by C. L. Clark
Touraine was the first to recover. Without thought, she shoved the rebel toward the rail. Sharp pain, dangerous pain in her ribs where her first captor had kicked her.
Touraine registered the wet suck of the bayonet as it lurched from Émeline’s body, and the other woman’s yelp of pain and surprise. Then the snap of the railing. It gave almost instantly under the rebel’s momentum. Finally, the sick thud as the rebel hit the stone floor below.
“Sky-falling fuck.”
Though Touraine’s brain hadn’t caught up, her body knew the motions. She ripped off her coat and pressed it against Émeline’s wound.
“ Émeline?” Touraine murmured. “ Émeline, you’re all right. I’ve got you.” Even though a voice in her head whispered You aren’t safe here over and over.
Touraine’s heart buzzed in her chest as she did the sums. It wasn’t safe for them to stay, to get a medic to Émeline here, but running away would only run her closer to death. Émeline’s blood smelled earthy and metallic—shit was mixing with her blood. The bastard rebel had gotten her in the bowels.
They were saved by the last person Touraine wanted to see as she tried to press Émeline’s guts whole. Tibeau stormed up the stairs, holding his rifle across his chest as he scanned for fallen Sands. He saw them.
“Tour, you bastard.” In an instant, he scooped Émeline into his arms, cradled against his chest. “We have to get her help,” he growled, setting off at a lope.
“Beau, if we move her—”
Touraine let her protests drop. Here or there, now or later. What did it matter? Grief settled over her. They were too used to hope’s quick flicker to spare the words for arguments or questions when each second could mean the difference between life and death, but Touraine still had one, more important than everything—
“Where’s Pru?”
“Held sniper. She cleared them, so I sent her back.”
“Not clear enough, Beau,” she growled back.
Tibeau looked stricken, and Touraine wished she’d kept her mouth shut. He’d never forgive himself for this. She wouldn’t forgive herself, either.
The night went quiet except for their desperate huffing breaths as she followed him back to rue de la Petière.
Émeline was dead before they reached the guardhouse. Tibeau had run silently with her in his arms, but Touraine knew they’d shared at least some of the same thoughts.
Don’t die. Of course she’ll die. Please don’t die. This is my fault. Fuck the rebels. Fuck Balladaire. Fuck me. Please don’t die.
It was hopeless, as she’d known it would be. Émeline and Thierry lay in the courtyard on blankets someone had sacrificed for their bodies. She didn’t even know when or how Thierry had fallen.
Touraine let the cold night air cool her flushed body. Her jacket was stiff and stinking with blood and waste. She balled the collar into her fist and let the hem drag through the dirt. Her hands were bloody to the wrists. She waited for everyone to bring in a cup of beer from the Sands’ common room. (Had they been there all together just a day or two ago?) Tibeau looked to the corners of the courtyard, avoiding everyone’s eyes, but especially hers. Pruett stood next to him, a quiet hand on his elbow.
The night had turned cold, but some soldiers stood with their coats unbuttoned, pale undershirts spotted with sweat. Some still had them buttoned to the throat.
Touraine took her usual place at the feet of the dead, and the rest of her squad circled off her. She hated this part of battle, of course. No one but a sadist could like this. Still, it reminded her why she did fight. As long as the Sands went into battle, she would go beside them.
She imagined that some of her soldiers prayed, forbidden as it was. Touraine didn’t, but she had an old Qazāli song she remembered, and the hum of it in her throat. As she stared at the bloody hole in Émeline’s stomach, Touraine thought about her promotion. They’d died coming after her. Being their captain wouldn’t stop moments like this.
A jostling at the guardhouse entrance—tipsy carousing, a bawdy joke—interrupted the vigil. Captain Rogan and a couple of other off-duty captains swaggered into the courtyard. Rogan might even have been sober. He stopped at the edge of the circle. Stared right at her.
“Lieutenant!” Rogan’s voice was bright and cheery. “So glad to see you’ve been retrieved.”
Touraine let him take in the scene behind her, the circle of friends around their fallen.
