The Unbroken

by C. L. Clark

  “Your Highness. You don’t know what you’re doing with her. You can’t trust them.”

  “Thank you for your concern, General. You’re dismissed.”

  For a moment, nothing in the room moved while Luca and Aranen both waited to see if Cantic would obey. Then, with the curtest of bows, the general made an about-face and left.

  After the door closed, Luca sagged back down into her chair. “That was peace over all?”

  Aranen’s smug look was gone, leaving only a distant, vacant expression. “Some scores are worth settling.”

  Comprehension finally dawned. “Surely Djasha wasn’t the Brigāni who…? It wasn’t just a rumor?”

  “The Brigāni who tore through Cantic’s camp using magic forbidden even by our god?” Aranen smiled. “My wife would never do such a thing.”

  Luca recalled Djasha that night at the festival. How swiftly she’d pierced her student’s body, how ruthlessly, never once looking away from the girl’s eyes.

  “Forbidden even to you?” Luca asked.

  “When I say ‘peace,’ I mean that I want you to leave. All of you. You. Your soldiers, the entire compound emptied. The merchants gone except by invitation. All land reverted to Qazāl. No Balladairan representation at all unless and until we’ve courted you for trade.”

  “And would you?”

  “Shāl willing, no. We have others to ally with. Depending on your good behavior, however, all things are possible.”

  “You sound like a diplomat, not a doctor.”

  “A priest of Shāl is a mediator. We heal more than bodies.”

  Luca breathed deeply. The jail was cooler than the surface outside, but her shirt clung to her sweaty back. “I told Touraine this. I cannot simply leave. I will work toward it.”

  “My wife tried to make a partial peace with you before. Something you would work toward. The next thing we knew…” Aranen shrugged again.

  It was all Luca could do not to show her full surprise. “She lied to you, too.”

  Aranen frowned. “Who?”

  “Touraine. She told Cantic. She broke the deal I made. On purpose. To save the Sands.”

  Luca watched as surprise and pain—and, for just a moment, rage—moved across the woman’s face. Then she bowed her head once.

  “That’s unfortunate. I didn’t want to heal her at first. Djasha insisted.” Aranen smiled ruefully. “I was beginning to like her.”

  “What will stop me from torturing the methods out of you?”

  “I would say your conscience, but I suppose that’s not true, is it?”

  Luca ignored the prickle of guilt tensing up her shoulders.

  “The magic is easy.” She smiled in a way that told Luca it was anything but. “Do you have any fresh meat held over?”

  Since the animals had been… vanished… it was difficult at best to find any meat at all at a reasonable price. Some had been requisitioned for officers’ meals, though.

  “How fresh, exactly?”

  Aranen arched an eyebrow. “Fresh enough for you. Bring me a warm meal of it, and I’ll show you.”

  Luca got up and, still watching Aranen from the corner of her eye, poked her head outside the interrogation room. Unsurprisingly, Cantic was still there, fists tight by her sides.

  “General. Perfect. The prisoner and I would like some lunch. Have them send us something with meat.” She forestalled the general’s protests with a raised hand. “It’s important.” Then she went back inside the room with Aranen and closed the door, without waiting to see if Cantic obeyed.

  “So you need meat. What else?” Luca asked the priestess after she sat down.

  “After that, it’s a simple matter of faith in Shāl and devotion to his tenets.” