by C. L. Clark
The entire building had been claimed by the Balladairan military, and because of the winding, attached-at-the-rooftops nature of Qazāli architecture, that included almost the entire street. Within, Touraine’s platoon could live under the close watch of their Balladairan handlers, with Captain Rogan’s horse-ass face in charge of it all.
The Qazāli natives who passed them on the street stared at Touraine and her soldiers like they were animals on display in a menagerie.
Touraine scowled. She wasn’t the one who looked like a bird, bright clothes flapping in the wind.
“This our shithole, then, sir?” The jaunty voice belonged to Aimée, a decent fighter who was strong in formation. She had a mouth worse than Pruett’s and a sour sense of humor, but it was still a sense of humor.
“It’s not a shithole, Aimée. Go in and get comfortable.”
Touraine didn’t like the way the Qazāli kept looking at them, and she really didn’t like the way some of her soldiers were looking back. A few soldiers wore hostile sneers and a couple looked curious, but most of them were uneasy, and jumpy soldiers didn’t make an easy peace.
Touraine plucked Pruett’s sleeve and spoke to her in a low voice. “Get a couple of soldiers on patrol around the building and someone out here. Everyone else, inside.”
Thirty soldiers filed past her, but Tibeau held back. He stared back at the civilians, searching faces. “Sergeant?” Touraine said softly.
“Do you think anyone will recognize us? The rest of us, I mean.” His voice was barely audible over the city’s noise. There was a longing in his voice that made her heart beat faster.
“No.” The word came out sharper than she’d meant. “And in case you haven’t noticed, most would rather stab us than share dinner.”
A gang of kids ran by, slowing to stare at Touraine and her squad, the Shālans in Balladairan uniforms. Did the children find them strange? Being so close to the main commercial section of the city, Ibn Shattath was a mix of the lowest and the highest and everyone in between, from Qazāli merchants in Balladairan clothes to Balladairan servants running errands. With the spectacle of soldiers gone, most moved on quickly.
Touraine chanced a look at Tibeau’s face. The smile she found was grimmer than she was used to, more like Pruett’s. “Someone recognized you,” he said.
It felt like a shove. A friendly sparring match turned cruel. She met him stare for stare as he tested her, asking her to bend.
“I was ten when I was taken,” he added. “I’d already had time to grow into my delicate features.” He batted his lashes over brown eyes full of desperate hope. He tried to hold on to the joke, but his voice cracked. “I should be even more recognizable, shouldn’t I?”
Touraine forced a chuckle despite the growing tension between them. Tibeau wasn’t what someone would call a pretty man. Like her, he was crossed by scars from growing up with the instructors and pocked by even more from going to war for Balladaire. When Touraine first met him, she’d just learned what a bear was from a lesson book. With his short dark hair, furry arms speckled with moles, and taut belly, he’d looked like a cub. Now he was full-grown. She still sparred with him for practice, but she beat him only four out of ten times, maybe. It hurt, now, to watch the tentative slump of his shoulders.
A scrawny man wearing only loose trousers ran a rickshaw past them, barefooted. He avoided colliding with them, but his cargo still shouted at him. A soft, blond Balladairan man, the lace from his clothes dripping from the cab. She felt Tibeau’s anger pulling taut like a bowstring.
She gripped the back of one of Tibeau’s thick arms. “Don’t bring trouble on us, Beau.”
“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not as stupid as I used to be.” It had been almost ten years since Touraine had gotten her friends whipped for fighting with Rogan, before he was their captain.
She tugged him toward the guardhouse with one last look around the emptying street.
The entryway to the home had a clever partition that denied large groups a quick entrance. If anyone tried to attack, they would have to enter one or two at a time; and using muskets would be impossible. Probably not the original intent of the design.
The building rose in a square surrounding a courtyard with a gurgling fountain. It was the wettest sound since the ocean, and the air within had a clean smell. Touraine felt more comfortable already, with everyone outside cut away. Immediately, everything was simple again.
