Gods & Thieves

3. Sacred and Rotten

༄༄༄

I've never got this amount of attention in my entire eighteen years of life. And apparently, I'm not cut for it.

I don't like it.

I hate it.

Even in this early hour when people only begin to pour out into the streets--opening shops or visiting those already open--everyone seems to believe it's their duty to spare me a glance. Some appear genuinely concerned as they see me escorted by two stone-faced patrollers. Others shake their heads angrily, whispering something about me getting what I deserve...How can they even know what deserve? Or who I am? And some--children mostly, dragging their feet to school--just stare at me with curious eyes. For all of them, though, I'm a museum piece on display. Stop staring!

Trying to find a distraction, I think if Kofi has already reached home. Has he told Cale what happened? Is Cale exasperated? Or has he just laughed when he heard I was in trouble again? Little Brother, the byword for catastrophe, he always says. Are they already on their way to rescue me, then? I only hope they haven't woken our moms. They don't even know Kofi and I have been stealing aura from under the shamans' noses; you don't tell your moms you're breaking laws, right? But now I can't stop picturing Ma running here after me, shouting curses, making more people gape. Berating me like a child, saying it's all Dad's bad influence. He shouldn't have taken you with him on his business trips to St. Daktalion when you were a kid, Eli. That city is rotten with criminals.

I shut my eyes for a moment, only to open them as one of my twin wardens pokes my back to make me walk faster. It seems she doesn't like being gaped at, too.

Leaving the crooked streets behind, we soon approach the imposing stone gates of Tik'al, an intricate animalistic pattern carved on both sides, ominously realistic in the light of the rising sun. Running from Hell, just to come back less than an hour later. The byword for catastrophe indeed. As far as I know, the gates are never closed. Maybe they don't even work anymore, just serve as a demonstration of the power and creativity of ancient artists.

Here people slowly walk in and out, those who work in the temples and orchards and libraries on the shaman territory yet aren't shamans and therefore aren't allowed to live in sacred Tik'al permanently. My two patrollers speak to the guard checking documents by the gates; the man with a thin mustache stares at me for a long, dubious moment, then steps up to do a quick search.

"Aw!" I grimace as his rude hands slap over my chest pocket, right where I hit the ground less than an hour ago and where my fresh bruise is surely blooming.

Disregardingmy complaint, he then discovers the golden watch in my jacket. "It doesn't work," he says, shaking it.

Just like your brain cells. "I know." The watch is old, belonged to my great-grandfather, a family relic I keep as a lucky charm, nothing more. Of course it doesn't work.

Returning the watch to me and confiscating my small penknife, the guard seems to be satisfied enough, and the patrollers lead me inside.

"Scared yet?" the twin brother who cuffed me asks,an annoyingly satisfied undertone in his voice. His sister smirks and strides off, to find whoever should question me.

Ignoring my anxious heartbeat, I will myself to glare at him. "You wish." I know how it works: they'll try to threaten me, to make me give up and admit a crime; they're rewarded, I'm punished. But do they really think my siblings and I haven't thought it through before risking our lives? If I don't admit a crime, they can't punish me. The only evidence they had--the bottle of aura--is gone, and even if they go back to collect the glass pieces, those have no fingerprints of mine. Nothing. It's their word against mine. Let's see who gives up first.