The Unbroken

by C. L. Clark

  The tendons in Touraine’s hard jaw bunched, and she nodded once.

  I promise, Luca added mentally.

  They arrived at the compound shortly after that. In her office, Luca drew the papers up quickly, surprising herself with how adept she’d become at paperwork since taking on Cheminade’s position. While Luca worked, Touraine’s attention flicked from the papers to the door.

  “You really don’t look well, Touraine.” Luca set down her pen. “Did she kick something—a rupture inside?”

  “I’ve had worse. Maybe I’ll just step out. Some air.” She limped slightly as she left.

  It was the second set of papers that was more difficult to manage. Papers of citizenship. She’d never had to make those. Nothing codified a Balladairan citizen’s rights compared to those of a subject of the Balladairan Empire. A Balladairan citizen was just a citizen. A colonial subject was merely a subject. Maybe she could change that when she took the throne.

  For now, all she could do was decree it so. And if it was that easy, maybe she could do it for the rest of the Sands. Then, of course, she would have to explain to Cantic why a large section of her troops had the freedom to desert. Luca could recall no precedent for turning so many… foreigners into natural citizens.

  Touraine returned just as Luca finished, looking even sicker. “Are you ready to go back to the Quartier?”

  Luca put down the rag she’d been wiping her pen with. “Sit down. I’m calling for a medic first.”

  The medic, however, agreed with Touraine after checking the soldier’s eyes and breathing. A concussion didn’t constitute “fine” in Luca’s eyes, but the medic said she couldn’t do anything but tell Touraine to rest.

  “No sparring, no stress, sir.” The medic eyed Touraine appreciatively, tapping her fingers on her satchel. “Honestly, I’m surprised you’re up at all. Still be wallowing in bed if I was you, sir.” She turned back to Luca. “Have her watched while she sleeps, Your Highness. That’s when the real danger is.”

  Touraine shrugged when the medic left. “Told you. Not my first day on the field.”

  Luca intended to order Touraine right to bed and send Adile in with some soup or whatever helped injuries best, but there was a letter waiting for them when they arrived at the town house. A letter scrawled on a ragged piece of paper that looked as if it had been torn from a book. She opened it immediately, right in the foyer.

  Touraine raised an eyebrow.

  She didn’t dare do anything but nod. The rebels are ready to sign. She called out to the coachman. “Keep the horses on the carriage!”

  The jostling of the carriage made Touraine’s head throb. Concussions always made her nauseated, but that wasn’t the only reason her stomach was rolling in on itself. Beside her, Luca drummed her fingers excitedly on a knee, probably anticipating victory. Touraine had seen the scribbled note. Djasha and the others thought Luca was trustworthy enough to settle with. To start the long journey toward peace. To trade a few paltry guns for the healing magic that Balladaire had been after for decades.

  Luca smiled shyly at her, eyes still crinkled with concern. She leaned her thigh into Touraine’s. “I suppose we don’t have to wait for me to give you these. Maybe they’ll take away some of the sting?”

  She handed Touraine two pieces of thick, soft, expensive paper. Touraine felt a lump rise in her throat and couldn’t stop her eyes from watering.

  “Just like that?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Luca said simply.

  The first square she unfolded looked almost like a receipt. Touraine followed the description of her position, assistant—not to the governor-general, but to Her Royal Highness Luca Ancier—all the way down to the monthly salary and yearly total at the bottom. Her mouth fell open. Next to her, Luca waited anxiously for her approval.

  Touraine unfolded the other paper and skimmed it, too, landing finally on the last line, just above Luca’s black wax seal. I hereby approve the naturalization of Touraine, previously of the Balladairan Colonial Brigade, as an esteemed citizen of Balladaire.

  “Is it all right? I can add a surname if you want to use one. Whatever you like.”

  Touraine tried to swallow the lump in her throat down. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

  Earlier that day, while Luca drew up this perfect paperwork in their office on the compound, Touraine had taken the excuse to get some air. Maybe not so much get some air as fight with herself without Luca seeing every expression on her face. Cantic’s office was just a door down. Touraine and Luca had come to work here so often, and each time Touraine debated whether to visit the general or not.

