Page 42 of Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

“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.”

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