No One Left Behind II

Today, the sun had risen amidst a haze of rain. Its rays were long and colored each droplet in their path gold. Higher in the sky, a rainbow had formed behind granite and limestone buildings.

Imagine dying under a rainbow. Would that be more or less shitty if you were gay?

I had no clue if Lil was gay or not, but in any case, I wouldn’t let her die today.

My leg hadn’t healed, but I’d gotten better at maintaining that concentration. It didn’t take all of my brainpower; it was more like occasionally glancing at a rearview mirror while driving.

I was currently standing amidst the crowd at the northeast square. Lil wasn’t there yet, but there was a gallows standing in the middle of the square, and guards holding us all back from approaching. Against the rain, it was firm and upright like a torii, clean-edged with the noose hanging down from the center.

A truck pulled in, an old-fashioned thing with those small circular headlights. It had a metal-walled carriage with no windows. The door opened, and Lil was led out, hands cuffed and with a gun to her back. She was dwarfed by her guards, three muscular soldiers who loomed over her. This place had no compunctions about executing a little girl.

“Stop!” a voice cried. The tone was so clear you’d never guess that he’d cried for almost an hour yesterday. “I’ll turn myself in!”

Standing in the crowd, Sai-ee lowered his hood and turned his aura way up. His eyes flashed green and his skin glowed like it was lit by fire. The people around him took steps back in fear, except for one woman, whose eyes glittered in avarice. Probably thinking of the 10,000 gold reward, she tried to grab him in a headlock and drag him off.

Sai-ee elbowed her hard in the chest and she flew backwards. Her back bounced off the stones twice before she stopped moving.

“Don’t resist,” one of Lil’s guards commanded, walking towards him.

The people around him glanced at each other, then together, stepped closer to each other and formed a wall surrounding Sai-ee.

“How come you get the reward money?” one of them said.

“Just because you’re a soldier doesn’t mean you deserve so much special power! You know what I could do with 10,000 gold? This stupid country’s economy is fucked, we all need it!”

“It is not fucked,” the guard said, trying to push her way through, “you should see how other countries have it! Don’t be so near him, he’s dangerous, didn’t you see what just happened?”

“Sai-ee!” Lil screamed and tried to get away from her other guards.

They clamped hands around her forearms. Both standing solid, no way they would let her go.

Shoot. We’d kind of counted on the guards going after Sai-ee. He was the more important one in this equation, after all.

Luckily, Jayla was waiting close by in the crowd for this reason, like a lurking cat.

We’d gotten a rifle off Val after telling him about the situation. Jayla’d hidden it under her clothes (luckily, Ry’keth clothes were big and loose) and now swung it over her shoulder.

Bang! Bang!

That kind of rifle really was damn hard to control. The shots went wide.

Jayla swore and went for the spear hidden on her back.

One guard let go of Lil and trained his own gun on Jayla. The other guard kept a grip on Lil, looking around for a place to cuff her to.

“Should we just hang her now?”

“No!” Sai-ee said. “Then I’ll leave!”

“If you’re turning yourself in, why won’t you let anyone grab you?” one of the townspeople complained.

“Um, cause what would you do with me?” Sai-ee shoved someone else back. Their heels skidded across the square for more than a meter before they collapsed on the ground. “I’m only seeing impure motives.”

“I gotta buy my sister out of slavery, asshole!” said the guy he’d shoved from the ground.

“Tough luck!” Sai-ee spat. “Figure your own shit out!” He kicked another person away from him, started laughing as they landed hard. “Take that! This court magician isn’t just your plaything!”

Another gunshot. Blood poured from Jayla’s arm. With a gun aimed at her, she was reluctant to move from the safety of the crowd, couldn’t get nearly as close as she needed to with her spear.

What should I do? Run to help? But I had to stay here.

I found Lil’s gaze and made eye contact with her. Her mouth opened slightly in shock.

The crowd around me was moving as a few people shoved through, trying to get to Sai-ee. I spread my legs wider and held my arms out, trying to keep everyone else from stepping on the teleportation circle I’d scratched into the metal grate under my feet.

That movement had been a bad idea. Pain arced up my right leg and I cried out, dropping to my knees.

A couple people looked at me with concern. I didn’t want them to notice the ground below me, or in fact any strange thing about me at all—I tried to get to my feet, pushing that tingling internal energy into my bullet wound.

It zoomed through my leg, dissipating all the pain, and straight through my foot into the teleportation circle.

Horrible timing! I tried to retract the power as best I could, at the same time stepping outside of the circle. The crowd around it stepped back as well, astonished gasps and expletives—in the sense of both “meaningless words” and “curse words”—filling the air. It kept glowing, bright purple.

“Hey! Over here! The court magician’s disguised himself as a woman!”

“Why would he do that?” I protested. “He could just stay out of the way in the first place!”

Bang!

Jayla had drawn her gun again, this time shooting the soldier who had a hold of Lil in the hand. But Lil screamed in pain too. The bullet had grazed her face and cut open her cheek, and blood was pouring from her mouth.

Jayla swore and almost dropped the gun, hands shaking. “Sorry, sorry!”

Bang!

Oh, that one had hit. Jayla dropped down to the ground in a crumpled heap.

The townspeople around me grabbed my arms and dragged me up to the soldiers. “She has magic power!” one said. “She’s Ek’Sai!” another claimed.

“No, she’s not! I am!” Sai-ee protested, but his words fell on deaf ears. That is, except for the soldiers’ ears.

“Get backup to catch that magician,” one of them told another. “Let’s keep the rest in custody for now.”

I kicked at one of the townspeople and twisted in their grips. How was Sai-ee powering himself up? Could I do the same?

I imagined aura coursing through my arm and slammed one of the townspeople’s chins up with a right hook. It went—far back. I heard his neck crack. Then he collapsed to the ground.

The woman next to him screamed. I flinched away and said, “I’m sorry!”

Don’t stop—don’t stop! They’re trying to take you in, remember?

I kept the aura flowing and elbowed a townsperson who was trying to get me in a headlock. At the same time, I stomped on the feet of another who was trying to grab my arm.

She let me go, and he cried out, but I fell from their grapples right into the arms of another person, who tried to hit me over the head. I ducked.

“Stop, hold on,” one of the soldiers said.

He couldn’t point a gun at me without shooting one of the civilians. I grabbed one of them, a skinny Koteran girl, and held her in front of me as a human shield.

“Get back!” one of the townspeople said, realizing the situation and trying to push everyone else away. “That way the soldier can—”

“What about our reward?”

“She’s not the magician, you idiots!”

“Well—Well, she’s definitely a magician!”

A few people took a step back, and the soldier took the opportunity to—

Shoot at me.

Through the girl.

I dropped her, but it was too late. She’d stopped the bullet from reaching me, but blood was soaking through her shirt.

“How the fuck,” I said, voice brimming with anger, “why the fuck would you do something like that.”

“You’re the one who used her as a shield, you monster!”

“I’m not the one who shot her!”

“Yeah, that’s right, can the shit!” One of the townspeople, an Asan, joined me in yelling at the other guy. “If she’d been Ry’ke, they wouldn’t’ve touched her!”

“Oh, sure, take the enemy’s side right now!”

The soldier pointed his gun at me and said, “Come forward, slowly.”

I wasn’t going to use the human shield strategy again, and I didn’t want to get shot. I came forward and let him cuff me.

I was shoved into the back of the truck and the door was locked. The last thing I heard before I was isolated in darkness were the townspeople asking for rewards.