She divided everyone into rooms on the first and second stories, four or five to a room. To the left of the entrance was an office, already set up with papers. That would be Rogan’s domain, then, and the biggest room would be his. Probably at the far end, opposite the entrance. To the right, there was a room with a couple of low tables and pillows to make a rough common room.
Touraine nodded, satisfied. It was already better than any of their other postings. She squeezed Tibeau’s shoulder. “Be easy, Beau. Find Émeline. Let’s have a drink.”
“Easy.” He grunted. “Right. So easy.”
He and Émeline joined Pruett and the other Sands in the common room for games of tarot and cups of nutty-flavored beer. Touraine beckoned Pruett with a look. Her sergeant followed her out of the common room and back into the open courtyard.
It might have been a beautiful place before. Back when water flowed from the pale stone petals of the fountain and the planting troughs were full of living flowers instead of dried husks on their way to decomposing. The ground was scattered with dirt and dead leaves and animal shit, bird and otherwise. Someone would go on cleaning duty.
Pruett sidled in close. “What’d you do this time, Lieutenant?” When Touraine didn’t smile back, Pruett dropped the wryness. “Did Cantic say something?”
“I’ve been invited to a dinner,” Touraine whispered. “Tonight. With the governor.”
“What the sky-falling fuck?”
“Shh. I don’t want everyone to know—wait, should I tell them?” Touraine glanced over her shoulder. “Everything is so tight. It feels like one wrong move and—”
“Like someone’s got a flame hovering over a fuse, and all you’d have to do is spook them at the wrong moment. I know.” Pruett nodded gravely. She took Touraine’s hand briefly and squeezed it before dropping it again.
Underneath it all, the unspoken hung. She felt it in the other Sands’ glances at her, some covert, some frank and curious. They were home, and she had been recognized. They were home, and allegiances were up in the air. Only, they weren’t. She’d have to address it before she left for the governor’s dinner. Leaving her soldiers like this, on edge, in the middle of such a mess, was a bad idea.
“It feels like I have a chance, Pru.” Touraine searched Pruett’s eyes for any hint of validation. “Like maybe they’re starting to take us seriously for once.”
Her sergeant raked her hands through her short hair, dried stiff and at odd angles from sweat. “Sky above. The governor.” Pruett gave her a quick kiss on the mouth. “Just don’t—”
“Get us into any trouble. I know.” Touraine rolled her eyes, and Pruett’s mouth quirked up at the corners.
Touraine was considering the words she would say to her squad, when a soldier on guard shouted angrily from the street.
In seconds, the other Sands were outside, just in time to see the barrage of rotten food pelting the guardhouse walls. An egg sailed past Touraine’s face, and she ducked. The sulfur smell cracked open behind her, but she tracked its trajectory to a Qazāli man in a glaring yellow hooded vest.
The handful of Qazāli scattered, except him. He jogged backward, trying to get in one last shot with his eggs. How he didn’t expect Touraine’s fist in his jaw, she didn’t know. She was proud of the punch; it echoed all the way through her chest to her hips. For a second, he hung suspended in the air. For a second, some idiot part of her brain thought she’d made a mistake. The only Qazāli she’d ever punched before were other Sands, and you didn’t hit your soldiers like she h
it him.
That idiot part of her brain was small compared to her well-trained instincts. She got him down with a knee in his back and locked his wrists in her hands. Passersby watched from a distance.
Let them look. Let them see what they can be a part of if they have any sense. They wouldn’t beat the Sands with rotten eggs and cabbages. Her hands clenched tight around the man’s wrists, her nails digging into his skin.
It was almost sunset. Her carriage would come soon. She couldn’t afford to get bloody. Behind her, Pruett and the others waited for orders, batons ready. She dragged the half-conscious man to his feet. “Take him in. Cézanne, you’re out here with Philippe, now. Patrols are three men on.”
Anger welled up in her, hot and defensive, as Tibeau approached. She gave him a sharp look. He misinterpreted it. “We could let this one go,” he said close to her ear. “With a warning. Show them we’re open—”
“We are not open, Sergeant. And if you think we are,” she continued through gritted teeth, “we should have a chat about your fitness for this position. Do you understand?”
