The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“Can I ask some advice?” Enid asked. “What’s the best way to get El Juez to talk to me?”

At that, a corner of Creek’s lip went up, and Enid was hopeful. But she said, “You don’t. He comes to you if he wants.”

“Ah.” Well, at least that was something of a guideline. “Thanks. Take care.”

Creek remained bent to her work, scraping the last of the hides, not looking up to watch her go.

After that, Enid found a couple of guys chopping wood and offered to help. They let her, mostly because they couldn’t seem to figure out how to tell her no. Their axes were made from the salvaged, ground-down steel Mart had talked about. Not very good, making the work slow, even dangerous. The salvaged blades were unpredictable. But Enid knew how to chop wood, and the guys seemed impressed. She asked about Ella when they paused for a rest. They’d known her, but had little interest in the Estuary settlement and questioned whether Hawk was even telling the truth.

“Maybe she ain’t dead,” one of them said. “She decided to stay down there, it’d be just the same. We’d never see her again.”

“I miss her,” said the other, frowning.

They couldn’t say why she’d left, and if she was really dead, they were sure one of Enid’s folk must have killed her. None of the people at the camp would ever do such a thing. Exactly what the Estuary folk said about themselves.

“Thanks,” Enid said, and went in search of her next interview.

She caught sight of an altercation: way off, out of earshot, El Juez chastising Hawk. Pointing at him, flicking his collar, then pointing away. Ordering him off, to stay away from Enid maybe. That was what it looked like, but it was just Enid’s guess. Hawk stomped off. After that, El Juez was the one watching her.

The man was a patriarch, in the best sense of the word that she could think of. He had his people; he cared for them, looked after them, and kept them close. In turn they were devoted. They looked on him with admiration, with love. Some fear, but nothing like the cringing terror she might have expected. Which, oddly, made her trust him—he wasn’t one to lash out, she suspected.

By evening Enid knew she was being tested. If these folk ignored her long enough, would she just go away? How long could they make her wait? Enid knew there were answers here. The connection between Last House and the camp went deeper than trading deerskins and knife blades. She could go back and dig harder at Last House, and they’d say the same things they’d been saying all along.

This was the other side of it.

The gang had left her pack and belt pouch under the shelter, making it clear she could pick them up and leave whenever she liked. She was able to get some of her travel food from it. A couple of people offered her bites to eat, dried meat with a kind of flatbread made from ground nuts, and she accepted. Over the course of the day, she had spoken to almost all the adults and a few of the teens—they hadn’t known Neeve at all, which meant the woman had stopped traveling this way some time ago, just as Enid had heard. Enid got some stories, some corroboration. Ella was a picky eater. Was proud of the Coast Road–made clothes that Neeve gave her and wanted to learn to make such things herself. Thought following Coast Road rules for a few years in exchange for learning to make good cloth would be worth it. Some folk thought she was going to stay away just long enough to learn to make good woven cloth, then she’d be back.

But Hawk, they said, hadn’t thought the trade was a good one.

“You think Hawk might have hurt her?”

“Oh no, never.” They all said that, with an air of astonishment. They didn’t want to think ill of their own. No one ever did.

Which brought Enid back to thinking of who at the Estuary might have done this. Erik, who was so suspicious of intruders. If he’d chanced on Ella in the dark, he might not have even known what he was doing. Then there was Kellan, who couldn’t talk about the incident without melting down.

Everyone who agreed to talk to her didn’t say much, but they were usually specific. Eight or nine days ago Ella was still at the camp. She’d helped butcher rabbits, and she’d watched the kids. She was usually the one to fetch water every morning, and now someone else had to do that job. When she left, she let folk know. They all knew she’d gone.

Enid asked, “Did she seem normal? Was she acting strangely? Did she talk about anything odd?”

Now that Enid mentioned it, yes, a couple of folk answered. They noticed that Ella was restless. She rushed through work. She seemed distracted, maybe even sad. “She and her boy had a fight maybe, yeah?” one older woman said.

Enid suspected this was true, and that Hawk didn’t want to talk about it. Or Ella might have just been nervous about the big change she was embarking on. A kid like that, setting off to travel the wider world—Enid understood that restlessness well.

It may have seemed like small talk, but it was something of a relief. It felt like a real investigation—solid questions and solid answers. Enid made notes in her book. Folk looked at her writing with curiosity. They knew about reading and writing, but none of them knew how.

Everyone had knives. Everyone used them, on food and rope and daily chores. Some of the knives even had decorations, carved pieces of wood and bone, like what Hawk had described. Bu

t most of the blades weren’t ones traded from the Coast Road. Likely, they wouldn’t have been sharp or long enough to make the cut that had killed Ella. But that nice forged blade that Ella had gotten from Last House . . .

Enid asked more than one person, “Your knife . . . I hear that Ella had a nice one that went missing.”

The answers she got back were variations of “Whoever hurt her probably took it.” Thinking just like the Estuary folk did.

“So her knife—you haven’t seen it recently, have you?”

“Not since she left.”

And so on. Everyone made that obvious assumption, the same one Enid and Teeg had: whoever had that knife now had probably killed Ella. So no one was just going to show it to Enid when she asked.