The Wild Dead

by Carrie Vaughn

That sparked Neeve’s interest. She lifted her head and put a hand on Mart’s arm. “It’s okay,” she murmured.

  Glaring, he obviously wasn’t sure. But he stepped aside.

  Enid guided Neeve away, off the path, walking through the scrub. “Walk with me, just a little ways.” Enid figured taking Neeve away from her household, away from everyone, the woman would be more likely to talk.

  Enid said, “I went to the camp up the hill. I talked to El Juez.”

  Neeve ducked her head to hide a smile. “He was just Rico back then. So he’s in charge there now?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. He’s easy to follow.”

  “You did. For a little while.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You wanted a child so badly, you cut out your implant. Then why did you leave her behind?”

  Neeve wore a knitted shawl, same pattern as Ella’s kerchief. Her hands picked at the stitches, stretching the yarn. Like she always needed something to do with her hands. “I wanted Rico to come here. We could say Ella was his, not mine. We could explain it all. We could have it all.”

  “Man like that was never going to come live here,” Enid said. She’d known the man for just a couple of days and could tell that. “So why did you leave the baby behind?”

  The smile vanished. Her voice broke. “Because if I brought her back, she’d be taken away. Someone like you would take her away.”

  “Then why didn’t you stay there, with her?”

  “Why are you asking? Ella’s dead, it’s all ruined, why do you care?”

  “I’m trying to understand. It’s part of why I do this job. I want to understand.”

  Neeve wiped her eyes, looked out at the sea. A few gulls dipped and turned. Their cries were high and rattling. “I never fit in there. I just didn’t. I can’t explain it, but if you were there you must have seen it. I kept . . . trying to change things. Make them better. Fix things. But they wouldn’t change. I’d suggest a new way of cooking, or maybe try to plant some vegetables. Rico would just laugh. He loved Ella, he was a father to her. But I didn’t fit in.”

  “And you fit in so well here.”

  “I know who I am here. I’m the woman who cut out her implant. And now I’m the woman who had a bannerless child.”

  It was a waste, Enid thought. A waste of a life. Two lives, counting Ella. It was all so . . . sad. She didn’t think she understood it any better. But it was an answer.

  “Thanks. That’s it, I guess. You keep well.” She turned to leave.

  “You’re not going to do anything to me? Exile me, disband the household—”

  “Ban you from earning banners?” Enid said. “No. I’m not going to do anything you haven’t already done to yourself. Good night, Neeve.”

  The folk of Last House stood on the path, watching Enid go. She glanced back once, then never again.

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

  Dusk had fallen. They couldn’t set out for home until the morning. Enid wanted to scream, but there was nothing to be done. She was flat-out finished for today—only that afternoon she had collapsed on the marsh from heat exhaustion. She ought to be a little gentler with herself.

  Least she and Teeg could have done was bring a car with them. But no, this was just supposed to be a simple case, no more than a day or two. But now they had to spend one more night in Bonavista’s work house. They kept Juni with them, taking turns watching her. When it was Teeg’s turn, Enid sought out Jess.

  She had to resist the urge to apologize. “I’ll have supplies sent to make up for what we used. I really wasn’t expecting we’d be here this long.”

  He was putting on a brave face. But his smile wavered and his eyes were wet. “She did it to hurt Neeve, you know. Wasn’t about the girl at all. I—I’m sure she didn’t really mean to hurt anyone. Except Neeve, I guess.”

  Enid didn’t know what to say. “Well. She’s ended up hurting a lot of folk. Taking her away is the best punishment I can think of. No need to break up the whole house.”

  He nodded quickly, head bowed. Tom, their son, was nowhere to be found. He just hid, and that was all right.

  They didn’t get a nice cooked meal that night, and Enid wasn’t going to ask for one. She spent the evening on the front steps of the work house, available if anyone wanted to talk. Visible, standing up for her judgment if anyone wanted to argue.

  Nobody did.

