by C. L. Clark
The compound was such a strange, hybrid place. Governed by Balladairan ideas of might and cleverness but still at the mercy of the natural laws of Qazāl—it was made of heat and dust and sand and clay. It would never be Balladaire, no matter how much wood they shipped in or stone they demanded from the quarries.
Two rows of bound figures waited in front of the crowd, some in Qazāli clothing, some still wearing the black Sands’ coats. She counted nineteen. Not all of the Sands, not all of the rebels. Jaghotai was there, a musket trained on her. Aranen stood in the line of prisoners, too, staring at Cantic. Other bodies littered the compound. No one would come back for them, not after such a disaster. Not soon enough, anylight.
Any last thoughts of escape dissolved. If she fought Rogan off and somehow ran to safety, the others would have no hope.
Rogan studied her, and she willed her face into a mask like Luca’s. Emotionless. Unflappable.
Luca was nowhere in sight. Anger straightened Touraine’s back, and she said coolly, “Firing squad, then.”
“Yes. First.” He sidled closer to her. His presence rose goose bumps on her naked torso. “They won’t kill you, though. Not immediately. I will shoot you myself in a noble coup de grâce.” He leaned closer, the heat of his lips on her ear. “I’m going to put you down like a dog.”
She stilled the shiver of fear, tried to cool the heat of her racing heart. She only had to look at the men and women she had led into this mess. It quenched everything inside her but a seed of resolve.
Rogan pushed her in front of a squad of riflemen. With the onlookers on her right and the other prisoners on her left, the space behind her was empty for missed shots. Aranen met her gaze steadily, her eyes red rimmed and glassy.
You could still run. Let Luca save you.
You are choosing this.
Aranen prayed with her eyes closed. Touraine looked up at the sky instead. Sky above.
Cantic stepped close to Touraine and spoke in a voice audible only to her. “I know the princess offered you another chance, Lieutenant. You’re sure this is how you want to spend it?”
Not counting last night, it was the first time they had spoken since Touraine had leaked half of the gun stash to the general. The months in Qazāl had taken a toll on both of them. Cantic’s blue eyes were bloodshot, the skin around them tight. A scarf hung low on her chin. It seemed like years ago that Touraine wanted to be just like this woman. Part of her still wanted that. From the very beginning, Cantic had represented respect and power. When Cantic was the Sands’ instructor, back in Balladaire, people listened when she spoke. They had obeyed her. Touraine had obeyed her, hoping she would learn enough to follow in Cantic’s footsteps.
“Did they make you do this? Tell us,” Cantic hissed.
“I’m choosing this,” Touraine said aloud.
Instead of becoming like Cantic, Touraine had learned enough to know that the general, too, wanted to mold her into something perfect. And perfect, to Cantic, to Beau-Sang and the lord regent, Duke Nicolas Ancier, meant not Qazāli, not any kind of Shālan. It meant Balladairan born and bred, and she would never be that, so she would never be completely worthy.
Touraine stood up straighter. She didn’t need to be worthy to them.
General Cantic shook her head, like she still couldn’t believe what had become of her protégé. A turncoat.
“Touraine. Ex-lieutenant of the Balladairan Colonial Brigade. Aide to Princess Luca.” Cantic’s voice was cold with disappointment. “You’ve been charged with desertion and treason. How do you plead?”
Touraine couldn’t see Luca, which meant she wasn’t there. She didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse, didn’t know if seeing Luca’s face would strengthen her or break her. It was better this way.
“I didn’t desert. I was made a free citizen by writ of Her Highness Luca Ancier.”
Cantic’s frown lines deepened. “And the charge of treason?”
“Guilty.”
The general nodded to Rogan.
Five musket pans sparked powder.
Time yawned. Bullets hit her in the chest. Lung, hip. Shoulder, stomach, ankle, calf, knee—her knees gave out; her body danced. The acrid metal taste of her own blood in her mouth before it tickled down her chin. She swallowed. Coughed. Swallowed the blood back down.
Jaghotai yelled from her spot in the prisoners’ line, and a soldier cracked her in the base of the skull with a musket butt in response.
