The Unbroken

by C. L. Clark

  “Maybe you should surrender, General,” Touraine said, holding her old mentor’s eyes. She smiled. “And Shāl’s mercy be on you.”

  A cry rang out as Djasha jumped forward in one last burst of energy. Djasha’s battle cry or a blackcoat’s warning or even Touraine’s accidental whimper—Touraine would never know. It was lost in the flash of Djasha’s pale palm in the dark, there and gone, like the shimmer of a fish belly. It flopped like a fish to the ground after Cantic severed it, almost faster than Touraine’s eye could follow. And faster still, the sword sliced across the Apostate’s throat in a spray of blood.

  Aranen, who had been behind Djasha—so close and yet as helpless as Touraine—wailed as she rushed to her wife’s side, pressing her hand uselessly against the flow of Djasha’s lifeblood.

  Moonlight glinted on the general’s bloody sword as she raised it high for another killing blow, and Touraine surged up from the ground on her good leg. She channeled anguish into rage to mask the pain in her cut tendon, and she screamed wordlessly, knife high. Cantic turned to parry the sloppy strike, and the force of it rang all the way into Touraine’s shoulder. It almost sent her sprawling again, but the blade of her knife was the only thing between Cantic’s sword and Aranen’s neck.

  Then she heard a familiar voice calling her name.

  “Lieutenant Touraine! Where are you?” Rogan’s singsong voice echoed across the sudden lull in fire as the soldiers on both sides realized their commanders were fighting. Touraine wheeled around so she could get Rogan and Cantic both in her sights.

  In one hand, Rogan waved a pistol against the sky. In his other, he held an iron chain connected to manacles on Pruett’s wrists.

  No.

  Touraine looked down at Aranen cradling her dead wife. Djasha’s braids were dull now, and her skin sagged where illness had taken its toll. The vibrant power that had been there just moments before was leaking out with the blood that covered Aranen’s hands. Aranen, hunched over in her grief, bloody hands pressed to her mouth, then bloody lips pressed to Djasha’s brow.

  Somewhere, Jaghotai was—Touraine hoped—giving the order to retreat.

  “Call them off,” Rogan said. He aimed his pistol at Pruett’s head. Difficult target to miss. “Arms above your head, on your knees. Call them off.”

  Touraine’s shoulders slumped.

  “I can’t call them off,” she said. “I don’t command them.”

  “That’s horseshit,” he spat.

  He half cocked his pistol, and the metal scrape was the loudest thing Touraine had ever heard.

  “Stop!” she cried out. She fell to her knees and put her hands above her head.

  “Order your men into the street,” Rogan barked. “Make them drop their weapons.”

  “Tour, don’t you fucking dare,” Pruett said. “I swear on my mother’s name—”

  Touraine fought back tears and a helpless laugh. “Fuck that. You hate your mother.” Then, wrecking her throat, she screamed as loud as she could, “It’s over! Drop your weapons!” She said it in Shālan, too, for good measure.

  The scattered musket fire stopped. Slowly, rebels peered around corners to see who had given the order, still deciding whether to obey or not. She cast around, looking for the rebel she most wanted. Where was Jaghotai? Jaghotai could call a retreat and save what there was left to save. Touraine would go down with the Sands and Djasha and Aranen. Jaghotai was stronger. Harder. She had nothing but Qazāl. Let us burn. Jaghotai deserved to survive the night. Then, one day, she would pray for rain again.

  In the rebels’ moment of confusion, the blackcoats were on them, beating the weapons out of their hands, cuffing them, dropping them to the ground any way they could. Someone shot at her, the musket ball pocking the earth at her side, and she flinched more out of reflex than any desire to live. It would be over soon, though, she had no doubt. Rogan’s face was too smug. Two blackcoats pulled Touraine to her feet. Two more pulled Aranen away from Djasha’s body.

  Touraine had promised to fight for Qazāl’s freedom. She had promised to be theirs, and she had kept that promise. She was ready to give her life for that promise.

