by C. L. Clark
“She’s one of the few Balladairans who isn’t completely against my new changes. I need friends like that. No.” She shook her head. “Friend is too strong a word. Though that would be nice,” she grumbled under her breath.
“Friends who might support a deal with the rebels. Push back against Beau-Sang.”
Luca twisted toward Touraine sharply. “Someone’s been paying attention.”
Touraine raised an eyebrow. “A soldier who doesn’t pay attention to her enemies is a dead soldier.” She had even gone so far as to wonder if Beau-Sang hadn’t been behind the sky-falling broadsides. Him, or maybe the dear uncle Luca groused about when she thought no one was listening. Touraine asked, “Have you gotten word from the duke regent?”
Luca settled again, dancing her fingers distractedly against her legs. “My uncle claims that he’ll happily cede the throne upon my return. In every letter, he’s preparing for my coronation, he’s glad I’m getting firsthand experience, he’s certain—” She glanced nervously at Touraine, as if she hadn’t realized she was still there, listening. “Certain my parents would be proud of me. And yet every opportunity we’ve had to crown me before, he’s blocked with some excuse or another. Regents have ceded the throne to the rightful heirs as early as twenty-five and as late as thirty. Outside of Balladaire, heirs have been crowned as young as thirteen!”
Luca frowned. “But it’s only a matter of time before the letters include lectures because I’m somehow mishandling the Shālan colonies and am thus not ready to rule.”
Sitting beside her, Touraine realized how young Luca, the queen regnant, was. Clear, sharp eyes behind her spectacles and tawny hair that might not gray for years yet. Even the lines in her face when she focused on her books or winced at her leg—they hadn’t set permanently. She couldn’t be that much older than Touraine.
Touraine wanted to ask, Are you ready to rule? Instead, she asked, “What’ll you do, then?”
And as she asked the question and saw Luca open her mouth to answer without a second thought, Touraine imagined herself taking these words, all of Luca’s words, and carrying them back to the rebels. Giving them ammunition, giving them tools, terrain, traps. She wondered what her life would look like if she went down that path, but she couldn’t see anything worth gaining. Not compared to staying with Luca.
“What do you know about Shālan magic?” Luca met Touraine’s eyes full on and lowered her voice. “What did the Brigāni woman say to you when you were captive?”
That startled Touraine into stammers. Unconsciously, she cradled her left arm in her right. “Nothing? Nothing. Just—that it’s—she said it’s just rumors. She told me a story about a kid priestess who was good at healing, made it sound like it was her.” She realized she was backing into her seat, as if the Apostate were there in front of her, knife gleaming again. “She—did cut me. I thought she was going to do magic with my blood, but I think that was just to scare me.”
Luca picked up Touraine’s pen and a scrap of paper from the desk and began scribbling notes, muttering to herself.
“What about—” The princess waved her hand without looking at Touraine, trying to pluck the words from the air. “You fought the Taargens, didn’t you? What do you know about their magic?”
Touraine’s heart froze solid in her chest. She must have been silent for a long time, because Luca finally looked up. She put the pen down and really looked at Touraine for the first time that evening.
Touraine broke eye contact and started cataloging. The paper on the desk. Her wobbly Shālan letters beneath Luca’s elegant script. The oak desk, sturdy, not a traveler’s desk, not cheap. Luca’s hands, one of them so close to her own clenched fist. The smell of Luca’s perfume, rose and something darker, muskier. The musk was new. Touraine’s own sweat. Her breath, too quick. Luca’s breath, quick, too. Luca’s hands, warm, tight, clasped around one of Touraine’s fists. A squeeze.
Luca didn’t say anything, and so Touraine let the silence pass as she tried to catch her breath, the room expanding and contracting.
It had happened after a clash with the Taargens. The autumn campaign was supposed to be over, but shitty orders and bad luck meant early blizzards caught the colonial brigade undersupplied as they covered the regular regiments’ asses.
Everyone thought they’d gotten lucky when they routed a small company of Taargens. Touraine sensed something was off as they went to pick through the bodies half buried in the snow—there were too many of them. Her shoulders prickled with unease.
