Bannerless

by Carrie Vaughn

  He knew. There was something wrong in Fintown, and Xander knew what it was. Did everyone know?

  First thought that came to her was the one that came to everybody when investigators showed up: a bannerless pregnancy. Someone had cut out their implant. Someone was hiding a baby. Enid realized the only true bannerless pregnancy she’d ever known of firsthand was the case in Haven a couple months ago, the one Tomas handled. And that one had turned out all right, because it had been an accident and Tomas awarded a banner retroactively and everything worked out fine. Not like some other stories.

  Everyone talked about bannerless pregnancies. It was the most sensational—interesting—case anyone could gossip about. But how often did it really happen? She would have to file that question away and ask Tomas when she got back to Haven.

  If she lived in Fintown, she’d know who was pregnant and who was supposed to be pregnant. Here, some households flew their banners from the masts of their ships, a proud display of their accomplishment. She’d recognize if anyone was missing—hiding because they were keeping a big pregnant belly secret. But Enid had only been here a couple of days. She just didn’t know.

  At dinner that night, all the talk was about the investigation.

  “They wanted to talk to Stev,” Fisher said. “Investigators usually do, just to make sure he’s okay. I try not to get offended.” She only seemed to be partly joking at that.

  The implication was that in some households, someone like Stev might not be okay. Enid didn’t like thinking about that.

  Stev was clearing the table, taking plates to the basin, and stacking them carefully. He looked up when Fisher said his name. “They were nice. I took them out to count chickens.” He beamed. Smiling, Fisher handed him the next plate.

  “And how many chickens are there?”

  “Thirteen,” Stev said.

  “Excellent work,” Fisher said.

  “But what did they really want to talk about?” Xander asked.

  “Bonito.”

  Nods and murmurs of understanding passed around the table. Nobody seemed surprised.

  Enid blinked and looked around, trying to decode the meaning behind the one word. “What?”

  “It’s a household up the hill a bit. Been a problem for a while,” Fisher said. “Their youngest walking around with bruises, keeping to themselves in a way that’s strange. Rumors of breaking quotas and hoarding, but nothing anyone can prove.”

  “Probably good someone’s stepping in,” Raul said.

  Xander shook his head. “Shouldn’t have been necessary. Town ought to take care of itself. Committee sees something like that—like that black eye Reni had last month—and they ought to do something.”

  “Then do we know who requested the investigation?” someone else asked.

  “No, they’re keeping it confidential. Can’t say I blame them.”

  Who would the town resent more: the household that did something wrong, the investigators called in to judge them—or the person who brought all the worry down in the first place? Should be the first, Enid thought. Shouldn’t it?

  Fisher said, “It’s hard, having to take to task people you see every day. People you have to live with. No one wants to be disruptive. As much as we don’t want to say it, it’s probably a good thing we have investigators. Let someone else be the villain, hmm?”

  Hild, the youngest of them, frowned. “But where do they even come from? Who would even want to be an investigator? Everybody hates them.”

  Enid spoke up. “A couple of my household cousins are investigators. They do it to help.”

  Everyone turned their attention to her; she told herself to straighten under the scrutiny, rather than slouch. She was proud of Tomas. She’d tell anyone she was.

  “Is that how they get to be investigators? It’s all people in the same households?”

  “No—it’s not that easy. They have to be recommended for it by committees from a couple of different towns. There’s a long apprenticeship. They travel a lot—I think some of them sign up for it for the travel.”

  “Easier to learn to play guitar,” Dak said wryly, and everyone chuckled, just like they were supposed to.

  “Nala was asking about quotas. If we think they’re fair, if anyone’s been regularly exceeding them. That’s what they’re going to get pinned on, I bet. Not the bruises, but the quotas.”

  “Well. Be interesting to see how it comes out,” Raul said.

  “What’ll happen?” Hild asked, her voice small.

  No one answered. Instead, they all looked to Fisher to make the pronouncement, to decide how much the young girl should know. To Enid, the conversation was familiar, commonplace. No one back at Plenty danced around these topics, and she found this talk fascinating. She wished she could ask Tomas or Peri about it. She tucked it away with the other stories she planned on telling when she got home. Dak sat back in his chair, hand on his chin, concentrating on the talk as much as she was but likely for different reasons.

  “Maybe just restrictions,” Fisher said. “What and when they can trade, quota reduction. No banner. Worst case, the whole house’ll be broken up and everyone’ll have to leave, find other households to join.”

  “Place like Bonito, would that be a bad thing?” Raul said with a huff, looking into his food.

  Fisher frowned. “I’m guessing it won’t come to that. I’m hoping the investigators will make it easier for Reni and anyone else who wants to leave to do so. It’s what I’d do.”

  “They couldn’t just leave if they want?” Hild asked.

  “It’s not so easy when you’ve put a bunch of work into a household, and the work and the credits stay there,” Fisher said. “Sometimes if you want to leave, you have to start all over again. Find folk to help if you can. It’s not so easy.”

  She spoke like someone who knew.

  By now the table was clear, and Fisher stood and clapped her hands. “Dak promised to play tonight. Let’s say we all go listen and see if we can cheer twice as loud as anyone else?”