  Not the Sands’ lives. Not Pruett’s. She couldn’t do this math. This was the line she couldn’t cross. The Sands were her first family, and she belonged to them, despite everything between them in the last year.

  Pruett stood across from her, her eyes screwed shut. Sky above. It isn’t supposed to happen like this. The last of the rebels emerged in a trickle, hands over their heads in surrender, muskets trained on their backs. Finally, Touraine spotted Jaghotai, who held both arms high. A battlefield bandage on her long arm was already soaked through with blood. She let a blackcoat cuff her hand to a long chain that linked the rebel prisoners. The soldier kicked her in the back of the knees to drop her to the ground, in line with the others.

  “Jaghotai!” Touraine didn’t move toward her, but the blackcoats wrenched her arms back anyway. A blow to the head left Touraine dazed.

  “Easy, Lieutenant.” Rogan called Touraine’s attention back to Pruett. To the pistol at Pruett’s head. He cocked the pistol all the way.

  Before Touraine could scream, Rogan turned the pistol onto her. The strike of the flint on steel hissed through the night air. Pain ripped through Touraine’s calf, and she fell back to the ground.

  “You sky-falling bastard,” she growled as the man’s smile spread across his face.

  They had lost.

  The next punch came to her temple.

  CHAPTER 41

  TO UNKNIT

  When Gil at last permitted Luca to step outside, the compound, which had become a battlefield, was quiet. The shots she’d heard firing outside her window had ceased, and Cantic had given the all clear. The fighters’ shouts had died. The prisoners—except for Touraine—were cuffed and held under guard at the far end of the compound. Balladairan soldiers dragged the dead outside the compound to be carted away and the wounded to lie outside the already overflowing sick bay. Beyond the yellow walls, the plague fires still burned; the orange glow lit the sky. As if the world had broken and the sun with it, setting on the wrong side of the sky.

  Their plan had worked, but at a cost.

  It smelled like blood. It wasn’t coppery, like it tasted in your mouth. It was thick and heavy, mingled with voided bowels to make a stench like a thick fog that she had to push through to get to the jail.

  Beneath the horror of the sight of a soldier’s guts spilling from her black coat or a rebel face half blown apart by a bullet, Luca felt a disturbing thrill of relief. She had never wanted to be so vulnerable, so close to death herself—but here she was, and she had survived. She was alive, if only because she’d hid under her table in the governor’s office with a caustic Beau-Sang. The comte had spent the entire attack threatening her with her uncle’s reaction. As if Luca needed him to remind her of what was at stake. She’d almost thrown him out to die in the cross fire.

  Luca pushed into the jail, ignoring the on-duty soldier’s protests.

  “Please, Your Highness, the general—”

  She half turned and said over her shoulder, “Shut. Your mouth. And wait outside.”

  He shut his mouth. He closed the door and waited outside. It was easy to be a villain when she felt like one inside. She was hurting herself, too, and she had to give them both one last chance to save each other.

  The first time she’d met Touraine in this jail, she hadn’t been attached to anything here. Curious about the Sands, even more curious about the handsome soldier who’d saved her from assassins and been abducted by the rebels. The gloom had been harmless and temporary. Now a desperate tug drew her to the cell where Rogan had dumped Touraine, and the darkness pressed her on all sides, threatening to trap her.

  “Touraine?” Luca whispered. Any louder, and she didn’t trust her voice to stay true. She had hoped for confidence, something Touraine would have faith in. Something Touraine would not doubt.

  A laugh, sharp and dis
believing. “Your Highness.”

  So it was back to titles, then.

  “I came to check on you. To make sure… Rogan didn’t hurt you.”

  “Hurt me?” Touraine’s voice flared with the crackling rage of fire on a new log. “He threatened my old soldiers so I would hand him my new ones. And I gave them to him.” Luca heard the waver of tears, too.

  “The Sands were never in danger. I would never have let him hurt them. I just needed you to believe it; I needed you to stop. If it were me, you would have known I was bluffing—”

  “Stop talking. You’re not making this better. You used them against me.”

