Bannerless

by Carrie Vaughn

  Face set, determined to get through the next few days as efficiently and fairly as possible, she went back to the committee, where they waited on the path toward the house. Probably looking on and wondering what had fascinated them so. Well, now Enid and Tomas would have to tell them. The next few moments would determine how the rest of the investigation went.

  Lee had been pacing but stopped when the investigators approached; his hands reflexively opened and closed into fists. Ariana’s arms were crossed so tightly, she hunched in on herself, as if wanting to hide. Philos stood between them. He might have been talking, but the others didn’t seem inclined to listen. A committee at odds.

  Enid went to Ariana first. “Ariana. Good instincts.”

  Instead of looking pleased, Ariana’s mouth opened. “What? But . . . but . . .” Her disbelief stammered out. So, Ariana had hoped she was wrong. Or she hadn’t really believed the death was suspicious and had called an investigation anyway. She didn’t look like a woman who’d been validated, but one who’d had a roof nearly fall on her.

  Continuing, Enid said, “I have reasonable suspicion of unusual circumstances surrounding Sero’s death, enough to warrant further investigation. I’ll proceed accordingly and hope to have everyone’s cooperation.”

  She anticipated an outburst from Philos, but she’d expected it to focus on her. Instead, the man turned on Ariana. “Now look what you’ve done! This wouldn’t be happening if you’d just let it go—why couldn’t you just let it go! None of this matters !” His hands clenched; Ariana bared her teeth, ready to shout back.

  Tomas stepped between them, silent, his gaze leveled at Philos.

  Everyone shut up.

  “I’ll need to talk to whoever found Sero’s body, whoever last saw Sero alive, and to anyone who might have seen who came to and from the workshop that day.” Four days ago now. Too much time had passed already.

  Lee, the quiet one, spoke, his voice shaking. “We don’t even know who all that could be . . . it could be anyone!”

  “Then, I’ll talk to everyone,” she said. She wouldn’t even be able to pin down an approximate time of death. Just when the body was found, and then count back from there. “First—who found the body? Who reported that he was dead?”

  Silence. They either didn’t know or didn’t want to say.

  This was going to be a long couple of days.

  //////////////////////////////////////////////////

  While the others scowled at her, Ariana finally revealed that a man named Arbor had discovered the body. At least, he’d been the one to go get help. Enid went to speak with him and his household first, while Tomas started interviews to find out who’d seen him alive last.

  Arbor was part of Baker’s Hill, a small household at the edge of town, closest to Sero’s homestead. The heads were a couple of older women; Arbor was the son of one of them. A few younger folk had joined them over the years. They had an orchard and a small herd of goats they used to make cheese.

  They gathered at the kitchen table in their comfortable adobe house. Enid turned down an offer of lemonade and asked them questions. What had they seen? When was the last time they saw Sero alive? Who else had they seen at his homestead? Had they spotted anyone running away that morning?

  No one else in the household knew anything. They shook their heads, ducked their gazes. They kept to themselves; Sero kept to himself; they rarely spoke; they didn’t keep track of him. He was a loner. Strange, they kept saying.

  Convinced that most of the household really didn’t know anything, she let them all go except Arbor. They fled through the kitchen’s back door, and he stared after his mother and the rest as if they’d abandoned him to monsters. His hands rested on the tabletop, one clutching the other, and he wouldn’t meet Enid’s gaze.

  She’d managed a quick look at his feet; his shoes seemed larger and wider than the steps she’d found outside the shed. He probably wasn’t the one who’d run away. Probably.

  Arbor explained that he’d recruited Sero to help him dig new latrine pits the afternoon of the day he died. When he didn’t show up on time, Arbor went to find him, first checking the house, then knocking on the front doors of the shed, then opening them and finding the body.

  “So the shed doors were closed?” Enid asked. “Did Sero normally close the doors when he worked?”

