Bannerless

by Carrie Vaughn

  “They might just be here to get information. It doesn’t mean that Petula’s done anything—”

  But Dak was already running down the path to the docks, looking for Xander.

  CHAPTER SEVEN • PASADAN

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

  Complications

  “What are you doing here?” Enid asked Dak, who laughed at her astonishment. It was a stupid question; it just fell out. Tomas wryly crossed his arms, like he was holding in words. Dak seemed to avoid looking at him, without appearing to be avoiding him, of course. Maybe they could each just pretend the other didn’t exist.

  “I live here,” he said. “And I can see exactly what you’re doing here.” He gestured at her, indicating the uniform.

  This probably wouldn’t be the best time to ask him if he knew Sero, when was the last time he’d seen the man, and where he’d spent the morning four days ago.

  They lingered in the shade of the committee building, surrounded by the heat and buzz of the afternoon. She could feel sweat on her brow and wanted nothing more than to take a shower and sit for a few moments.

  “You know each other?” Ariana asked. She looked back and forth between the two of them, mid-gesture. More astonishment.

  “A long time ago,” Enid said simply.

  “A very memorable time,” Dak added.

  She ducked away, embarrassed, frustrated that she was blushing. Tomas didn’t offer rescue. But then he’d never much liked Dak.

  Ariana’s smile was tight, polite. “That sounds like a good story.”

  “Oh, I doubt it,” Enid said. Again the words seemed to just fall out. Of course, Dak laughed again. She hadn’t been trying to be funny.

  “So do you know what happened yet?” Ariana asked.

  “Still working on that. We may need to talk to everyone in town, just to get our timeline down, to know when Sero was last seen. You won’t mind if I asked you a few questions?” Enid regarded Dak appraisingly; she couldn’t imagine him rushing to share information. Maybe he’d surprise her.

  “Not even starting with, ‘Hey, how are you, what have you been up to lately?’ ”

  She matched his smirk. No reason to poke at each other, but here they were. He was more likely poking at the uniform, she reminded herself.

  Ariana laid a hand on Dak’s arm, a friendly, familiar gesture. “You should play tonight, Dak. Get people’s minds off all this.”

  The couple of townsfolk who hadn’t drifted off—to avoid questioning, likely—jumped in eagerly. “Oh, please do, it’s been weeks!”

  “Why not?” he told them. “We’ll put a fire in the pit up here, and maybe you all can scare up some food to share? We can welcome our investigators properly.”

  The others ran off to spread the word, leaving Ariana and Dak standing side by side before Enid and Tomas. Clearly a united front. Intimate, even. Were they together? Dak said he lived here now—as part of Ariana’s household, she’d bet. Well, good for him.

  “We still have a few questions to answer,” Enid said evenly, professionally. “The investigation may take a couple of days. If you can show us to your way station, we’d appreciate it.”

  “Of course, it’s just behind the committee house,” Ariana said. She and Dak exchanged an indecipherable look. Rather than trying to find meaning in it, Enid decided it wasn’t any of her business.

  Within half an hour, an impromptu party gathered around the side of the building, where a fire pit and a cluster of benches and chairs were located. Dusk was settling in, bugs coming out. Someone brought out a cask of cider. It was exactly like she remembered all of Dak’s grand entrances, the way the man could start a party anywhere he went.

  She lingered at the door of the meeting room, watching, wondering who knew what and why they weren’t speaking to her. She’d gotten into the mindset where everyone looked suspicious.

  “Come sit,” Dak said, coming up to her and gesturing to the fire. He’d gone to get his guitar, its strap slung over his shoulder in that all-too-familiar way. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

  “Can’t.” Couldn’t maintain objective distance for an investigation during a party. And she couldn’t imagine folk being in a mood for celebration with a couple of investigators on hand. “They’ll be happier if we’re not there.”

