Olive seemed to need a moment, a few breaths to steady herself, but finally she smiled and reached for Enid’s hand, which Enid grasped tight. “Okay,” Olive said. “But Enid pins the banner to the wall.”
“Yes, of course,” Enid said, and did so right then and there, climbing up on a chair while Sam held her steady and Berol handed her a nail and hammer. Between the three of them they managed to do the work of one sober person.
Olive got her implant removed the very next day. She’d wanted it out that night, but the others talked her out of it, mostly by convincing her that drunkenly waking up a medic in the middle of the night couldn’t possibly end well. The next day would be soon enough.
The actual removal felt anticlimactic. There should have been witnesses. There should have been a ritual. It should have been . . . more difficult.
But no, the clinic had already gotten word of the banner from the committee. Enid, Sam, and Berol waited outside. Olive emerged from the back exam room ten minutes later, with a bandage on her upper arm and a startled look on her face, like she couldn’t believe it. Girls got their implants as soon as they started menstruating, and some women never had them removed, only replaced, their whole lives. It was a part of you. Unless you earned a banner, and then you became something else.
“How does it feel?” Enid asked.
“I don’t know,” Olive answered. “I’m afraid to look.”
“I’ll look,” Berol said, picking at the edge of the bandage, and Olive slapped his hand, pulled away, and then hugged him.
“Let’s go home. Right now.”
“What? I thought we were going to go find some brandy, celebrate some more—”
“No, we are going home right now,” Olive said, grabbing his hand and pulling. Her face was flushed.
Enid and Sam stayed out of the house for the rest of the day. Got sandwiches and had an impromptu picnic out by the duck pond, snugged up under a tree. Sam even fell asleep, his breathing turning deep and steady. Enid kept waking him.
“Are you sad? That it’ll be theirs and not ours?”
“Hmm?” he shifted, securing his grip around her. “It’ll be all of ours.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well. I do think you’d have a beautiful baby.”
“So would you. We both would.” And yet, somehow, she couldn’t quite picture what this imaginary baby would actually look like. Would it have light hair or dark? Her round features or Sam’s square ones?
Enid also couldn’t imagine herself pregnant. But Olive—she could absolutely imagine Olive pregnant and glowing from it, the way some women got. In fact, she couldn’t wait to see it.
Sam murmured, “If it happens, it happens. No reason it shouldn’t.”
“But what if we never earn another banner?”
“That’s too far ahead to think about.”
“But—”
“Enid. You’re overthinking it.” He tipped her face up and kissed her, and she melted, grateful to do so.
That was how it worked. Your household earned a banner, one of you had your implant removed, and every child was wanted and cared for.
But no one had cared enough to come looking for Ella. This had kept Enid awake. Why did no one want to learn what had happened to her?
It was like her people already knew she was gone.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
Enid crossed the bridge and continued up the hill with purpose, just as the Estuary’s inhabitants were waking up and starting morning chores, collecting eggs, milking goats. She had no interest in talking to anyone; they’d told her everything they were going to. Time to move on.
But when she got to Last House, to where the road ended, she stopped. Mart watched her from the front steps. He was just going out the front door; might have seen her coming up the path.
She paused to ask, “How’s Kellan?”
He shrugged. “This whole business has wrecked him.” They had to raise their voices, to hear each other across the distance between them.
“I’m sorry for that.”
“Kellan didn’t do it. You told your partner, yeah?”
“It would help if we had some evidence that he wasn’t involved.”
Mart scowled. “He’s usually off by himself, scavenging on the shore. Alone.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking away. That was what she had assumed. Evidence would have to come from someplace else. “Right. Well. I’m going after Hawk to see if there’s anything he can tell me. I don’t suppose you know exactly where he’s run off to?”
Folding his arms, holding himself close in, Mart shook his head. “He said we must have done it. That we may not have held the knife, but we drove Ella out and got her killed. Offered her a place, then didn’t protect her. He just . . . I think he just wanted us to say it was our fault. He wants to blame someone.”
“Everybody does. You think he’s trying to blame someone else because maybe it was him that did it?”
“What? No—at least, I hadn’t thought so.” His gaze turned inward. He was thinking about it now.
“You know anything about that knife Kellan was looking for?”
“Yeah—Hawk was looking for it too.”
“You saw it, before it disappeared.”
“Neeve gave it to her,” he said.
“Gave—not traded?”
He chuckled. “Maybe it was a bribe. But I haven’t seen it since the last time Ella was down this way. Month or so ago, I guess. She had it then.”
“And the next time you saw her was after Kellan found the body, and there was no knife.”
Mart shrugged, a noncommittal gesture. He seemed to be trying to put together the same broken pieces she was.
“Any idea where it could have ended up?” asked Enid.
“With whoever killed her, I guess. They likely buried it somewhere.”
“Even though a blade like that would be valuable to outsider folk?”
“I don’t know; you’re the investigator, you tell me.”
She suppressed a smile. “Right, then. I should be back in a couple of days. Maybe I’ll have it all figured out by then.”
She started walking, and Mart called after her. “They’re violent out there. Wouldn’t put it past them. If it wasn’t Hawk that killed her, it was likely one of the others, one of his kin.”
