by C. L. Clark
Dizzying anxiety seized in Touraine’s chest, competing with the fog in her mind. She stepped into a narrow lane to lean against a wall. Just to have something at her back until this all passed. Just to stop spinning. She hunkered down on her heels, pressed her palms into her eyes, and tried to pull herself into the moment with the techniques the instructors had taught her.
What could she see? Dirt, yellow brown like everything else here. Her boots, worn, polished leather, well trusted. The clay wall of the building opposite her, just two paces away. Another cart woman, dark skinned with braids, out on the street, pushing whatever remained of the day’s wares. But Touraine’s vision blurred and her eyes crossed.
She could hear the wheels squeaking away. They sounded familiar, as if the sound of cart wheels in the city streets were a constant. The night sounds of a city, so loud but so easily lost to the background, like the buzz of insects. She’d never lived in a city. Then the buzz faded, as if her ears had been stuffed with wax. Then her blurry vision went dark.
Touraine woke on her stomach, ankles tied to wrists behind her. The ropes dug into her flesh, and she tried to stay as still as possible. A muscle cramped along her lower back. With her face pressed into the floor, every breath tasted like dirt. Sand gritted in her teeth.
Sky above and earth below. Where was she? Other than fucked. The last thing she remembered was collapsing in a heap against the wall, her head too fuzzed to think straight. She hadn’t been that drunk.
She rocked, trying to tilt onto her side, but the ropes that bound her were held up by something else. All she got for the effort was a wrenched shoulder.
“How are we feeling?” A woman’s voice? Speaking accented Balladairan.
Touraine tried not to give away her surprise, but her heart beat faster. “Good,” she grunted in Shālan. It was one of a handful of words she remembered from Tibeau.
The stranger laughed, harsh and barking. “Didn’t hear that,” she said. Then she repeated the word, smoothing out Touraine’s rough pronunciation. Her boot pulled back in slow motion, and Touraine braced herself. When she kicked Touraine in the stomach, Touraine groaned through her teeth. Curled in on herself by reflex, only to strain her shoulders in their sockets.
“All right, Balladairan dog.” The woman crouched in front of Touraine. She wore dark trousers tucked into heavy boots, and one of those Qazāli vests, with the hood up and the dark veil pulled over her nose and mouth. Lantern light reflected on dark, dark brown eyes shaded by angry eyebrows and outlined in crow’s-feet.
She’d been taken captive by rebels. She was double fucked.
“We don’t really want to hurt you,” the woman said, giving no sign that this was true. “We should be on the same side. You and the other dogs—you’re slaves, too.”
Touraine’s laugh scraped her throat. “You’re sky-falling crazy.”
The Balladairans could—would—flay them all alive. Or whip them just as near. It baffled her, how stupid the rebels were about the balance of power: the Qazāli had nothing. Balladaire had numbers, equipment, supplies—they were winning, had been winning for decades. Some of the Sands might miss their families, their pasts, but it would be better to stay on the Balladairan side of the conflict. She’d kept that in the back of her head even as she’d wanted to strangle Rogan in the past.
“You want food, you talk to me. Let’s start small—where are your guns?”
“Can’t talk,” Touraine whispered into the dirt.
The next kick to her side cracked something. Sky above, she was going to look like a lavender field the next time she took her clothes off.
When she caught her breath again, she said, “We don’t have guns. You like my baton? You can have it. We keep them on our belts.” The familiar rod dug into her hip. It was almost a relief when the woman tilted Touraine over casually and unhooked the baton from her belt. Almost.
The woman flipped it through the air to catch it several times, as if she already knew its weight intimately.
“You’re soldiers without guns?” she asked.
Touraine imagined the disdain and suspicion on the woman’s face. It probably matched hers when she learned she wouldn’t have a gun.
“Ridiculous, I know.” Years of training, to find out the gun was hers only before an engagement or in active war, to be returned immediately after. Any soldiers who refused were to be shot.
“I’m not an idiot. Where are your guns? Or tell me how your shipments come in. Or your guard rotations.” The boot swung back again.
