by C. L. Clark
It made Touraine thirsty just to look at it. Or maybe that was just the long city march. Her legs ached; she’d kept up with her exercises on the ship, but nothing quite prepared a person for a couple hours of marching like a couple hours of marching.
The only similarity to her old compound in Balladaire was the layout. Nothing green grew inside these walls, and the roads were trampled yellow dirt. Instead of thick gray stone blocks sealed with mortar, the walls were gritty chunks of sandstone wedged together. The yellow-brown buildings on the right were all the same—great square blocks. The barracks. The buildings on the left curved away from the street, making a small, dusty courtyard. The biggest building of the lot would be the administrators’ building and their quarters. That would include General Cantic.
Balladairan guards stood up straight when Rogan approached the gate. One sneered as Touraine and the other Sands followed. His eyes were wide, incredulous, as if he were watching trained dogs marching in parade. She stared him down as they passed.
Touraine trudged to the mess hall. She wanted food and a chair and to take off her boots and maybe even drown herself in water. Before she could find shelter under the cool stone, though, a Balladairan boy ran up to her. He was sunburned across his cheeks, probably a few years her junior.
“You Touraine, then? I have a message from General Cantic.” His voice was pitched to crack. Several years her junior, then. His black uniform was plain, no pins on his collar or rank stripes on his shoulders.
“Lieutenant Touraine.” She folded her arms. Beside her, Pruett tensed. Touraine had gotten into more than one fight over her rank. She wouldn’t this time, though. Not with Cantic so close, not with the chance for promotion at her fingertips. Her record was—mostly, minus some temper here or there—exemplary. “One of several,” she growled. “What’s the message?”
“There’s several of you made it to lieutenant?” He threw his head back, laughing.
If you kill him, you definitely won’t get promoted. Sky above, it would feel amazing, though.
Touraine felt Pruett’s silent warning behind her. She snatched the paper from him. “At least we earn our ranks.”
She shoved past him without looking back. She didn’t know what else to expect in this new country, but some things would clearly stay the same.
“What’s our dear old instructor want with you?” Pruett asked, close on Touraine’s heels. “Think that she-wolf still loves whippings?” Her amusement was tinged with bitterness.
West of the compound, the sandstorm rolled north through the city and into the sea. Touraine held one hand across her face and flicked the note open with the other. Nothing but a summons and an ink stamp.
You’re Jaghotai’s daughter. Cantic had heard the man.
She forced a smile. “If she were going to kill me for some kind of treason, she wouldn’t send a messenger first.”
The logic managed to comfort her, until Pruett said, “If she were going to kill you, she’d do it when it suited her and not a second before.”
Touraine snorted. “A kiss for luck, then?”
A shadow passed across Pruett’s face. Touraine could tell she was scanning the compound, watching Balladairan blackcoats and Sands alike—watching them watch her and Touraine. A constant habit. While fraternizing within the brigade wasn’t forbidden—in fact, it was the only fraternization allowed—Sands couldn’t afford the weakness of public affection. You never knew if it might be used against you.
Touraine leaned in a hair. “If they see us as citizens,” she murmured, “as more than bodies to throw in front of Taargen cannons, maybe we could be more than just this one day.”
Pruett shook her head, her expression shuttered. “We have this. Please.” She locked eyes with Touraine. “Don’t say or do anything stupid. Kiss her ass like you used to. Lieutenant.” She flicked a salute, and then she was gone, pushing away against the wind and into the canteen.
Touraine had thought about the general often since the woman had stopped being the Sands’ instructor. Touraine had been thirteen and devastated when Cantic told them all she was going back to the field. She had been wearing a formal dress uniform with a lieutenant colonel’s golden shoulder stripes.
