Well.
She’d wanted to talk to them. Now, it seemed, she’d get her chance.
Chapter Sixteen • the WILD
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Darkness
Enid grew exhausted from working at not falling. She stumbled on what she assumed were tree roots, random stones, pre-Fall bits of road. But she would not allow herself to trip and give her captors an excuse to manhandle her back to her feet. From inside the hood she shifted her head, trying to adjust the fabric so she could maybe glimpse something past the bottom edge, to at least see her feet. Didn’t work, and the air only got heavier and stuffier.
They marched for what felt like hours. Endless hours.
Eventually, the rope tugged at Enid’s neck, bringing her to a halt, and a hand on her shoulder steadied her.
“Sit here,” said a voice, a new one, and directed her to a hard perch. Concrete, likely. It felt too smooth and flat for stone. Enid sat still and listened hard, but the troop of wild folk did no more than murmur among themselves. She didn’t pick up any of their plans. Someone started a fire; Enid heard the crackling of wood, caught the orange glow through the hood’s fabric.
They’d been settled for a while when someone yanked off the hood, and Enid blinked, disoriented. Night had fallen, and the light from the fire hurt her eyes.
One of the wild folk—she didn’t get a good look at which one—held a skin of water to Enid’s mouth, and water splashed down the sides of her face as she drank as much as she could. Then they took the skin away and put the hood back over her head.
Enid didn’t say anything. She didn’t complain. She could be patient as stone.
They stayed here for the night. She assumed that some of them slept, while others kept watch. Assumed that someone was guarding her. They left her seated, her stomach growing hollow with hunger—she hadn’t eaten since noon. Her hands tingled, grew numb. She stretched and clenched her fingers as much as she could, trying to avoid cramping up.
Though she listened, she didn’t hear anyone say anything about Ella. Whether by inclination or intent, they were keeping quiet on the subject.
She must have slept a little, propped up against the ruin. Her head would nod, and she’d jerk awake, over and over. In a half-daze, she felt someone tug at her arm, urging her to her feet. Sudden wakefulness jolted her, and she wrenched her arm back, out of her captor’s grip. Noises around her—low voices still scratchy with sleep, quick commands to quench the fire, to gather close—suggested they were about to march on.
“I need to go behind a tree for a minute,” she muttered. “Can I do that?”
A whispered conference ensued. Enid spent it considering if she could just piss where she stood and let them deal with the mess of it, however uncomfortable it would be for her. She’d rather not, and decided she could maintain her dignity in either case. This was on them, not her.
Listening for footsteps, for voices, she heard when they approached and steeled herself not to flinch when one of them took hold of her wrists and pulled at the knots in the rope that bound her. So they were reasonable . . . at least to a point.
As soon as her hands were free, she stepped away and yanked off the hood. Again, they surrounded her. One of them was even holding her staff. Nice, in a way, that they’d think she was so dangerous. She held her palms out and moved slowly.
“It’s all right. I won’t fight, I won’t run. I told you, I want to talk to you. There’s no need for all this mess.” She tossed the hood at Hawk’s feet. “I’m just going to step over here for a moment, yeah?”
They were treating her like some kind of weapon, like she might destroy them with a look. What stories did these people tell each other about the Coast Road, about people like her?
The forest here was much the same as where she had been last evening, when they’d captured her. Not so many signs of ruins. A wide track traveled through where the trees were just saplings, and a strip of sky was clear overhead. A remnant of yet another old road. They were everywhere, if you knew what to look for. The group seemed to be following it.
She didn’t go far to relieve herself, and was aware that the whole troop of them were watching her. The tree she’d chosen wasn’t quite wide enough to hide behind, but it would have to do. When she emerged, the troop’s leader, the burly man, waited with the length of rope in one hand and the hood in the other.
“Really?” Enid said. “Don’t you think we’ve had enough of that?”
“You want to talk or not?” he said.
She nodded at the hood. “You think that’s going to hide where your camp is, or are you just trying to be cruel? I promise, I won’t cause trouble.”
Unless they started it first.
Around her, some of the wild folk—most of them were really just kids, weren’t they?—fidgeted, tightening grips on spears, darting glances at their leader. She was making them nervous. Yet they could kill her easily. They could swarm her and beat her to death with their bare hands if they decided to.
She knew it was dangerous to keep poking at them, but she had to keep on like she knew something they didn’t. Like, even now, she was stronger. She wasn’t afraid; she was curious.
“Let’s go,” the burly man said finally. “But go slow and quiet. No trouble.”
“No, of course not. What’s your name?”
He didn’t answer. Gesturing up the road, he urged her forward, and fell in behind her.
Surrounded by wary fighters, Enid walked carefully, her gaze ahead, not wanting to rile them by staring and making them any more jittery than they already were. But she kept watch out of the corner of her eye.
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After walking another hour or so, the smell of wood smoke tickled Enid’s nose. Someone had a campfire up ahead. They’d passed more and more cut stumps—a lot of wood harvesting went on here. The road opened to a clearing with blue sky overhead. Voices traveled, the familiar sounds of people living their lives, focused on food and shelter and shouting after children.