He tsked. “Sacrifices must be made. A pity.”
“Will they be burned, Captain?”
Rogan flicked his eyes to the bodies, lips pursed in false concern. “I don’t think General Cantic will spend the little wood we have. You’ll have to do with a field burial, I’m afraid.”
Cantic wouldn’t waste the wood on a couple of Sands is what he really meant. Never mind that they could fire horseshit to burn the bodies. Never mind that the desert was dry and packed so dense that a shovel would bounce back up.
Rogan went to his rooms, his friends chortling behind him like geese. She wanted to scream at him, but she bit her tongue on the words, blinked away the burning fury in her eyes, and took a deep, shuddering breath.
A finer person, like Tibeau, would feel some pure selfless grief. Or like Pruett, a tender empathy for the grieving. She would know how to comfort them. Touraine felt only rage.
As long as Rogan was in charge, this was their lot. Nothing but humiliation. Tibeau’s dreams of revolt were—the product of a weak mind? Uncivilized thinking? She couldn’t bring herself to blame him, but the dreams were flimsy, in any case. The Sands, the Qazāli, wouldn’t win that battle, and no one in their right mind chose starvation over food and pay. The problem here was Rogan and his ilk, not Balladaire.
And yet a small voice said at the back of her mind, if the Sands didn’t have to be soldiers at all, they wouldn’t have to die. If only they were given the choice.
Touraine raised her cup to push the thoughts away, and the other Sands followed suit. They drank as one.
Then, as if a string knotting them together had been cut loose, the Sands went their own ways, to bunks or the small infirmary. Tibeau and a few others wrapped the bodies to ready them for transport to the compound. Noé, a small man with a handsome voice, sang a sad Balladairan song they all knew as they worked.
“As it whistles through the mountains, as it tickles blades of grass, as it pulls me from my bed, again, the wind, it cries your name.”
Everyone found their own dark corners to mourn in. Someone’s arms, the bottom of a cup. Touraine decided on her bunk. She trudged up the stairs alone and slammed the door shut behind her—tried to. It caught on Pruett’s propped boot.
“Hiding from something?” Pruett cocked her head and an eyebrow. She held two cups of beer. She didn’t show any signs of wear from the night’s fighting. That, at least, was a relief. She stepped inside, set the cups down on the one small table, which held a lamp. She lit the lamp before closing the door.
“Hiding? Who? Me?” Touraine limped to her bed and eased herself down with the wall’s help.
“You need the infirmary, Tour. Don’t be stupid.”
“Nope. The infirmary needs us. Without us, the medics would be out a job.”
Pruett rolled her eyes and shoved one of the cups at Touraine.
“You know I hate drinking. I’m already fucked enough as it is.” Just that many words left her wanting breath. Maybe the rib was more than fractured.
“Thought you’d make an exception tonight. You were blasted for three straight days after we got you back from the Taargens.”
“Exactly.”
Still, Touraine swallowed against dryness, weighing the potential dizzy sleep against the last—few?—days. She took the cup, and Pruett sat down on the bed beside her.
“You gonna tell me what happened?”
“She got caught by a bayonet. I flipped the bearfucker over the railing, and he cracked like a melon. How did you find me?”
“We got a tip. Not all of
the Qazāli like the rebels. Might have exchanged some money, too.” Pruett put a hand on Touraine’s lower back. It was warm. “Where did you go, Tour?”
“I didn’t go anywhere.” Touraine drank deeply. The beer was better than she remembered.
“Why’d you leave? Did you… mean to leave? Did Cantic say you wouldn’t get a promotion?”
“No. She said she could see me as captain one day.” That wasn’t exactly what Cantic had said, but she forced more confidence into her voice. “Head of a whole sky-falling company. Sky above, I ate with the fucking princess.”
Pruett slouched, elbows on her knees. “What’s wrong, then? Did they do something to you?” Pruett sounded guilty, as if she were the one who had done something wrong.
“Am I on trial?” Touraine snapped.