“That’s what I’m going to try to find out.”
“Enid, wait.” He trotted down the stairs, came close enough that he didn’t need to raise his voice. “With you gone, your partner’ll be back up here. He’ll lay this on Kellan. What’re we supposed to do then?”
“I’ll be back to clear everything up.”
“But what if you aren’t?”
They were so sure she wouldn’t be back.
“How about we figure all this out then?”
She walked on.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
Enid had done this before—walked into the wilderness. She’d met outsiders there, spoken to them. They hadn’t been dangerous, not obviously. But that had been a couple hundred miles south, hadn’t it? These were different folk.
She wasn’t worried. Couldn’t be. Half of her job was acting like she absolutely knew what she was doing.
The final bit of path, the very last remnant of the Coast Road in this part of the world, dissipated to grass, then forest soil, as trees grew up and closed in around her. After that she was on her own, following her sense of direction northward, orienting to the sun, which was arcing west in a hazy sky, and to the San Joe, now a fast-running creek a quarter-mile to the east, cutting through a steep gully. No clear path cut through the woods here. She’d almost expected to find one, given how often Hawk, Ella, and others traveled back and forth to Last House. But they must have hidden their routes, taking different ways through the forest each time. Being careful. They didn’t want to be found, which discouraged Enid. With a million places to hide out here, she mig
ht never find them.
A dozen years ago—before becoming an investigator, before Serenity, before practically her whole life—walking into the wild was easier. She didn’t have much to lose. Now she felt the pull of what she left behind. This was dangerous. She shouldn’t be doing this. Olive would be horrified if she knew what Enid had planned. Sam would be concerned. But he wouldn’t tell her not to do it. Just to be careful.
Enid needed to know.
Just like she’d done the last time she trekked off the road, she found a fallen branch. She pounded it on the ground a couple of times to test its sturdiness. With its twigs and leaves stripped off, she could use it as a makeshift staff. Both for walking, and for just in case. Probably wouldn’t need it, but didn’t want to be without it if she did. Made sure the tranq patches were in her belt pouch, within reach. Continued on, and hoped for the best.
On that first excursion into the wild, she’d been traveling the Coast Road with Dak, her former lover, and trekking overland to the ruined city had been an adventure, a lark. They’d stood on the western hills and looked out at the tangle of shadows, lost in haze, its own sub-climate of rusted steel and decaying concrete. Folk thought steel and concrete lasted forever, but they didn’t. In a hundred years even a city could be overrun with trees and swamp. People still lived there, Dak had warned her. He insisted that they were dangerous, wild, threatening. But they hadn’t been. She had met them, sat with them at their campfires. Like anyone, they were mostly concerned with getting enough to eat.
Now she walked into wild territory not with a noble sense of exploration, but with grim purpose. A quest, but she wasn’t sure she knew what she was looking for. An answer must be somewhere; she might as well look.
Those overriding questions remained: Were the people she looked for dangerous? Had one of them killed Ella? And if they had, could she expect them to tell her what had happened? What if one of them admitted to it?
Then she realized that if one of them had done it, Enid would have to be satisfied with turning around and walking home, learning the truth her only outcome. It would have to be enough. She prepared herself for that.
This might be a stupid thing she was doing. She promised Olive she’d be back home soon, and this seemed like a good path to maybe breaking that promise. Enid stopped and almost turned around right then. She would never find what she was looking for. And she was endangering herself unnecessarily.
Instead, she took a deep breath. Noticed how different the air smelled, even this little ways away from the settlement. The briny, muddy reek of the Estuary was gone. Here, the muggy thickness gave way to air that was almost cool. The cleanness of it stung her nose, and she filled her lungs. Pine trees grew straight, their branches reaching. She looked up at a washed-out sky, crisscrossed with branches. It was beautiful. Nothing like this back home. Flickers of movement caught her attention. Birds, she decided, but they never stayed still long enough for her to get a good look at them. Their calls were staccato, muffled.
Ahead a great cracked slab of concrete blocked her way. Beyond it, a fallen steel pole. Could have been a lamppost, could have been part of a building. Hard to tell now, out of all context. She couldn’t resist poking around, kicking away dirt where ruins met the ground, looking for clues as to what had been here a hundred years ago. Even in what looked like untouched woodland, the earth held remnants of what had once been towns, before almost everything had washed away. Bits and pieces left, like shells on a beach. When she got back to Haven, she could check old maps, find the names of what had once been here. But right now, she had to focus not on history but on what had happened to Ella just a few days ago.
“Sam, what am I doing?” Enid murmured. As if he would tell her anything but to follow her instinct. Trust herself.
So on she walked.
Dusk fell; she was still heading north and hadn’t seen any sign of people. She passed more concrete slabs that had once served as foundations for buildings, and evidence of a road—a strip of rotted asphalt under a series of fallen trees. The people in the ruins she’d explored a dozen years ago had used broken walls for shelter and navigated via old roads. But here, no one.
Hawk had to live somewhere. He hadn’t been carrying enough with him to suggest he was nomadic, though he might have stashed his pack nearby rather than bring it down into the Estuary with him. Maybe she should backtrack, head out through the woods in another direction.