  “And maybe pick up more gossip while we’re there,” Xander said.

  Yeah, Enid thought. There’d likely be plenty of gossip. The thought of it, the implications of it, made her stomach clench. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what sort of tragedy could disrupt such a nice place as Fintown.

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

  Investigators Nala and Holt weren’t at the party. Probably for the best, as the mood was already subdued. A couple of brown uniforms in the mix, the party would never even start. Even if they didn’t wear their uniforms, they’d still be strangers and everyone would know. As it was, as Xander guessed, lots of gossip passed around. Other heads of households coming to Fisher to compare notes on what the investigators had asked her about, what they seemed to be looking for.

  The community house had a covered patio where people gathered. Candles and lamps lit up the space as the sun set over the ocean, and a fire burned in an iron brazier for warmth. Someone had brought a cask of cider, another household brought honey cookies.

  Dak sat on a chair at the front of the space, a handful of kids surrounding him as he explained how the guitar worked. He let them pluck the instrument’s strings, showed them how they made different notes. Someone on the Coast Road must know how to make guitars and other instruments; Dak’s shining black piece wasn’t a survivor from before the Fall. Whoever it was had to have learned the skill out of pure love. Or just enough people wanted guitars to make it worthwhile.

  Enid sidled up next to Xander. “Anyone from Bonito here?”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding to a clump of the older people who had their heads together, gossiping. “That’s Jada at the end. She’s the only one, though. She’s not the head of the house, but I’m wondering if she’s here to try to suss out what folk are saying. See if there’s anyone who might speak in favor of Bonito.”

  “I get the feeling the answer is no.”

  He huffed a humorless c
huckle. “It shouldn’t have taken investigators to fix this. Our committee should have been able to handle it on its own.” He spoke softly, so only she could hear. She wondered if he’d have said such a thing to anyone from Fintown.

  “But that’s why it’s good we have investigators. When a place can’t fix things itself.”

  “I think you’re the only one I’ve ever heard say anything good about investigators.”

  She blushed, looked away. Growing up with Tomas had biased her, clearly. She would be quiet about it from now on. After all, this wasn’t her town, her household, or her problem.

  Dak played for a long time that night—he had a familiar and enthusiastic audience who seemed glad to have him there. Folk shouted requests. Even when the very young and very old drifted off to bed, a good-sized group kept the fire up and passed around more cider. The excuse to celebrate something, anything, seemed welcome . . . because that tension lingered; just a couple of buildings away, at the town’s way station, the investigators lurked.

  Enid sat in the back of the gathering, full up on drink and food, wrapped in a blanket because a breeze was coming in off the water. Xander had moved up front, joining Dak on some of the songs with the comfort of practice. An old friend of Dak’s, then. She wondered where Dak had been born, and what had set him wandering.

  Dak had a song he didn’t often sing for crowds, but saved for late nights around dying fires, when only the restless and bleary-eyed stuck around to listen. Enid had only heard it a couple of times, but she remembered it and sat up when he played it now. The chorus was about dust in the wind, and how everything would eventually blow away and come to naught. The melody was sad and haunting, a rain of notes plucked on the strings until they faded out, just a lingering vibration through the wood of the guitar. The sound seemed to carry, even after the song ended.

  “That was really sad,” one of the half dozen left on the patio said, and the words seemed rude somehow. Like after that they should have all just vanished without a word, melting into the night.

  “I learned it from an old man when I was just a little kid. He said it came from a place called Kansas.”

  Enid said, “I’ve seen Kansas on a map.” A crinkled atlas in the Haven library had the continent marked up into regions that didn’t mean much these days. “It’s over a thousand miles east of here.”

  “Maybe we’ll see it someday.”

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing but mountains and deserts between here and there. It’d take months.” And once you left the Coast Road, you couldn’t be sure of anything.

  “We don’t even know if there’s anyone left out there,” Xander added.

  “I bet there are,” Dak said. “Folk find a way. You’d be surprised.”

  “Seems kind of a waste to me,” one of the others said. “All that effort getting there, and what would you have to show for it?”

  “Some things worth doing just to do them,” Dak said, patting the body of the guitar so it gave off a resonant echo. He strummed up another song, about lemon trees and love gone wrong.

  When Dak drank a long cup of water and started packing his guitar in its case, Enid realized she didn’t want him to stop. Because then it would be time to go to bed, and she didn’t know where she was sleeping—or with whom; she wanted to sleep with Dak, but she didn’t want to have to compete to do so, and she had a feeling she was the only one who looked on this as a competition. It was all so much simpler when she and Dak were alone on the road together. She was starting to think that maybe she wanted to go home, and that disappointed her. She had thought she’d be traveling for years.

  And then Xander left, and Dak was at her side, running his thumb on her cheek and leaning in for a good long kiss. Her resolve to be sullen about the whole thing collapsed. She wrapped her arms around him, content.

  “Hey,” she said after a moment, pulling away only enough to reach into her pouch. “I made something. Just, you know. A thing.” She drew out the second pendant, the white one, and offered it in her cupped hand. She shrugged, wanting to apologize. For what, she didn’t know. For being weird and maudlin. Scared, maybe. She had no idea what he was going to say.

