The Rogue Guardian

Chapter 11: Trap

I wish I could give you a legitimate reason for this being late but all I have is that I was not in a novel mood. I was in a poetry mood. Let's just all be happy this isn't written in stanzas.

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She plunged into the maze without hesitation, right on his heels. The noise of the main streets was easily lost in the winding alleys, and like before she passed few people. Which was rather strange, though she hadn't questioned it last time she followed him. This time she dared to stay closer, just a turn of a corner behind, and it was easier to keep track of his footsteps, so she looked at her surroundings more.

Maybe it was so quiet because there were no shops. It was row after row of houses. Or not really rows, since nothing in the Maze was that neat. And of course that begged the question of why there would be this utterly confusing sector in a city otherwise laid out in neat lines and wide roads.

This was why she needed to know people here. Before, this would have been the kind of question to take to Caer. She hadn't had him as a resource for very long, but in a month she'd come to rely on him more than she ever would have thought. And now she had no access to a library, much less to a boy who seemed to have one catalogued in his brain.

Was it absolutely necessary for her to know why the Maze existed? No. But would she take any information about this city she could get? Yes. The problem was she no longer knew how she could get any. The incident with Ysmay proved how inept she was at identifying rebels, and it would be dangerous to head into Maenar's under-realm with no idea of who her enemies were and how dangerous they could be. But without access to the caverns, there would be no information of the kind she would probably need.

Sooner or later she'd have to decide whether to risk it. She needed the caverns, both as a place to help her survive and a place to treat like home. In just a few hours she'd practically made it her home base for the search.

This was going to be so hard without Caer.

And Jan's footsteps had faded.

She stopped short the moment she realized. They were just-- gone. Had he stopped walking? Had he turned a corner quickly and gone outside her hearing range?

She couldn't lose him. She needed to figure at least one thing out, have a least one thing explained so she could deal with the rest of the problems in her life, and she'd decided that was going to be him. Suppressing a groan, she rounded the corner and walked right into a solid punch.

It was as effective as running into a brick wall. Thrown onto her back on the ground, the world spun dangerously.

"Why are you following me?" The question was accompanied by sour breath being blown across her face, a dark, slightly blurry figure leaning over her.

"Wha..." She was dizzy. Her head pounded. Words were not cooperating. So when he leaned closer to hear her she grabbed his arm and brought him crashing down next to her. Scrambling up, she nearly fell right onto his friend, narrowly avoiding getting skewered on the long, serrated blade of his knife. Two-- yeah, it wasn't just her spinning head, there were two of them, besides Jan, who was lying on the ground and moaning.

Oh, hell, he'd set a trap.

"That's not nice," she told them, though judging from their expressions she was still not forming words correctly. It had been a very solid punch.

Still, actions spoke louder than words.

She kicked the legs out from under the first one, yanked the knife from her boot, and quickly realized it was not easy to fight an opponent like friend number two while the alley was still doing acrobatics around her.