Page 52 of Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

“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.

---