The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“She’d been dead for several days, and she’d already bled out.”

“Doesn’t mean anything.”

Enid tried a different tack. “Is there any way I might be able to talk to anyone else who knew her? Who might know where she’d been, what she was doing?”

“I don’t see how anyone will want to talk to you.”

“Can I come back with you? Back to your camp?”

His expression locked down. Grief changed to suspicion.

All right, then.

“Ella’s pyre is still burning,” Enid said, gesturing back toward the rising smoke. “Do you want to come and see?”

“Could be she isn’t dead. Could be you’re lying and it’s someone else in that fire.”

He’d accepted her word when she first said it. He’d wanted Ella to stay away, he’d warned her away. Enid wanted to know why, but he’d started creeping away, stepping backward, knife still held out as a threat.

“I’m done talking. Don’t you follow me,” he said.

“I won’t.”

She watched him go. He followed no path, and she lost sight of him quickly. That was likely her last chance to talk to one of the outsiders, and she couldn’t do anything to stop him from leaving.

Chapter Twelve • the estuary

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

Scavengers

Back at the edge of the woods, she found Teeg waiting for her. He’d been savvy enough to keep his distance. Had there been two Coast Road folk bearing down on him—investigators, no less—she was sure Hawk would have fled sooner, or taken to violence.

“Did you get him to talk?” he asked.

“A little. Not much of use.”

“And you let him leave?”

“Should I have held a knife to his throat?” she asked, brow raised.

“But what if he’s the one that did it?”

“He seems awfully broken up about it.”

“Broken up that you found him out, maybe,” Teeg shot back.

Enid moved past him, walking back toward the pyre near Last House. “He’s looking for a knife she had with her. One with a flower carved in the handle.”

Teeg trotted after her, and she shouldn’t have been so satisfied, stoking his frustration like that. Petty feeling, there. They were supposed to be partners. Partners didn’t often disagree. But they didn’t often see a case quite like this.

“The same knife Kellan was looking for?”

“The one that probably killed her, yeah.”

“So where is it?”

“That’s what that guy wanted to know. I couldn’t say.”