  Luca finally gathered the courage to step closer and let the narrow stream of lantern light illuminate Touraine’s sharpened cheekbones, her grief-hollowed eyes. She was half-naked, and the smell of piss wafted over.

  “What happened?” Luca asked sharply. “What did he do?”

  “Just let me out. You’ve done it before.”

  “There are guards posted outside. You’re not my prisoner.”

  “But I was yours.”

  The words, and the plaintive truth in them, cut her. Made her want to undo the last year entirely and fashion them so that she had another choice. She imagined them at a ball in Balladaire, dancing together, with Touraine in a fabulous suit with the right to a pistol at her hip.

  “Cantic already let you go once; she won’t do it again. Not after all of this. She’s brittle iron—she doesn’t bend. She’ll break first. You know that better than I do.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Luca swallowed the nerves climbing up her throat like worms.

  “If you recant, confess, I can keep you alive longer. A pardon from execution. You’d come to Balladaire a prisoner, but I could get you out between here and there. I’ll find a way. I can’t get you out of anywhere if you’re dead.”

  “Why? You lied to me. You said you’d help us.”

  “I have never lied to you.” The words fell softly, like the last clinging leaves before winter.

  “Then what has all of this been?”

  “Not a lie.”

  “Then why are we here?” Touraine slammed the bars of the cell with her palm. The sound rang through the empty jail. “No, I know. I know. Your precious throne.”

  A cold anger settled in her stomach at the judgment in Touraine’s voice. Touraine had ruined Luca’s first peaceful attempts to end the rebellion for a handful of soldiers, and she dared judge her for selfishness?

  “I am my throne. You stupid, stupid woman. I was born to this, raised for it, and I have fought for it this year harder than I have ever fought for anything. There is more at stake here than who I want to fuck, and I have made sacrifices because of that.”

  Touraine’s shoulder, holding her up as they danced in the circle of Qazāli. The brief moment of skin against skin in her bedroom after. The anger and shame and arousal that washed over her the first time Touraine called her out for her pretensions.

  With her head against the stone, Touraine sighed. “I’ve made sacrifices, too.” She limped back from the cell door and lowered herself gingerly. “For the soldiers who follow me and the people who welcomed me as I am and not for how they think I’ll be useful. Though I can’t say I’m sure who’s who.”

  “I’m not doing this so you’ll be useful to me.”

  “I know. If you thought I’d be useful, I’d be free by now.”

  It stung worse than a slap.

  “When I’m in power,” Luca said, “I can make this better. Even Cantic will answer to me when I’m crowned.”

  “Executing a traitor and stopping the rebellion will help you get there. They’ll know you’re strong, efficient, and willing to do what’s necessary.”

  “Touraine, please—”

  “I hope your rule is so magnificent that this was worth it.”

  There was no spite in the other woman’s voice, no sarcasm, only calm certainty. She could hear the unspoken words, too: I hope you think about this moment every day you sit on that throne.

  Luca looked away. Her magnificent domain, the jail, sandstone and clay, the piss and shit of prisoners Touraine had freed. Just outside, more prisoners and the dead. Beyond that, other compounds in Qazāl, throughout the whole empire, perhaps only a breath away from catastrophe like this. She and Cantic had seen a chance, and they’d taken it. The rebels were crushed. Their gamble had paid off. Hadn’t it?

  “You aren’t the only one who’s grown here, Your Highness. If you won’t compromise yourself, why should I? Why should the Qazāli wait on your mercy, wait for you to have your crown? This is their home.”

  “Not yours?”

  Touraine tilted her head up to look at Luca. Luca shifted the lantern to better see the disdain, but there was none. She wished there were. She wished there were anything to make her feel like Touraine would fight for her life. Luca saw only a torso full of bruises, bones jutting where they shouldn’t, bloody wounds wrapped in bloodier clothing. Touraine needed medical attention.

  “I don’t think I’ll live long enough for it to be.” The soldier leaned back against the wall, her right leg stretched out, her left knee pulled against her bare chest.

  “Please. Think about it.”