  After dark, bugs swarmed the porch light, and Enid hugged a sheet over her shoulders. The whole Estuary seemed asleep. But Enid wouldn’t feel peace until she was far, far away. She kept double-checking shadows, sure Hawk was going to jump out of one, intent on revenge. She kept seeing movement in the edges of her vision; she felt unsettled.

  Teeg came out after a while. Stood by the door, looking out in the same direction she did, expression locked in a frown.

  “She’s asleep, I think,” he said finally. “Wore herself out.”

  Enid didn’t have a lot of sympathy for the woman. Part of her still wondered if they shouldn’t have let her keep walking out into the waves. Just let her disappear.

  “The report on this one’s going to be a trick,” he said, the conversational tone forced. Trying to talk like nothing was wrong.

  “I’ll write it all up, you don’t have to worry about it.”

  “But I’ll have to sign off on it too—”

  “You weren’t even there.” She hadn’t meant to spit out the words so sharply.

  He said, “I was wrong. That’s what you want me to say, yeah?”

  “I don’t want you to say anything you don’t want to. Doesn’t much matter, does it?” She wanted a drink. A good cider from the orchards back home. Apples didn’t grow in this region.

  “You did it. You solved it. I knew you would, after the Pasadan case.”

  She was going to become the expert on murder, wasn’t she? The specialist. The one committees called on when a body turned up. Be nice for them, having someone else to shove the problem onto.

  “I never would have guessed it,” Teeg said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah. That’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re not supposed to guess.”

  “That’s why you want to write the report. You’re not going to have anything good to say about me.”

  She had planned on leaving him out of the report entirely, at least where finding Ella’s murderer was concerned. That would speak for itself. “You care about the report that much?”

  “Of course I care—”

  “If you cared, you should have stayed to help.” Except she couldn’t imagine what he would have done at the camp, how he would have handled the gang that took her. Couldn’t imagine him behaving in a way that would have encouraged El Juez to talk, to say the thing that parted the clouds and made the whole situation clear.

  She couldn’t imagine him helping, and that was a sad thought.

  “Get some sleep, Teeg,” she said. “I’ll keep watch next.”

  “No. I’ll watch. You need sleep more than I do.”

  Trouble was, she didn’t think she’d be able to. Didn’t make much sense to argue, though. They had a long walk ahead of them, come morning.

  Chapter Twenty-One • the coast road

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

  Beginning

  A light rain came through that night, and Semperfi’s ruin crashed down in the middle of it. The screeching racket of it carried over the whole marshland. Enid bolted awake from her corner of the work house, blinking in darkness. In the opposite corner Juni was curled up, pressed to the wall, clutching a blanket to her chest.

  “What was that?” the woman gasped.

  Enid made a lopsided grin. “Doom,” she murmured, and Juni’s face fell.

  Enid opened the door to go out; Teeg got up and followed her. The noise had stopped. The air was still again, but in the main house, lights were coming on, voices calling. Up the path to the hill, more house lights turned on
.

  “Stay here, “ Enid ordered Juni, who cringed back against the wall. Then Enid grabbed a hand lantern from her pack and went out.

  The crash drew people from up and down the road, so Enid and Teeg were part of a procession of folk with hand lanterns and questions. Their shapes and shadows moved ahead, beams of lanterns playing back and forth. Conversation was low and earnest.

  They converged at Semperfi, at the pre-Fall house that had just collapsed into shredded timbers, scattered down the slope all the way to the river. Enid couldn’t quite make out what happened, but if she had to guess, she’d say the muddy slope gave way, dropped the web of stilts, and the whole structure slumped downward. The floor tilted, the walls broke, and the roof fell. That was mostly what remained visible, the angle of that leather-wrapped, patched-up roof on a pile of splinters. As they’d all said, it was only a matter of time. A cloud of dust was still settling, carrying a stench of mold and old wood. There wouldn’t be much to salvage here, but the wreck would keep Erik and the Semperfi folk busy for a time.