She locked eyes with a staring corpse, his pale blue eyes vacant over a red-brown beard. Then he smiled.
Touraine managed only one shout before he dragged her to the ground: Run.
“The magic comes from their god,” Touraine said when she could. Her voice was hoarse, her throat drier than she realized. Luca’s thumb brushed over Touraine’s knuckles, comforting.
After the Taargens had taken her and a fistful of others—Valbré and Cariste, two siblings; Omarin, one of the field medics; a few others whose faces were starting to lose their edges in Touraine’s memory—they took them back to the Taargen war camp and dumped them in their bonds next to a fire that was so warm Touraine was grateful and felt guilty for it.
Until a couple of Taargens in bearskin cloaks came up to the fire and started chanting over it. Touraine didn’t speak the language, but she felt the change in the air on her skin.
They took Valbré first, his teeth chattering, dragged him to the fire, where a Taargen—call them a priest, sure—stood, and Touraine was so sure she was about to watch them burn Valbré alive while Cariste screamed for him, for mercy. What happened was worse.
The Taargen priest held Valbré’s face close to their own and whispered something. As the priest’s eyes rolled in rapture, Valbré’s eyes rolled up, and he shook until the priest dropped him. Touraine thought he was dead as he flopped to the ground, eyes staring back at the captured Sands. But his chest still rose and fell. His mouth still opened and closed.
Then another priest used Cariste, then Omarin, both of them discarded just like Valbré.
“They take you—they take something out of you.” Touraine’s voice trembled as she related the memories to Luca. “While they’re praying, I think. And use it. To…”
“The bears,” Luca said softly.
Touraine nodded. The bears. She’d seen the priests’ monstrous transformations into the animals they worshipped. Watched the bears run in the direction of her own soldiers. “Wolves, too. Then when they finish, you’re gone. Just empty.”
“Dead?”
Touraine shook her head. If only. If only. “We had to…” It had been Pruett who’d saved her that night. Again. As always. Together, they had put to rest the empty, breathing husks of their friends.
Luca didn’t pick up the pen to take notes, and Touraine was grateful. Even if that did mean she was still holding Touraine’s hand. Maybe because it meant she was. Touraine swallowed. If Pruett could see this now, she would regret ever saving Touraine. Still, a part of her wanted to unclench her fist and let Luca lace their fingers, pen-calloused against baton-calloused. So she pulled her hand away with the excuse of putting her head in her hands.
“I see.” Luca laced her hands with each other instead. “My idea was that I could bring Balladaire something valuable. Something like magic. Something to stop the Withering, or to manage it better when it comes. Sabine—a friend of mine, one of the few—is worried that we’ll be due for another plague soon. My uncle will run, like he did last time. I won’t abandon my people, Touraine. But I also don’t want to come to them empty handed.”
So you’d steal from someone else, just to give it to Balladaire. Touraine didn’t say it, though, didn’t dare. Even if she would never go over to the rebellion, being with them dredged up complaints she had buried, the kinds of things Tibeau went on and on about but she put aside in favor of sanity. She could see the shape of empire in Luca’s words.
“What are t
hey like?” Luca asked. “The rebel council.”
Touraine snorted. “One is an asshole who’s going to wreck every overture you make. The bookseller is kind and Malika is savvy, but it’s the Brigāni woman… She’s the dangerous one.”
“The Brigāni witch that Cantic is hunting.”
“That’s the one.”
“I could use Cantic’s goodwill,” Luca mused. She sighed with disappointment. “Maybe we should stop. Give her their names, root them out, and be done. It would be easier than explaining this to the nobles. And Cantic and my uncle.”
She gestured angrily at what Touraine realized must be Luca’s response to the rebels’ list of demands. She propped her head on one hand and glared at it.
“What do they want?”
Luca scoffed. “Arms, land. For nothing in return. I’m afraid—” She stopped herself and glanced at Touraine, like she was gauging how vulnerable to be. “I’m afraid we’re risking everything to get nothing.”