“I’m not lying!” Touraine said harshly, watching the boot. The kick wouldn’t break her mind, but it could break something else, and sky above, she hurt. She couldn’t help thinking about the cut on her arm, which now seemed like the one place she didn’t hurt. “I’m a Sand. They don’t tell us shit.”
“So tell me what they do tell you,” the woman hissed. Her dark eyes were almost black in the dim room.
“Fine.” Touraine relaxed a hair. “I set guard ro—”
The final kick ripped a scream out of her, and it broke down into a dry sob.
Sharp words outside the door in Shālan made the woman growl, irked. She stalked out.
A thick, metallic paste of blood and dirt coated Touraine’s tongue.
The door opened again. She had a brief glimpse of light from the courtyard before a shadow blocked it out.
“Let me help you.” A new, calmer voice came from behind her in crisp Balladairan. It sounded like her tutors in Balladaire and was a pleasant change from the bitch with the boots and the growl.
The relief, however, was short lived.
The world lurched as she laid Touraine on her side. She groaned gratefully at the sudden lack of tension. This captor wore a scarf that covered all but her golden eyes, which dazzled in the lamplight, emphasized by dark kohl.
Touraine’s breath stopped in her chest. A Brigāni. The woman’s long dark robe puddled around the floor as she knelt next to Touraine. According to the Tailleurist history books, the Brigāni were the cannibal Shālan witches from Briga, the country across the river from Qazāl. They drank their enemies’ blood to kill armies, ate their hearts to destroy cities. According to the history books, they had also died out.
“Are you thirsty?”
Just the word thirsty dried up what little moisture Touraine had left. She shook her head.
“You’re lying. I’ll drink first.” She drank from a clay cup and then held it to Touraine’s mouth. Most of the water spilled across her lips and onto the ground, but what she tasted was delicious.
The room was small and bare, with only one lamp. The Brigāni placed a cushion in front of Touraine and sat on it, watching her. Like the Tailleurist tutors, again, who’d watched the Sands like they were fascinating animals.
“What?” Touraine’s voice was a hoarse and dusty thing.
“Why are you really here?”
“You put me here.”
“You’re the highest-ranking soldier of the Balladairan Colonial. They made you an officer. Technically, you’re a gold stripe.” She scanned Touraine over, from the bristles on her scalp to her bound fists and worn boots. The slang sounded strange on her tongue. “Gold stripe” was the nickname for Balladairan officers—or really, anyone with government favor—so called because of the gold on their collars or sleeves. By contrast, grunts were called blackcoats. The Sands were never called blackcoats, even though their coats were just as dark. They were something apart.
“Untie me. I’ll talk.”
“No. It was easy to carry you when you were unconscious. I am not particularly interested in trying under fairer circumstances.”
Touraine frowned. Maybe the fog in her mind hadn’t been natural. The headache at the back of her skull was definitely not like any hangover she’d had. That would mean she had been drugged, though, and the throbbing pain in her head barely left room for the requisite panic, let alone the puzzle.
“How long have I been here?”
The Brigā
ni shrugged.
The Sands would have noticed that she hadn’t come back from dinner, and Rogan, too. He’d report it to Cantic giddily. How many of them would think she deserted? Would they look for her?
“Are you going to eat me?” Touraine masked the very real fear churning in her stomach with a taunting lilt. The Brigāni legends were only legends. None of the Sands had ever met one, but they had all heard scare stories from their parents—if they had parents.
The other woman rolled her eyes. “We’d actually prefer not to hurt any of the dāyiein. We could be mutually beneficial to each other.”
Touraine snorted, and the sharp breath caught on a probably broken rib. “Not feeling very benefited. What’s a dayeen?” She tried to repeat the word, but it didn’t fit right in her throat.
“The Lost Ones. We can… give you a place. Reunite you with family, if they live.”
It echoed Cheminade’s comment at the dinner so closely that it sent a shiver up Touraine’s spine.