  He smiled. “Oh, nice.” He picked it up, smoothed out the cord. Held the glass up to the light. “This is what you found on the beach the other day, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I love it.” He pulled the cord over his neck, let the glass hang, and beamed at her.

  She sighed, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.

  They went for a walk; he had a place picked out, a sheltered pocket of sea grass and weathered boulders, and they sprawled on the blanket she’d brought, then stripped and tumbled together until they lay back, cuddled for warmth, and looked at the stars. The sea glass sparked on his bare chest, the frosted white almost glowing with its own light.

  “I’m thinking it’s time to get back on the road,” Dak said. Already gazing at the horizon like he could see past the next hill.

  “But . . .” She didn’t have a good reason to stay. In fact, she had good reasons to leave. But she liked Fintown. “I mean, I’m sure everyone would love to hear you play a couple more nights at least.”

  “Enid, if there’s trouble, I don’t want to be here.”

  She sat up on an elbow, gazing down at him, his long hair fanned around him, his eyes half-lidded, half-asleep. “What kind of trouble do you think there’s going to be?”

  “I know you have investigators in your household back home, and you’re from Haven, where everything is perfect. You don’t really understand what can happen on the rest of the road.”

  That was it, was it? She was sheltered. She was naive. “Seriously, Dak. What do you think is going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t want to be in the way when it does.”

  “But I want to see how it turns out.”

  He gave her that look again, the pitying one, like she was a child and couldn’t possibly understand. “I’m not sure you do, really.”

  “But . . .” She realized she didn’t have anything else to say, that she wasn’t going to convince him of anything. He brushed her cheek, smiling like he thought he’d won something. She sank into his arms because her body wanted it.

  He was right, after all. What happened in Fintown was none of their business, really. Dak could do whatever he wanted, and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t accompanied him by her own choice. She could go her own way whenever she chose.

  She was annoyed at herself for being so annoyed by all this. But she couldn’t seem to convince her emotions to just stop. Alas.

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

  Enid and Dak packed up the next morning. She liked Fisher and thought she could learn a lot from her. She wanted to go sailing with Xander again. Count chickens with Stev. Spend a whole day watching ocean waves shush in endlessly from the horizon.

  “You’re welcome back anytime,” Fisher said. They gave each other a long, heartfelt hug, right after she put handfuls of fish jerky, boiled eggs, and flatbread in Enid’s pack. Enid’s, not Dak’s. Fisher was talking to her. And Enid felt welcome. She could always come back, and she thought that yes, maybe she would.

  Dak and Xander said their farewells privately, for which Enid was grateful. She’d rather not face that particular mess of emotions in her gut right now. But before that, Xander sought her out.

  “I’m very glad to have met you, Enid,” he said.

  She smiled. “Me too. I really liked sailing.”

  “You two look out for each other, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Enid had time to run out and find Nala and Holt. They were at the way station, eating breakfast. She knocked shyly at the open door, and they invited her in.

  All in a burst she said, “After you leave here, if you see Tomas, tell him I’m okay? I don’t know if he—or my household—is worried about me. But. Well.”

  “I’m sure he’ll b
e glad to hear news about you,” Holt said. “Even if we don’t see him, we can pass on a message.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Take care of yourself,” he said.

  Then, late in the morning, Enid and Dak hiked back to the main road and continued south, and inland.

  After another week of walking, the Coast Road ended. Just trickled out to one southern outpost, a lone household called Desolata at the edge of baked desert, home to a briny inland sea that shrank a little more every year. Farther north got too much rain; here, there hadn’t been any rain at all in years. Somehow, the household survived.

  The folk here took in Enid and Dak for stories. Dak didn’t even need to sing; they just wanted news of how the harvests were going and the number of storms that had hit the coast over the last year.

  The people here produced salt. Scraped it off the flats and sent it north once a year with a trading party that brought cloth, herbs, cider, and foodstuffs they couldn’t provide for themselves, which was pretty much everything. Enid asked them why they didn’t leave. They could go north, buy into another town, go to a more prosperous household.

  “This is our home,” said Vega, a sun-toughened old woman with grizzled gray hair and arthritic hands; she grinned warmly.

  They didn’t have any banners hanging on the wall of their common house. Not a single one, which struck Enid as incredibly sad. They barely took care of themselves; they certainly didn’t have enough to feed another mouth. But the household had been here for decades, they said. It seemed that every few years someone wandered in, wanting to see the edge of the world, decided they liked the quiet, and stayed. The place just suited some people. Even bannerless, Desolata would always be populated.

  South of that was more desert, an alkaline wasteland. Stories said there used to be cities even here, and even farther south. Paved roads and power lines and all the rest. Enid and Dak wandered along mesas and gullies and found isolated slabs of concrete, the rusted struts of a steel tower, a set of foundations half covered with sand dunes. Like everywhere else, these places lost their people, and without power or anyone maintaining them, the buildings fell and were swallowed up by drought and the expanding desert.