it would be of help.

At the time of the Fall, folk had had to make choices about what to save. Medicine, but not forensics. Windmills and solar collectors, but not photography. Someday, maybe they’d have enough resources and incentive to pick up some of those lost skills again—and a library full of books waited in the cellar archives at Haven whenever they were ready.

But right now, a body was rotting in the heat, and they could keep the flies and scavengers off it only for so long. Gulls had already started perching on the outbuildings, testing the perimeter.

The body had told them everything it was likely to.

Enid thought she would have to order a couple of people to help her and Teeg carry the body up the hill, a trek of a couple of miles. But Jess and others at Bonavista volunteered. Enid was grateful. Again, they used the canvas for a makeshift stretcher, one of them at each corner.

A small, impromptu procession formed behind them. Juni, a couple of the folk from Pine Grove and other households. Enid assumed they followed out of curiosity. Or maybe she ought to give them more credit, and they came because even an unknown stranger, left dead on the marsh, deserved a little respect when being put to rest. No one from Semperfi appeared, and no one was out working at the ruined house. The quiet around the place made it seem abandoned.

Way up the hill, maybe a hundred yards out from the edge of the ravine and just beyond Last House, was a clearing—no trees, no sodden marsh, just a stretch of dirt and rock where a fire could be set without putting any buildings in danger. A low bier of driftwood and deadfall marked the center of the clearing, a lonely, sa

d mound; knowing its purpose might have made it seem that way. The wood stored under a nearby lean-to looked the same but didn’t seem to hold so much somber meaning.

The other folk of Last House, Neeve and Kellan, were there with a lantern and torch to light the pyre, with buckets of water and mud nearby to quench it later. The procession hung back, watching from a distance.

Witnesses. A farewell like this should always have witnesses, Enid believed.

Together, Enid and Teeg worked to arrange Ella’s body among the branches. Enid spent a long last moment studying the girl, her clothes, her hair. Imprinting her mind with the sight, wishing that maybe at last some crucial detail would jump out and explain everything. Who Ella really was, why she had ended up like this.

“Enid?” Teeg prompted.

“Yeah. All right.”

Neeve lingered over the body for just a moment before lighting the kindling. As the flames rose, she stood back, head bowed, eyes shut. Quietly and respectfully, as if Ella were one of their own, the folk of Last House watched the fire rise up and engulf her.

There was a chance, a small chance, that whoever inflicted that wound was present. To watch the pyre burn, fascinated to see the final result of the death they’d caused. Enid kept a lookout, not really sure what she was searching for. One of the detectives from before the Fall would probably spot something odd right off.

The folk who’d gathered were quiet, somber. No one behaved at all unexpectedly. The vague expectation that one of them would fling themself on the ground and confess out of sheer oppressive guilt wasn’t very realistic.

Enid cast her gaze farther out. The young man she’d seen by the river—if he was interested in Ella, interested in the body, he should be here, watching. Or maybe she’d scared him off, and he’d never come back.

Enid had so many questions for him. So she searched, just in case.

The sun shone down on the sparse trees, not leaving many shadows, at the edge of the wood. But against one of those trees, Enid spotted an anomaly. A shape leaning against a trunk, a figure in hiding. She let her gaze pass over as if she hadn’t observed it, and went back to watching the pyre, which was now fully engulfed, whitish ash floating away with the smoke. Enid glanced back and saw that the figure was still there. A young man with the start of a rough beard.

She stepped closer to Teeg. “I’m going to take a walk. Don’t look, don’t react. Just give me fifteen minutes or so, yeah?”

“What is it?”

“Maybe come running if I shout real loud,” she said, grinning wryly, and walked toward Last House’s cottage, before curving back up the hill, toward the trees.

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

Enid fully expected that the man had been watching her closely, saw her leave the pyre, and kept track of where she went next—so there was little point in trying to sneak up on him. What she wanted to avoid was having to chase him down in front of a crowd of witnesses. Maybe he could be persuaded to talk.