Bannerless

by Carrie Vaughn

  “No. Can’t say I do. I mean . . . I’m sure he was around. He was repairing the fencing at Sirius, but that was a couple of weeks ago. After that . . . maybe in the square? Just walking along? You take it for granted, right? See people but don’t see them.”

  People became part of the background noise of the world, like birdsong or clouds. Enid tried to name everyone she saw on her way out of Haven two days ago, and wasn’t sure she could. So yes, she understood.

  “Do you remember how you heard that he’d died?” Enid asked. “Where you were, what you were doing, who told you?”

  The woman swallowed—she didn’t want to say. Worried, perhaps, that she would implicate someone. Her dark eyes were large, blinking. “I think everyone must have heard the news all at once—that’s how fast word traveled. It was so strange, so sudden. Philos, maybe? Or Ariana? Maybe both of them together. I know they came around to all the households here in the village to say that he was dead and that he’d be burned soon. As if any of us would go watch—”

  “They encouraged people to come watch the pyre?” Enid asked. Other people; the committee members clearly hadn’t felt that request applied to them.

  “I think . . . they hoped someone would. They knew it would look strange if there was no one there. But they must have known that no one would watch; it isn’t like Sero was friends with anyone.”

  “So you heard the news from Philos or Ariana, when they came around to make the announcement.”

  “But we all already knew. We just . . . knew.”

  That instant wave of rumor. And the memories had already blurred, because people had gossiped and shared their own impressions and decided that yes, this must have been how it had happened; Sero must have just fallen, an accident. Of course.

  Enid and Tomas might have to talk to everyone in town. The prospect daunted her. Well, she reminded herself, someone had to do the worst jobs.

  “Who was with you back there, watching the pyre?”

  Miran swallowed, as if trying to keep back the word. Enid left the question hanging until the girl said, “Kirk. It was Kirk. He’s . . . he’s just a friend; we just happened to be there.”

  “What’s his household?”

  She studiously folded the next sheet. “Bounty.”

  “Thank you, Miran. I may have more questions later, all right?”

  She nodded, not lifting her gaze. Enid left her alone to her laundry and her anxiety.

  Enid had gotten the sequence of events of how and when the body was discovered and what happened after. She hadn’t learned anything about what happened before, except that at some point some people must have visited Sero about jobs around town. She started looking for brand-new fence posts, unfinished construction, or freshly painted anything. All those extra household jobs that folk sometimes needed help with, so they’d ask their neighbors. While it seemed that nobody spent any social effort on Sero, they were happy to ask him to work. And was he happy to do it? Did he ever argue about it? Did anyone hold a grudge against him?

  No need to go spinning stories. She just had to find the person who’d rushed around the back of the work shed. Who’d gotten blood on their hands. Ask them what had happened. Then it would all be clear. She could hope.

  She spoke to a half-dozen folk around Pasadan about obvious recent repairs at their households. All of them looked back at her, wide-eyed and startled, taking in her uniform and her serious expression. She tried to appear neutral—merely a sponge for information, nothing to worry about. Didn’t seem to help. They shouldn’t have been surprised; surely they’d heard about her and Tomas’s arrival just as quickly and thoroughly as they’d all heard of Sero’s death. But still, they all seemed just that tiny bit guilty at her presence.

  Everyone she talked to who’d had a fence built in the last ten years had gotten Sero to build it for them, because of his auger. Most said they had spoken with him more than a week ago. The jobs had all been finished days before his death. Did anyone know who else might have been talking with him about new jobs? Who they might have seen going to his house? Anyone at all? No one knew or could recall.

  The households here were all neat, well cared for. Nothing too big or unreasonable. No one exceeding what they needed, no one going hungry. By outward appearances, Pasadan was ideal. Except for Sero, the outcast.

  Enid went to examine Sero’s house next. Maybe he kept records.

  It was as simple as a house could get. A front room with a small wood stove, water pump and basin for a kitchen, a table and chair for sitting. A single chair—none for guests. A back room that held a canvas cot with a faded quilt spread over it, a closet with a few changes of clothes, a couple of towels, and a spare blanket. A door led to a water closet and shower. A solar cistern on the roof meant hot water. Or at least comfortably warm water. It was simple, but it was enough. A person could be happy here, she imagined.

  A set of shelves in the front room held tools and buckets of spare parts. He might have brought some work here instead of keeping it all in the shed. The solar-powered auger Ariana had mentioned had pride of place, hanging on a rack in the corner, the battery and power cords tucked up underneath it. Sero had kept it in amazing shape. The steel bit was as long as her arm, polished to a shine and sharp. The housing for the motor wasn’t as pretty; a faded green, it had layers of scratches and dings on it. In places the plastic had grown brittle and chipped. Strips of canvas held parts of it together.

  On one side, a series of four names had been painted in black ink. The older names were faded: Ray Macintyre. Carter Macintyre. Aldus of Bansai. And then last: Sero. Just Sero, as if he didn’t identify with anyone or anyplace. Not Sero of Bansai, Pasadan, or any household. The auger had been passed down, and it was clearly a legacy Sero had cherished. She wondered: Did he have an heir in mind? Had he ever intended to try for a banner, to pass the ancient machine on to someone else? Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe this had been enough for him.