  Touraine knocked on Cantic’s beautiful, forest-themed door.

  “Come in,” came Cantic’s muffled voice.

  The general was alone, smoking a cigarette, the air clouded and smelling like smoke. It reminded Touraine of Pruett, and that, in turn, reminded Touraine why she was there. Touraine closed the door behind her.

  “Good morning, General. Do you have a moment?”

  The older woman’s hair was out of its usual tail and hung messily around her shoulders. Cantic raked her empty hand through it before settling her gaze on Touraine. “You sound genteel, but you look like you’ve taken up pit fighting. What are you doing here?”

  Touraine ducked her head, but it couldn’t hide the bruising. “Her Highness is seeing to governor’s paperwork,” she lied.

  “I see.” Cantic took another drag from her cigarette and didn’t look away. She was drawing Touraine out, waiting for her to fall into the silence. It worked.

  “Sir, if you had to choose between the good of the empire and your soldiers, how would you?”

  Cantic propped her elbows on the desk. Now she was listening.

  “That’s a complicated question, Touraine,” she said in that same smoke-scratched voice Touraine knew from childhood. “When you get to where I am, the only thing that matters is the empire. I can’t keep an accounting of individual soldiers. However, you don’t get to where I am without your soldiers. Why do you ask?”

  And Balladaire would be nowhere without its Sands.

  “My old soldiers. We’ve fought for Qazāl a long time, sir. Our whole lives.”

  “Well, no, some of that time was spent educating you to a civilized standard.” Cantic smiled. “We didn’t send you out fighting at ten years old.”

  Touraine forced herself to smile back, but inside, she felt her resolve crumbling. Never mind. She would take her own citizenship, her own wages, and wait for Luca to give the Sands what they deserved. Those who survived the battles to come—and they would come. Touraine had no doubt that the rebels and their guns would only be the beginning. She wanted to have hope, like Luca did. She wanted peace to be around the corner.

  A good leader was supposed to make contingency plans for her soldiers, and yet here she was. Letting them down. For a greater, eventual good.

  “Touraine, let me offer you this piece of advice.” Cantic stubbed the butt of her cigarette into a tin tray already littered with the corpses of previous smokes. She pushed up her sleeves, revealing age-spotted forearms still ropy with muscle. “You’ve always been an exceptional conscript. As I said before, I’m glad the princess found a use for you. It would have been a shame to lose your potential so early.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You and I understand practical considerations of war. We’ve lived it. Bled for it. Her Highness is brilliant, but her hopes and ideas have no place here. They belong back home, in La Chaise. You can’t plan a campaign based on the ‘hope’ that an enemy won’t shoot you in the back. That’s why it’s best that the duke regent hold the throne a little longer. We’ll get her ready, but I don’t want you to fall into her pretty words. People like you and me have to remind people like her the difference between what’s important and what’s possible.”

  Touraine felt the blood rush from her face. She had been thinking the same thing. Even though it made her heart sick to think it, Cantic’s word
s made sense. Luca’s belief in an easily settled peace after a quick exchange of a few guns for the promise of magic, her assumption that she could control any and all of the consequences from this one deal, made her seem naive at best, arrogant at worst, drunk with self-confidence.

  Touraine felt light-headed.

  “Thank you, sir. That’s good advice, sir.” Touraine ducked her head again.

  And then Touraine had hesitated, glancing back toward the closed door. Toward the room where Luca had been fervently planning on these hopes and dreams. “Sir?” she’d said. “There’s just one more thing.”

  Clutching the papers—the freedom—Luca had given her as they trundled to the Old Medina to sign a deal with the rebels, Touraine wondered if she had just made a terrible mistake.

  Luca would never forgive her if she found out what Touraine had just done. Touraine held the crisp documents tighter and consoled herself with one simple thought: when the rebels found out that Touraine had broken their deal, they wouldn’t have the guns to fight back.

  The Sands would be safe. For now.