  Tomas also lingered outside, near a corner of the building. Standing watch, seemed like. “Someone might want to talk about the investigation,” he explained. It happened sometimes, a local with something to say, but without the pressure of formal questioning, coming to them under cover of darkness or some other pretense. But Enid suspected this was an excuse for him to get out of their way. She almost wished he wouldn’t.

  But she and Dak did need to catch up with each other, didn’t they? Might as well get it over with. “Why don’t you come in for a couple of minutes? You won’t need to go play while everyone’s cooking.”

  Inside, she pulled chairs from the table and acquired a couple of mugs of cider while Dak explained that he still traveled a week or so out of every month to play for markets and festivals, usually only when invited in advance these days.

  “I’m mostly settled now. Newhome—Ariana’s household—took me in, the poor chumps. I teach the kids in the town reading and writing, a little music.” His guitar leaned against the table beside him. Every so often Dak glanced at the doorway as if worried. Enid didn’t know if it was the uniform or the sense that Tomas might be outside, eavesdropping, or secretly wanting to throw him in a pond.

  “You and Ariana?”

  “We’re friends,” he said. The phrase could have meant anything when Dak said it. “She was kind to take in a stray.”

  “Strange to think of you settled down.” He shrugged, as if he couldn’t explain it either. She gestured to the guitar. Worn blond wood instead of the black lacquered one he’d had before. “You found a new one.”

  “Yeah. Wasn’t as hard as I was afraid it would be. This is actually my second new one. Best one yet. If someone’s out there building guitars, the world can’t be all bad, yeah?”

  “Right,” she said softly.

  His presence had no bearing on the investigation, but she would have preferred to do without the distraction. She’d gone for months without thinking of him. Years. Why should he cause her any worry now? Her lips twisted wryly, regarding him, trying to figure out how much he’d changed, if at all.

  “You get back to Fintown often?” she asked.

  Dak shrugged. “Haven’t been that way in a few years.”

  “Ah.” Enid had traveled to Fintown just two years ago—delivering copies of records, not because of an investigation. Xander was co-head of Petula Dock these days. Still sailing. Strange, to think she’d been there more recently than Dak. She and Xander had only spoken of him in passing.

  A knock came at the door. Enid expected Tomas, but Ariana leaned in. “Is everything all right?” The question was tense; her hand gripped the door frame. Laughter sounded from outside. Night was settling in, and the fire would be going strong by now. Dak’s absence would be noted.

  “He’ll be out in a few minutes,” Enid said. Ariana took the hint and ducked out, biting her lip.

  “What about you, Enid?” he asked, when his own tale reached a suitable end. “You’ve been busy, I take it.” He gestured at her, or rather at the uniform she wore.

  “I have,” she agreed. She thought for a moment about what she could say, how to explain Serenity, Sam, her career—all of it—and no words seemed adequate. So she settled on broad summary. “Life is good.”

  “Bien, bien,” he said. Another long silence passed. He studied her, and she him. She was used to dealing with long silences. He very much wasn’t. “You’re still in Haven, then?”

  “I am. I started a small household with three others. We do all right. I travel quite a bit.”

  “I imagine you do.”

  Enough with the small talk. She resisted the urge to straighten, to lean in a
s if this was a serious interrogation. “I’d like to ask you . . . did you know Sero?”

  “Not really, no. He was a loner. That’s why he lived out on that patch by himself. No one ever visited him. No one much even talked to him.”

  “He never came out to the fire pit for gatherings?” she said, gesturing toward the party outside. “Not even to hear you play?”

  “No. Can’t charm everyone, I guess.” His smile turned lopsided, and she chuckled at the joke. “Ariana said you think it’s a murder. That can’t be right, can it? I heard it was an accident. He just fell.”

  “Possible murder. We’re still asking questions, looking for possible witnesses.”

  “She was pretty upset,” he said.

  “A lot of people are. I can’t blame them. Can you remember the last time you saw Sero? Maybe just walking around town, working on some of those fences?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t. You know how it is, you walk around and see people . . . they’re like part of the scenery.” He didn’t even have to think about it.

