Bannerless

by Carrie Vaughn

  “I live there,” she said. “In a household called Serenity.”

  “You do? I mean, that’s nice. I guess.”

  “It is,” she said, smiling. “I think Haven has the best fall market, but I’m biased.”

  “No, I think you’re right. Not that I’ve seen that many.”

  And just like that, they were at the committee house. Tomas was at the doorway, looking particularly stern and enforcer-like. Miran hung back, and Enid gently urged her forward. “Let’s go in, yeah?”

  “Hello, Miran,” Tomas said kindly. “Would you like to sit down? Can I get you a glass of water or something else to drink?”

  “No, thank you,” she said, achingly polite, and made her way to the chair Tomas had out waiting for her. Enid joined her, taking a second chair. Tomas remained in the doorway, leaning with his arms crossed, casual-like.

  Enid turned back to Miran, pausing a moment to gather her thoughts, to study the woman in front of her. Nervous wasn’t the same as guilty. She was pretty certain Miran hadn’t hurt Sero—she didn’t exactly have the physical stature of someone who could knock over a sturdy man eight inches taller than she was. And her feet weren’t big enough to have made those prints in the ground outside the shed. But she might have seen something. And if she was protecting someone—that was a thread to follow.

  “I have a few more questions for you about what happened to Sero. Is that all right?”

  She nodded, hugging herself even more tightly. She seemed to shrink even more, if possible. Enid would have to step cautiously.

  “A witness saw you at his house the morning he died.”

  Her eyes widened; she glanced away quickly. “Who said that?”

  “Were you there? Did you talk to him?”

  “I didn’t do anything—”

  “Not saying you did. I’m just asking if you were at his house, and if you were, what you talked about.”

  “We hardly talked at all. I was hardly there—”

  “And?” The girl must have been having trouble gathering scattered thoughts. Enid wanted to press, to see what fell out of the confusion before she could get her story straight.

  “Fern kept asking me to go there; I’m the youngest, so I get the chores no one else wants. It’s not like anyone else was too busy; it’s just I’m the youngest . . .”

  “Why did she ask you to go?”

  “She liked his work. She kept asking him to do work. And then when we had extra food, baked an extra pot pie or curry or whatever, she’d send me over with it for him. I was just a messenger; that’s all it was.”

  Such a simple, commonplace job should not have inspired so much anxiety, but Miran was twisted up, hugging herself, eyes red.

  “Are you sure there isn’t more to it?” Enid asked gently.

  Miran bit her lips, took a long, shaking breath. And she said, “I think she was going to ask him to join the house, to join Sirius—she felt sorry for him, being out there alone. But none of the rest of us wanted him. We didn’t want him but she kept pushing, and I even think it made him uncomfortable. But Fern wouldn’t know that because I was the one who had to stand there, and he couldn’t even say thank you, he stuttered so badly—”

  “Miran! Miran!” a voice from outside shouted. Kirk.

  The woman jolted, her whole body clenching, and she looked to the doorway. Tomas had straightened, preparing.

  “Where is she? Where is she!” Kirk himself appeared at the doorway, very nearly slavering in fury. He seemed to have every intention of storming in, but Tomas put out his arm and caught him.

  Kirk saw Enid and addressed her, spitting words. “What are you doing? You can’t keep her. She didn’t do anything. What’s wrong with you people!”

  “Kirk, wait outside, please?” Enid said. “I’m almost finished here, then I’ll speak with you.”

  “No! Miran—come on, come out of there. You don’t have to stay; you don’t have to talk to them.”

  He lunged, even against Tomas’s presence. The enforcer had to hold on to him, arm across his chest like a bar, feet braced.

  Miran stood. “Kirk, no, it’s all right—”

  The sight of Enid had drawn him in, but the sound of Miran’s voice drove him into a frenzy. The boy twisted, snarling, wrenching one arm of out Tomas’s grip, half falling, then swinging upward with that suddenly free fist, right toward the enforcer’s gut. Miran screamed and started to leap into the fray, but Enid stepped in and gripped her arm—torn, because she also wanted to help Tomas by knocking that boy to the floor. She could only do one or the other, so she held on to Miran, who couldn’t possibly save Kirk from himself no matter how much she wanted to—and Tomas could take care of himself.

