by C. L. Clark
It was home. And she was drifting farther and farther away from it.
Deep down, maybe she’d thought that her promotion would show the other Sands that it really was best to stay with Balladaire. That there was fairness. That loyalty really would be rewarded and there was logic to the world.
“Argh!” She slapped the wall in a burst, and the sting echoed up her forearm.
“Said shut your fucking mouth, didn’t I? Or I’ll come shut it for you!”
If Cantic found her guilty and executed her, she’d prove Touraine wrong. And why should the Sands stay then?
CHAPTER 9
THE COURT-MARTIAL
Two days later, or maybe three, or maybe just one, things got worse.
The jailer was speaking to someone, but she couldn’t make out specific words. Only a familiar honking bray. Touraine recoiled from the bars, like she could hide somewhere in the cramped cell.
“You’re looking well, Lieutenant Touraine.” Rogan raked Touraine up and down with his eyes. He turned to the jailer with a smirk. “Did you manage to have any fun before the trial?”
Touraine made out the disgust on the jailer’s face in the light of his lantern. The man had the single wheat stalk of a sergeant pinned to each side of his collar.
“Best not to mix with the like, Captain,” he said.
Touraine was offended and comforted at the same time. Without another look at her, the jailer unlocked her door and cuffed her wrists behind her back. The skin was healing slowly from the rebels’ ropes, thanks to the medic’s ointments and quiet tsks.
Rogan led Touraine out of the jail, his fingers tight on her arm.
The sky was blindingly bright with late-morning blue; the sun warmed her immediately. Soldiers and aides and all the others who made an army run smooth marched or scurried through the compound, from barracks to mess hall, from sick bay to barracks, from training yard to sick bay. They barked orders that would be followed half-heartedly, delivered bad news, practiced drills they should have known better. It looked different here in Qazāl, all bare sandstone and clay, dirt and sand, but this was the world that made sense to her. She knew her place in it.
But it came with problems she couldn’t escape on her own. When she glanced sideways at Rogan, his expression was professional, a consummate soldier following orders. His words, however, were his own.
“I haven’t forgotten what I owe you,” he said.
They fell in smooth step together, as soldiers do. That alone was intimate enough to make her stomach churn.
“Your trial will not go well. The general will hear your testimony, and she’ll be gravely disappointed. She’ll want to believe you. Until I testify. And when the court finds you guilty, I’ll pay you a special visit in your cell. I’m sure the jailer will turn a blind eye despite his opinions on mixing with… the like. How does that sound? Even Cantic won’t care what I do with a condemned woman.”
Her pulse beat like a frightened rabbit’s, and she hated herself for it.
A blackcoat opened the door of the administrative building, and Rogan pushed Touraine through. Aides and soldiers alike stared at them as Rogan marched her inside and down to Cantic’s office. He didn’t say another word, but the damage was done. She couldn’t possibly win.
“Touraine. You’re accused of treason against the empire and murder of a Balladairan soldier. How do you plead?” General Cantic leaned forward, elbows on the long table at the front of the small audience room, her hands steepled.
Touraine. Just Touraine, the name unadorned, the way the Balladairans had handed it out to her as a child, along with her new clothes and new bed and new language. She had never disliked the sound of her name before that moment. She sat in a stiff-backed wooden chair, her arms wrapped around it and her locked wrists dangling. She was going nowhere. She wondered if the Sands had been told about her trial, or if Pruett and Tibeau had been left to wonder.
Cantic wore her formal uniform, all black except for the gold left sleeve. The four other gold stripes presiding wore their formals, too. They sat arrayed to Cantic’s left and right at the long table. The room they all sat in was probably where they all came together to discuss strategies when they weren’t glaring disapprovingly at soldiers, waiting for them to answer for their crimes. It lacked the usual attempts at martial decor, no mounted swords or old muskets on the walls, no war tapestries. Maybe they kept those in another room. The starker, the more frightening.