  She took a chance. “Can you remember what you were doing in the morning four days ago?”

  He never stopped with that smile, even now. “You’re interrogating me.”

  Her lips curled. “Just asking a few questions.” She wondered what Dak saw when he looked at her now? Not that she ever really knew.

  “As it happens, I was away. Playing for the market at Porto. Only got back the next day and heard about the accident then. If I knew anything, I would tell you. You know I would.” There it was, alibi established, so smoothly he could pretend he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

  “I know,” she said. He blinked at her, then reached for his guitar.

  “You’ll come hear me play, won’t you? I think it’s about time for some music.” He rested the instrument on his lap and picked a couple of strings, tuning as he did. The notes whined. She remembered that sound.

  “Not tonight, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, then. I’m sure we’ll have other chances to talk. Maybe after the unpleasantness is done.”

  “Maybe.” She stood to see him out to the door.

  “It’s really good to see you, Enid,” he said before leaving. “Sunshine in a storm. Oh—” He fumbled at the collar of his tunic for a moment and drew out a pendant on a string—a piece of sea glass, the one she’d given him, that she’d found the first time she’d seen the ocean. With him. “I still have it. Remember?”

  She was amazed that he hadn’t given it to someone else on the road. That he hadn’t just lost it. “I do. You kept it.”

  Hers was sitting on a shelf at home, in the room she shared with Sam.

  “It’s one of my favorite things. Night, Enid.”

  When he was gone, Tomas ducked into the room. “That was unexpected.”

  Enid rubbed her face and sighed. “What are the odds? I can’t even imagine!”

  “You’re not happy to see him?”

  “I . . .” She paused. She honestly didn’t know what she was thinking. What she ought to be thinking. “I’m curious about what he’s been getting up to. He always had such a clear picture of himself and it wasn’t so . . . domestic.”

  “Or he put on a good show of it before,” Tomas observed, settling into the chair Dak had occupied.

  Yeah, there was that. “That’s a depressing thought. The show’s what I liked about him.”

  She had never asked Tomas if he had a lover in every town, the way he’d so confidently told her that Dak did, back in the day. She didn’t really want to know. Tomas had stayed with Plenty, back at Haven. Part of a legacy. The household had earned half a dozen banners during his adult life, and he’d fathered one of the resulting children. She also understood that he was the father of a boy at a household up north—they’d earned a banner, and the mother asked him, and he obliged. Enid didn’t know the details. As far as Enid knew, he didn’t have any kind of partnership like she and Sam did, or Olive and Berol, and he traveled too much to be close to his children—couldn’t be said to be their father in any way but biological. A lover and a father were two different things. Her own biological father, Zen, was part of Plenty. He repaired windmills for most of the surrounding communities and traveled a lot. He hadn’t been around much when she was growing up, and she hadn’t really missed him—she had plenty of other people looking out for her. Folk like Tomas, in fact. But maybe she’d inherited her wanderlust from him.

  With a household, a kid always had family. More than enough family sometimes, as Enid thought of her own crowded childhood and that overwhelming urge she’d felt sometimes to flee. She liked her own small cozy household just fine, and when Serenity’s kid finally came, it would have four parents. And probably want to flee just like she did.

  She took a long drink of cider and got out her notebook. “We need a timeline of what happened. Who saw what when. This is a tangle; we’ve got to keep it straight.”

  They worked backward from when Sero’s body was discovered. They had holes to fill in, to get as close as they could to the definitive last time he’d been seen by witnesses. Earlier that morning, possibly.

  Witnesses said Miran had been there that morning. She might have misremembered when she was last there, or might have been lying. She said he’d been doing work at Sirius household; that might be their starting point. From the time of death, Enid worked the timeline forward to the call for an investigation and her and Tomas’s arrival. A full day had passed, near as Enid and Tomas could figure. There’d been a debate before Ariana had sent a courier to the regional committee. It had arrived two mornings ago. Which meant Pasadan had had four days to clean up evidence and hide witnesses. But no one had bothered checking for footprints and blood around the shed. Loose threads still waited to be pulled.