Rogan approached Touraine in blurry slow motion. His own pistol cocked and pressed against her forehead. The sulfur of gunpowder. The smell of home.
For one overwhelming moment, she thought she could hear the heartbeats of everyone around her. Rapid or slow or stuttering still.
She had made her choice.
It was dawn.
Luca was due outside any minute now. As the princess, it was her right to witness sedition against her rule punished. Instead, she waited just inside the door of the command building, hand hovering over the door handle. Everyone else who wanted to witness the end of the rebellion was out there. The staff, the soldiers who were able, the civilians bitter enough or frightened enough to be awake at this hour.
Any minute now.
Any minute now, they would haul Touraine out of her cell, stand her up against the wall, and shoot her like a rabid dog. Luca could already imagine her dead. The blood in a pool beneath her body. It wouldn’t spread. The thirsty earth would drink her up.
A moan wrenched out of her.
Any minute now, she would push the door open. She would walk out and take her place beside Cantic, who would ask her if she had any testimony to offer. Luca would watch Touraine shake her head, and then watch her die.
Or, if there was a kind god at all in the world—Are you so desperate that you would pray to it, if it would grant you this thing?—Touraine would say she was mistaken. That she had moved in misguided judgment, that she would serve penance however the crown saw fit. Luca would pardon her, and they would figure out what came next together.
A volley of coordinated shots made her hand spasm over the door handle.
No.
Luca sprinted with a foal’s tangle on rubbery legs. Fifty yards in front of her, Touraine swayed on her knees. Her naked chest ran crimson and dark with blood. Captain Rogan stood with his pistol pressed against her forehead.
“Stop!”
Everyone watched Luca as she ran, awkward and in pain. They didn’t matter. She crashed before she even reached Touraine, sprawling into the dust on her knees. Her subjects, noble and military and laborer, watched her crawl through the dirt to the conspirator’s side.
Touraine was such a bloody mess. Her eyelids fluttered as she wavered, somehow holding herself upright.
“Where… the sky-falling fu—” She didn’t finish the sentence, choking on her own blood.
Luca swallowed and pushed the pistol wide before scooping Touraine to her chest.
“You have no say in military justice, Your Highness,” Cantic hissed. As if she could not wait for it to be over. Are you as ashamed as I am? Cantic nodded at Rogan. “Finish this.”
“I said, stop.” Luca stared down the barrel of the gun and into Rogan’s eyes. That this horse-faced bastard should be the one to end Touraine was beyond cruel. And anylight: “All she has done, she has done for me.”
Cantic hesitated. Her mouth half-open to form what words? A flicker of sorrow broke through the mask of stony command.
Touraine’s blood leaked warm against Luca’s pale linen shirt, blending in with the black embroidery. So warm. Too warm. Like the glow of a fire in a winter hearth.
“Sacrifices,” Touraine choked out. “Must be… made.”
“Touraine?”
Before the flash and the sound of a skull shattering, Touraine’s eyes glowed golden.
Luca thought her heart had stopped as everything froze around her, but it hadn’t. Everyone, including her, had forgotten how to breathe. The air was still; the audience was silent. To
uraine, too, lay still in her arms. Utterly still.
She did not believe her eyes, which told her that Rogan’s head had broken open, not Touraine’s.
Then, like a wave crashing from its zenith, the entire crowd recoiled in revulsion and panic, and Luca flinched with them, spattered in gore. The firing squad held their spent weapons, blinking in surprise. Only Cantic pulled her pistol, but there was no place to aim.
Fast, faster than anyone could reckon in their confusion, Aranen the priestess, somehow unbound from the ropes that held her, crossed the few paces separating her and the general. Aranen’s eyes glowed golden, her hands and mouth were smeared with blood, and she reached to brush a palm over Cantic’s cheek.
Luca didn’t have time to cry out, but the general’s reflexes were well honed.
Cantic pulled the trigger with the barrel of her gun against Aranen’s belly. The priestess barely flinched, a slight recoil of force. She never lost contact with Cantic’s skin.
