No One Left Behind I

“Then, this is going to be harder, but I guess it can’t be helped…Guess I should start being nicer to him. Let me tell him about this second thing, too.”

“What’re you talking about?”

Back in the bedroom with the door shut, Jayla held out a poster to me and Sai-ee.

TRAITOR TO THE GOVERNMENT

LIL the Court Magician’s maidservant charged with the KIDNAPPING and/or DISAPPEARANCE of said Magician KI SAI-EE also known as EK’SAI

will be HANGED tomorrow at 3 hr after sunrise in the northeast square

~~Reward of 50 GP for information pertaining to Ek’Sai and 10,000 GP for those who return him to the Empire in person~~

Oh. So now Lil, who wasn’t going to die at first, was dying instead of Sai-ee. Unlike him, her death wouldn’t even do any good in the large scale.

“Oh,” Sai-ee said. He hugged Jayla’s blanket like a teddy bear, drawing his legs up around it. His eyes were duller than when he’d reversed his aura. “Bad luck.”

“Naomi, what should we do?”

Oh, right, we could do something!

I glanced down at my leg. Maybe it wasn’t fair for me to decide this, when I would be much more of a liability than an asset. But I was the oldest here, and Jayla was looking at me. As for what we did…I wanted to keep trying to mitigate the harms I’d caused.

“I think we should try to save her,” I said. “Maybe I can use magic to heal up my leg, since I’ve been progressing a little as a magician.”

“She can’t be saved, we can’t do anything,” Sai-ee said.

“How do you know that?” I countered. “We’ll do our best for her, you know? And we’ve got two of the most powerful people in the world on our side—” aka, us— “plus my Jayla, who broke into Ky’cina’s manor all by herself!”

“Well, Val helped…”

“Let’s not talk about him,” I said. Could we get him to help? Nah, probably not between now and 11 am.

“What powerful person? I won’t help.”

“Come on!” Jayla said. “This is your best friend, right? Plus, she’s a great person!”

“I won’t help.” Sai-ee curled up further on himself, pressing his face into the blanket. “We’ll fail, and she’ll die.”

“So what? Better to try than not do anything!”

“Augh!” Sai-ee lay down with his face in Jayla’s pillow and kicked his legs like a little kid throwing a tantrum. “Shut up! You—!”

“We really do want to help you and Lil,” I said, kneeling across from him (my thigh screamed in pain). “And if you don’t want to help, we’ll try and save her on her own. I’m not gonna exploit you for your powers.”

I tried to reach out a hand to him. He slapped it away.

“It’s not fair.” His voice was choked up. He looked up at me, revealing a face covered in tears and snot. “How come you made me feel something!”

Jayla handed him a handkerchief. He did his best to wipe off his face, but kept crying. It was in earnest now, his whole body shuddering.

When he was almost all cried out, an occasional hacking sob still rattling him, he muttered, “I want to die…”

“Come on,” I said, “it’ll be okay.”

“No, it won’t be…Lil really will die, but I’ve—hic!—I’ve got this stupid hope that she won’t now. And they’ll take me back, and I’ll never see the sun again…or I’ll stay out here, and rebels will—eat me alive! Or something. Kill me right away.”

“It’s better to have hope than not at all,” Jayla said. “Keep getting back up.”

“Oh yeah? That what you do? How many good things have happened to you in your life, Asan?”

That last word was a pointed dig. Jayla glared at him. “My people can have good lives, y’know.”

“Have you?”

“...I’ve met good people, and had good times.”

“Sure.”

“Gimme my handkerchief back.”

Sai-ee tossed it at her face. It hit her cheek and slid down.

“Ew!” Jayla threw it back again. It just barely missed Sai-ee, landing on the bed.

“Stop it, both of you.” I picked up the handkerchief and balled it up, avoiding touching the snot. “I’m not looking to become an elementary school teacher anytime soon, thanks.”

“What’s elementary school?” Sai-ee asked.

“School for children specifically. We have it in my home country.”

“We have it in Asania too,” Jayla said with a tone of superiority. “What about you? Never went to school, huh?”

“I bet I’m smarter than you,” Sai-ee said. “I can read and do math.”

“29 yards of fabric for 3 silver each, how many gold?”

Jayla sat in thought for a moment before saying, “...7 gold, 3 silver?”

“Good job.”

Now it really felt like this was elementary school.

“Anyway,” Jayla said. “We want to save Lil. How should we go about it?”

“The natural thing seems to be breaking her out of prison,” I said, thinking aloud, “but a prison will be locked and guarded, and she’ll be hard to find. At 11 am—I mean, 3 hours past sunrise—we’ll know exactly where she is, and there’ll be a crowd, and no cell bars.”

“But they’d be expecting someone to try something,” Jayla said. “Though on the other hand…I guess prisons are set up to expect people trying something too. Breaking in and out, or riots.”

“Exactly. Maybe we can try to get her while she’s being transported to the place instead.”

“I have an idea,” Sai-ee said. “It’s something possible cause of Lil, actually.”

After Sai-ee explained what he was thinking, we formulated something pretty decent with it. Next, we started on the problem of my leg.

“I never learned much medical magic,” Sai-ee said. “Never learned much magic at all, actually; but probably I know more than you, given you just figured it out.”

I didn’t actually know if that was true or not. I was the author, but I’d improvved the magic system like crazy.

“I’ve always healed kinda fast. You felt your internal energy when we were doing the aura thing, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Take out that bloody stuffing you’ve got in that bullet hole and try putting your energy there instead.”

I did as I was told. After a few minutes of concentration, a purple glow filled the small space, and the pain left my leg. I was even able to stand on it, and there was no bleeding.

“If I can keep up my concentration, I can even do this plan without it healing all the way!”

“That’s a big if,” Jayla said; but I was confident.