Rial's blade stopped just short of the jugular.

Tala would always remember that, how the blade had arced upwards with an unstoppable force towards Karal's throat before halting, sharp edge against skin.

Even as the dagger finished its job the sword did not move.

The man’s companions had raced off into the trees even as the light faded from Devan's eyes, leaving the cart behind. They made no sound as they disappeared into the undergrowth. Rial said nothing, but turned around and walked away, returning his sword to its sheath as he headed north. The others stood there dumbstruck.

Things moved in silence after that.

They killed the unresisting grakar and burnt the vivinder, dragging several sacks of it from the bottom of the cart and setting it alight. The velvet blue plumes of smoke carried high into the calm evening air, a marker of what had occurred here displayed for miles around. They moved quickly after that, getting away from the plume before it attracted unwanted attention.

The last thing to happen was when Karal began rifling through the cart for any goods to take. He was unprepared for Hurstrom's fist flying through the air to hit him clean on the jaw, knocking him over the back of the cart to hit the ground with a thud.

Getting to his feet and massaging his jaw, Karal looked like he was about to make a go at Hurstrom before he saw the stances of the rest of his team. He had few friends right now.

"We leave anything we don't pay for," said Tala in tones the brooked no opposition.

Karal looked from her to the deep, dark forest and the anger fell from his face. He chuckled humourlessly, knowing as well as they that the traders were almost certainly dead.

They took only the nitre and panax, leaving the crossbow in exchange. Tala felt dirty.

"Where is he going?" asked Rakthi, as the two of them walked ahead of the two men, beginning their return journey southwards.

Tala knew she meant Rial.

"I have no idea. Maybe back to the mountains he came from. Maybe elsewhere. I think..." she trailed off.

She didn't want to admit that she felt they had failed somehow.

"You don't want to go after him?" said Rakthi, looking back over her shoulder.

The smoke continued to billow high into the sky north of them, making it impossible to see Rial even if he were still close enough to do so. He was probably well over the horizon now.

"No. If he wants to leave, he can. This is more important. We need to get back home."

Tala hardly ever referred to the city as 'home,' but something within pushed her to do so now. Her gut twisted in impatience to be back in the city, back where she at least knew the lay of the land and how situations generally played out. Every step they took in this direction led to normality, no matter how strange and distorted it may be. Wherever Rial was heading lay only further madness, she was sure.

“I don’t know if Karal was wrong.”

Rakthi’s words broke her thoughts.

Tala looked at her friend as they toiled onwards. Their packs were heavier now, Hurstrom’s equipment shared out between the three of them so that he could carry the nitre unencumbered, and sweat poured down their faces.

“Oh, I know he was wrong to do what he did without our agreement, but… I don’t know if the reason he did it was wrong,” continued Rakthi.

She gave Tala a look that mixed both worry and defiance.

“Neither do I, Rakthi. Neither do I. They were selling some dangerous stuff…”

The vacant faces of the three children flashed across her mind.

“Anyway, it happened. There’s nothing we can do to change that now.”

Tala let her last comment be taken by the wind, falling into a silence punctuated only by their heavy breaths and the sounds of the footfalls in the dirt.

She thought about Rakthi’s words.

Did it make a difference that Karal had done what he did without their sanction? Was that the key point here, that he had defied the group? Tala wondered what would have been different had he tried longer to convince them he was right. Maybe they would have acquiesced to the man’s death.

Was that all that made the murder of a man a crime, or was the act itself the crime? Did the murder of a man mean anything in the grand scheme of things? Rial seemed to think so.

Tala wasn’t so sure.

They paced through the shadows of the evening and Tala told herself she didn’t see the khiladri eyes, following them from the shadows of the trees.