The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

Enid paced, too full of sudden energy to stay seated, her skin buzzing with it. Every scrap of information she’d learned, the whole timeline and all the details, crowded in her mind at once, arranging themselves in a new shape. It was too much; she needed to think.

“Wait a sec,” Enid said, as the air seemed to fall still, voices around her suddenly muffled. “What’re you saying?”

“Neeve’s her mother. Didn’t they tell you?”

No, they didn’t. Because no one in the Estuary knew. Neeve had kept it secret; all this time she hadn’t told anyone. No, that wasn’t true: Kellan knew. That was what he wouldn’t tell anyone. That was what drove him to fits every time the topic got close. Keeping the secret was breaking the man.

El Juez started to say more, but Enid held up a hand, shushing him. She needed quiet, space to piece it all together, because this one scrap of information kept skittering away from her. It wasn’t possible.

And it explained everything.

She sank back onto the concrete slab and got out her notebook, going over the timeline again, reviewing everything folk had told her about Neeve. Twenty years ago, she’d cut out her implant. She’d been caught, reported by her own household—namely her twin sister, Juni—and after that had become a recluse. She wandered, spent weeks away from the settlement. During that time, could Neeve have hidden a pregnancy? Had there been enough time for her to go upriver, give birth, and leave the baby with the outsiders—

Maybe.

But would she have done that?

Turning to the detailed description and inventory of the dead body, Enid recalled the girl—her hair, the shape of her face, the color of her clouded dead eyes. Compared that image to Neeve. And yes, there it was. The round face, the thick texture of the hair—it was the same, though Neeve’s own hair was going gray. The similarities had never occurred to her before—and why should they have? No one had ever had a bannerless pregnancy without being discovered. Investigators always found out, everyone knew that.

Took twenty years this time.

Amazed, unable to hide her shock, she turned back to El Juez. “Why didn’t Neeve stay? She spent so much time here, went through all that trouble to have a child—to have a child with you—why didn’t she stay? Why did she leave the baby behind? She could have stayed!” When Neeve returned to the Estuary, when her cut-out implant was discovered—she must have already given birth. And she’d hid it all this time.

“Don’t know,” El Juez said, shrugging. Tension pulled at his shoulders. “Not sure she ever meant to stay. When she left the last time, I thought she’d be back. She left Ella here because she said you folk would take the baby away from her.”

That was true. Someone who so egregiously stepped out of bounds, as Neeve had done, couldn’t be trusted to care for a child. The baby would have been fostered out. But no one on the Coast Road had even known there was a baby.

“You never went to find her?”

“No, wouldn’t go down there. Didn’t need to. She knew where to find us.”

Neeve had tried to stay in the camp with her child, but couldn’t. It wasn’t home, and for all that she was a recluse, she was still Coast Road. Electricity was a hard thing to give up. But she couldn’t just return with a baby; she’d never have been allowed to keep it.

Maybe . . . maybe . . . Enid hadn’t been the only one to suddenly recognize similarities between Neeve and Ella, mother and daughter. Maybe someone had seen her, made the leap. Someone in the Estuary found out, and was furious. Even after all this time. Someone met Ella by chance and recognized the resemblance instantly.

“I have to go,” Enid said, slipping her notebook in her pouch, marching to the tree roots where she’d stashed her pack. “I need to get back.”

“You know who did it? What happened?”

“You were right, it’s nothing to do with your people here.”

“Ella was our people.”

Except she wasn’t. Or rather, was only half. But that other half meant Enid did have jurisdiction in this. The right—the duty—to make a judgment.

She hesitated, studying the man one last time. Wondering how much to tell. “You didn’t have to raise her. You could have . . . I don’t know. Taken her back. Demanded . . . some responsibility.” Enid suspected many folk would consider abandoning a baby a worse crime than cutting out one’s implant. But Neeve had left the child with its father. She must have trusted El Juez to raise her.

And then, years later . . . Neeve wanted her daughter back.

The man scowled. “Nobody just lets a baby die. Unless . . . do you people?”

“No. Never. At least, we try not to. But Ella . . .” Enid shook her head.

“What’s the punishment for this?”

“They’ll be dealt with.”

“We would kill them. Crime for crime.”