Bile rose in Luca’s stomach. The general’s skin turned grayish and drained, while her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Blood pooled in her eyes until her eyelids overflowed; it leaked from her mouth, nose, and ears.
The brief panic halted in the face of pure shock.
In that interval of horror, Luca laid Touraine down, resting the woman’s head in the dirt as gently as she could. Touraine stared at the sky, but Luca saw her eyelids flutter. Golden irises in bloodshot eyes. The relief in her heart didn’t last. If Touraine died right now, Luca would hate herself forever. On the other hand, if Aranen wiped out the compound—or worse, the remaining Balladairans in the city—there would be no living with that.
She stood, good and bad leg weak and trembling, and walked to Aranen. The priestess stared at Cantic’s corpse, then at her own hands. Luca held herself as straight as she could. She looked nothing like royalty, in a blood-soaked shirt and plain trousers. She probably smelled like sick, like everything else in this sky-falling compound. The broadside artists would have fun with this moment if she survived it.
“Please don’t hurt anyone.” She lowered her head. She didn’t deserve to ask it of Aranen, of any Qazāli, but she would try.
Aranen turned to her. Her eyes had turned the dull gold of an antique. Then she made to pass Luca, and Luca flinched. Another musket fired and hit Aranen in the shoulder. Blood blossomed and spread through the dirty cloth, but as Luca watched, the wound slowly closed.
Sky above and earth below. Luca’s mouth worked soundlessly until she found her voice.
“Stop!” She threw her arm out to stave off another attack.
Aranen brushed past her, but she only walked to Touraine.
Half of the audience had already fled, to barracks or for the Quartier or the city proper—wherever they could convince themselves was safe. Nowhere. Nowhere is safe, Luca thought.
Many of those remaining were blackcoats. She met their grim or frightened gazes with her own, whatever good the solidarity would do. “Lay down your weapons. No matter what happens, the Qazāli go free today. Rebels. Conscripts. They are not to be harmed today or any day after. We’re leaving.
“Have mercy on us, Aranen.” Luca spoke to Aranen’s back, in Shālan. The priestess was consumed with Touraine’s body, running her hands along the woman’s torso and legs.
“You have cost me everything,” Aranen finally said.
Luca wanted to say that it wasn’t her, but Aranen didn’t deserve such weakness. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Aranen stood and fixed her eyes on Luca again, and Luca knew without doubt that the priestess was not the one appraising her. Every petty thought, every insecurity, every moment of cruelty was exposed. She wanted to throw herself to the ground.
The priestess stepped toward her, hand outstretched, and Luca shrank back. Cantic’s dead body was barely two paces away.
Where does a queen’s life weigh in the balance of her kingdom?
Aranen pressed a hand against her cheek. Luca leaned into it, eyes closed. She yielded.
Heat, or maybe light, or maybe none of that but something rolled through Luca’s body. It coiled inside her chest, sliding between her lungs, slipping into the gaps of her intestines. It itched, a fierce tingling that made her want to rip herself apart. It shot up and down her legs, bouncing, heedless of the pain it caused her. At her heart, it felt like a caress, like a fist wrapped around her life, thinking to squeeze.
Balladaire has lost. I’ve lost us.
And then Aranen broke contact. Luca sagged to her knees, gasping for air. She’d been spared. Touraine’s eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling steadily.
“Thank you.” She rested her forehead on the ground at Aranen’s feet before she could push herself back up again.
To everyone else—her people, the Sands, the rebels—she said in Balladairan, “Citizens, my countrymen. Gather yourselves. It’s long past time for us to go home.”
CHAPTER 42
THE RAIN (AND YET ANOTHER BROADSIDE)
Luca still hated public speaking. Her stomach flipped over and over as she dressed. She eyed her uncle’s letter on the bedside table as she buttoned her shirt.
Bastien was waiting for her. He didn’t fault her for his father’s arrest, and he’d helped her manage affairs since the surrender. What day had it been? She would have to count back later—the day the Balladairan Empire cracked would be important for the history books. And her name next to it.
