She stepped closer to Teeg. “I’m going to take a walk. Don’t look, don’t react. Just give me fifteen minutes or so, yeah?”
“What is it?”
“Maybe come running if I shout real loud,” she said, grinning wryly, and walked toward Last House’s cottage, before curving back up the hill, toward the trees.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
Enid fully expected that the man had been watching her closely, saw her leave the pyre, and kept track of where she went next—so there was little point in trying to sneak up on him. What she wanted to avoid was having to chase him down in front of a crowd of witnesses. Maybe he could be persuaded to talk.
Once Enid reached the woods, she angled back toward where she had seen him. And yes, he was clearly watching her approach. His hand rested on a palm-length sheathed knife lashed to his belt.
A knife that could have killed Ella, Enid thought. Maybe she should have brought Teeg along, with his staff.
She moved calmly, arms at her sides, letting her steps make noise. “Hey there,” she called out. “Hola.”
Back pressed to the tree, the stranger finally caught her gaze.
He couldn’t have been more than twenty or so, and still had a wiry adolescent look to him, despite the shadow of beard on his face. His fuzzy black hair was cut short, and his demeanor was hard and wary.
For a moment he just looked back at her. Then he bolted deeper into the forest.
“Oh no, not this time,” she muttered, and gave chase.
She thought she’d picked a good route straight through the woods that would cut him off on the arcing path he took, but she quickly got tangled in shrubs and undergrowth, and the stranger pulled ahead.
Enid knew she’d lose to him in a straight-up footrace. Desperate, she slowed, looked around for something, anything, to throw, and found a stick the size of her forearm. Hefted it back over her shoulder and let fly. She wasn’t quite aiming at him, but if it hit him and got his attention . . . well, that would be okay. It didn’t, in fact, hit him, but it flew right past, in front of him—enough to get his attention and make him pull up short, arms flailing as he recovered his balance. That gave Enid time to close the distance between them.
Scrambling, the man made the mistake of looking down at his knife sheath as he reached for the weapon. That gave Enid a window, and she lunged forward, reaching to grab whatever she could. It turned out to be the sleeve of his tunic, which she yanked as hard as she could to try to throw him off balance; it worked—the stranger stumbled . . . and the knife fell from his grip. With a quick twist, she stuck out a foot, pushed him in the direction of his own momentum, and forced him to trip over her outstretched leg. With a frustrated grunt, he fell to the ground.
Teeg had the tranquilizer patches, and she cursed herself for not bringing any. Never mind whether or not she had any real right to use tranquilizers on an outsider.
“Please, I just want to talk! Sit still a minute, would you?”
She loomed over him, and he lay flat on his back, staring up at her, catching his breath. Once he did, he said, with a snarl, “What did you do to Ella!”
“Me? I didn’t do anything.”
He scrambled to his knees then, and when Enid didn’t stop him, he got to his feet. Dead leaves and dirt clung to his clothes. He pointed back toward the pyre. “You’re burning her. She’s dead, and you people killed her; you must have. She didn’t deserve it.” He tightened his hands into fists, maybe to start a fight, but he stepped back, instead of toward her. Ready to flee, but his question still hung there.
“You’re right,” Enid said calmly. “She didn’t deserve this. But you and I want the same thing. I want to know what happened to her, how she died. Can you help me?”
“You people killed her!”
Everyone is a suspect when you don’t know who the culprit is. He started scanning the ground; jumped toward a spot, reaching, and came back up with his dropped knife. He held it menacingly, the tip pointed in Enid’s direction. He left no doubt he knew how to use it. Was it possible he’d used it on Ella?
“The folk down in the Estuary assume one of your folk did it.”
“None of us did it. Why would we?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone got mad at her, given how she died.”
“What’d you mean, how?”
“So you don’t know how she died.”
“What’re you saying?” He kept the knife between them. Enid was ready to run if he attacked; she was good in a fight, but didn’t want to take a chance against his knife. She probably ought to yell for Teeg, but if she did, this young man would definitely flee. She needed him to stay, to talk.
But he didn’t flee, and didn’t attack.
He backed up until he leaned against a tree trunk, as if to steady himself. His fingers dug into the tree bark, then absently began to peel bits of it off.
“Her throat was cut,” Enid said. “Someone attacked her with a blade and cut her throat. Maybe a blade like that.”