  CHAPTER 25

  A FAMILY, BROKEN

  Luca couldn’t hide her triumph as she entered the empty smoking den on the Old Medina side of the Old Medina wall. Almost empty but for a table already set with water pipes and small cups of steaming mint tea. A table tall enough for chairs.

  Djasha and Jaghotai already sat around it, along with a man Touraine had called the bookseller. Saïd. Jaghotai had a deep-purple bruise along one cheekbone, but even she exuded the same jovial air of a job well done. Of peace.

  Touraine, who still looked ill, was the only one who didn’t. At least her presence was a comfort. With a gentle hand at her back, Luca bade her sit before following. Saïd poured them both fresh cups of pale tea, thick with the smell of sugar. He also set new coals on a water pipe before handing the tube to Luca.

  She pulled from it. The tobacco was laced with rose, and it couldn’t have been sweeter.

  “My people have a watch on the warehouses now. They’ve confirmed your security measures and the contents,” Jaghotai said. She dipped her head begrudgingly, long dreadlocks dipping, too. She smoked from her own pipe. “She told the truth.”

  “So we have a deal?” Luca said from within a cloud of smoke. She pulled out her own copy of the treaty document she’d drawn up.

  Jaghotai smoked and jerked her head at Djasha. “Your turn, witch.”

  The Brigāni slowly turned to look her companion dead in the eyes and held Jaghotai in her gaze for five eternal seconds. A look like that would have made Luca apologize, at the very least. Jaghotai only smirked around the tube at her lips.

  “Don’t take all day,” Jaghotai said. “I want my new toys.”

  “We have a deal.” Djasha pulled out the wax tube Luca had given her last night and uncurled the paper. “We’ll send one priest to you when we have the weapons. They’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “Very well.” Luca pulled out a pen and a small bottle of ink. She laid both contracts out and copied the Apostate’s amendment to her own.

  When she finished and held the pen out for Djasha to sign, the Brigāni woman’s golden eyes were hooded and unreadable. She clutched her robes to her, as if she were cold.

  Luca leaned closer, felt herself falling toward the woman, toward a depth she knew was hidden just out of reach. She was a child again, peering over the edge of a boat into the lac de Solange to see what lay in the dark. There was no one here to pull her to safety if she tipped.

  “Do you know our history, Your Highness?” Djasha asked finally.

  “Of course. All the way back to Empress Djaya at least, but the… curse… on the other city leaves much of that occluded. The Blood and Wheat Treaty, signed by my great-great-great-grandmother after your empress went mad. The Technological Trade Agreement, signed by my great-great-grandfather, that got plumbing and irrigation for you and surgical techniques and vaccinations for us. Then—”

  Djasha cocked her head. “And then your father, who dissolved all of it.”

  Luca’s recitation had been rote, as if Djasha were one of her tutors and she were just a child. She was cut off like a child, too.

  “And in any case, I’m not talking about your version of our history.” Djasha paused. She closed her eyes, as if she were having a fainting spell.

  Touraine and Jaghotai startled to their feet a second before the door burst open. Luca couldn’t help it—she screamed, ducking under her arms.

  It was only Gillett, his face pale in the dim light of the smoking den. The gauzy dyed curtains made the grim lines of his face stand out in green and red and blue.

  “Your Highness, we need to leave now. Mesdames, monsieur—” Gil looked meaningfully at the rebel leaders. “See to your people. You’re under attack.”

  “What have you done?” shouted Jaghotai. The Jackal was up and lunging for Luca before Gil’s words had sunk in. Touraine tackled the woman in a clatter of low tables and stools, a howl of rage. Gil already had his pistol out, and it was pointed at Djasha.

  “Into the carriage, Luca!” he said.

  “But, Touraine—”

  “Get… the fuck… out!” Touraine said from the ground, restraining the Jackal.

  Luca obeyed.

  “It wasn’t her!” Touraine growled at Jaghotai, holding her down until Luca was safely out the door. More of a whimper, really. Sky-falling fuck, but she hurt. “She didn’t plan this attack. It’s Cantic.”

  “Then why the lucky coincidence?” Jaghotai shoved Touraine away.

