Bannerless

by Carrie Vaughn

  Philos didn’t need to know about Serenity’s banner hanging on the wall back home. The one that didn’t have a name on it yet. Even if she hadn’t had that banner, she would have thought this was appallingly brash. She was almost impressed with him.

  If she really wanted to have a baby herself, Olive would give her that chance. But Olive wanted to be the one to carry the child, to give birth. She was the one who yearned for it. Enid . . . she suspected she’d wanted the banner for the accomplishment of earning a banner and not for the baby. For the status. And that didn’t feel quite right.

  Philos didn’t need to know any of that. Let him make his assumptions.

  “I guess I would,” she said, conversationally. “I’ve been a bit too busy to think of it. Pasadan gets all the banners it wants, I suppose?” She hadn’t seen any pregnant women in town. That didn’t mean anything, of course, and she thought of Olive again. She wanted to go home.

  “We do all right. We hope to keep it that way. I’ll do what I can to keep it that way. But right now, that outcome is up to you, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose it is.” They’d arrived back at the committee house. “Well. I’ll be thinking a little more clearly after I’ve had something to eat, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you for your time, Investigator.” He actually bowed himself away, and she wanted to kick his ass as he turned.

  She waited until he was gone before entering the front room and setting the basket on the table. Teeth bared she said, “Philos just tried to bribe me. Let the whole thing go, and he’ll get me a banner.”

  “Really?” Tomas said, with the hint of a chuckle. Like his prey had just landed in a trap. “That’s a hell of a bribe.”

  “Tomorrow, I want to look at Bounty again. See what they’ve got tucked away in hiding.”

  CHAPTER TEN • THE RUINS

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

  Hunter-Gatherers

  They bypassed Fintown and whatever trouble had settled there with the arrival of the investigators. Enid would have to remember to ask Tomas what had happened. Investigators all talked to one another; he would know. For now, they kept moving.

  It rained. Off and on for the next two weeks, rain fell. Not a lot, but the misting, annoying drizzle still managed to turn the world wet and muggy. They traveled, until the landscape became green and forested.

  Against Dak’s usual habits this time of year, they took side roads, exploring several byways off the main route, discovering households that made their way off the main part of the Coast Road. They became enamored of their roles as messengers, exotic travelers bearing news from the wider world.

  Travelers weren’t taken for granted on the fringes.

  Households on the frontiers made small livings with farming, foraging, and scavenging. A woman at one household made medicines, heady-smelling ointments and tinctures to soothe aching joints and sore throats. Her workroom smelled marvelous, as if every possible smell came together—sweet and bitter, musky and spicy—into a cohesive whole that made Enid feel pleasantly lightheaded after just a couple of breaths. Her name was Dream, and she said most of the ingredients grew wild. Her mother taught her to gather and prepare them. Her household had been doing it since the Fall, and they traded for cloth and tools with nearby households and travelers.

  She offered Dak a wound salve to try for a bruise he’d acquired, stumbling over fallen branches. Dak smelled it. “I know this—I’ve seen this before! Or something like it. You think your goods might get traded farther out on the Coast Road?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve got one lady takes almost all I make. Trades it to a market out east. Brings me back empty jars and things. She trades on the whole Coast Road, so yeah.”

  Dak grinned at this, and Enid marveled that even if this woman and her household had lived in this spot for decades, what she made had traveled all over the world. All over their world, at least.

  Dream’s household had banners, a half dozen hanging from string at the front door. The oldest, sun-faded and dusty, must have been decades old. One of the first, from when the system started. The newest was still bright. Enid had seen a teenage boy chopping wood out in a gully on their way in; it must have been his.

  Enid and Dak passed through these small places, brought what news they could, trading stories and small chores for food and a roof, for messages carried. Enid collected a batch of folded letters and dropped them off at a way station at the next crossroads.

