When The Petal Fell

12-2

Klaron gave her horse its head, speeding away south without even a glance backwards. Sora felt as if her face were on fire. The top of her head almost burned. A mixture of anger, resentment and embarrassment at the things the Kannai had said. She looked back, northwards, and considered leaving Klaron to her own devices. She never asked for this. None of it.

It was Cierene's fault. Bringing her into this investigation. Pushing her into something she had no experience of. Now, she had seen a poor little Fae slaughtered for nothing and found herself in lands she had never seen, let alone travelled in. This was not her world. Her world was back in the shadows of the Underside, with people like her. People who didn't look down their noses at her. People who understood the give and take of a little violence. Her people.

She didn't belong among the Top-Siders. She didn't know how to talk to them, how to handle them without at least a little violence. They valued talk and the twists and turns of what they say versus what they mean versus what they really mean. Sora didn't understand it or want to understand it. It was alien to her.

Just as this land was alien to her. With its trees and huge blanket of a sky. The rolling, rocky hillsides and the growing heat as they moved further away from the city. She missed the view of the bottom surface of the bridge and of the gaping gaps below the wooden walkways and rope bridges. She should go back. Leave the Kannai to her job and Patrons burn her.

Gripping the reins of her horse, she looked, again, northwards and then to the south and the diminishing figure of Klaron, biting her lower lip. Cierene would be furious if she heard that Sora had abandoned the Kannai, not that anyone could tell under those fake faces she pulled. She drooped her head and sighed.

"Balls to it." Kicking the flanks of her horse, she turned its head southwards, bending over the horse's neck for speed.

Klaron had pulled out quite a gap between them, riding fast and hard, following the sweep of the edge of the forest, heading ever southwards. Sora pushed her horse as hard as she could, feeling the huge muscles of the creature flexing and stretching as it raced onwards, its breath snorting from its nose at regular intervals.

Up ahead, Klaron had stopped, jumping from her horse, and Sora took the opportunity to let her horse slow down a little, white sweat covering its fur. Still, she soon caught up and found the Kannai squatting on her haunches, stroking the big barrel chest of a horse laid on the ground, its head lifting every so often, listless and strained. This horse, too, had become lathered in white sweat.

"He pushed it too hard. Poor thing." Klaron stroked the horse as she unfastened the straps of the saddle. The horse shifted its head, eyes so wide, as if it knew it was dying.

"So, he's not that far ahead, then?" Sora stood up in her stirrups, searching the horizon. "We can catch him."

Klaron said nothing, only kneeling and continuing to stroke the horse, trying to calm it. Then, as the horse seemed to rest its head on the ground, breaths coming short and fast, Klaron stood. She came over to Sora and, without looking at her, took the spear from its hoop attached to the saddle.

The Kannai turned back to the horse, holding the spear in both hands, her head bowed, shoulders slumped. She took a few seconds, gripping and releasing the spear shaft, then raised her head and thrust the spear deep into the horse's chest, piercing its heart. The horse gave a single scream in pain, lifting its head, and then fell silent. Klaron pulled the spear from the horse's body, turned and tossed it to Sora.

"And you say I'm brutal." Sora shook the spear head, sending rivulets of blood arcing onto the short grass.

"That was a mercy, you idiot. The horse was suffering." Klaron clambered back into her saddle. "Not that I could expect you to know the difference."