“Half of us aren’t even Qazāli.”
“You are.”
That drew Touraine up short. The Brigāni rested her hands in her lap in a strange palm-up gesture.
“I also hanged five of your people,” Touraine said. “This isn’t personal.”
The lie sounded hollow even to her own ears.
“It’s always personal.” A grief-stricken grimace passed over the woman’s face. “They’re using you. Like they used you in their latest Taargen war.”
Touraine didn’t answer. The Sands had started fighting for Balladaire in earnest during the second Taargen war. Five years ago, now. They were always the first to fight and the last to get relief. Of a thousand kids taken, fewer than half of them survived, a brigade winnowed down to a few companies. They’d been trained their whole lives for it. Almost a year and a half had passed since Rogan read the official cease-fire agreement to Touraine’s company. The one time she hadn’t wanted to shoot him.
“Balladaire and Taargen haven’t been on good terms since the Balladairans started their purges to ‘civilize’ anyone who believes in a god. Balladaire is picking fights and throwing you in the middle.”
Touraine still didn’t answer. She remembered a bitter cold night following a frigid day. Blood practically congealing on the dead before they hit the ground. She opened her eyes wide against the memory, trying to fill her mind with the Brigāni, with the small room.
The Shālans are just as uncivilized.
“I’ve heard the Taargens eat their victims, too,” the Brigāni said. A knife appeared in her hand, and she came closer.
The Taargen fire. Her captured soldiers being pulled to it one by one.
“No,” Touraine finally choked out.
Touraine tried to catalog her surroundings again. Dirt. The Brigāni’s robe. The knife. The walls—not things to make the growing fear ebb.
“Well. Rumors must come from somewhere.” The Brigāni’s voice was darkly ironic. Then it softened. “How many soldiers did you lose?”
“Enough.”
The Brigāni tilted her head.
The day Touraine was captured, seventy-six soldiers died. Fifty-eight on the field. The rest of wounds and frostbite. They’d been lucky it was only a small group of the bearfuckers. Just over two years ago, now. They’d promoted her after that battle.
“Too many died in a war that’s not theirs.”
“Your rebellion would be another one.”
“You’ll have to fight for one side or the other. Why not fight for the side that gives you freedom?”
“Because I can fight for the side that’s winning.”
“Winning isn’t everything. It’s how you win that matters most.” She held Touraine’s gaze before looking distantly into a corner. When she spoke again, her voice cracked before steadying.
“Once upon a time, a young Brigāni girl stood poised to be the greatest healing priestess of all the tribes, probably in the whole Shālan Empire. A little vanity goes a long way, and she left her tribe to study at the Grand Temple in Qazāl across the river.” She trailed her knife along Touraine’s shirt, drawing a path from Touraine’s neck to her collarbone.
“She enjoyed her studies, so much so that she avoided going home until caravan after caravan brought rumors—rumors that an army from the north was traveling the Holy Sea and the Brigāni were in its path. Rumors that a young Balladairan captain was making a bloody name for herself. Perhaps you know her?” She fixed Touraine’s eyes with her own, the gold unnerving as she pressed the point of the knife just deep enough to draw blood.
“I don’t know—” Touraine started through gritted teeth, but the woman spoke over her.
“So a foolish youth buys a camel and catches the first ferry to southern Briga to put her mind at ease. She finds embers and char when she arrives.
“How does she know this is her family? The Brigāni are nomads now—it could have been anyone. However, there are distinguishing factors. A father’s belt buckle. A mother’s bangles melted into each other nearby. A sister’s jeweled knife. Frankincense mingling with smoke.”
The silence when she finished pressed on Touraine’s ears like the knife pressed on her chest, tearing through her shirt. A bloom of red spread across the cloth. She clenched her jaw until her teeth hurt.
The deep lines between the stranger’s eyes deepened. “Do you want to ally yourself with people who murder indiscriminately? Or will you help me stop the Blood General?”