“Sir.” He straightened with a snap, his face so blank Touraine knew he was as pissed as she was.
Good. He needed to know she wasn’t fucking around. She wouldn’t give Cantic a reason to question her loyalty, and that meant he couldn’t, either.
The Qazāli man would be bound and thrown into a room for holding. Rogan could arrange for his transport to the jail in the compound.
Back in the common room, the mood was brittle. Touraine didn’t like the taste of the beer, but she drank a cup anyway. It busied her hands and cooled her off. She kept glancing anxiously toward the exit. She had cleaned up, put on a fresh uniform. Even stolen a bit of the cologne Aimée had splurged on with their meager salaries.
Tibeau slouched in the corner against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, Émeline beside him with a hand around his waist. Aimée leaned on one of the tables, tapping her fingers noisily and looking from Touraine to the other Sands. That troublemaker was just barely holding in a smile at the tension.
Pruett sat beside Touraine, a cigarette pinched between her lips. Now? Touraine asked with her eyes. Pruett nodded.
Sighing, Touraine pushed herself up to her feet. “All right, everyone. Let’s talk about this. Some of us are home now, yes?”
Several nods, but some of the Sands had been taken from other nations in the Shālan Empire, like Masridān or Lunāb farther east.
“And even if Qazāl isn’t where you came from, you’re closer to home than you’ve ever been, right?” More nods.
“You’re feeling frustrated and confused. I was, too. The things that are confusing you aren’t real, though. If you’re torn between your post and some idealized past, stop and think a minute.” Touraine jerked her thumb toward the street beyond the guardhouse wall, where Philippe and Cézanne kept watch. “The people you imagine welcoming you? That’s them.”
Thierry shifted his shoulders, glancing at Tibeau, as if for a cue. Thierry was Qazāli, too—she remembered that much.
It had been so long since any of them had talked about where they were from that Touraine wasn’t even sure whom she should keep the closest eye on. In Balladaire, she had been on the outside of the warm circles when the older children talked about home and how they’d go back one day and what they missed most. If the instructors heard them talking about Qazāl or the other colonies, they were beaten, and the memory-spinning grew more and more hushed until the only thing left was silence around all they’d left behind.
“I know some of you think this is our chance.” Touraine avoided glaring at Tibeau like she wanted to and leveled her gaze at each soldier. “And it is.” A shock rippled around the room, and she put her hands up. “Not to leave. To rise. I’ve spoken to Cantic. About a promotion. No more Rogan.” She held her hands out to encompass the guardhouse. “This building would be ours. I’ve even been invited to a dinner with the governor-general tonight. I’ll be representing our interests.”
Everyone sat upright or held their drinks or cards still in shock. Touraine nodded hopefully.
“So while we wait, we watch our people get crushed under Balladairan boots?” Tibeau said softly. “Until we get to do it ourselves.”
Sky-falling fuck.
She matched his softness, her voice carrying through the quiet room. “The best way to help them is to show them what they gain if they stop fighting.”
“We shouldn’t have to remind you what happens if you desert.” Pruett’s voice was sharp. “Remember Mallorie.”
Everyone looked down at their boots or their drinks at that. Better for them not to delude themselves. Aimée’s amusement disappeared as she nodded thoughtfully.
Touraine felt a stab of jealousy. Her soldiers were split on two sides, to stay or to go, but they weren’t looking to her for guidance. Even though she was their lieutenant, they respected Tibeau and Pruett. But Touraine knew Balladaire. She knew its systems, and she knew how to be what it needed.
“It’ll take getting used to,” Touraine said finally. “I’m not asking anyone to be perfect. Rest up tonight.”
A chorus of “Yes, sirs” followed her out.
“Good luck,” Pruett murmured, squeezing Touraine’s forearm.
On reflex, Touraine winced at the touch. The cut she’d gotten this morning had been clean and shallow, but long enough to feel inconvenient whenever she flexed her skin tight. It hadn’t even bled through the last bandage she’d put on, so she hadn’t bothered to change it when she bathed. Odd thing was, though, it didn’t hurt at all when Pruett grabbed it.