  Making a cursory search through the bedroom, Enid looked in the shallow closet, pushed aside the few tunics and clothing hanging on pegs, and found a banner on a hook in the back. A red-and-green section of woven cloth, a foot and some on each side. Embroidered along one side in bright yellow thread: SERO.

  Some households did that, sewed in the name of the baby represented by the banner. Olive and the others at Serenity planned on doing so with theirs.

  Sero had been born with a banner. A parent or someone of the household he’d been born into had stitched his name on the cloth that the household had earned to have him. Whatever had happened to that household, whatever reason Sero had had for going off on his own, he’d taken the banner with him. A mark. A declaration.

  He must have known of the rumors about him. That was half the point of such rumors, holding them against their object. Sero could have nailed that banner to the outside of his house, told everyone the truth. But he hadn’t. He’d just wanted to be left alone.

  Sadly, Enid brushed a bit of dust from the cloth and let it be.

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

  Enid met Tomas walking back to the committee house. The scent of wood smoke hung about him.

  “Pyre’s done, then?” she asked.

  “Just about. How’d your talk go?”

  “Her name’s Miran; the guy with her was Kirk, and she was careful to tell me they’re just friends. Sero did work for the household a couple of weeks ago, but she can’t remember the last time she saw him. You find anything?”

  His expression went from pensive to sly. “I have two witnesses say that in the days before he died, they saw a young woman named Miran go to Sero’s house twice.” He looked like a cat who’d just dropped a mouse at her feet.

  “Huh. She didn’t mention that.”

  “Right?” he said.

  “So what’s going on here?”

  “Somebody’s hiding something.”

  “Well, yes, clearly. Could they have had a thing going? Miran and Sero?”


  “And hiding it because everyone would have disapproved,” Tomas said.

  “You’ve picked up on that too, hmm?” She was thinking of the auger, the list of names, and whether Sero might have wanted to add to that list.

  “It’s a thread at least,” he said.

  She turned to him. “You’re so calm! Doesn’t it make you angry? The way everyone wants to brush this away like Sero didn’t matter? He’s got no one standing up for him.”

  “Better to stay calm,” he said, like he always did. “See more, when you’re calm. You know that.”

  “Yes. But I want to knock some heads together.”

  “You usually do,” he said, grinning.

  There was a disadvantage, doing this job with someone who’d known her so long. She scowled in reply. “So we need to get a timeline down and see where we follow it out to—”

  Enid stopped. A group of people was in front of the committee house. Ariana, a couple of others from the town. The way they hunched in together suggested serious conversation. Likely, discussing the arrival of a certain pair of investigators and what they might find.

  One of the people there had long brown hair that brought out the angles of his face, sharp chin and defined cheekbones. Nut-brown skin. She’d have recognized this older version of him soon enough. Especially if he’d been holding a guitar.

  And then his voice. “—they’re here now, nothing to do but deal with it and hope they finish quickly—”

  She knew that voice; it hadn’t changed. It was like hearing the familiar, nerve-breaking crack of pottery shattering on hard ground. She hadn’t seen him in ten years, and she hadn’t ever expected to see him again. Yet somehow, she wasn’t surprised to see him now. As much traveling as she did—as he must still do—it was inevitable. And all she felt was frozen.

  He looked out at the newcomers, caught her gaze. She thought she saw surprise there, eyes going round in a moment of shock. He knew investigators had arrived, but no one had told him their names. That one of the investigators would be her. His performer’s instincts quickly took over and settled his expression into a pleasant smile.

  “Dak,” she said with her next breath. Disbelieving.

  “Enid,” he said. “Been a long time.”

  CHAPTER SIX • THE COAST ROAD

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

  Sea Glass

  The Coast Road was somewhat misnamed—it ran inland for a third of its length. Miles west of Haven lay a series of hills and the ruins of the old cities that had been flooded, destroyed, and abandoned at the time of the Fall. Folk didn’t much go out that way. But south of the ruins, the Coast Road bent westward around the hill country and finally reached the ocean. Fishing and seaside villages clustered there. Enid had never seen the ocean and was looking forward to it. Dak promised to show her.

  Along the way, several byways branched off from the Coast Road—the Long Road to the eastern plains, the Sierra Road north to the mountains—and one could travel along these for weeks and still come across households and villages that were part of the Coast Road communities. This late in the season, Dak kept to the main road, where he was more sure of the welcome he would get. High summer, when harvests came in and before the autumn storms hit, was the time to go exploring.

  Enid and Dak never had to walk more than a day to the next village, and between those larger settlements, dozens of households had rooted in along the Coast Road. Most could be counted on to put up a couple of strangers for a night or two, especially if they helped with chores and sang some songs, making at least an effort to earn their keep. They knew one of theirs might need the favor returned someday.