  She let Arbor think a moment, his head bent as he searched memory. “No,” he finally said, brow furrowed. “Not in this heat; he’d leave them open to let in air. I know I’ve seen him working there with the doors open.”

  Then someone had closed the doors before running away from the body. “Did you touch the body?” she asked.

  “Oh no! No. I—I didn’t have to.” His gazed flickered nervously to the table, then back to her. “There was so much blood, and flies. He was dead; I didn’t have to go near him. I didn’t even go inside, really.”

  “So you didn’t get blood on your hands? On your shoes, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so. No, I didn’t.”

  “You ran to get help. Where did you go?”

  “To Newhome household, to find Tull.”

  That meant up the hill to the main part of town. Not back behind the shed. And he didn’t have blood on his hands, confirming that he hadn’t been the one to make that smear of blood. Someone else had been there first and closed the doors before fleeing, slapping up against the wall.

  “What else did you see?” Enid asked.

  He described just what Enid would have expected: sprawled body, a pool of blood. Nothing else out of the ordinary. He had fetched Tull, the medic, who went to check the body, then called on the committee. Ariana first, who’d ordered the body taken to her cellar. The scene must have looked like it required an investigation, and she must have been eager to pass that responsibility along. Well, this was why they had investigators, wasn’t it? At least they were starting to build a timeline of what had happened. Arbor had found the body early afternoon, four days ago.

  “Sero was usually reliable, then?” Enid asked, calmly and without accusation, going over the same information, searching for telltale gaps. “He agreed to do a job and he’d be there?”

  “Well, yes. Mostly. I was ready to be angry at him if he’d forgotten what we agreed on.”

  “But he hadn’t forgotten.”

  “No.” Arbor’s hands rested in his lap. “Was there something else I should have done?”

  “No, that’s fine. You didn’t see anything else in the shed? Any sign of commotion, anything knocked over? Any kind of weapon?”

  The man wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Can’t say I looked around enough to see anything. Just the body. The blood.”

  “Did you notice anything odd that morning?” Enid pressed gently, hoping to jog a memory. He seemed keen to scrub his mind clean of any such recollection. “Anyone else going to talk to Sero, anything out of the ordinary?”

  Arbor, short and stout, bearded and balding despite being a relatively young man in his late twenties, said, “No one ever went there. I’m not sure what you think anyone’s going to tell you.”

  She expected such evasions and offered only calm. “I’m only trying to be thorough. Any scrap of information, even if it doesn’t seem important, might help me understand what happened. It seems odd that Sero would just fall, doesn’t it? With the floor that clear?”

  “Maybe he died then fell. Heart attack. Something like that.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed, and wondered if an autopsy would tell them if there’d been some other cause. Maybe the medic would be up for performing an autopsy. “Are you sure no one else ever went there?”

  Arbor bit his lip, looked away. “If anyone went there, it was likely to talk to him about a job. Find out what he was working on, who he was doing jobs for. Maybe someone else will know.”

  “That’s a good idea. I’ll ask around. Let me know if you think of anything else, yeah?”

  She started to get up from the kitchen table when Arbor re
ached after her.

  “He was bannerless, you know,” he said. “That’s why he was alone. That’s why he didn’t get along with anyone. Why no one liked him.”

  The one did not follow the other, in Enid’s experience. If Sero was the product of an unauthorized pregnancy, that was on his parents, not him. He’d have been adopted out, taken care of. No one ought to hold it against him; ideally no one even ought to know about it.

  But people did know. Somehow, they always did.

  She frowned. “You seem to be telling me he deserved to die the way he did.”

  Arbor sat back as if she had slapped him. In the next breath he looked down, shoulders hunched. Proof of shame. Because he knew better; they all did.

  She imagined that Arbor was not the only one who would say that Sero was bannerless. That this had somehow happened because of it. Because being bannerless meant a person lacked protection. Lacked a home and safety. As if the child ought to be made to suffer for the parents’ infraction, all through his life.