She’d sent a note to Aranen every day to see if Touraine had woken up. And every day the response had been the same. No. Luca wanted to delay the speech until she knew whether Touraine would stand by her side, but the city was growing restless. And even though she didn’t plan to leave Qazāl until she knew Touraine’s fate one way or another, the citizens of Qazāl needed to know she wasn’t their ruler anymore.
She checked herself once more in the mirror. She wasn’t sure she liked the gaunt woman staring back at her. That woman barely looked human, let alone like a queen. She’d finally stopped losing her meals, but food didn’t appeal to her.
You’re worrying too much, Gil told her repeatedly. What was too much worry, exactly?
She tossed and turned through the night. She spent the days planning how to take her own empire apart. How to let it crumble while doing the least damage.
Bastien helped her slide her arms into a light jacket cut in the Balladairan style, and then they left, Lanquette on her heels, Gil and Bastien by her side. The carriage clattered over the dirt and stones. She winced and held her head when it jostled too much.
Bastien put a hand on her knee to steady her, or perhaps to comfort her. She twitched her leg away, and he drew back. They had had… a moment in the weeks after that day. With all the work to do and Touraine on her mind, she hadn’t been able to concentrate. She’d embraced the distraction.
“You don’t hate me for destroying your country?” Luca asked Bastien.
He smiled. Such a gentle man. “Technically, Qazāl is my home country.”
She snorted. “It won’t be for long.”
His eyes went soft and sad. “I know. I’m prepared to leave, but I’ll wait… until you do.”
Luca stiffened and looked back out the window to watch the gates as they passed through them, the worn Shālan words illegible.
“And your sister?” she asked.
“She’ll stay, I think. Aliez has always gotten on well with the Qazāli. And I think she wants to see to our father’s justice.”
“Ah.” Luca hadn’t been upset to find an excuse to hand the comte over for Qazāl to determine his fate, but she had worried how Bastien would take it. When she told him, he had held silent for a moment before sniffing and saying “Good riddance” and nothing else.
Luca’s headache intensified when she arrived at the bazaar and the crowd stretched in front of her. Qazāli filled the square, likely from all over the country. Word had spread, as she’d intended—the Balladairan surrender.
Uncle Nico
las didn’t know the extent of what Luca planned to do today. His last letter said to hold. Do nothing drastic. It also mentioned the fate of the Balladairans who’d fled on ships in the initial wave back to Balladaire.
Thanks to your mismanagement of the colonies and your fraternization with the Qazāli—including your indiscretions with the soldier, don’t think I was never informed—we had to sink all incoming Balladairan ships for quarantine measures.
So many of her people, even the healthy ones. Dead.
Uncle Nicolas had also included yet another broadside, apparently all the rage: her, kneeling with her forehead on the ground before a darker person in a Qazāli robe, clearly meant to be Aranen. Do you see this filth? he had written. News had already spread back to La Chaise. Splendid.
Lanquette helped her out of the carriage, and she walked up the gallows.
Several Balladairans bunched together in the crowd. The ones too poor or unlucky—lucky, rather—to miss the first wave of escape. She could tell them from pale Qazāli because of their frightened faces, like rabbits walking into a wolf den.
Luca tightened her hand on her cane and straightened.
“Peace on you all,” she said in Shālan, and then in Balladairan, “Peace. Too long have we struggled against each other. Though I cannot take responsibility for every decision, I am the rightful ruler of Balladaire, and I take responsibility for all that was done in my name, in my family’s name. All that I benefited and continue to benefit from. I apologize.”
She had worked out some of the speech details with Bastien. She would have preferred to work them out with Touraine. Touraine knew these people. She’d fought with them. She would know the right things to say. But she was unconscious somewhere. Luca scanned the crowd for Aranen or any of the rebels. Saïd, or even that wickedly sharp Malika. She flinched as something wet landed on her nose.
“I ask your forbearance while I remain a little while longer. Some of my citizens took ill, and we must wait until they make a full recovery until we will be welcomed back home. Anyone not adhering to this armistice, anyone not treating Qazāli with the utmost respect due to another sovereign people, may be brought to my attention. I…”