The princess was in the small room, too, waiting. The heir wouldn’t come to a simple court-martial for murder. That meant Cantic was taking the charge of treason seriously. The young woman’s face was stern and haughty, lips pursed. The elegant woman Touraine had met before looked cold and intimidating. The effect was enhanced by the two royal guards flanking her and the captain of the guard standing at the door. They wore black coats, but their button panels were gold and the buttons black. Their short gold cloaks hung still, as if the cloaks, too, were waiting for Touraine’s answer.
Touraine had always had faith in Balladaire, or at the very least, Cantic. She hoped that faith wasn’t misplaced. She took a breath, deep as her healing ribs would allow.
“I’m innocent, sir.”
“Then explain yourself for the jury.”
“As I said before, sir, I got lost after the driver let me off too early.”
Touraine fought for another breath. The windows were shuttered tight against eavesdropping. It kept the sun out, but it kept clean air out, too. A room full of sweating men and women shouldn’t be closed off from a breeze. The manacles on her wrists were already slick with sweat. One officer hadn’t put on enough scent to mask his body odor; another officer had put on too much.
“As you say. What next?”
“I… think I was drugged, sir. At the governor-general’s dinner.”
Now someone did laugh. Touraine turned sharply. A muscular colonel with gray streaks in his close-cut beard smiled. “She drank too much, General, and she’s trying to cover her mistakes.”
Touraine ignored him. “Truly, sir.” She tried to explain her logic—the strange drowsiness, the fog—but one of them was picking her nails and another was looking at Touraine like she was something he’d cleaned out of his nails.
“Maybe you could ask the governor,” Touraine said, reaching desperately. “Maybe she noticed someone acting strange that night.” Touraine wasn’t going to throw her life away by accusing the governor of drugging her, no matter what reasons the woman had. Accusing a Balladairan never went well for a Sand.
Cantic laced her fingers and rested them on the desk. “Unfortunately, Lord Governor Cheminade is dead. Furthermore, whether you were drunk or drugged, it is your actions on trial, not your mental state at the time.”
The news shocked Touraine’s body rigid against the chair. How? Why? Was it the rebels? The questions ticked one after another, spinning in her mind so that she didn’t hear Cantic at first.
“Soldier!” barked Cantic. “What happened next?”
Touraine recounted the rest: waking up in custody, the questions her captors asked. She lingered on the woman who had kicked her. Cantic asked her the same questions as she had before. The rest of the panel seemed almost bored until the questions circled back to the Brigāni.
“What did she talk about?” Cantic asked.
“You, sir.”
The jury of officers took a collective breath, and Touraine rushed to continue while she had their attention. “She wants to kill you.”
Cantic raised an eyebrow at the bluntness. “She can get in the queue with everyone else. For the sake of the court, did she say why?”
“You killed her family.”
“Very good.” Cantic’s face was impassive again.
Touraine was losing her, losing all of them. She’d run out of what little good faith they had, if they’d had any. She didn’t know how else to prove her loyalty.
“Sir?” she started. “The Brigāni also implied that the Shālans ha
d magic like the Taargens, sir.” Touraine shrugged apologetically.
The general narrowed her eyes. “Implied? Did she or didn’t she say so?”
“She said, ‘Rumors must come from somewhere.’ I took that to mean there’s a hint of truth even in our stories. If the stories about the Taargens had some truth, so do the ones about the Brigāni. There might be plans to use this magic against Balladaire again. Whatever it was.”
Touraine thought of her arm again and felt the need to rub at it, as if she could pick it raw and learn what had happened to her. She’d bet that was Shālan magic, too, but she didn’t dare show that to anyone.
For a moment, Cantic only shifted her jaw, like she was working something in her mouth. She spun the ring on her right little finger. Even the secretary’s pen stopped scratching as he waited. Touraine had struck a nerve, and all that pain and fury working behind those eyes—she’d suffer the brunt of it.