Pruett flinched. Touraine dropped her head against the wall, letting it loll, and caught the shape of the tapestry hanging behind her. A rug with a thick layer of dust covering a swirled pattern, just like in the rebels’ room.
After a silence that stretched too long, Pruett spoke in the barest whisper. “The others are worried about you.”
Touraine drained her cup, then held her hand out for the other. She emptied it in one go. Filling her stomach felt good. She only just realized how hungry she was. How hungry she would be in the morning.
“I could use a few more of those,” she said.
Pruett stared at her in silence for one long breath, then stood. “I’ll be back.”
She returned with a tray of cups. “I had to fight for these. We should get you rinsed up first.”
Pruett helped Touraine pull off her undershirt. She raked her eyes up and down Touraine’s torso, the black and blue of it. Pruett’s hand hovered over the scabbing cut the Brigāni had given her.
“Sky above, Touraine. Sky-falling fuck—”
Touraine gave her a crooked, tired smile and tried not to slump back into the wall. Part of her wanted to point out her new scar, to ask her about it. But the urge to sleep was sudden and real, as real as wanting to keep the lamp up high, to keep looking at Pruett.
So she drank while Pruett wiped down her back and chest, going carefully over the cuts, murmuring and soothing, until Touraine didn’t feel the ropes around her wrists anymore.
She startled from her doze, jumping out of the bed, sloshing beer over the bedclothes, over her trousers. The room spun, out of focus, in focus, out again. A shadowed figure in the corner, that woman with her sky-falling boots—Touraine lurched.
Pruett leapt to her, snatching the cup away with one hand and holding her close with the other arm. “Shh, shh. Tour? Stay here, okay? Here. I’ve been there. You don’t have to go back today. Stay here.”
She kissed Touraine’s temple, her eyebrows, her cheekbones, finally her lips. Then she led Touraine back to her bed and propped her up with pillows. She settled on the narrow cot beside her like a spoon.
“They don’t trust me like they trust you.” The words spun out of Touraine like the room spun. The rug on the wall spun, too. She turned away. “They listen to me because I’m your and Tibeau’s friend.”
Pruett settled against her. “That’s not true. We’re not that fickle. You get shit done like he and I don’t. You’re balanced.”
“I’m not clever enough. Not brave enough, not passionate for the right—”
“You keep a cool head, Tour. That’s what we need. Maybe not all the time, but that’s okay.” She rubbed Touraine’s back in broad circles. “You think before you act. More than Tibeau, anyway. And I’d probably never act for thinking if I had my way. Me and him both need you. The Sands need you. The Balladairans listen to you. That’s why you’re lieutenant. That’s why you’ll make captain.” She punctuated each sentence with a gentle kiss on Touraine’s shoulder, but the sensation was distant, and exhaustion pulled Touraine toward darkness.
A pounding on the door yanked Touraine from sleep. The stabbing in her ribs clenched her up.
“Sky above and earth below,” she groaned. Fully conscious, she registered pain everywhere, as if she’d been beaten in the training yard a week straight.
Pruett startled awake beside her. She jumped back into her trousers.
The banging came again. “Lieutenant Touraine, open this door immediately.”
Rogan’s sharp accent stopped them cold, Touraine with an arm in her sleeve, Pruett with her hands on her trouser buttons.
Justice had always been a tricky thing with the Sands, even when they were innocent. It was hard to meet the fear in Pruett’s eyes. Touraine cleared her throat and gave her the steadiest smile she could. Even though standing straight made her chest ache, and her brain felt too big for her skull.
“It’ll be all right,” Touraine promised. She was glad Pruett let her keep the lie.
She swung the door open. The morning was beautiful. Touraine could tell from the clear sunlight shining into the courtyard and into her room. It lit up the tapestry, a dark burgundy under the gray dust. The three cots, two pushed together, one untouched. The sun sparkled on Rogan’s sleek dark hair as he grinned, wrist irons in his hands.
“Lieutenant Touraine, you’re under arrest for sedition and the murder of a Balladairan soldier.”