This wasn’t just a camp, as she’d seen before among outsider settlements—temporary arrangements made by folk who traveled, following good weather. This was a village. Permanent structures made of split logs, neatly stacked firewood stored under shelter. Cabins that used the walls of pre-Fall buildings and had substantial roofs. Worn paths and well-used fire pits between them all, a web of connections. The central clearing had the look of a market square in a decent-sized town.
No livestock that she could see, not so much as a chicken. No goats, which meant no milk. No sources of wool, at least not right here. Everything they ate, they foraged. She saw no blacksmith’s forge. Nothing that looked like complex metalworking. As she’d been told, all their metal was salvaged scrap. Anything else, they’d have to trade for.
A dog bounded out, barking at Enid. Rangy and scrappy, with short brown-and-cream fur and pointed ears, it might have been a hybrid coyote, or something that had been feral for a few generations before being re-tamed. More bristly and alert than Bear back at the Estuary. This one didn’t assume everyone was a friend. Spotting Enid, a stranger, it looked like it might charge. She stood her ground, wished for her staff. But the burly man waved the animal off, hissing a couple of words. The dog tucked its tail and slinked away to watch from farther off.
“Over here,” her captor said, pointing to an open-walled shelter on the far side of the clearing. A sturdy roof on steel supports covered a concrete slab. The concrete was cracked and repaired with multicolored clay patches that had been smoothed down, then patched and smoothed again. The beams supporting the roof were riveted and painted. This was a pre-Fall structure. Not a whole building—likely it had never had walls. But it seemed the village had turned the old shelter into a community space. A couple of teens were inside, twisting hemp, making rope. A woman was pounding something between stones. Nuts, looked like, making paste.
Activity stopped when Enid a
rrived, and people stared. She was clearly a stranger: taller, more muscular. Better fed. Dressed in linen cloth, not leather, hemp, and felt. Enid left her hands at her sides, trying to appear friendly and harmless.
“Wait,” the burly man ordered, pointing to a wooden bench. “El Juez’ll come look at you.”
The troop gathered in the shelter, hemming Enid in. More spectators emerged, coming from sheds and cottages, from farther out around the clearing, to see what this was about. To look at her. Wasn’t much different than when an investigator arrived in any town: cautious curiosity. No one wanted to get too close, but everyone wanted to see.
A dozen adults, plus as many kids. Too many kids, she thought. She made calculations that were second nature to her—how much did they grow, how much could they forage, how much did they hunt, and was that enough to feed everyone? Probably yes, if they spent all their time on it. They likely all helped, even the little ones. She thought that most of the adult women here had had more than one child each.
A set of bone wind chimes hung from one of the beams. Just like those at Last House, ribs and vertebrae on twine, with a few rough wood beads in between. They’d clack together in a breeze, but at the moment the air was still.
“Did Ella make this?” Enid asked, pointing. “Or maybe Neeve?” No one answered. Not even any nodding. She wasn’t really surprised. She glared out, a thin wry smile on her lips, and studied the faces around her, as carefully as she had done when they first captured her. Let them believe they hadn’t rattled her.
These folk might decide to kill Enid as some kind of exchange for Ella. One of theirs for one of ours, that sort of thing. Enid hadn’t been thinking in those terms, and for the first time regretted coming here. She had been considering higher notions, like truth and justice. Impractical notions that didn’t put food in anyone’s mouth.
She had to give them a stake in talking to her.
“Hawk,” she said, and the young man flinched. “Did Ella live in the camp here?” He pressed his lips shut, seemed determined not to speak. “Did you all know Ella?” she said to the rest of them. “Were any of you close?”
For a moment, she wondered if they even spoke the same language.
“What is it?” said a booming voice with a clipped accent.
The speaker emerged from one of the cabins. The man was big, tough. Brown hands used to gripping, legs used to walking for miles, all wrapped in leather and felted cloth. His unruly beard was going gray, his thick hair tied back in a tail. He glared, full of iron and suspicion. This must be El Juez.
Enid slowed her breathing and looked on, calm as she could make herself. The people seemed to expect her to panic, so she didn’t.
“Hola,” she said. “I’m Enid.”
He looked her up and down, studying her just as closely as she studied him. She wondered what he saw.
To the head of the small band he said, “Why did you bring this here?”
“She can tell about Ella, Hawk says.” The burly man spoke carefully, hands folded before him, deferential.
“Hawk said that already. Didn’t you, Hawk?” said El Juez.
“Yeah,” Hawk said, softly, his gazed lowered.
It wasn’t that the folk seemed scared of El Juez, exactly. But they offered a great deal of respect. They kept a physical space around him.
“So that’s enough. Don’t need more,” he said.
The tough guy said, “But—”
The leader waved him off. “Ella made her choice. You.” He pointed a callused finger at Enid. She met his gaze squarely. “You can go. We don’t want you here.”
She imagined he didn’t. Part of her thought she’d be better off walking away. Safer, certainly. But then she’d have made this difficult trip for nothing.
