Impulse Control III

“Don’t stay mad at him,” Jayla said.

“But he hit you,” I countered. “And just generally was a dick.”

She laughed a little. “Yeah, maybe. But—I mean, Cass hit me occasionally too.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. I mean, we were in intense situations, so sometimes I needed to get it together and behave. The world’s rough like that, you can’t go easy. And I mean, it was kinda how he showed his love, y’know?” She grinned. “Like ‘Jayla get back here!’”

I didn’t get it. I’d written Casselian, though, so I knew he loved Jayla with his entire heart and soul.

Jayla pressed her face into her knees. “I really miss him. Um. About Kit-na. I think…he’ll probably want to take back what he said, but he’s too proud to straight-up do it.”

“That makes sense,” I admitted. “Do you still want to travel with him?”

She looked startled. “How else would we get to Ky’an’th?”

“Hitch a ride with someone else.”

“Is that gonna be easy to find?”

“Well, probably not, but we can definitely try.”

“I want to talk to him again first.”

With that settled, we kept hanging out in the streets, talking about nothing, to let the show finish and give Kit-na some time to cool off.

“Want to look at the market?” Jayla asked me. That sounded fun, so I said yes.

It was a few streets away, and crowded with stalls and vendors. Since Jayla was with me, I got a few less odd looks. There were enough interesting things for us to spend two hours there; looking at everything, chatting to each other, eventually focusing on the useful and buying some food and drink that would last. I also picked up an Asan novel, muttering to myself “Bookception…” as I paged through.

“What’d you say?”

“Oh, nothing.”

The day began to cool into evening, and we headed back.

The sets were in the process of being taken down. Kit-na stood to the side, talking to the soldier that Jayla had tried to kill with a vase.

“Yes, I’m sorry, it was part of the show. She meant to aim for an empty space.”

“No way,” the soldier said. “It was crowded around there. And look.” He hitched up his pant leg to reveal a big bruise and a collection of cuts. “It broke against my leg!”

You’re military, shouldn’t you be okay with some injuries?

“We’re so sorry.”

“Get out of here,” the soldier snapped. “We shouldn’t even let you in this town. Where is that girl?”

“She was a temporary member of our troupe. I kicked her out.”

“Good. Accidental injury of a military member is a ten gold fee, unless she wants to go to jail. Is she going to pay it?”

“No, I will.”

Jayla tried to move forward. I grabbed her wrist to hold her back and hissed, “You have ten gold?”

She snarled low in her throat and tried to shake me off.

The Asan weren’t really more like animals than humans, so that growl was… Jayla’s eyes were wide. She wasn’t thinking straight.

“Kit-na can pay it.” I wrapped my other arm around her in something more like a hug. “C’mon. You can’t go to jail.”

Jayla’s shoulders shuddered; she bowed her head and stopped trying to get out of my grasp.

I ushered her away, feeling queasy myself. The Ao clan could pay that amount upfront, sure, but what impact would it have on them in the future? They didn’t have any money in the bank, they didn’t have a place to live, and they didn’t have a stable food source—they were going to use that gold. But Kit-na had kicked us out and paid the fine without giving us any obligation to return and pay him anything.

Jayla raised her head and whistled three times like a bird.

What is she doing?

After a moment, Seu-li came running to around where we were, looking around.

“Seu-li,” Jayla said quietly from where we were hiding.

Seu-li knelt down. “What’s going on? Didn’t Uncle kick you out?”

“Yeah. He paid a fine for us so I didn’t have to go to jail. Here.” Jayla held up a mess of coins. “It’s not ten gold but it’s not too far off.”

I added a few coins to the pile. I had less money than Jayla because her Asan family had given her some before she left (and because I appeared in this world with only a fiver nineteen days ago).

Seu-li took them. “Are you really leaving?”

“Yeah,” Jayla said, glancing at me.

I nodded. Don’t think we can face him again. Hurting a soldier was a serious crime—I hadn’t realized how serious the whole situation was…and whoops, speaking of hurting soldiers, we’d killed two, including an officer with a bright future.

“I don’t want you to.”

“Tough luck.” I ruffled her hair. “Maybe we’ll see each other again.”

We left without anyone else seeing us, and reached some distance away—too far away for me to hear anything, but Jayla’s ears twitched.

“What is it?” I asked.

“‘Seu-li, what is this?’

“‘Just, y’know, money.’

“‘I…see. How do you think they’ll do on their own?’

“‘They’ll probably find someone else to take them the rest of the way…’ and so on,” Jayla finished.

I sighed.

“They were good people.”

“Yeah. Where do you want to sleep tonight?”

“It was my fault. I don’t want to screw up like that again—”

“I told you already. You’ve got a lot of trauma.”

“Naomi! Just let me be upset, ‘kay?”

“Yeah. Sure. Sorry.”

We had no money to stay in a hotel, so we set out towards Ky’an’th in roughly the way a crow flies. This direct route might actually speed up our process…or we might get lost in the savannah and starve.

In any case, we walked for a long distance, until the sun dipped below the horizon, then set up camp as the light began to fade from the sky. Jayla went out with her knife and returned with a dead rabbit, which we shared for dinner.

Three days later, we arrived at Jayla’s hometown.