Enid hadn’t particularly wanted to spend the night in the wild—the idea wasn’t as romantic as it had been when she was younger. But she was frustrated. Her instinct told her Hawk was out here.
Somewhere.
She followed the trail of ruins, hoping. If there were people here, they’d be living on the bones of what came before. The woods had become very quiet, the shadows long.
She felt a prickling on the back of her neck and looked around, thinking there must be something here, someone watching, but she just couldn’t see it.
This wasn’t home; she didn’t know this area. Her attackers did.
And knew just the right moment to strike.
She was in a spot where the ruins had more substance, where walls still stood, though they were stripped down, windows missing, roofs gone. A charred layer suggested a fire had come through at some point, leveling most of what had been here—a street in some hillside town. The handful of walls formed an aisle.
A trap.
She should have recognized it; instead, she’d walked right up that aisle until she had nowhere to run.
She heard a rustling through dead vegetation, something passing through air, shifting the whole atmosphere of the forest. Then the steps, a pounding on soft forest earth. She turned as he raced toward her through skeletal dead buildings. Enid planted her feet and braced her staff in front of her.
The second one came at her from behind.
His sharp inhale told her he was there. She twisted to look over her shoulder, quelled the spike of panic. He had a club, raised and ready to strike.
The first, a slim young man, bare-armed, growling, was there as a distraction. The second, bigger and quieter, moved decisively toward her.
Ducking, Enid evaded the striking club, but the move wasn’t graceful or stylish and didn’t put her in a good spot. Off balance, she stumbled back, and they closed on her. They had all the momentum, all the advantage. She had no time to go for the tranqs in her pouch; the men would just knock the patches out of her hand even if she had. She’d be able to use that trick only once, at any rate.
The second attacker raised his club again—she got a better look at it this time. It was wood, the stout end of a branch, stripped of bark and polished smooth. When he swung, she got her staff in the way to block. Wood striking wood made a sickly crack.
The first guy lunged to grab the end of the staff, and yanked.
At first she held on, got into a brief tug of war that she knew she would lose. Recovering enough to let go at just the right time, she sent him flailing backward. Then the second one got a grip on her arm. And he just held on. He was a full head taller than she was, and he came in close, ready to knock her over. She had to get away—if she could just get away and run.
She would not scream, and she would not panic.
Enid slammed her foot on the attacker’s instep; her boots were much tougher and better made than his soft leather ones. Her boot had a heel. A scream of pain would have satisfied her, but his gasp and stifled groan were good enough, and she wrenched free as he dropped his club.
Nursing no illusions of her chances in a fight with these two hardened outsiders, she ran.
Enid wasn’t sure she’d be faster than them both. The bigger guy, yes, but his wiry accomplice, maybe not.
Didn’t matter. She had to try.
Not five strides on, she came up against a half dozen more wild folk, fanned out before her, waiting. She had no place to go. No chance of escape.
She bent over her knees and caught a breath that came out as a ch
uckle. Straightened and studied her assailants, now her captors. And yes, one of these new ones was Hawk. He glared at her with satisfaction.
Enid was the only one smiling. She looked at each of them, marking, remembering. Two were women, scrappy like the rest. They ranged in age from twenty to maybe forty.
“Well then. Isn’t this lucky? I’ve been wanting to talk to you all.”
Silence. Not even a touch of wind to creak through branches. The light was fading, the forest turning dark.
“I have a few questions about Ella,” she said. “You all knew her, yeah?” She caught Hawk’s gaze, but he ducked away, scowling.
“No talk here,” said the large man, still standing uncomfortably close. He’d picked up the club again and now held it at his side.
“All right. Where should we talk?” Maybe they had a camp somewhere. A fire might be nice right about now. Everyone felt better around a campfire. With night coming on, the air was definitely chilled. This was nothing like the sticky heat of the marshes.
“Let’s go,” the man repeated.
“I’d be glad to. Where?”
They closed on her, quick and smooth, the wiry guy grabbing her pack off her shoulders, the pouch at her belt, another one gripping her arms and wrenching them back, yet another dropping a sack over her head, forcing her into darkness.
Her breath came fast and hot, too close to her ears, held in by felted wool. A coil of rope went around her wrists and tightened. She couldn’t move her arms at all now. Hands held her shoulders, clutching the fabric of her tunic.
They weren’t going to kill her, she reassured herself. If they meant to kill her, they’d have just done it. Could have put an arrow in her from fifty paces away and not gone through all this trouble.
So they weren’t going to kill her.
Probably not.
Not yet.
Another loop went around her neck, and she gasped. They didn’t pull this one taut. Instead, they used it like a leash, tugging her forward.
“This way. Go on,” one of them said. Not Hawk, not the burly guy. She didn’t know who was speaking.
Her feet remained free, for all the good it did her. She stepped forward because she didn’t have a choice, feeling for the ground in front of her, her senses stretched to breaking. Hunched over, moving carefully as she could, she stayed quiet, didn’t struggle. The troop moved around her, setting a pace that was just a little too fast, but not so fast she couldn’t keep up. She was irrevocably off balance.