Ky'anth Outskirts

I rode my horse along a winding mountain path which snaked upwards through the jungle. Rain drizzled down, casting a blurry filter over distant views and washing rocks until they gleamed shades of orange and pink and gray. The susurration of rain, the sounds of birds and larger animals, the regular rhythm of my horse’s hooves, and the distant noise of machinery and city clamor, made it difficult to distinguish any signs of a stalker.

I resolved to stop and get off my horse as soon as I was a bit further out, so I could pay better attention to my surroundings—apart from the sounds my horse itself made, I had to concentrate on steering it well and staying on its back. Horseback riding wasn’t something I was experienced in, though it was intuitive enough if your horse was well trained and you weren’t scared of it.

The path grew more slippery the longer it rained. I tried to slow my horse down by pulling back on the reins, but that didn’t have an effect. I only really knew how to tell it to speed up and stop.

Its hoof slipped on a rock—it whinnied and reared back—I held onto its neck for dear life and said in a coaxing voice, “C’mon, whoa there now, whoa there—“ and it got its footing and stood still.

To either side of us were dense thickets of shrubs, ferns, and tree trunks; so this didn’t feel like a good place to stop, but it wasn’t a bad place either. I slid down off of the horse’s back and scratched it (her?) between the ears, then tied its reins to one of the trees.

If there was a stalker, they’d be behind me. The jungle was too dense for a human to move through surreptitiously, and the trail was too narrow for anyone to have gotten out ahead of me.

I turned and walked back the way I’d come. Slow steps, rolling from my heel to my toe, trying not to make a noise. Mud schloped into my sandals and stuck to my feet.

The footprint resembled a puddle by the time I reached it. Not my footprint—the stalker’s footprint. I had been on my horse at this point, and its hooves formed a neat pattern of smaller indents to the side.

The stalker’s trail cut off here, but where were they?

The jungle.

The woods were dark and deep. I leaned forward into the left thicket, stepping on a bush, looking back and forth for a sign of someone.

A stick cracked behind me.

I pivoted and met eyes with my stalker.

…Val?

“Um, hey.” He awkwardly tried to extract himself from a thorny vine.

“Why are you following me?” Legally, Koteran weren’t allowed to carry weapons within the city limits, but for today, I’d hidden a knife under my shirt. Should I draw it? But I’d travelled with Val for weeks, and he’d not done anything objectionable.

“Why have you gone out here?” he countered.

“Do I have to explain that to the person stalking me? I was trying to track you down, figure out who you were.”

“Me?”

“Whoever was following me.”

“You didn’t go out here to meet anyone?”

“I mean—again, you?”

“Someone else. Anyone at all?”

“Why? Is there something going on I should know about? Are people meeting with people they’re not supposed to?”

“I think I messed this up,” Val muttered.

Things started to click together. “You and Ky'cina have been suspicious of me, haven’t you?” Then, why the restaurant job? Wasn’t that something requiring them to trust me?

But what if it was a red herring? They’d wanted to give me something, so I’d go and try to make a report. Then, they could see who I was reporting to.

“And that restaurant job was a lie,” I said, watching Val’s face to gauge his reaction.

It wasn’t hard to read him. He turned away with a guilty expression.

I’d been excited, but it turned out I was wasting time. A thought occurred to me. “What about Jayla? Where is she?”

“With…” He looked around, like he was searching for a teleprompter from the clouds. “With…”

“She’s not safe, is she? Where is she?” I shoved him back into the thorns. “Tell me!”

“Hey!” He drew a knife. “Watch it!”

“Oh, you have a knife, huh?” I pulled mine out. “Guess what?”

“Have you been carrying that around?” he asked.

“Just today.”

“Because you shouldn’t do that without at least asking the restaurant owner, you know.”

“No one was going to find it. And you’re working together; he would have said ‘no’, then sent me up here to fight you defenseless.”

“He wouldn’t’ve let you go up here at all, and I don’t want to fight you.”

“Tell me where Jayla is, then.” I took a step closer, brandishing the knife, and tried to bring the point of it to his throat.

He knocked it away with his arm.

“Seems like we’re fighting now.”

“Y—you started it!”

Damnit, he was a kid. I didn’t really want to hurt him.

I hesitated for a second, and he quick-stepped around behind me and pushed my head down.

“Hey!” I kicked at his knees. I couldn’t turn; he had his arms around my chest.

I ducked down and tried to throw him over my back. His feet left the mud with a pop; that was about as far as I got. His weight pressed down on me and I lost my footing, falling to the ground with him on top of me.

His knife was at my throat. I still couldn’t reach around with my own. He pried my fingers up from my knife’s handle bit by bit.

I shook his hand off and hid my knife underneath me.

“C’mon, give it to me. I’ll cut your throat.”

“No you won’t.” I could feel the blade against my windpipe as I spoke. “You like me.”

“Don’t you want to know where Jayla is?”

Yes.

“Do you know what might happen to her?”

I did.