Though Touraine didn’t think Cantic the type to pull a prank, she was still surprised to see the one-horse carriage waiting for her outside the guardhouse in the early twilight. The Balladairan driver just nodded for her to get in the cab. She’d barely closed the door before he set the horse off, and she jostled on the hard seat. A rough start.
Touraine tried not to think about what her soldiers were saying about her in the guardhouse. She had to give them space to work out their feelings without her oversight, and trust Pruett to report any changes in the temperature.
Instead, she turned her thoughts forward. She was exhausted. She’d gone from the ship, to the hanging, to Cantic, to her soldiers’ teetering loyalties, and now to this. Excitement kept her alert. Maybe Pruett was right to be nervous, but Touraine had a good feeling.
Tonight would change everything. She was going to become someone.
Touraine remembered her arm as the carriage trundled through the Quartier to the governor’s home. In the darkness of the cab, she pulled her left arm out of its sleeve. Blood hadn’t seeped through the bandage. Gingerly, she tugged it off.
Before panic could seize her, the carriage stopped.
“Shit.” Touraine stuffed her arm back in her coat and hid the bandage in her pocket just as a footman opened the door. She tried to pull herself together. If she fucked up this chance to catch the Balladairans’ attention, she wouldn’t get another one.
But even as the footman—a footman!—led her from the carriage to the governor’s house, the back of her mind spun in a panic over this new secret.
There’d been nothing but a thin line of blood on the wrap, and a thin silver scar across her skin.
It had already healed.
CHAPTER 3
THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL
Princess Luca! It is my absolute pleasure to welcome you to my home and to Qazāl.”
At the sound of her name, Luca Ancier startled in her carriage. The door had been thrown open, and a pale, round Balladairan woman with gray-streaked chestnut hair grinned at her from the ground. Luca had arrived, then, at Lord Governor Cheminade’s home.
It was a short trip from Luca’s town house in the Balladairan Quartier to the governor-general’s, but it felt even shorter.
Luca had been thinking of the hanging. How hot the sun had been. How the sky had darkened in the distance as clouds of sand thre
atened to engulf the city. How the old man had cried out at the last and the young woman had twitched for long seconds after—Luca didn’t know how long, because she hadn’t the stomach to watch.
Like the heat, the old man’s voice had followed her into her own town house and up to her study as she unpacked her books and placed them on the empty shelves that were waiting for her.
They were the rebels she had come to stop. Them, and men and women like them, perhaps hidden in the crowd. And when she stopped the rebellion and eased the unrest in the colony’s capital city, she could show her uncle that she had the skill to rule. She would claim the throne that was her right.
The governor-general herself handed Luca down from the carriage. Luca saw the woman glance at her leg, but it seemed less boorish curiosity and more careful concern. Luca warmed slightly toward the woman.
When Luca had both feet and her cane on sturdy ground, Lord Governor Cheminade bowed deeply. “Your Highness. It is a pleasure to meet you. Your father always spoke proudly of you when you were a child. You’ve grown into a striking young woman. My household is at your service, as am I.”
At first, Luca was put off by the effusiveness, preparing to fend off the first sycophant. At the mention of her father, she checked the impulse. Of course Cheminade would have known her father. She’d been the governor-general of the Shālan colonies for almost fifty years, as long as Balladaire had called the broken Shālan Empire her colonies. Cheminade would have spoken to her father regularly, surely. Something like jealousy bred with hopeful longing in her chest.
Most importantly, that might make Cheminade an ally as Luca worked to challenge her uncle Nicolas for her throne. First, however, she would calm the unrest in the colony.
“Thank you, Lord Governor. It’s likewise a pleasure.” Luca bowed her head in return.
The governor’s smile reached into full cheeks, plump and still touched pink by the sun. Her eyes crinkled with pleasure. “Come, come. You must be famished. I know a thing or two about ship food. That’s why I haven’t gone back home all these years.” She wrinkled her nose distastefully, then laughed.