  Then, the households ran out. All the settlements ran out. All that was left was shrouded, muggy wilderness—and then the ruins came into view. The bones of the old city, a concrete scar slowly melting, turning overgrown, becoming something else.

  As they had when walking south, they stopped and looked. As if the place were a magnet with some kind of physical pull. They couldn’t not stop. The sight was eerie. A ghost, but one they could watch physically fade, getting weaker.

  “You want to get a closer look?” Enid asked.

  Dak didn’t say anything. Adjusted the strap of his guitar case, a moment of fidgeting. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. So Enid started walking. Left the road and cut overland, kicking through grass toward the gap between the couple of hills that stood between her and the ancient city.

  “Enid . . .” Dak called, then followed her.

  They took the rest of the day to approach the city. The shape of it came in and out of view as they walked past hills, along creek beds, and through stretches of woods. Quickly, surprisingly, they came upon other signs of the pre-Fall world. A stretch of asphalt that hadn’t yet been swallowed by grass. A white square of concrete pavement.

  Enid’s foot would hit a solid, echoing step, and she’d look up and around and suddenly see the shape of it: a long, straight dip in a meadow that must have been a road a hundred years before. The land was sunken, the grass a slightly darker color—that was all that marked the place. But there must have been more: buildings lining the road, the rusted shells of cars, signs and lights and all the rest. If she pulled back the overgrowth, dug into mounds of scrub oak, and cut through mats of clinging vines, she would find more evidence of what this place had been. More remains.

  The vegetation suddenly seemed alien, a cloak hiding something ominous.

  “What do you suppose it was like?” she asked, her voice sounding flat in the muggy air. They hadn’t spoken in a long time, walking silently, somber, as if watching a funeral pyre.

  “Doesn’t really matter,” Dak said. “But I would have liked to hear their music.”

  A sudden crashing in the underbrush ahead startled her. Startled them both—she reached out, heart racing, and his hand was right there to grab hers.

  Cattle. Two feral cows with scraggy ruddy coats and beady eyes lumbered across the one-time road and into the next collection of shadows. She barely got a look at them, their brick-like faces braying and thick legs kicking.

  She and Dak both laughed and came together in an awkward hug, bleeding out adrenaline. Looking around one more time, wondering what else was out there and if they ought to be worried.

  “What happens if we see people?” she asked.

  “We probably won’t see anyone,” Dak said. “They’ll be scared of us. If there’s even anyone here anymore. I don’t see how anyone can live in this wild.”

  It was certainly different out here than what they were used to, even with all the traveling they did.

  Enid didn’t think anyone would be scared of the two of them—they weren’t much to look at. A couple of kids with bulky packs and blankets tied over their shoulders, not to mention Dak’s guitar. They weren’t a threat—they were targets. She started studying the undergrowth, pulling up fallen branches, and testing them until she found one that was about a foot shorter than she was, that she could easily fit her hands around but still looked sturdy enough to cause damage if she swung it. After stripping twigs and leaves from it, it had the look of a decent walking stick. While she worked, Dak watched
impatiently.

  “You look like an investigator with that thing,” he said.

  “Bien,” she answered. “Now folk’ll be scared of us.” If they needed it. Maybe they wouldn’t need it.

  Dak shook his head and went on, not waiting to see if she caught up or not. She got the feeling he was getting frustrated with her. Maybe she ought to suggest turning around? Maybe she ought to ask him if he was unhappy. Or why he was unhappy, rather. She wondered what he was thinking and couldn’t bring herself to ask, because it would sound like whining. Because she might not like the answer.

  She studied the angular, artificial shadows ahead. She wanted to see them up close; that was what she focused on.

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

  Farther on, Enid put her hands on the bones of one of those ancient structures. A spine of steel emerged from underbrush, thick enough she could put her arms around it, red and rusting, chipped concrete sloughing off it, spotted with fuzzy green moss. Plates of rusty-brown fungus grew out from the base—nothing they could harvest. The growths ate into the concrete, causing the remains of the structure to melt away almost as they watched.