  Enid felt weirdly glad that she got to see the end of the whole mess. “Well, that’s that,” she said.

  Erik stood on the path, shining a light over it. With all of the handheld lights together, the ruin was pretty well illuminated. It would look entirely different in daylight, and probably sadder.

  “Wait—what’s that?” Enid focused her lantern on a spot near the top of the mudslide buried in torn roof timbers. A piece of fabric amid the broken wood, incongruously soft and delicate. She moved closer, to the edge of a collapsed wall, peering through the dark, sure her eyes were playing tricks. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought she saw.

  But she was. A rough-woven sleeve, an outflung hand at the end of it, pale against the soaked ruins. Enid knew exactly who it belonged to—the shadow she’d been watching for, over the past day.

  Hawk had gone to ground in his usual hiding spot.

  “Oh no,” Teeg murmured behind her.

  The hand wasn’t moving. Nothing was moving. Since she couldn’t assume the young man was dead, she blew out a breath and prepared to crawl along the broken pieces.

  “Enid, wait—”

  “I’ll be careful,” she answered. “Keep that light on him, will you?”

  They all did, the whole gathering, and waited with such breathless silence, she could hear a faint rain pattering on the river at the base of the cliff.

  Carefully, putting each foot down gently, holding on with both hands, and pausing to see if the structure was all going to slide out from under her, she crawled out to the body. Confirmed that yes, it was Hawk, with his floppy brown hair, though half of it was covered with blood now. She could see one of his arms, one of his legs, both twisted to awkward angles. But she guessed it was the blow to the head that had killed him. A piece of the roof might have come straight down on top of him. He likely had been asleep when it happened.

  She held his wrist, waited for a pulse a lot longer than she really needed to, but she wanted to be sure. Wanted all the witnesses to be sure. In the rain, his skin was already cold. No life left in him at all.

  With just as much care, she backed out of the ruin, testing each step, each broken board. When she reached solid ground again, she sat hard and caught her breath. She’d done a hell of a lot of work on this trip, she thought. More than earned her uniform. She really wanted that shower now.

  “Enid?” Teeg put a hand on her shoulder, and she patted it reassuringly.

  “I’m fine. Help me up.” Grasping his hand, she got back to her feet. Regarded the gathering. Yet another time when all the Estuary’s faces looked back at her, waiting for her judgment.

  “Are you going to start another investigation?” Erik said, an edge to his voice.

  Enid glared. “Why, you think you should be held liable for not knocking down this deathtrap earlier?”

  The man stepped back, arm raised as if warding off a weapon. Enid—her voice, her presence—was sharp as a blade. The investigator shook her head. Exhaustion pressed her on all sides, and she couldn’t afford to give in to it, not yet. Still so many miles to go.

  “No, I won’t start an investigation,” Enid said, rubbing the mist of rain from her face. “This was an accident. A stupid, stupid accident.”

  “You want us to get the body out of there?” Teeg asked.

  Enid shook her head. “Not till morning and full light. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

  With that, the gathering drifted off, knowing there was nothing more to be done just now. Anna touched Erik’s shoulder and drew him back toward the main house. Their real house. Far from angry, the man seemed relaxed, the knots gone from his shoulders and neck.

  Well, good for him.

  Enid turned, was surprised to find Mart standing there, his lantern hanging at his side. Light pooled at his feet, but his face was in shadow. The rest of his household hadn’t accompanied him; he stood alone, off the path. She stared stupidly at him for a minute, too tired to think.

  “We’ll do the pyre for him,” he said softly.

  She nodded. Her voice came out a whisper: “Good. Good.”

  Teeg had to lead her off, a tentative hand on her arm.

  Returning to Bonavista’s work house, Enid realized they’d left Juni unsupervised and half-expected that the woman might have fled. But no, they opened the door and she was still sitting in the corner, knees pulled to her chest and hugging a blanket. Maybe asleep, maybe not.

  This gave Enid a little bit of hope for the long journey ahead, that at least Juni wasn’t likely to run away and cause more trouble.