The princess had lost her stern disinterest. She sat on the edge of her seat, hands balanced on her cane, right leg straight out. When they’d been briefly introduced at Cheminade’s dinner, she had seemed courteous but aloof. Now Touraine saw that she had clever eyes that didn’t miss much.
“This is preposterous, Cantic. Are we holding court or listening to fairy stories?” said the gray-bearded colonel. “I support due process, but this?”
The general waved him down. “Colonel Taurvide, please. Touraine, what of the other rebel?”
“Nothing important, sir. She only kicked me in an attempt at torture, but as I said, I gave her nothing.”
“Anything else in your defense?”
“No, sir, only—two of my soldiers died in my rescue.”
“Yes.”
“They should have a funeral.”
Rogan interrupted. “General, resources are precious. Sacrifices—”
“I’ll pay the funerary expenses. Carry on.” Princess Luca’s voice was cool, matter-of-fact. It was the first she’d spoken since the trial began. Catching the princess’s equally cool blue-green eyes felt like catching a sniper that had you in her sights.
“Captain Rogan,” Cantic said. “Your testimony regarding the accused?”
Rogan stood at attention between Touraine and the jury, grimacing.
“Perhaps one might call Lieut—excuse me, Touraine capable. Her loyalty, however, has always been in question. She has attacked Balladairan soldiers in the past.” His face was grave.
He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it, snapping it crisply before giving it to the general. “I also present the following examination notes on Corporal LeBlanc’s body. In summary, he was attacked with a long, blunt object hard enough to fracture his skull. The… disfigurement… to his face suggests multiple strokes. The wounds are congruent with those inflicted by the conscripts’ batons, sir, and Touraine was the only conscript unaccounted for at the time of his death. The baton found near his body makes it clear, as all other conscripts’ batons are accounted for. I would not put collusion with intent to mutiny beyond her.”
“Any evidence against her own claim? That she was taken by rebels?” Cantic asked without taking her eyes from the paper.
“Wounds can be fabricated, sir, if you’re desperate enough to build a lie. Moreover,” he added, his voice turning somber, haunted even, “I’ll never forget the time she led her… comrades in an attack on my men and me. Late at night. Years ago, but I don’t think that the seed for that kind of insurrection ever quite dies.”
She saw the bait, how he dangled it in front of her. Touraine clenched her fists so tight behind her that she thought she’d cut herself and bleed all over Cantic’s stone floor. It was too much.
She bit the hook. “You lying bastard!” The words burst out, even though she knew her temper would condemn her. Her pulse throbbed all the way to her fingertips. Her body burned with heat. “I ought to cut your own dick off, you raping—”
“Touraine!” Cantic slammed her palm on the table.
The general’s face remained unreadable, but the other officers glowered at Touraine’s outburst. She saw her guilt in each gaze and last of all Rogan’s smugness. It made her want to be sick. Blood pounded behind her eyes, and she ground her teeth.
“Sirs,” Touraine started again, in as measured a tone as she could manage. “I lost my baton to the rebel who kicked me, not fighting a blackcoat.”
“That was careless of you,” one of the jury officers said.
“More careless than killing a man and leaving my weapon in the street with his body?” she snapped. “Which makes more sense to you?” Touraine bit down on her tongue. She needed to get herself back under control, but the unfairness of it all was driving her ragged.
She turned to Cantic. “Sir, you said the soldier’s balls were stuffed in his mouth—I couldn’t do that. We don’t have knives.”
“So you threw the knife away—”
Touraine cut off the other officer. “If I would hide the knife, why wouldn’t I hide my baton?” She turned back to Cantic. “Sir.”
Cantic looked from Rogan to Touraine. There was disappointment, but maybe pain, too. Did the general feel guilty? Guilty enough to give her another chance?
How had Touraine gone from saving the princess and receiving the highest honor a Sand had ever received to begging for her life in front of this farce of a court-martial?
“Thank you, Captain,” Cantic said, as if Touraine hadn’t said a thing. “Sergeants, escort her back to the jail while we recess. Not you, Captain, stay—”
As the sergeants approached her, Touraine had a desperate thought, more desperate than the host of desperate thoughts she’d had over the last few days.