CHAPTER 7
THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL, AGAIN
The morning after her visit to the bookshop, Luca didn’t have time to finish composing her request for Nasir to come work for her. Instead, she was woken from a deep, self-satisfied sleep by an urgent knock.
“Luca.” Gil stepped inside and closed the door. “The general’s come. It’s an emergency.”
That snapped Luca awake. “The city.” She pointed for a pair of trousers—Gil shook his head. No time even to dress? Luca splashed her face with water and then wrapped herself in her evening robe, a voluminous thing of dark silk embroidered with pale roses.
General Cantic stood when Luca entered the sitting room. She held her tricorne in one hand against her chest. She was elegant in her well-tailored black uniform, gold sleeve gleaming in the morning light. Black boots polished to a high sheen rose to her knees. She must have been sweltering, but she didn’t show it.
“Lord Governor Cheminade is dead, Your Highness.”
Luca stopped midstride. Her hand jumped to her throat in surprise. “Killed?”
Cantic frowned sharply and shook her head like a displeased horse. “We aren’t sure. She was found in the streets of the Old Medina. There were no visible marks of struggle or murder.” But there was a but, and Cantic hadn’t let go of it. She was frustrated over the failure of her people’s examination, Luca could see.
Luca tried to placate the gaping ache she felt with logic. Otherwise, the loss of her first true ally felt too large to grasp. “She wasn’t young. It’s possible she suffered an attack of the heart, isn’t it?”
As shock relinquished her limbs, Luca made her way to her own chair near the window. She gestured to the servant standing at the edge of the room. “General. Will you have a drink?”
“Thank you, no, Your Highness.” Cantic didn’t even take her seat. She stood with her arms behind her back. “I have other business to attend to this morning. I just wanted to give you the news and—”
The general began to steeple her fingers to pursed lips and then aborted the gesture, gripping her hat instead. She looked uncertain. The general was not a woman to look uncertain.
“We’ll need to replace her immediately, Your Highness. The city is too strategically important to be without a governor, and she was also responsible for managing the lieutenant governors in the other provinces of Qazāl. There’s correspondence to monitor, complaints from citizens to address regarding tariffs…” Cantic’s voice rose in frustration before she controlled herself again.
“You won’t take the seat yourself? You’re the highest-ranking official here—”
The general bent her neck as if to stretch out tightness. She cleared her throat. “No, Your Highness. I’m not.”
Ah. No,
indeed, she wasn’t.
“Anylight, only despots put cities under martial law,” the general added.
“So you want me to take the position.”
“Only as a stand-in, Your Highness. Temporarily until we find someone suitable. I wouldn’t presume to give you a job, of course. Only to let you know that there is a vacancy that must be filled as soon as possible.”
Luca looked out the window, picturing the city beyond, full of people pressing and pressing against each other in the Old Medina and avoiding each other in the New Medina. She thought of Cheminade’s wink and the tender hand on her husband’s. An ache spread through her chest and made her eyes sting. She blinked it all away.
She said, “If I take on Cheminade’s duties—the governor-general reports directly to the metropole. I am the metropole.”
“With the duke regent, of course.”
Luca ignored that. As governor-general, there would be no middle official to wrangle. She could change policies in Qazāl herself, without weighing them over meeting after meeting. She would rule this city, the nation, every colony in the region, and the success would be hers. It would show her uncle and the people that she was formidable and sensible. A worthy ruler. The rebellion would be hers to end.
Any failure would be hers, too. No one to hide behind, to blame decisions on, except, perhaps, for Cantic.
“As regent, he only wants to maintain King Roland’s empire, Your Highness. He won’t jeopardize it.”
Luca had no response for this. Her uncle had come up with the Droitist theories, ostensibly, yes, to integrate the colonies into the empire. His attitude and the theory itself, meant to curtail children with pain and rigid rules, would never achieve it, she was sure. Even Cantic said she disapproved of the Droitist methods. She sipped the coffee that the servant brought her, then twisted the cup in her hand.
Cantic dropped her hands to her sides and set her shoulders. “Will you accept her duties, Your Highness?”
Luca gave one slow nod. “I will.”