“What are we risking?”
Luca ticked the risks off on her fingers. “The empire, its trade. My reputation. You.”
The last surprised Touraine, and it showed.
“What?” Luca asked. “You are risking yourself. If they change their minds, they could kill you.”
That cheerful thought had occurred more than once to Touraine herself. Touraine was afraid, too, though. Afraid that she and the others who risked everything would get nothing. That they would suffer no matter what.
All Touraine said aloud was “It’s fine. You’ll make progress.”
“You’re lying.” Luca raised a wry eyebrow. “You can be frank with me.”
Touraine smiled ruefully. It was a pretty thing to say, but it just showed how little Luca understood. She could never tell Luca about all the doubts she had about Balladaire, about Qazāl, even about magic. Luca wouldn’t trust her anymore. She would cut Touraine loose, and then where would Touraine go? So Touraine told just some of the truth.
“I don’t think they trust you,” she said hesitantly. “The Jackal—she’s the asshole—she’ll never be happy with anything you offer, and I don’t know if the rest of the council has her under control.”
As the words sank in, the princess bit her lip like she always did when she was thinking hard. Luca looked between the notes she’d taken and the list of demands.
“Do you think you could soften them for me?” Luca struck Touraine with her sharp blue-green gaze. The small line between her eyebrows deepened. “Because if the magic is real and if they’ll give it to us or teach us or share—if we get access to the magic, we might actually be able to find a middle ground.”
“Those are big ifs, Your Highness.”
Very big ifs.
“We can reach an agreement—I know it.” Luca’s shoulders slumped. “I’ve only ever wanted to be a good queen.”
Touraine scooted back into her seat. She had been sitting on the edge. “I only ever wanted to be Cantic.”
Luca snorted. “I’m shocked.” She was smiling.
Touraine chuckled, and then they were both laughing, and the vise grip around her body was loosening.
“I don’t know what I can be now,” Touraine added. “Anylight, I would have to survive long enough.” She laughed again, but this time it rang false.
“I’ll always need advisors, Touraine. Here and in Balladaire.” They sat close enough that Touraine watched Luca’s throat bob up and down as she swallowed hard. “I would like you to survive that long.”
CHAPTER 19
HISTORY LESSONS
The next night, Touraine sought out Saïd and the rebels. Luca’s response to their demands was locked in her mind. None of them could afford to have a paper like that floating around.
This time, she went with an offering. In the new meeting room, more spacious but more sparsely furnished, she spread out fresh flatbread and a bean paste that the street hawker at the food cart said originated in one of the far eastern countries in the old Shālan Empire. Dry black olives, wrinkled and a touch bitter.
The Jackal looked suspiciously at it all. “She’s trying to bribe us.”
It wasn’t a bribe. Not exactly. And it wasn’t from Luca—not exactly. Luca wanted this to work, and Touraine wanted to help. If the Jackal would let them.
“Not a bribe. Just courtesy. You fed me last time.” Touraine ate the first bite, exaggerating the chewing motion.
The Jackal rolled her eyes and snatched a piece of bread. Saïd already had a chunk in his mouth and munched quietly, maybe even smiling. Malika took some of the food to the Apostate, who had taken up a similar position as before, in the back of the room among cushions.
“What did you want, then?” The Brigāni woman daintily rubbed the olive oil on her fingers into the smooth, dark skin of her hands. She had tucked the bread into her mouth without removing the scarf enough to show her face. She seemed like she was feeling better after the fit that had taken her the last time they had met, but she moved deliberately.
“Apostate.” Touraine nodded respectfully. “Princess Luca wants your concrete support in an alliance and a cessation of attacks on Balladairan businesses. She released some of your people.”
The Jackal plucked up another piece of bread and twirled it idly between her fingers. “Some isn’t all. Also, saw you and her cronies burning up those deliciously scandalizing broadsides—seems a bit like she’s ashamed of her alliances, if you ask me.”
Touraine’s face went hot. “They were crude slander.”
The woman sucked air in, wincing. “The pup’s a bit touchy about her lover.”