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

  What little sleep she got didn’t seem to do Enid any good. Her body still felt drained, still moving only at half speed. She had to fight through a fog in her mind. She expected she wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep until she was back with Sam and knew how Olive and the baby were doing.

  Some places still had working two-way radios, she’d heard. But Haven didn’t have one, so even if she could find one this far out, she couldn’t talk to home.

  Enid and Teeg let Juni take a bag with her, whatever belongings she could carry. Wasn’t much. A hairbrush, a change of clothes, a knitted scarf, a carved wooden mug, maybe something that Jess had made. She got a few minutes with her household to say goodbye, but only Jess and Tom came to see her off. Enid offered a quick word to the boy.

  “I’m still putting in a good word for your work. This isn’t on you,” she assured him.

  “Not that it’ll do any good,” he said, frowning.

  Enid and Teeg stood apart to give the household privacy, but Enid did listen in. As part of the investigation, she assured herself.

  “Did you really do it?” the boy asked, his voice tight and tearful. Juni didn’t say anything. “But why? How could you?”

  Unanswerable questions.

  “I don’t know,” Juni said softly. Tom ran off, scrubbing his face, hiding his tears.

  Jess looked back at Juni one more time. “I’ll do what I need to, to keep the household together.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t. The place is cursed.” Juni’s mouth twisted as if full of a sour taste.

  “I don’t believe that. We’ll keep our banners on the wall. It’ll be enough.”

  The woman nodded, and they turned away from each other. Not even an embrace or a touch of hands.

  They set off, Teeg and Enid taking up positions on either side of Juni, pressing her on. They had a long walk ahead of them.

  “It’s not fair,” Juni muttered under her breath, only half an hour away from Bonavista. She repeated it like some kind of mantra. “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.”

  “You’re right,” Enid said curtly, cutting her off. “It isn’t.”

  Juni didn’t say another word.

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

  Finally, at the end of the day they arrived in Everlast, an
actual town. It was like emerging from a shroud into sunlight.

  Away from the coast, away from the wetlands—this place felt stable. No houses perched on stilts, no tumbling ruins, no waterlogged marshes constantly shifting.

  But it wasn’t the end of their trip. Teeg stayed with Juni while Enid checked in with the local committee for messages. Nothing personal had come from Haven, which she took as a good sign—that she wasn’t too late. Even better, Everlast had a solar car on loan for committee business, and Enid laid claim to it.

  Enid also asked that a medic go back to the Estuary as soon as possible, mainly to check on Kellan. The stress of the investigation had eaten at him, and Enid worried. Really, it might not hurt to get everyone looked over. A medic checked out her injury, admired the multicolored bruise covering her shoulder and upper arm. No, nothing was broken, but it would take weeks to heal. The medic handed her a salve and extracted a promise that she’d actually remember to use it.

  After an hour’s worth of work at Everlast, meeting with their committee and the medic, requesting that food be sent to Bonavista to replace what Enid and Teeg had eaten, and collecting all the other messages to be carried down the Coast Road, they set off. Juni remained sullen but cooperative. Teeg was thoughtful and quiet. Made Enid nervous.

  Half a day of driving brought them to the Coast Road proper, then to Morada and the regional committee house. Two exhausted, grubby investigators driving up with a hunched, glaring woman between them attracted attention. When a pair of investigators based here walked up to meet them, Enid was relieved. She felt like she’d been carrying all this on her own.

  Now, maybe, finally, Enid could be done with this.

  “Wait here,” she told Teeg and Juni, and went to meet her colleagues. One of them was Patel, Teeg’s mentor. He’d have a particular interest, wouldn’t he? With everything else, Enid hadn’t had a chance to get her thoughts in order about Teeg.

  “Enid,” Patel said in greeting. Enid wasn’t short, but Patel was half a head taller than her. An intimidating figure, with the uniform. He was intense, interested. “What happened? This was only supposed to take a couple of days. You’ve been gone a week.”