  Some of the villages they went to were more structured than Enid was used to. More formal, more . . . rigid. In a village called Saved, for instance, Dak found a spot that looked like a central gathering place and began tuning his guitar. Before he’d sung a note, a committee member arrived to explain to him what rate of exchange he could expect: an hour of playing for a place to sleep, six songs for a meal. Dak would look on these bargains with amusement, especially when the committee member seemed relieved that he wasn’t going to haggle. He sang because he liked it, and because he could usually count on some recompense for it. Meals, drinks, even a hat or some mending for his boots. But Saved wasn’t like Haven, where what people gave him seemed more like gifts or gestures of gratitude than payment.

  Some places, though, were very strict about recompense and fairness. Very serious about resource management, and they considered music to be a resource like any other. Wouldn’t want anyone to get more than they’d earned, because that was what doomed the old world. Enid could understand, she supposed, but it didn’t feel the same as sharing.

  Enid had credits from Plenty—a letter that stated she had the backing of her household, that she had resources if she needed them—and her own muscles and effort to support her. She reassured herself that she wouldn’t need Dak to sing for her bed as well. Usually, she did chores: weeding, chopping wood, some light cooking, and mending. A little of everything. She didn’t mind; she wasn’t dead weight. Dak even taught her a few songs, harmonies they could sing to add an extra kick to his music. She could hold a tune, but her voice wasn’t artful, didn’t draw people in by its tones the way Dak’s did. She didn’t sing much—and she’d rather listen to him anyway.

  And they made love. Sometimes at the excuse of a picnic lunch or for no reason at all they’d leave the road, run off to a beautiful copse of willows along a pretty creek, and end up tumbled together, peeling off their clothes to soak up the sun and each other. Rainy season was coming—best get all the sun they could while they had the chance. Did they really need an excuse to roll around in the wild for an afternoon? They had food—not a lot but enough—they had water, and they had each other. They had exactly what they needed and no more. It was a good way to live, she thought.

  Dak wanted to be south by the time of the first rains. More shelter there, he said. They could walk in the rain, but it was best if they had a place to dry out each night.

  A week out, they saw the ruins.

  The Coast Road went into some hills, rising gently enough that the walk wasn’t difficult, and they almost didn’t notice until they paused at a crest and looked out to what felt like hundreds of miles in all directions, if not to the ends of the world, then maybe to the ends of their world. Pockets of settlements huddled in valleys up and down the road; smoke from their hearth fires rose up, and flocks of bleating sheep dotted windblown pastures. Clusters of windmills reached up hillsides, spinning lazily.

  But west, not so far in the distance as she would have expected, was the big ruin, what had been a city of millions a hundred years before. Enid couldn’t imagine a million people in a space like a city, much less in the whole world, though folk who talked about such things said there must have been billions of people still living—we just couldn’t get to them to count, and the world was too big. These days, there was a lot more space between people. A lot fewer roads and radios connecting them.

  The city was a gray mountain that had collapsed on itself, its ruins projecting from the surrounding landscape like the shards of a broken bone. Those struts had been buildings once, towering hundreds of feet tall, and the space between them had been wide streets. Hard to make out more details than that—from where they stood, it was mostly a stretch of color, a gap in the land where something had been taken away. The air over the city was hazy, almost smoky, as if the ruins produced their own atmosphere.

  Through the years of the Fall, the dense settlement had been inundated and washed away. Pieces broke and couldn’t be repaired until all of it was broken. It was a marvel, how quickly a structure became a ruin. “If we didn’t save it, it didn’t get saved,” Auntie Kath used to say. Meaning, they could only save so much. Those first years, they did triage on the whole of civilization. Auntie Kath said that they’d been shocked: much of the old world was gone or useless within a decade or
two. They looked around one day, and the Fall was over, and they were living After.

  You could only save what you worked to save—what everyone came together to save. If you didn’t work to save anything—you saved nothing. That was the city in ruins.

  Looking at it, Enid felt both revulsion and longing, urging her to flee from it and race toward it at the same time.

  “Auntie Kath says they used to talk about ways to save the cities. There just weren’t enough people, and then the buildings started coming down, and it wasn’t safe to go there anymore. But I’m thinking it might be safe now—everything that’s likely to fall down has probably already fallen, yeah?”

  “But is there anything worth saving in there?” Dak said.

  “I don’t know.” That was why she wanted to go check. And to bear witness. Had Kath ever gone back, after helping to build Haven?

  “Who’s Auntie Kath? You talk about her a lot.”

  “She was the Last.” And yes, the word felt like a title rather than a description. The Last of them. There might have been others up and down the Coast Road—even now, there might still be folk who remembered what it was like before. But maybe not. Someone with vague childhood memories of things like television and airplanes wouldn’t be able to explain, not like Kath. “She was alive before the Fall. Really old when I knew her. But she told stories.”

  “Must have been great stories.”

  “Yeah, they were. I learned a lot.”

  “Anything useful?”

  She looked at him. “Everything’s useful to someone, I imagine. I want to know everything.”

  “But really. I bet she talked about things like airplanes and orchestras. You think anyone will ever see an airplane fly again?” A laugh touched his voice; he sounded like he was mocking her.

  “Then maybe it’s even more important to know about it.”

  “That can be your job, then. The Knower of Things.”

  Yes, he definitely seemed to be laughing at her, though he had the decency to hide his grin. She frowned and scuffed a foot at the dirt.