  So began a forest of metal, flat surfaces that had edges covered in vines, trees leaning off balconies that seemed to be freestanding, but on closer look it seemed that the walls around them were gone, and only steel frames held them up. Sloping hills of refuse might have been left by giant moles. Enid studied it all, trying to imagine what had been here before . . . and failing. She’d seen pictures of what this had looked like; what she couldn’t see was the transition, how the world in those images had turned into this.

  Auntie Kath would know.

  “Well, this is it,” Dak said, holding his arms out in presentation. “The ruins.”

  “Yeah,” she breathed. Her heart raced; she smiled. There was a strange kind of echoing—birdsong sounded louder here. “Let’s keep going.”

  The gaps between steel and concrete had obviously been streets. Some walls still stood—holes indicated where windows and doors had been. Strange, that some parts were so identifiable, yet also ghostly, no longer serving any kind of purpose.

  She thought they had come to the end of the city when they reached a wide stretch of broken asphalt, with trees and scrub rooted in decaying black rubble. No buildings, nothing else—but in the middle of this space, more steel, carpets of broken glass crunching under their boots, beaten by weather over the decades. Enid crouched, cleared away some moss and grass, and the pebbles of glass flashed in the light. They walked farther, circling a steel boundary with struts and buckled walls. This had been a single building once, able to encompass some of the towns they’d been to. What did anyone even do with a structure so large?

  Even after this, the ruined city continued. For miles, it went on.

  Enid hoped to find artifacts. Tools to salvage or a toy or a piece of cutlery to show what life had looked like before the Fall. Maybe even a book—how marvelous would it be to find a book that no one from Haven had seen before. But no, all that had vanished long ago. Already salvaged, buried, or rotted away. So many things just rotted away if no one was there to take care of them.

  In the last days, there hadn’t been enough people to take care of much of anything.

  Enid didn’t worry about getting hurt—anything that might have fallen or broken off had done so a long time ago. She stood still and tried to take it in, the strange view, the rich smell of vegetation cut through with the musty odor of wet rock or concrete, only slightly unpleasant, only barely identifiable.

  In the distance, the scrape of gravel.

  “Shh,” she hissed to Dak. He was already standing still, quiet. She gripped her walking stick two-handed.

  “Enid, we should go, come on . . .” He started back the way they’d come.

  “No, wait a sec.” She continued on a few steps, listened harder—and heard voices. She couldn’t make out words, but she definitely heard two people speaking, calling out curt instructions to each other.

  Behind her, Dak looked ready to run, if only he could be sure she’d follow. But she wouldn’t.

  “Dak,” she hissed. “Play something.”

  “What?”

  “Get your guitar out. Play something. We’ll pretend we’re having our own little party and draw them out.”

  “Enid, that’s a terrible idea.”

  “I want to see them.”

  “You’ll do more than that if they find us!”

  The voices drew closer. “Was that . . . heard somethin’ . . .”

  Too late, Enid and Dak had already been discovered. They’d have a confrontation on their hands—unless they could make themselves interesting. Enid said again, “Play something!”

  Dak found the corner of a fallen slab to sit on and pulled his guitar out of its cover. Enid stood nearby, leaning on her staff and keeping watch for whatever came around that corner up ahead.

  Two figures, short and wiry, all joints and whip-like muscles. It took Enid a moment or two to realize it was a man and a woman—they both had rough dark hair, long and tied back with leather cords. Their clothes were a hodgepodge, wraps of leather and worn cloth held together with twisted rope, stitched and mended moccasins. Their skin was brown, sun-baked, and their gazes were wary.

  Enid stayed very still, watching them enough so they knew they were watched. She tried to keep her gaze soft, interested but not too intent.

