The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“I never would have guessed it,” Teeg said, shaking his head.

“Yeah. That’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re not supposed to guess.”

“That’s why you want to write the report. You’re not going to have anything good to say about me.”

She had planned on leaving him out of the report entirely, at least where finding Ella’s murderer was concerned. That would speak for itself. “You care about the report that much?”

“Of course I care—”

“If you cared, you should have stayed to help.” Except she couldn’t imagine what he would have done at the camp, how he would have handled the gang that took her. Couldn’t imagine him behaving in a way that would have encouraged El Juez to talk, to say the thing that parted the clouds and made the whole situation clear.

She couldn’t imagine him helping, and that was a sad thought.

“Get some sleep, Teeg,” she said. “I’ll keep watch next.”

“No. I’ll watch. You need sleep more than I do.”

Trouble was, she didn’t think she’d be able to. Didn’t make much sense to argue, though. They had a long walk ahead of them, come morning.

Chapter Twenty-One • the coast road

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Beginning

A light rain came through that night, and Semperfi’s ruin crashed down in the middle of it. The screeching racket of it carried over the whole marshland. Enid bolted awake from her corner of the work house, blinking in darkness. In the opposite corner Juni was curled up, pressed to the wall, clutching a blanket to her chest.

“What was that?” the woman gasped.

Enid made a lopsided grin. “Doom,” she murmured, and Juni’s face fell.

Enid opened the door to go out; Teeg got up and followed her. The noise had stopped. The air was still again, but in the main house, lights were coming on, voices calling. Up the path to the hill, more house lights turned on

.

“Stay here, “ Enid ordered Juni, who cringed back against the wall. Then Enid grabbed a hand lantern from her pack and went out.

The crash drew people from up and down the road, so Enid and Teeg were part of a procession of folk with hand lanterns and questions. Their shapes and shadows moved ahead, beams of lanterns playing back and forth. Conversation was low and earnest.

They converged at Semperfi, at the pre-Fall house that had just collapsed into shredded timbers, scattered down the slope all the way to the river. Enid couldn’t quite make out what happened, but if she had to guess, she’d say the muddy slope gave way, dropped the web of stilts, and the whole structure slumped downward. The floor tilted, the walls broke, and the roof fell. That was mostly what remained visible, the angle of that leather-wrapped, patched-up roof on a pile of splinters. As they’d all said, it was only a matter of time. A cloud of dust was still settling, carrying a stench of mold and old wood. There wouldn’t be much to salvage here, but the wreck would keep Erik and the Semperfi folk busy for a time.

Enid felt weirdly glad that she got to see the end of the whole mess. “Well, that’s that,” she said.

Erik stood on the path, shining a light over it. With all of the handheld lights together, the ruin was pretty well illuminated. It would look entirely different in daylight, and probably sadder.

“Wait—what’s that?” Enid focused her lantern on a spot near the top of the mudslide buried in torn roof timbers. A piece of fabric amid the broken wood, incongruously soft and delicate. She moved closer, to the edge of a collapsed wall, peering through the dark, sure her eyes were playing tricks. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought she saw.

But she was. A rough-woven sleeve, an outflung hand at the end of it, pale against the soaked ruins. Enid knew exactly who it belonged to—the shadow she’d been watching for, over the past day.

Hawk had gone to ground in his usual hiding spot.

“Oh no,” Teeg murmured behind her.

The hand wasn’t moving. Nothing was moving. Since she couldn’t assume the young man was dead, she blew out a breath and prepared to crawl along the broken pieces.

“Enid, wait—”

“I’ll be careful,” she answered. “Keep that light on him, will you?”