  “I don’t know.” Touraine heaved herself up and forced herself to meet Jaghotai’s eyes, then Saïd’s and Djasha’s. “This isn’t part of her plan.”

  Touraine hadn’t expected Cantic to move so quickly. She had hoped for long enough, at least, to send a message to the rebels. To tell them they’d been compromised, if not by whom.

  “I don’t have time for your bootlicking shit.” Jaghotai ran to the door. Guns fired and people screamed, only getting louder. And yet the streets near the Old Medina wall were emptying quickly, the local silence chilling in comparison.

  Jaghotai ducked back in, coming to the same conclusion as Touraine. “Saïd, get Djasha to safety, then grab anyone caught in the cross fire. Take them there, too.”

  “Take them where?” Touraine asked. “Where’s safety?”

  Jaghotai frowned at her, her silence accusation enough. Then she shot back out into the chaos. Touraine trailed at a lope.

  The storehouse where Luca had ordered the guns stored was on this side of the bridge, in El-Wast proper, down in the heart of the Old Medina. She knew without asking that Jaghotai was running to the heart of the Old Medina. Outside of the slums, it had the highest concentration of Qazāli.

  Touraine knew the attack had to be Cantic. What she didn’t understand was why. All Cantic was supposed to do was send soldiers to get the guns from the warehouse before the Qazāli could get them. She was supposed to contain the violence, not unleash it on the civilians. The guns had nothing to do with the rest of the Qazāli. Her stomach twisted. But now the rebels would blame Luca, and they would never come negotiate again.

  The streets thickened with an exodus of civilians in flight the closer they got to the bazaar square. And then she saw the sparkle of sunlight on fixed bayonets, a sight as familiar as the scars on Pruett’s back. Heard the pop-pop of musket fire, the soft thwack of the lead balls as they hit dirt and other, more vital places. On one side of the narrow street, a young man sprinted into one building, only to come out of the next—almost unnoticed. Farther down, the silhouette of a climber scaled to the top of a building—to escape across the rooftops? No: a sniper from another rooftop took aim, and the climber fell with a sickeningly stifled cry.

  Jaghotai shook her head in answer to a question only she knew, and ducked left, down a side street.

  “Where are you going?” Touraine shouted after her.

  Jaghotai didn’t
answer, didn’t even turn back.

  Touraine looked back down the street. A door slammed shut. A Sand kicked it open. Not someone from her squad, but Touraine recognized him. The Qazāli couldn’t wait for someone else to defend them from her mistake.

  Then Touraine recognized a figure climbing up a building’s outer ladder, a musket on her back. Pruett.

  Touraine pushed forward. She sludged through the pulped remains of oranges and peppers and some plucked, raw bird. The smell of crushed food was everywhere.

  As she yanked up her hood and its veil, a horse clopped closer. A nearby gunshot made Touraine and the fleeing Qazāli flinch. Ducking, she turned and saw Rogan, his pistol held high, his knees clenched around proud, tall Brigāni horse stock.

  And then a fresh wave of Sands was upon them.

  Her Sands.

  The carriage bumped and jostled as quickly as the coachman could navigate the horses through the narrow roads. Luca looked back through the window, as if she could see her broken peace lying shattered on the road behind them.

  “We have to go back for Touraine, Gil. They’ll kill her.”

  The tight lines around Gil’s mouth said everything. Touraine was on her own.

  “We have to at least see what’s happening.” Luca reached over for the screen that separated them from the driver.

  “Sit down, Luca!” barked Gil. “If you would be the queen, act like one.”

  Luca froze with her arm outstretched. When was the last time Gil had spoken to her like that? Slowly, she sat back. So be it.

  “What do you know about this?” She used the cold scholar’s voice, forcing herself into a detachment she didn’t feel.

  “I was hoping you would tell me.” He regarded her with a grim, calculating expression. Part father, part advisor, all tightly checked anger. Or was it fear he held in? For once, she couldn’t read the stiffness in posture or the pace of his breath. “I was under the impression negotiations were going well.”

  “So was I. You said it was Qazāli under attack?”