  Kirk swung a punch up, and Tomas stepped out of the way, slapped a tranquilizer patch on the flailing wrist, then grabbed Kirk’s elbow and twisted. On his knees now, gasping for breath, Kirk stared at his arm as if it had been stabbed. Enid could just about watch the tranquilizer taking hold, melting his limbs, his eyes gleaming briefly as he realized what had happened, then going soft as he ceased caring. He tried to stand, but only managed a couple of stumbling steps. Tomas let him sink to the floor on his own. Blinking a couple of times, Kirk looked back as if to protest, then finally laid himself flat on the ground, unconscious.

  Enid had only seen Tomas tranq someone a couple of times before, but she always admired his deftness. She let Miran go, and the girl gave a yelp and fell to the floor next to Kirk, stroking his hair, murmuring.

  “Will he be okay?” she pleaded with Enid. The tears had started and her cheeks were streaked with them now.

  “He’ll wake up in half an hour or so,” she said. “He just needs a moment to collect himself, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, and sniffed loudly. She didn’t leave his side.

  Tomas came to join her. “I believe those two are together, yes?”

  “Yes,” Enid said. “Yes, they are.”

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

  Because she had just about lost patience with the entire town of Pasadan, Enid stood Miran up and checked the girl’s implant. Still in place. That was good—she and Kirk hadn’t gone so far as to plan on sneaking off together to have a bannerless baby. But when this many people had gotten together to hide something, consciously or not, she had to ask the question . . . and was relieved that she didn’t have to add that to her list of suspicions.

  Miran didn’t seem to notice Enid surreptitiously pressing fingers to her upper arm as she helped the girl to her feet, and then assisted Kirk to a sitting position against the wall. They made the boy as comfortable as they could, a blanket tucked over his legs and a cup of water waiting for him when he opened his eyes.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Miran kept asking that. Enid and Tomas had stopped trying to reassure her.

  “Miran, you have any idea why he was so furious about us talking to you?”

  She shook her head, pressed her lips together. “He gets emotional. Really emotional. Like everything’s a matter of life or death. It’s exhausting sometimes.” But the way she said this hinted that she also rather liked it. This was a man who would seduce his beloved with a truly flattering passion. Enid knew how that went, and she blushed because the man who’d first poured that kind of passion on her was less than a quarter mile away.

  “Have the two of you talked about earning a banner together?”

  Miran looked at her, startled. Then settled, because of course Enid would guess—investigators were omniscient, weren’t they? Enid stifled a grin.

  “He promised he’d earn me a banner. Not that I wanted one. I mean, someday, sure, but not right now. I’ve got to earn it. I’ve got to work for it, or we work for it together. You know how it goes. You make a household, then you get a banner—not the other way around, like Kirk talked about it.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But he wanted me to promise. He wanted me to promise that I’d wait for him, that wh
en we got a banner, it would be ours.”

  Kirk wanted a baby, and he wanted it with Miran. That might have been enough to put him in a panic. Or there might be more to it.

  Like, if Philos was breaking quotas, his household—Kirk’s household—might never earn a banner again. The man was trying to stake a claim. Make plans as some kind of bulwark against tragedy. As if simply making a plan meant that it must, must happen, just like that.

  “Wha . . . what.” Kirk started to come around, a hand twitching, head lifting. Eyes not quite opening, but head turning as if he were searching for something anyway. “Mir—Miran!”

  “Kirk!” She gripped his shoulder and murmured. “It’s all right, you’re fine. Don’t move just yet. Just rest, yeah?”

  Enid expected him to ask what happened, and then to get surly. To try to pick up the fight where he left off, only sluggish and drunk on tranquilizers, which would be amusing to everyone but Kirk. But he did as Miran asked. Let the wall hold up his weight and reached for her hand as his eyes finally opened and looked out, unfocused.