  Enid would say to them: The whole community couldn’t see fit to offer him protection, then? Is that what you’re saying? Did he not earn his keep for building all your pretty fences?

  They’d all get that hunched-in, shamefaced look that Arbor had now.

  She stood from the table, grateful not to have to thank him for a glass of lemonade. “If you think of anything, if you hear anything, come find me or my partner, Tomas. All right?”

  He hadn’t met her gaze but once or twice during their whole talk; now he looked straight at her. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Yes.”

  Enid next spoke with the town’s lone medic, Tull. Used to dealing with procedure and questions, he was the only one not instantly put on guard by the uniform. He kept a small clinic near the committee house. In so many respects, this was such a nice town—so many places didn’t try to recruit or maintain a medic. Pasadan had so much, and yet here they were, in the middle of an investigation.

  Tull and Enid stood outside the clinic’s front door, taking advantage of the cooler air outside. His testimony didn’t hold any surprises.

  “It was a mess,” Tull said, shaking his head in memory of the scene. “He was dead when I got there. But even if I’d got to him quick, I couldn’t have helped. Not with a head injury like that.”

  “He didn’t have any other injuries or health problems that might explain what happened?”

  Tull shook his head. “No, no. Not that I know of.”

  “Was anyone with you when you examined the body?”

  “The whole committee. The two guys I had with the stretcher—one of ’em’s my assistant I’m training up.”

  “Anything strange about how the committee members acted around the body?”

  “Just the way they argued. I mean, of course they argue, that’s what a committee does, right?” He chuckled. “But sometimes people get funny around death. More stressed than usual. Ariana was in tears. Wanted an investigation right off. Philos argued against, said they could take care of it.”

  “I get the feeling Philos and Ariana don’t get along,” Enid prompted.

  He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “Philos isn’t used to being questioned. Ariana asks a lot of questions, you know? But I don’t think anyone has complaints about them or their work, if that’s what you mean.”

  Enid nodded. “I’m just trying to understand what happened. Part of the job of coming into a town like this.”

  Tull asked, “Do you really think something’s wrong? Obviously it was an accident, right?”

  “What do you think?” Enid asked. “Accident or not?”

  “You mean, did someone push him?”

  See? Enid told herself. It wasn’t just she who thought it. “There’s blood on the outer wall and a set of footprints running around the back of the shed. Any idea who they belonged to?”

  “No,” he said, astonished. His gaze turned inward, thoughtful. He breathed again, “No.”

  “If you think of anything, let me know, yeah?”

  “Of course, of course.”

  This was a man looking at his community in a whole new light. Mysterious bloody handprints had a way of doing that.

  After her talk with Tull, Enid met back up with Tomas. He hadn’t had much luck with his interviews, either. Just more of the same: Sero had been a loner; no one talked to him; no one had any idea who might have seen him last. Or who might have run around the back of that shed. And did they know that he was bannerless? Most everyone had taken care to point out that he was bannerless. All very rote.

  At least they felt they could authorize the cremation of Sero’s body that afternoon. Whether they might learn more from it later didn’t matter—it wouldn’t last long enough. Tomas oversaw the arrangements—one of the households already had the pyre set up in a clearing about a hundred yards away from the center of town; they were just waiting for the word. Sero didn’t have a household, but this one stepped forward to take care of the job because of the goodwill they’d earn with the committee for doing so. Or maybe they really were doing it to be nice. One could be optimistic. Probably it was a little of both. If the committee had to name a household to do the job, it would reflect badly on the whole town.

  A middle-aged man in a blue tunic and well-loved straw hat supervised the pyre, a simple mound of dry wood and kindling. He stood waiting with a torch and lantern. A bucket of water sat nearby.

  “Any words?” he asked Enid and Tomas, who stood by, watching. Sero’s body, wrapped in an old length of sheeting for a shroud, seemed small. Just another part of the fuel.