The only people the Sands gossiped about more than each other were the instructors, and after Cantic left, rumors about her spread like a plague. She had been disgraced once, and teaching them had been her punishment; now she was forgiven. No, she had fucked her way up the ranks until she got to the duke—that was how she got a promotion so quick. No, Cantic was lying entirely, and it was just an excuse to retire without looking weak. Touraine had believed none of it and fiercely wished to be an officer under the woman one day. But after Cantic had left, Touraine had never thought she’d see the general again.
Now, after all that time, all those hopes to impress, here she was, summoned when she was sweaty with heat. Though she had changed her uniform and washed from a basin before the hanging, she imagined she still smelled like body odor and seaweed and fish gone bad. Her stomach looped itself in knots, and she hadn’t wanted to be sick like this since the first week at sea. Yes, Touraine had stopped an attempt on the princess’s life, but she’d also been recognized by one of the perpetrators. Would that condemn her, too, somehow?
He had called her out by name. The thought still made her shudder with—what? Revulsion wasn’t right, and neither was fear. It was the sense that she had been walking a broad path along a cliff only to find it was a bayonet’s edge. She was just waiting to be pushed.
And how she’d stumbled with the praying woman. If Cantic thought Touraine had sympathized with the woman, this could be a different meeting entirely. One that ended with her own neck at the end of a rope. Touraine was long past the age when they were only whipped for sneaking prayers and hiding holy beads.
The administrative building was guarded by a sergeant at attention, rifle at her side. The sergeant was trying and failing to pretend the wind didn’t bother her. Even though the storm was blowing north through the city, the wind here ran wild.
“Lieutenant Touraine to see General Cantic.”
The soldier scanned Touraine up and down, lip curled. The effect was ruined by her flinching squint. “Address your betters appropriately, Sand.”
“Lieutenant Touraine to see General Cantic, Sergeant.” She leaned heavily on the subordinate title and left it at that. Irritation in the back of her throat threatened to bubble into temper as Touraine passed, but she swallowed it down.
She walked through the small hallway and up the stairs, dropping her eyes whenever another Balladairan passed her. They were all high-ranking military administrators or aides-de-camp. Here were officers in black and gold.
They made her feel small, even more conscious of the sand falling from the folds of her uniform to scatter across the floor. One day, she wouldn’t tiptoe through compound halls. She would belong there. Her soldiers wouldn’t be at the mercy of horse-faced bastards like Rogan. She’d have the certainty and safety that came with rank.
One day, even farther away, people would look at her like they looked at Cantic. She would command the same level of respect.
After passing door after plain door, Touraine knew instantly when she arrived. She knocked three times on the ornate wood.
The general’s door was smooth with age and nicked by travel, but well cared for. Touraine smelled the polish. Carved rabbits chased each other along the bottom panels, and birds flew at the top. The middle panels were taken by smooth deer, two fawns and a buck grazing while the doe looked warily around for a threat.
Another rumor: before Cantic became the Sands’ instructor, she was a captain in the field, instrumental in expanding the empire under King Roland. When her husband and two children died in the last Withering plague, the grief broke her. She couldn’t fight anymore. The army brought her home to teach and recover.
Touraine reached to brush her fingertips across the buck’s antlers.
The door s
wung open under her hand.
General Cantic stood in the doorway, looking sour. Not a good start.
“Are you deaf, soldier? I said come in.”
“Apologies, General.” Touraine saluted. “Your door. It’s beautiful.”
The general’s eyes might have softened. Then the moment was gone, and her eyes were the blue ice chips Touraine remembered from her childhood.
Cantic had taken off her black coat with its golden arm, and her tucked shirt hung loose on her wiry frame. Her skin had leathered and freckled with sun and age more than Touraine had realized on the gallows. She still wore a thick grief ring on her right middle finger and a small one on each little finger.
Cantic finally cracked a smile. “Touraine. Lieutenant Touraine. I am glad to see you well. I always knew you’d advance. This morning was very well done.”
Touraine smiled back, flush with pride and hope. “I think of your lessons regularly, General. It’s good to see you again, sir.”