His face screwed up and he choked, the sound of a stopped sob. “Someone . . . someone cut her throat?”
“Yes, I’m sorry—that’s what happened,” Enid said softly.
“Folk are afraid of you,” he said. “Down on the road, they talk about you. Afraid of the bullies in brown.”
Enid had heard the phrase before, but rarely spoken aloud in her presence. “Yes, I know. But we don’t kill people. It’s our job to investigate when someone does.”
“But who would kill her? And why? I . . . I don’t . . .” He was stricken; his voice stuck.
“That’s what I’d like to find out. Can you help me? Answer a few questions for me?”
The stranger looked uncertain, but he didn’t reply one way or another. Enid took it as a good sign and continued.
“Where’s she from?” she asked him. “How do you know her?”
He scrubbed his runny nose on his sleeve before answering. “From the camp, up the way.” He gestured over his shoulder.
“Up where? How many days’ walk?”
He glared. He wasn’t going to give away that much.
Fair enough.
“And you—you were in love with her?”
“We were friends, that’s all. Just friends.”
It was funny. Some on the Coast Road said that the nomads—the wild folk, the ones who lived on the fringes—didn’t understand them, could never understand. Were uncivilized and not worth even speaking to. And yet, when this one said “Just friends,” the words had exactly the same tone they did when anyone on the Coast Road said it in such circumstances, and Enid could guess the meaning well enough.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
The hard look he gave her suggested that he didn’t believe her. The set of his jaw indicated he was grinding his teeth. He rubbed the hilt of his knife, but didn’t seem aware he was doing it.
“I hated it when she came down here. I told her not to. Over and over I told her.”
“But she came anyway.”
“I don’t trust these folk. You can’t trust them. They give you things and you don’t know what they want from you. I told her not to trust them!”
“So then she came without you.”
“A few mornings ago, yeah. Snuck off. Didn’t want to argue with me, I reckon.”
“And then?”
“She didn’t come back. Days and days, and she didn’t come back.” He was a young man despairing, the picture of grief, the weight of it anchoring him to the ground, as if he might never move again.
Enid had a sudden thought: Was it possible Ella had been pregnant? That was usually the first thing an investigator checked for, finding a woman without an implant. But Ella hadn’t had to cut out an implant—she’d never had one in the first place. Enid hadn’t checked, and Ella’s belly seemed normal. They would’ve had to cut her open to know for sure. And, well . . . it was too late for that now.
But if she had been . . . mi
ght someone have wanted to kill her because of it?
More wild speculation. “Someone left a blanket and fire striker down in that wrecked house,” Enid said, thumb pointing downriver. “That was you, yeah?”
His eyes widened. Surprised he’d been found out. “I’d meant to go back for ’em. Didn’t think anyone would ever go in there.”
“You’re lucky that wreck didn’t slide down the cliff with you in it,” she said. “My name is Enid, by the way. And you are?”
He set his jaw, like she had asked him to hand over treasure.
“Please,” she said. “I just want to be able to call you something.”
He bit out, “I’m Hawk.”
“I want to find who killed Ella,” Enid said. “You knew her. Do you know who else knew her, who might have been angry with her for some reason? Or how she might have gotten into danger? Had she done anything odd recently? Had she been scared?” Ella might have wanted to live at Last House if someone out in the wild was hurting her. Someone like . . . Hawk? Might all his grief be for show?
He’d started shaking his head before she finished speaking. “I told her not to come here, not by herself. I didn’t want her to come here anymore.”
Might he have done something to stop her? Might any of the other folk who lived in the hills?
“Where do you come from?” Enid asked.
Hawk’s look darkened. What tears there’d been now stopped. “Why you want to know?”
“I just mean: Do you have family? A village? Other people who knew Ella, who I can talk to?”
“Why?”
She’d known this wasn’t going to be easy, and reminded herself to be patient. “I want to find out what happened to her, and to do that I need to talk to people. Find out who saw her last, who knows where she might have been right before she died, and why.”
“Nobody knows anything,” he said, picking at the hem of his shirt. “She’s dead and that’s it.”
He turned nervous—no longer just angry and despondent over the loss of Ella, but nervous—and looked over his shoulder like he was about to bolt. But he didn’t; he lingered, however much he didn’t want to deal with Enid. Ella was dead. So what was keeping him here?