  Enid shook her head. “Just . . . thank you. For this.”

  The man nodded, lit the torch from the small lantern flame, and set the pile burning in a half-dozen spots. A great crackling fire roared up in moments, pressing out heat. Enid and Tomas stayed to watch for a time, until the top layer or so turned to gray ash and the whole thing started to sink.

  The man would stay and tend the fire, see the whole pyre burned through. But he was the only one. Ought to be friends and family and children here in the clearing, well-wishers surrounding the fire. Ought to be here drinking, singing songs, telling stories about the departed, crying out their grief. But Sero didn’t have anyone. Not even the committee members came; Enid had expected Ariana at the very least. Instead, the only witnesses to the pyre were a couple of investigators—strangers—and a man sitting on a stump, who watched the flames and poked at the logs because he seemed to like fire on principle. It felt wrong and made Enid sad. But the chance to fix it would have been years in the past. Decades. Assuming there was even anything to fix. If Sero had been contented alone, why should anyone complain now?

  At the edge of the town, a couple of figures stood. Two people, a man and woman. Younger, in their early twenties maybe. She couldn’t make out much more of them with the sun at this angle. But Enid spotted them in time to see the woman storm off and the man bow his head and follow. Not quite observers, but something.

  Those two. She would talk to those two next.

  The wind changed; the smoke drifted, and the smell of burning wood couldn’t entirely mask the stink of the burning body. Enid touched the attendant’s shoulder and thanked him again, then said to Tomas, “Time to get to work.”

  “Yeah. Saw those two watching?”

  “I did.”

  Pasadan wasn’t that big. Shouldn’t be hard to find anyone. Of course, the two figures had vanished. Fled. But she was patient. They’d turn up.

  “Something to hide, then?” Tomas asked. “Or is it just the uniform?”

  “I always assume it’s the uniform first. You’ve worn it so long, you take it for granted, the way a whole village freezes up when one of us comes along.”

  “But the effect is so very useful,” he said, grinning. Indeed, she’d seen cases where a guilty party would throw themselves at an investigator, unburdening their souls of every slight they could think of, just at the sight of the uniform and the implication t
hat their mistakes would inevitably be discovered so they should immediately confess and beg for mercy. Muddied the water, sometimes. So Enid assumed anxiety when folk avoided her.

  On the other hand, someone had fled from that work shed. Someone in this town must know something.

  They reached the first dirt lane in the town. Tomas gestured right; the man was out of sight, but the young woman was marching steadily to a house a ways down.

  “Why don’t you go ahead?” Tomas said. “The both of us will just spook her. I can find the other one.”

  “Right,” she agreed, and continued on, while Tomas went the other way.

  When the young woman arrived at the house, she circled around back. Enid followed to see her take up a basket and begin pulling linens off a clothesline. She might have been trying to look like she’d been there for some time. A pale kerchief tied back her black hair, and she wore a yellow skirt and tunic and laced-up sandals; her face was round, still babyish though her body was full grown and curvy.

  “Hola,” Enid called as she came around the corner, giving the woman plenty of warning. Her quarry turned sharply but didn’t look surprised. Basket against her hip, shirt dangling from a hand, the woman froze. Enid said, “Please, don’t stop. I just have a couple of questions; we can talk while you work.”

  The woman looked like she didn’t entirely believe Enid. When she reached for the next piece of laundry, she moved at about half speed and didn’t glance away from the investigator.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Miran. Of Sirius household.” A towel dropped into the basket, and she reached for the next as if afraid of startling it.

  “I’m Enid. I saw you watching Sero’s pyre.”

  Miran ducked her gaze, nodded. “I was curious. I’d heard it was finally being taken care of.”

  “Did you know Sero very well?”

  She shrugged as well as she could with a basket on one hip. “No. But no one did. He kept to himself. He was . . . odd.”

  “So I’ve gathered. Do you remember the last time you saw him?”