  Dak focused on the guitar, and only slowly did he start playing notes, sliding gradually into music like the first drops of rain before a steady, calming drizzle. A light song, the notes were clear and simple, arranged in a rolling melody that repeated, shifted into a variation, then went back to the beginning. A simple exercise for Dak, but he let the song flow. Didn’t sing. The plucked strings were enough here.

  The folk from the ruins stood still, listening for a long time. The notes seemed to hang in the air. Eventually, on Dak’s third song, they approached. The man had an unstrung bow and a quiver of arrows on his back. The woman had a metal pipe as long as her leg—clearly a weapon. For the moment she held it like a walking stick. Right now, they weren’t a threat. They did give Enid’s staff a look up and down. There was something equitable about the way they sized each other up, like they were deciding that yes, they were on the same footing and there’d be no trouble. An agreement that all would be well as long as they kept a certain distance between them—for politeness’s sake.

  The third song finished and Dak paused. Their turn, now.

  “Names?” the woman asked in a tired, broken voice. Like she was getting over a cough. “You’ve names?”

  “Enid,” she said, hand on her heart. “This is Dak.”

  “Star,” the woman replied, and pointed to her partner. “Rook.”

  Enid nodded, accepting. Thrilled, really. She felt like she’d come to the end of the world and found it welcoming.

  “Where you foot it from?” Rook asked next.

  Enid started to say, “The Coast Road—” but Dak jumped in. “Just traveling. We’ve been all over.”

  They nodded; they seemed to be familiar with the nomadic life.

  “You been around,” Rook said next. “Any sign of storms coming up?”

  “Rain south of here. Nothing too bad,” Enid said. They had a clipped way of speaking, and she found herself adopting the short tones. A careful way of speaking to people you weren’t sure of.

  The man pointed out, a vague direction north. “Some wind coming up. Seasons changing. Best to watch out.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. The big typhoons would scour out a place like this. These folk must have had a strategy to keep safe. A place to shelter.

  “Why don’t ya come and sit by the fire. Rest a bit. Can ya? Maybe do some more of that?” He waved a hand at the guitar.

  Enid looked at Dak, leaving the decision to him. But he had a hard time turning down a request for music.

  “Sure, bien,” he said, as she expected
.

  They followed the pair of hunters farther into the ruins.

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

  This wasn’t the Coast Road anymore, but trade still worked. Music for space to rest. There was some reassurance in that.

  The folk here had a camp of sorts. It wasn’t any more than a camp—lean-tos made of fallen branches, tents made of cowhide, ramshackle bolt holes built into the ruins; and all of it looked like it fell down and had to be rebuilt every time a storm passed through. They had scavenged tools, ax heads that they kept sharp, hammers that were worn almost round. They had plenty of fire, with wood and cow dung for fuel. The wild cattle seemed to be how they made their living—they hunted for meat and leather, foraged for the rest. Bladders and barrels of rainwater sat protected under overhangs. They defended their territory, because apparently several nearby settlements made raids back and forth. Lots of skinny children running around. Lots of children. It shocked Enid, and she looked for where the banners would hang, on a wall or a line or a pole, but there weren’t any banners. No implants.

  Star introduced them. The settlement was made up of three family groups, what Enid had to think of as a household. Three mothers and their children, with several other adults who came and went—someone was always out hunting, while some stayed to look after the camp.

  All of them were wary as Enid and Dak approached. They didn’t smile, only nodded politely.

  Dak found a perch near the main campfire, which had a spit made of scavenged metal over it, empty at the moment. He started playing—seemed the best way to set everyone at ease. Enid kept close to him. Standing watch over him, she thought of it. As if these people would knock Dak over the head and steal him away if she didn’t protect him.

  He played, sang softly, counterpoint to the guitar’s chords. The children came out of hiding, gathering close. Seven of them, including the baby one of the women bounced on her hip. A couple of older ones, fifteen maybe, just as lanky as the rest and holding spears and worn knives. Hard to call the older ones kids—they dressed like the adults, looked like the adults. Soon as they could hold a knife, they likely started hunting with the others.