“Good.” Cantic sat behind a desk carved with as much artistry as the door. Her face sharpened from impressed teacher to inquisitor. The familiar eyes searching for missteps. “Now, first. Who was that man to you? The one at the gallows.”
“No one, General.”
“No one?”
“No one I know, sir.”
The truth, no matter who asked.
“You know me better than he does,” she added. “I’ve spent my entire life in Balladaire. My commanding officers are Balladairan. My teachers are Balladairan.” She nodded at the general. “Sir.”
Cantic nodded slowly, her face a bit too pinched for Touraine to think the general would dismiss this entirely. She shuffled the papers on her desk in silence, as if she were looking for a particular topic she wanted to discuss, and Touraine’s heart crawled up her throat while she waited for the silence to break.
“I’m glad to hear it. Here, have a seat. Would you like some water?”
The sudden turn made her body lock in suspicion even as her stomach flipped with giddiness.
Cantic flicked her hand impatiently and poured water from the pitcher on a small side table. “Sit. You just marched through the whole sky-falling city, and you look drier than old balls.” She caught herself and smirked. “I suppose you’ve heard worse by now.”
Touraine took the cup out of reflex and sat slowly—an order was an order—but she wanted to look over her shoulder, just in case. This wasn’t turning out to be the moment Touraine had dreamed of for months, of going from lieutenant to captain, of ousting Rogan. She didn’t know what it was, but it was dangerous.
“You fought the Taargens. How was it?”
Touraine took a drink to delay. The water was lukewarm, but it felt like bliss on her dry throat, rinsing away the dust. Somehow, the question was a test.
What are you asking?
Yet another rumor: Cantic’s loyalties were suspect; she hailed from Moyenne, the disputed region between Balladaire and its neighbor Taargen to the east; the spelling of her family name smacked too much of Taargen influence. Training the Sands had been penance and loyalty test, both. Touraine always cut down whoever brought this up. Cantic’s loyalty was no more suspect than her own.
“We won many of our engagements. They weren’t equal to our training, sir.”
Their one notable loss was caused by an anti-Shālan captain of a Balladairan company who refused to send his men to help a “den of sand rats.”
“No, of course not. God-loving bastards. They’ll stay on their side of Moyenne for now. Tell me about your time behind their line.”
Touraine’s mouth went dry again, and there was not enough water in the world to wet it.
“As you said, sir. They’re uncivilized.”
Uncivilized. It meant they kept a god close. Touraine had never believed in magic. It was the sort of crutch the Tailleurist books urged the Sands away from. Gods were myths, and holding them close was the sign of a weak mind. Touraine had honed her mind against them.
“The Qazāli and all the other Shālans are just as uncivilized.” Cantic leaned her elbows on the desk and stared at her. As if she could read the fear in the shape of Touraine’s grip on the cup.
“You’ll be stationed in the main guardhouse in the city, off rue de la Petière. Captain Rogan will rely on your leadership to set steady patrols in the city. The buildings are close together, so you’ll want to watch the rooftops. And beware any proselytizing. Too many damned dissidents trying to stir up trouble.”
Cantic gestured at a parchment on her desk, and Touraine realized it was a map of El-Wast. Smaller maps detailed the various quarters and medinas, but they all oriented themselves by the River Hadd flowing west of the city.
Touraine had never seen a map so beautiful—or, probably, so expensive. The Hadd’s thick blue line flowed south from the sea, separating Qazāl from Briga and El-Wast from the abandoned Brigāni capital drawn in a faded gray. Small green flourishes denoted the rich farmland between the docks and the city; more elaborate ones indicated the Mile-Long Bridge that arched above that land (that wasn’t an exaggeration; the walk from the docks to the city had felt like an age after the voyage). From the bridge, the Old Medina wall circled what Touraine understood as the oldest part of the city, including the Grand Bazaar. The New Medina wall made an additional circle around the city, a thin ring of shops and houses marked with bolder ink. And then there were the Balladairan additions, the military compound and the Quartier, where many of the Balladairan civilians lived.