Touraine closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
There were so many ways to die on a battlefield. A lead musket ball to the brain was simple, relatively quick compared to a bayonet to the guts or the lungs. A cannonball could take your stomach out, whole entire, or rip most of your leg off so you’d bleed to death. Touraine was a bayonet’s edge away from wishing them all on the other woman.
The woman bent over her crossed legs, elbows resting on her knees. Her fingers dangled an inch above the dusty clay floor like rug tassels. Touraine couldn’t see the smug expression behind the scarf, but she could imagine it. One day, Touraine would rip the mask from her face and get a good look before punching her square.
“Peace, Jackal.” The Brigāni, who also kept her face masked, shot the woman a sharp look with those golden eyes. The eyes didn’t cow her like they did Touraine.
The other woman just tilted her head from side to side and leaned back on her hands. “What else, then, Mulāzim?”
“First, she had a simple question. Do you know anything about the broadside artist?”
A single shake of the Apostate’s head. “I don’t. Which means they’re not in this city.”
Shit. That skewered Touraine’s hopes of pinning it all on Rogan’s anger. It meant Luca had bigger problems to deal with.
“What else?” The Brigāni—the Apostate—blinked once. “She didn’t send you here to do research like that.”
Touraine swallowed. “No. I have her response to the list.”
It felt like everyone in the room leaned in to listen. Even the Jackal, who was so insistent that this was a waste of time, stopped picking at her nails.
“Regarding a minimum wage for all Qazāli workers under Balladairans,” Touraine announced, “she accepts; she’s already been working on it. She also says she’s willing to require all businesses that rely on Qazāli land to be partly owned by Qazāli.”
Touraine paused to catch her breath, and the Jackal pounced on her hesitation.
“But?” she growled.
“But… she won’t give you guns. She won’t send the soldiers back to Balladaire, but she will reduce the number of them in the city. They’re still necessary since this is a base for the southern reaches of the empire. It also means the compound won’t be vacated for Qazāli use.”
Finally, though she didn’t think it needed to be said, Touraine ad
ded, “She won’t acknowledge the colony’s sovereignty. Does that about cover it?”
The emotions around the room were mixed. Malika frowned like Touraine had pissed a puddle in her path. Saïd looked optimistic, as if he hadn’t expected such a pleasant surprise.
The Jackal barked a loud laugh that the Apostate spoke over.
“Not even close, girl. But it’s a start.”
“If this is all she has,” the Jackal said between dark chuckles, “we have nowhere else to go. I told you these little talks were a waste of time.”
“Maybe not. The princess has read things. And heard rumors.” Touraine flicked her eyes up from the olives and met the witch’s eyes for just a moment before looking for safer targets instead, finding none. Malika’s lips pulled tight, and even Saïd’s eyes were angry under his heavy brows. Of course they knew what was coming. “About Shālan magic.”
The Jackal huffed. “Such a noble heart, your master. She wants something that’s not hers, just like every other Balladairan scavenger.”
It echoed Touraine’s earlier thoughts too much for comfort. How much would Luca be willing to take if it won her the throne in the end?
“She doesn’t want to just take it,” Touraine snapped back. “This is a negotiation.”
“An alliance based on a rumor of magic.” The Apostate’s eyes crinkled above her scarf. “From everything I’ve heard about her, I expected her to be more intelligent.”
“Rumors must come from somewhere.” She tossed the witch’s old words back at her.
The witch barked a laugh. “They do. So I’ll tell you.
“The last Brigāni emperor fell two hundred years ago, depending on your position on her rule. Emperor Djaya. She commanded the respect of a hundred thousand troops—and their fear. They called her the warrior priestess because of her devotion.”
The Brigāni twisted her own hands before her face, as if seeing them anew, wondering what power she had herself.
“The Qazāli stories call her greedy. They tell the tale of most empires—a hungry lord, not content with the land and tribute they’ve already taken, not content to call neighbors ‘allies,’ only ‘subjects.’ To them, the story isn’t any different than what they say of the Balladairans today.
