Page 51 of Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

“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.”

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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.

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