Touraine sat back and exhaled. “Yes, sir.”
“What I really need to know, Lieutenant, is the status of your men and women. This is an abrupt change. It might be troubling for some. We think that your presence—the colonial brigade—will have a positive effect on the citizens. To show that they can have power of their own if they’re cooperative. When we open the ranks to Qazāli, I’ll need experienced officers I can trust.”
A recruitment initiative. The idea sent a thrill up Touraine’s back. So far, Touraine’s cohort of Sands was the only one. Maybe Balladaire was trying a different tactic, one that brought in Qazāli soldiers voluntarily. If the Qazāli could see how the Sands benefited from Balladairan employment, they wouldn’t want to rebel. And if others were recruited, it meant being a conscript would become a job, not a life they were bound to. A choice. With rewards. And her, a captain over her own squad of Qazāli. She could make them a company to be reckoned with.
“You can count on me, of course.”
And yet as she said it, Touraine thought of Tibeau’s anger at the rich Balladairans in the New Medina. Cantic wasn’t warning idly. She wouldn’t be the only eyes the general picked to keep the Sands from straying. Eyes would be watching her, too. The test would continue.
She twisted the half-full cup of water in her hand. It was warm and brackish, but it was water. You’d die without it, especially in the desert.
“Is there anything else I can do, sir?”
Cantic’s lips were pursed, thoughtful. “You’ve been invited to dine with Lord Governor Cheminade this evening.”
“Sir?” Touraine’s stomach lurched, even though she didn’t understand the implications of the invitation. She didn’t want to ask who that was and risk looking like a fool. “The colonial brigade?”
“No,” Cantic said, as if she were just as baffled. “The invitation was for you personally. I believe she was impressed with your actions early this morning at the docks. I explained to her how irregular this would be, yet she insists. That means you don’t have much time to prepare.” Her voice went sharp, the confusion falling away. “Treat it as a military ceremony. Speak to no one unless spoken to, and when you are spoken to, know that you speak with my reputation at stake. Do you understand, Lieutenant?”
“Sir. Yes, sir.” Already Touraine’s stomach tied itself in knots over the nerves. And the excitement. No Sand had ever been in this position before. Their status could change, if they were noticed by the right peopl
e.
The general eased back. As if she could read Touraine’s thoughts, she said, “No colonial soldier has ever been in such company. Perhaps you can further prove yourself. A carriage will retrieve you from the guardhouse at sunset after you’ve settled your troops. Perhaps time will see you in charge of a guardhouse yourself.” General Cantic smiled warmly again, like she was oblivious to any threat in her words. “Dismissed.”
The guardhouse where Cantic had stationed Touraine and her squad had once been a home, “borrowed” from a “generous” Qazāli merchant and repurposed by the Balladairans. A small sign nearby read, “rue de la Petière.” It was in the Ibn Shattath district in the Old Medina, near the Grand Bazaar square. The gallows square.
The sandstorm had finally blown itself out, and the sun emerged from behind the nearest building, like a soldier leaving cover. Touraine ducked her head down to catch the glare on the brim of her cap. In less than an hour, it would be gone, and she’d be cast back into cool shadow.
Across the narrow street were more of the old city’s crumbling clay-brick buildings. The whole city had no distinct shape to it. Buildings crammed themselves along the streets, not caring how much space there was: if there was no room, the building shoved itself in anylight, leaving barely enough room for a couple to walk arm in arm. The streets themselves were a labyrinth. How could anyone know where they were going in this city? As far as Touraine could see, though, all the main roads wide enough for multiple carts and livestock led to the Grand Bazaar. On the walk back into the city, they’d passed a couple of the smaller bazaars, where people were doing business as if the storm had never come through.
The narrow streets would make a good defense for a smaller force, and whoever had the rooftops would have the advantage.