  They needed to talk to Philos and Ariana again, find out how deep their argument ran. This business over Sero might just have been the latest bout in a long-running conflict. She also wanted to see Miran and the rest of Sirius household, and to find Miran’s friend Kirk. He might be a reason to go check out the party after all. Or they could leave it till morning—the truth had waited this long.

  “We’ve got our list to talk to in the morning, then,” Tomas said, shutting his notebook.

  “We do.” She leaned back, already tired. “No one is happy about us being here. Not even Ariana. They all just keep saying that no one liked Sero, as if that explains everything. People are horrible,” she said, even though she didn’t mean it. Saying so was cathartic sometimes. Tomas quirked a smile.

  “It’s likely we won’t have to push for more than a day or so, and guilt will pull someone out. They won’t be able to take us poking around anymore.”

  “One can hope. But it’ll depend on who they’re more scared of. Us, or everyone else in town looking at them to keep quiet?”

  He made a grunt of agreement. It was them against everyone else, like usual.

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

  Enid finally got her shower late that night. The water drained from a solar-heated cistern on the roof, and while it wasn’t hot, its lingering warmth still cut through the day’s sweat and stress. Five minutes of scrubbing with a washcloth and she felt almost new. She might even sleep, if she could keep from turning over the images of Sero’s body and that smear of blood on the outside wall.

  The way station, just a room behind the committee house, was made up of the washroom and four cots. She and Tomas settled into sleep. Dak still played outside, the music sounding vague and distant through the wall. Enid tried to ignore it.

  The next morning during a breakfast of bread and tea in the meeting room, she and Tomas were going over their notes again when Philos, wearing his gray committee sash, arrived and stormed into the room to lean on the table where they sat. Enid still had a mouth full of biscuit.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “Well what?” Enid asked, swallowing quickly, leaving an annoying lump in her throat.
Tomas leaned back in his chair, thumbs hitched on his belt, looking all casual like he wouldn’t hurt a fly. The stance usually made people nervous—his hand was next to his pouch of tranquilizers now. Sure enough Philos kept glancing over at him.

  “Finished yet?”

  “No,” she said. “We’ll let you know when we’re finished.” She leafed through pages of her notebook, resting on the table in front of her—this was mostly for show. “We need to talk to Kirk, of the Bounty household. Can you tell me where I might find him?”

  Philos looked sharply at her. “Why do you want to talk to him?”

  “Same reason I want to talk to everyone. His name’s come up a couple of times. Is there a problem?”

  “He’s my son. Bounty is my household.”

  “Not sure that necessarily follows,” she said, amused. That was an interesting bit of information, but not necessarily relevant. “I don’t think you should worry so much, sir.”

  The old man seemed to be gnawing at his own cheeks. Maybe he just had a nervous disposition. “I keep telling you you’re going through a lot of trouble for nothing.”

  “That’s for us to decide, I think. So. Since Kirk’s your son, can you tell me where I might find him?”

  She let him spend another moment trying to figure out how to get his son away from her attention. Finally, he gave up. “I’ll go get him. I’ll send him over here in the next hour—”

  “How about I go with you, save the trouble? He won’t have to leave whatever he’s doing; I’ll just talk to him right now.” And Philos wouldn’t have a chance to coach him.

  He glared. She was getting used to that expression. Philos marched out the door and headed in the direction of the town center. She quickly stood, brushing off crumbs and washing down a last gulp of tea.

  Tomas said, “You go on. I’ll check with the households Sero had been doing work for.”

  “Right.”

  Packing her notebook, she followed after the committeeman. He was rushing, moving at a fast shuffling walk that made his tunic flap at his sides. He seemed to want to get far enough ahead to be able to warn Kirk. As much as she might like to keep that from happening, she wasn’t willing to race after him. Better to maintain some semblance of dignity.