“What are you looking for?” Enid asked. “It’s why you’re hanging around. It’s not just Ella—there’s something else.”
His head went up, suspicious. Surprised that she would ask such a thing, maybe.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m like you, I want to know what happened. Any little detail might help.”
Nodding, he settled. “She . . . Ella . . . she had a thing with her. Did you find it?”
“A thing? What thing?”
“You’da noticed it if you found it.”
“We didn’t find anything unusual.”
Flustered, he said, “A knife, she should have had a knife.”
The back of Enid’s neck tickled, and she tilted her head, curious. Carefully she said, “We didn’t find a knife, I’m sorry.”
“But she had it, about this long”—he held his hands about a foot apart—“and thin, with a bone handle with a flower—”
Enid studied the knife on his belt, the polished antler handle sticking out of the sheath. “Like yours?”
“No. Better than mine. One of your knives, not one of ours.”
“That the only reason you came looking for her? To get that knife back?”
He didn’t answer. Which meant he had expected to come here and find her alive.
“Can I show you something?” She gestured to her pouch, hesitated. “I don’t have a weapon. Not like that.” She didn’t imagine he found her smile all that comforting. “It belonged to her; I think you’ll want it.” Finally, he nodded, and she drew Ella’s knitted kerchief from her pouch. The way Hawk’s face screwed up, tears ready to spill over again, he clearly recognized it. Holding it out like a prize, she finally lured him forward. He grabbed it out of her hand, balled it up in his grip, pressed it to his face.
“Smells dead,” he said.
“She’d been in the water for a while.”
“Someone did this to her. Got to be one of you Road people. She came down here, then she got killed. It had to be one of you all.”
“We don’t know that she was killed here. We think she might have been killed somewhere else, then washed in on the river.”
“How do you know that?”
“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.”
“Enid,” he said, coming up beside her. “We’re never going to find the weapon. We’re never going to find who did it.”
“We don’t know that. We’ve only just started poking at wasp nests.”
“It’s too . . . it’s too . . .” He shrugged expansively, arms raised.
“Too what?” Enid asked.
“It’s too much.”
She said, “If you had a chance to find the weapon. If you assumed that someone wouldn’t throw away a thing as valuable as a good sharp blade, in a settlement that doesn’t have a blacksmith, what would you do?”
He thought, staring ahead, steps pounding. “Track down every blade in town. Can’t really look for blood—the killer would have washed it, yeah?”
“Likely.”
“Then we’d have to follow the body. Track where she was and what she was doing before she died. But that would mean—”
“Yeah. We talk to her people.
”
“That’s not realistic. It’s outside our watch.”
“That boy might come back.”
“Or he might not.”
“Then maybe we should wait and see.”
“Enid—”
She cut him off with a gesture; they’d arrived back at the clearing and shouldn’t be seen arguing in front of the local folk.
The pyre was sinking to ash, and most of the Estuary folk had drifted off. And why should they stay to watch the whole thing burn? The woman wasn’t theirs.
Kellan had a length of rusted rebar that he was using to poke at the base of the pyre, collapsing ashes, bringing air to the buried segments of wood, causing flames to rise up again, then subside. The barest shape of Ella was still visible, a shadow buried in light. There were bones, charred, broken. After dark the last of the embers would glow orange, and fade.
Mart had brought out a low stool and sat fireside, whittling on a length of wood. A spoon, looked like. Something with a long handle for stirring. Enid eyed the knife he was using, but it was too small to have made the wound that killed Ella.
Enid came up beside him. “How are things?”
“Calm,” Mart said, and Kellan shrugged, seeming to agree. “Sad. She was just a kid, really.”
“You knew her well?”
He paused a moment and shook his head. “Not any better than anyone else around here. Just saw her the few times. It’s still sad.”
“You ever meet an outsider named Hawk?” she asked. “Young man, about this tall?” She gestured to indicate a height close to her own.
The two men looked at each other. Kellan seemed stricken, like she’d just accused him of something. Mart managed to settle his expression and put on a thin smile. “Yeah, sometimes. He’d come with Ella but never stayed long.”
Enid pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “I just talked to him. He’s been watching from the trees. He seemed angry.”