  “I messed up, di’n’t I,” he stated, and sighed.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “What got you all riled up?”

  His face screwed up—the previous rage tempered, with no outlet. Enid held her breath, waiting quietly for Miran to continue questioning—Kirk would give her answers he wouldn’t give anyone else. But instead of talking, the man looked like he might cry. Not so much unhappy as . . . lost. Defeated. And he wasn’t going to talk, not even to Miran.

  “Kirk,” Miran whispered, prompting, and Enid decided that whatever Kirk knew, and whatever Sero knew, neither of them had told Miran.

  “Enid,” Tomas spoke warningly, straightening to block the door.

  Someone was coming. Enid could guess who and heard Philos before seeing him.

  “What have you done with him! Where is Kirk? What have you done!”

  How had he found out? Everyone who’d seen Kirk’s outburst was here. Ah, but a town like this—someone might have seen Kirk rushing up and gone to tell Philos. Philos himself might have been looking for Kirk and finding him nowhere else realized his son had come here.

  Might then have been concerned about what Kirk was telling the investigators about . . . about whatever it was he was hiding. Whatever his whole household, or the whole town, was hiding. The old man approached, a ragged creature, hands clenched like claws.

  “I’ve got this,” Enid said, taking up a position at the doorway, Tomas standing at her shoulder.

  “I’ve got another patch ready if we need it.”

  “You almost sound eager.”

  “Be a pleasure to take that man down a notch.”

  Then the man was upon them. He stopped, paused a moment. Maybe realizing he was facing down two investigators, official and frowning in their uniforms.

  “Where is my son? What are you going to do with him? I’ll lodge a protest—whatever is happening, I’ll go to Haven myself and demand the regional committee reprimand you both. You can’t overstep yourselves like this—”

  “We’ve not overstepped anything.” Enid stopped him before the speech could go any longer. “Your son attacked Tomas. Tomas subdued him—well within his rights.”

  “What are you accusing him of?”

  “Assault, for the moment. But I’m prepared to forget it if I can understand what’s really going on here. Can you help me understand that, Philos? What’s really going on?”

  His mouth worked for a moment before he said, “That’s what you’re here to tell me. I thought that was how this worked.”

  Properly, he should have told her about the conflicts on the committee and the extra field of grain the minute she and Tomas walked into town. Properly, he ought to be working for the well-being of the whole community. But he’d gone defensive. Placed himself on the other side of a divide from her. She’d forced him to a place where he could only argue.

  She had to build the wall behind him before she could back him into it.

  “Extra fields,” she said. “Grain fields exceeding the town’s quotas. Whose fields are those? Who have you been protecting?”

  From the floor, Kirk leaned up and muttered, “I didn’t say anything, Philos. I didn’t tell them anything.”

  Miran gazed open-mouthed at Kirk, then at Philos. “What? What’s going on here?”

  Philos kept on. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t have authority here!”

  She considered him, keeping her expression still. Investigators’ manners, their faces, were as much a part of the uniform as the color they wore. Calmly she said, “You’re right. If you don’t want us here, we don’t have to stay. We only have the authority you let us have. But if we leave, if you reject us, you give up the right to trade with any other town on the Coast Road. Anything you need supplied by anyone else? Gone. None of you will ever be able to settle anywhere else. No one else will have you. Once we get the word out, Pasadan is on its own. Outcast, from the whole of civilization. Is that what you want?”

  He didn’t say anything. Nobody said anything.

  Cut off from the Coast Road—that could kill a town like this, just a little too small to get all it needed on its own, that depended on markets and trade for the things that made life easier. Enid had the power to make that happen. Such a simple thing to say the word, to enact such a shunning. She took the uniform she wore seriously indeed, because people were right to fear it.

  Whatever he was hiding, Philos wouldn’t go so far as to wish death on his town. So he remained silent. With a final glare at them all, even Kirk and Miran, he turned and stalked out.