  Touraine pursed her lips. She tapped at her knee with one hand. The other hand was palm up, eerily still against her other thigh.

  “If you can pardon me, can you pardon them, my soldiers, the rebels?”

  She’d known that would come, and she knew her answer, as well. “No. That many proven enemies—no.”

  “Then it’s probably best not to spare even one.”

  “Touraine, you’re not—I’m not—”

  “Please, Your Highness. I’d like to pray alone.”

  Pray? Since when does she pray? She waited, stunned into silence, before she realized she’d been dismissed. Rejected and dismissed. Touraine always did have that tendency, of dismantling Luca and making her want more at the same time.

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. I hope your god answers your prayers.” And talks sense into you where I could not. If that was how the gods worked.

  Luca wanted to jump into the cell with that idiot woman and hold her, to stand between her and Rogan and Cantic, but she turned and started up the corridor.

  “Wait! Luca!” Touraine’s voice sounded so small now. “When I’m gone, do me one favor. Give Djasha a proper funeral.”

  The thickness in Luca’s throat kept her silent as she left.

  After Luca left, Touraine did try to pray. She whispered the small, easy-to-remember prayer that Aranen had taught her. She hummed the song she had always hummed. She did everything she could not to think about Luca’s offer.

  “Fuck you,” Touraine said. The words bounced back at her.

  If Luca cared for her, Touraine wouldn’t be waiting to die here. Luca was smart; she was calculating. If she couldn’t find a way to keep Touraine alive, it was because she didn’t want it badly enough.

  Luca had made an offer, though. All Touraine had to do was watch the rebels—her soldiers—die while she walked away, in chains but alive.

  She wasn’t in the position to do much other than die standing or surrender. Something in her shoulder was broken badly enough that she couldn’t raise her right arm. She’d stanched the bleeding in her calf with cloth from her own trousers. Her other ankle, her other knee would barely hold her weight. She couldn’t fight back, and no one was there to fight for her.

  It wasn’t that death was so hard to grapple with. Every battle she’d fought in had been possible death. It was always a roll of the dice, a chance of the cards. This time, she had been unlucky.

  Still, she had meant every word she had said to Luca. For the first time, she had faced death for a reason of her choosing. She would die for Djasha’s vengeance. She would die for Aranen’s temple. She would die for young Ghadin and her friends. She would die here, because she chose to. She couldn’t ask for more than that.
r />   Touraine barely registered losing consciousness—no one could call the pain-addled visions of her death “sleeping”—before Rogan’s voice woke her again.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant. It’s a beautiful day to die, don’t you think?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m not interested, thank you. We have an appointment to keep.”

  “I’m not interested, thank you.”

  His pistol clicked and was echoed by a chorus of cocked muskets. “You can die down here if you’d like. I don’t think that suits you.”

  She hated to prove him right.

  Climbing to her feet and walking out of the cell helped her inventory her pain yet again. Shoulder, ankle, calf, knee, shoulder, ankle, calf, knee. A litany of injuries that distanced her from what waited.

  In the brig corridor, more men yanked her arms behind her and tied them so tight her wrist bones creaked and something in her shoulder popped again, forcing out a grunt of pain. Rogan smiled. She spat on his boots—Stop smiling, you bastard—but he only grinned wider, his blue eyes crinkling.

  Then he punched her in the side of the head, and light winked in her eyes as she staggered and fell. The brig spun.

  “Make sure you get the two women she was with,” he told his men without looking away from her. “When we’re done, we’ll display the bodies in the bazaar.”

  Tears burned her eyes. He wanted a reaction from her, clear as day. It was hard to know he was telling the truth and not react. She could only hope Luca would do that one thing for her. The other rebels would hang, covered in crows that pecked at the softest bits of them. They would begin to reek in the sun.

  An audience waited for her in the middle of the road that split the compound. Blackcoats, some of them sick or wounded but able to stand. Balladairan civilians who worked on the compound. Civilians who didn’t, who wanted the protection of the walls, who couldn’t afford to flee the pox.