“Yes… I mean NO!” He was flustered and confused now. “Wait, so you’re saying that it’s not okay to kill someone that has murdered other people and will probably continue killing if you don’t stop him?”
“I said nothing of the sort. I am merely asking you to clarify your core beliefs,” she said, smiling back at him. “Let me rephrase. Do you feel justified in killing a man that has shown himself to be a killer, with no regard for life of any kind? Do you believe that doing so is your duty?”
Kre swallowed the words he had been going to say. Instead, he reached down and gripped the sides of the ugly dark orange cloak he had been wearing for nearly two days now. “I suppose,” he sighed, “that I do.”
She nodded in understanding of his particular situation and mounted her horse. “We should go. It will take another two hours of riding and the sun is already down. You can continue your self-pity once we get there and get a warm meal.”
“Will I be welcome?” he asked softly, holding out the cloak to demonstrate the shame he bore for his past actions.
Kitalia laughed another sparkling laugh. “Oh Kre,” she said with a wide grin, “you will be more welcome there than anywhere else in this land.”
“More welcome than my home? I doubt that very much,” he responded with a grimace, homesickness welling up inside of him.
She gave him a sideways look for a moment, half wondering if he were joking with her and half wondering if he was really that naïve to not catch on to what she was hinting at. “You do realize,” she said finally, convincing herself of the latter, “that I am implying that, in this settlement, your cloak will not be unique?”
“This?” he asked, holding the hem of the cloak up a bit. “This really isn’t something you find everywhere. They issue these nasty burnt orange accessories out to people that are to be marked and disciplined for criminal behavior. They call it a cloak of shame. I can’t actually remove it though; the cloak pin uses some sort of locking mechanism that only officials have a key for.”
“It is truly ugly,” she agreed. She seemed to have more to say but chose to remain silent. They continued riding until the stars were their only guide through the forested hills.
They rode slowly, letting the well-trained horses pick their steps carefully through the brush. The vegetation wasn’t very thick in these parts, not so much that it was difficult terrain to travel through, but it was still an odd experience for Kre to travel by horse through woods at night. Such things were folly and his father would have chided him for putting the horses in danger of a sprain or, worse yet, breaking a leg.
The sound of crunching leaves snapped Kre out of his reverie. Before he could do more than swivel his head to identify the source of the sound, a voice from somewhere among the trees called out, “Well na… just where be ya headed?”
“More to the point,” another voice called out, “what’ve you got in them bags?”