  Miran slumped as if exhausted.

  Enid touched the young woman’s arm. “Take Kirk home, why don’t you? We still have an investigation to finish. You know very well that the sooner those answers come, the sooner we’ll leave and all this will be done. But I won’t leave till I know what happened. Spread that word. If anyone knows anything, they’ll do best to come to me quick. Right?”

  They avoided her gaze as if it would allow them to avoid the subject at hand. She had cornered them well and good, and they didn’t like it.

  “Come on,” Miran murmured gently, happy enough to be taking care of Kirk. “Let’s go.”

  The boy still looked like he was about to cry. He hunched his shoulders and leaned into Miran’s touch, his face turned from them all.

  Enid turned to find Tomas propped up in the doorway, looking tired and suddenly old. Like he’d had just enough of this and didn’t find any of it fun anymore. She could agree with that.

  “Well,” she said brightly, hoping to distract them both. “That was a whole lot of interesting.”

  “Were we finished with her?” he said. “Before the ‘interesting’ arrived?”

  She thought about it, tracing back the events of the last few moments, the conversation with Miran, who’d been talking when Kirk barged in. What had she been saying . . . about Fern wanting Sero to join their household. Not that Sero would ever have agreed to that, based on what they’d learned about him. Miran shouldn’t have worried. But yes, she had seemed worried. Was that thread worth following? Enid suspected not. She was just a girl caught in the middle of it all.

  “I think so,” Enid said. “She just happened to be the one to talk to Sero more than anyone else by virtue of her household feeling bad for him. Strange how people get mixed up in these things.”

  “Yeah,” Tomas said. “I wonder, though.”

  She made an inquiring noise, and he shook his head, dismissing his own thought. Tomas rubbed his shoulder, kneading muscles like he had strained something.

  “You all right?” Enid asked.

  “Yeah. Think I may finally be too old for this. What would you say if I took up basket weaving instead?”

  He was fifteen years older than she was. Not as much older as he used to seem. Not old at all, really. “Whatever makes you happy, but I say you’re still the best enforcer on the road. Beautiful t
akedown with the boy, there.”

  He rolled his eyes like he wasn’t convinced. “Thanks, I think. Not sure it’s a skill one should be particularly proud of.”

  “The hard and necessary work that must be done.”

  “Ah, yes,” he murmured. He did look tired. Pale, as if the fight, however brief and however much he had had the upper hand, had taken something out of him.

  “Sit. I’ll get us dinner,” she said, patting his shoulder and going to find Ariana.

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

  The sun was setting by the time the drama with Kirk had dispersed, and Enid was ready to be done for the day. If she asked at Newhome in time, there’d be a couple of extra servings of supper for odd travelers and guests. Tonight was a chicken salad with chunks of fresh bread. The cook gave her a basket to carry the meal in, and Enid thanked him.

  Halfway back to the committee house, Philos found her.

  She had a moment of fear—an actual spike of anxiety—because her hands were full and the man was still angry. Prone to doing something rash. As he’d done with Sero, maybe? She wouldn’t be able to easily defend herself. But she stood her ground, even while holding the basket, and faced him.

  “Hola,” she said, just to let him know she saw him coming from behind the outbuilding at the edge of the household.

  “May I walk with you, Inspector Enid?”

  This was very formal, which instantly made her suspicious of him. More suspicious. “Yes, Philos.”

  “We’re a good town here. We have enough. Not too much. Every mouth gets fed; everyone has a place.”

  “Now that Sero is gone, at least,” she said.

  “We have room here,” he continued, undaunted. “If you ever get tired of your work. If you ever feel that you need a quieter life.” He looked her up and down appraisingly. “How old are you? Thirty?”

  Wryly she said, “A bit younger. I’ve had some hard miles.”

  He smiled politely. “I really don’t know anything about you. What you’re like when you’re not doing this. What you want. But I suppose . . . if you wanted a banner, you’d need to think about it soon, yes?”