“El Juez, yes?” The judge. Name and title. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.” This was all part of the investigation.
He studied her, and she bore it quietly. “About what? Ella?”
“What her life was like here. It’s not enough to know what happened to her. I want to know why.”
Oddly, counterintuitively, the longer he studied her, the calmer she grew. He didn’t seem to have a bad temper. He didn’t seem likely to kill her out of hand. She could deal with him, she thought. And if she could get him on her side, the community would follow.
He waved a hand at the surroundings, the structures, campfires, the work going on.
“You ever seen a place like this?” he asked.
“Yeah, I have.”
“Then you know what you need. Best foot it back to your people.”
“Ella was going to leave here, wasn’t she? She was going to settle on the Coast Road. Live with Last House and get an implant. You all couldn’t stand that, could you? Losing one of your own, a strong young person at that. You need all the help you can get, in a place like this.”
“She was free to go if she wanted,” the man said.
“You sure about that? Did everyone feel that way?” And El Juez looked at Hawk, who flinched as if the look was a blow. Enid could see there were suspicions. She prodded them to say more. “Did you send Hawk to kill her, or did he do that on his own?”
“I didn’t!” the boy shouted, and lunged at her. It happened so fast, she didn’t have time to react. But El Juez stepped between them, and both he and the burly guy from his troop grabbed the young man and held on as he thrashed, hollering. “It wasn’t me, I didn’t do it, I didn’t do anything, she’s lying!”
El Juez looked back at Enid, and she stayed calm. Hoped her lack of reaction looked like some kind of supreme confidence and self-control. Their leader’s gaze was appraising.
“He says one of you did it,” El Juez said. Prodding her, just like she prodded him.
“A lot of folk running around with good sharp blades. Any of them could have cut her,” Enid said. “I’m looking for evidence. Ella was down in the Estuary for a reason, and I think that reason got her killed.”
“Why do you even care?” El Juez said, his voice tired and sad. There it was, her hook.
“Because it’s right to care.”
The man’s stare was dark, penetrating. He intimidated by staring, and she made the effort not to wilt before his gaze. This felt like some kind of test.
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“Can you tell me how many days ago Ella left? When was the last time you saw her?”
El Juez turned his back on Enid. The rest of his folk did likewise. Even Hawk, moving off from the shelter with a determined gait.
Ignoring her. Driving her away by sheer indifference.
She looked around, searching for another way in.
Chapter Seventeen • the CAMP
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A Way In
El Juez and his enforcers scattered to their own business, as if Enid’s arrival hadn’t caused any stir. The work of the camp, the work of any camp—food, shelter, cleaning, mending—went on. The storm from a couple of weeks before had left its mark here too, in different ways. Fallen branches had been dragged into piles, the rivulets of temporary creeks had cut through the dirt. An older boy and girl were up on a cabin roof, patching it. Clothing and hides hung on lines to dry.
Enid stood for a moment as the life of the camp went on around her. Folk stared, glanced away, looked again, but no one engaged with her. This was as pointed a request to just leave as was possible without physically tying her up and dragging her back down to the Estuary. That they didn’t go that far encouraged Enid to stay. They could ignore her for only so long, and she was here to learn. About Ella’s life, and about Neeve’s connection to these people.
Hawk watched Enid, his gaze hard and glaring. She made sure not to turn her back on him, keeping him in the corner of her vision at least. Keeping other people between them.
No one stopped her from wandering. No one challenged her, no one threatened her. They certainly didn’t seem worried that she would capture ever
yone and force them back to the Coast Road for implants and whatever other horribleness these people imagined awaited them there. That said something about them, and what they might have thought about Ella. Ella leaving here wasn’t seen as threatening or dangerous. When El Juez said it was her choice, he wasn’t blustering.
The camp—more than a camp, if less than a town—seemed to be arranged in a series of family units, lean-tos and sheds clustered around maybe a dozen cook fires. A couple of areas for messier work lay farther out. Drying meat was arranged on a rack. At the very edge of the settlement, a tannery. Latrine pits almost out of sight—and out of smell, downwind. The arrangement of it all was familiar. Roof and food and clothing. Only so many ways to keep a settlement alive.
Enid wandered over to have a look at the tannery, because she didn’t have a lot of experience with the process of making leather. A woman in her thirties, hair tied back, wearing a belted tunic and skirt, was working alone, pulling what looked like a whole deerskin out of a wide aluminum vat a couple of feet wide and deep. Pitted and beat-up, but clean and polished smooth, the vat must have been salvage from before the Fall. A thing like that, rare and useful, was always well taken care of. The hides had been soaking in muddy-looking liquid. Some kind of solution, Enid couldn’t guess what, but it smelled acrid. After letting the skin drip a moment, the woman lay the hide on the ground, staked it taut, and on her knees started scraping hair off with a dull-looking metal spatula. She’d scrape, shake hair off into a pile, scrape again, wipe off the spatula, over and over. It seemed tedious and awkward, the kind of work you had to get right, or else it could ruin all your previous effort. But the woman was clearly well practiced at it. The bare leather emerged in moments, clean and smooth.