She had saved the fucking princess’s life. Princess Luca owed her. She’d said so herself.
If this backfired, Touraine might be shot on the spot for her audacity. Still, it was better than waiting in jail for Rogan and then being shot.
“General,” she said. The other officers were talking over each other in outrage. Rogan watched her, and even though his face was the picture of grim dignity, she read the smugness in the cocky set of his shoulders. The princess was watching her carefully, as if she could read Touraine’s mind. As if she could read it and wasn’t upset by what she saw there.
The sergeants had her by the arms. Louder: “General Cantic, sir.”
The general held up her hand to stem the conversations. “Speak.”
“I saved the princess—”
“Helped save. You alerted us to a threat.”
Touraine pursed her lips tight. “Just so, sir. I helped save Her Highness’s life.” She nodded to the princess, the closest to a bow that she could manage. “Your Highness, I would ask the boon you promised me.”
The princess’s mouth made a round moue, her eyes just a fraction wider. At the table, the officers clamored again, but Touraine didn’t look away from the princess, who didn’t look away from her.
“Ask.” Princess Luca’s cool voice cut through the noise, silencing the officers as effectively as Cantic’s hand.
Touraine swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.
“I ask for my life,” she said, as steadily as she could. It was as if saying it aloud reminded her how badly she didn’t want to die just yet. Not here, not without any say in it.
General Cantic slammed her hand on the table, breaking the link between Touraine and the princess as everyone jumped.
“Touraine, you overstep. Sergeants—”
“I would like to ask her a question or two, General.” The princess stepped in again. Her voice was like a dip into a cold river on an already frigid day.
The look of hesitation passed so quickly across Cantic’s face that Touraine almost missed it. She sat up straighter.
“Heads of state have no sway here, Your Highness. This is strictly a military proceeding.”
“She is on trial for treason against the crown, is she not?”
Cantic’s lips tightened and she nodded.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“And as the governor-general of the southern colonies, I’m also responsible for crimes committed in my jurisdiction, correct?”
She’s the governor-general now? Touraine thought with surprise.
Cantic nodded again.
Princess Luca limped to stand in front of Touraine, slouching to favor her right leg. If Pruett’s eyes were the sea in a storm, Princess Luca’s were the middle of the ocean on a cloudless day, clear and blue green with nothing friendly in their depths. She was a slight woman, wearing simple but elegant clothing tailored close to her narrow frame. A golden horse head gleamed on her black cane. Her lips were pink and parted as she studied Touraine. Touraine’s heartbeat sped up under her gaze.
“Lieutenant Touraine. Did you receive any letters of seduction from the rebels? A message to convince other conscripts to join them?”
“No, Your Highness.”
“Have you attempted to coerce your fellow soldiers to join the Qazāli rebellion?”
“No, Your Highness.”
“Have you passed sensitive information or military knowledge or weapons to the rebels?”
“I would never, Your Highness.”
The princess weighed Touraine’s answers with pursed lips and narrow eyes. Her tight bun made her even more severe. She had the same clipped accent as Rogan but without the condescension. To condescend, you had to be close enough to have an opinion. The princess held herself apart from everyone.
“Did you know or were you alerted to the attempt on my life in advance?”
“No, Your Highness.”
“Then how did you know the attack was coming?”
“I saw a man, the old man…” Touraine trailed off. You look familiar, he’d said. “He kept trying to pull me into a conversation, but I caught him looking toward the girl who attacked you.” The girl who had prayed on the scaffold before Touraine hanged her. “That’s when I sounded the alert.”
“Why would the rebels frame you for murdering a Balladairan soldier?”
Touraine looked at the princess’s boots for a long moment before finally shrugging helplessly. “I don’t know. I wasn’t cooperative? To move suspicion somewhere else? To make a rift between the Sands and the blackcoats? They might not have been trying to frame me at all.”
