The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

Jess looked back at Juni one more time. “I’ll do what I need to, to keep the household together.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t. The place is cursed.” Juni’s mouth twisted as if full of a sour taste.

“I don’t believe that. We’ll keep our banners on the wall. It’ll be enough.”

The woman nodded, and they turned away from each other. Not even an embrace or a touch of hands.

They set off, Teeg and Enid taking up positions on either side of Juni, pressing her on. They had a long walk ahead of them.

“It’s not fair,” Juni muttered under her breath, only half an hour away from Bonavista. She repeated it like some kind of mantra. “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.”

“You’re right,” Enid said curtly, cutting her off. “It isn’t.”

Juni didn’t say another word.

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Finally, at the end of the day they arrived in Everlast, an

actual town. It was like emerging from a shroud into sunlight.

Away from the coast, away from the wetlands—this place felt stable. No houses perched on stilts, no tumbling ruins, no waterlogged marshes constantly shifting.

But it wasn’t the end of their trip. Teeg stayed with Juni while Enid checked in with the local committee for messages. Nothing personal had come from Haven, which she took as a good sign—that she wasn’t too late. Even better, Everlast had a solar car on loan for committee business, and Enid laid claim to it.

Enid also asked that a medic go back to the Estuary as soon as possible, mainly to check on Kellan. The stress of the investigation had eaten at him, and Enid worried. Really, it might not hurt to get everyone looked over. A medic checked out her injury, admired the multicolored bruise covering her shoulder and upper arm. No, nothing was broken, but it would take weeks to heal. The medic handed her a salve and extracted a promise that she’d actually remember to use it.

After an hour’s worth of work at Everlast, meeting with their committee and the medic, requesting that food be sent to Bonavista to replace what Enid and Teeg had eaten, and collecting all the other messages to be carried down the Coast Road, they set off. Juni remained sullen but cooperative. Teeg was thoughtful and quiet. Made Enid nervous.

Half a day of driving brought them to the Coast Road proper, then to Morada and the regional committee house. Two exhausted, grubby investigators driving up with a hunched, glaring woman between them attracted attention. When a pair of investigators based here walked up to meet them, Enid was relieved. She felt like she’d been carrying all this on her own.

Now, maybe, finally, Enid could be done with this.

“Wait here,” she told Teeg and Juni, and went to meet her colleagues. One of them was Patel, Teeg’s mentor. He’d have a particular interest, wouldn’t he? With everything else, Enid hadn’t had a chance to get her thoughts in order about Teeg.

“Enid,” Patel said in greeting. Enid wasn’t short, but Patel was half a head taller than her. An intimidating figure, with the uniform. He was intense, interested. “What happened? This was only supposed to take a couple of days. You’ve been gone a week.”

She hesitated. “I don’t know where to start.”

“This was just a mediation, yeah?”

“It turned into a murder.” She explained, trying to keep it simple, not sure she was making any sense. Most cases never lasted longer than a week or so. She’d been on this one too long.

“That’s awful,” said Denis, Patel’s partner. A slim brown man with an eager gaze, scruffy chopped hair he must have cut himself.

“Yeah,” Enid said with a sigh.

The closest thing the Coast Road ever got to a trial then ensued. In the pre-Fall world this would have been so much more formal, bound by rules and traditions and ceremony. The Coast Road didn’t have much time, or call for anything like that. It was one of the things that encouraged towns to solve problems on their own. So solving them didn’t become a production.

Murder was something that simply couldn’t be solved, Enid was coming to believe. It could only be dealt with. The regional committee was there, along with the investigators who would take over the handling of the case, Patel and Denis. A handful of other investigators, some in uniform and some not. They’d already begged for copies of the report. One of them said, “I read your report on Pasadan from last year. You’re becoming the expert on this.” He smiled kindly enough, but the words sat like a rock in her gut.

Teeg still wasn’t talking. He hung back from the others, arms crossed, answering questions in monosyllables.

The committee’s meeting room had gotten chaotic, three committee members on one side of a long table, Juni sitting in a chair by herself, hugging her pack. An audience of investigators and assistants clustered in. Enid went over the details again and again, answered question after question. Teeg corroborated, answered some questions himself. Like what he’d been doing the three days Enid was gone in the wild. Asking the same questions of the same people, apparently. By then, they’d gotten used to not answering. So he decided Kellan was guilty and finished it himself.

Enid was still angry about that.

Ahn, the chair of the committee, peered through antique reading glasses and studied a set of notes Enid had copied from her book, right before the hearing.