The Blood General. Another name for Cantic, fuel for darker rumors. After the statesmen in Masridān surrendered, she invited them to a party to cement the alliance and murdered them all. No, even worse, she drowned their children in the city baths when they refused her terms. No, it was like this—on and on, but Touraine never believed the rumors, because she knew who they came from. The Sands could get creative about the instructors they didn’t like.
“Tell me about her,” the Brigāni said.
It wasn’t the knife that made Touraine tremble. She’d been cut before, and worse. Strips of skin gone with a bad whipping. Sky above, she’d never forgive herself if she pissed her trousers now. You are not weak, she chanted in her mind. You are not uncivilized. No superstition can harm you. But the woman had said healing priestess. Touraine’s mind flicked back to the new scar on her arm, and she pulled it away just as fast.
The Brigāni took the blade back and stared at the line of Touraine’s blood sliding down the knife. She licked her lips. Skimmed the blood off the knife with her thumb and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. What could she do with that blood? Control her, like the Taargens, turn her into a beast? She looked away, beyond the Brigāni. Fixed her eyes on the swirls of an old tapestry on the wall, pale with dust. Anything to get away.
“I can’t. I don’t know anything about her—none of us do.” Touraine’s voice wavered. “That’s not how this military works. A private is a private, and the Sands are even lower than that.”
“A pity. Well, if you remember anything useful, let me know. I’ll be back soon, after I’ve made things ready for you.”
She stood and rolled Touraine back onto her belly. Her muscles cramped immediately. The lamplight vanished, and her soft boots padded away.
CHAPTER 5
THE FIRST BROADSIDE
The next day, Luca disregarded Cantic’s “suggestions” and went on her first proper visit to El-Wast, to the largest bookshop in the city, run by a Balladairan man with a squint and a shining bald head. She had hoped to go with Cheminade, but the governor-general was busy with the fallout from the hanging.
She had woken this morning to a small unmarked parcel. It was a book about Shālan history. There was no name card or note, though it seemed like the sort of gift Cheminade might give. But why wouldn’t the governor leave a note?
The text was simple, but not in a foppish way. More like it was an introduction to a work that could be longer with more research. She didn’t recognize the author, whose name was inscribed
only as PSLR. It included an intriguing discussion of a Shālan text about the last emperor of the Shālan Empire, before it shuddered under its first blow five hundred years ago—The Last Emperor by bn Zahel. The author had never read this elusive book, or even seen it, but said the last emperor was rumored to be a sorcerer and that it was sorcery alone that allowed her to so devastate Balladaire’s coastal cities.
Luca tried to tell herself that her research itself wouldn’t save or ruin her attempts in Qazāl. In the back of her mind, however, she thought about how easy it would be to rule Balladaire if she had magic on her side. If magic actually existed. How people would look at her if she managed what her father could not.
And if she failed? How would people look at her then? If they thought she was chasing down gods to worship, as uncivilized as the colonials?
She wasn’t doing that, though. She had no interest in savage gods or prayers. She just wanted to learn magic. To see its proof, to use it for Balladaire. No one could fault that. They were two very different things. Magic was a tool, perhaps even a weapon. Religion was folly dressed as hope.
Luca was skimming the shelves when she heard women tittering noisily near the door. She huffed loudly and did her best to shut them out, but the shop was small. They kept on. She huffed again, louder.
Her newest guard, Lanquette, shifted uncomfortably on his feet. Luca shot him an annoyed look, then caught the women’s conversation.
“She looks exactly like that, leg and all. I saw her at the hanging. I told you, I was there.”
“She can’t possibly be that—why, she looks like—have you seen those tall, spotted horses at my mother’s menagerie back home?”
“Those giant, skinny things? A… zeeraf?”
Luca’s face burned as she stepped out from the shelves and approached the entrance. The two young women stood outside, parasols raised against the sun, staring at something on the wall of the building. One had dark hair, the other fair, both in a braid that coiled about the head in the style of the colonial nobility—supposedly elegant yet cool. Luca wore her hair in its usual bun, pale wisps tucked behind her ear.
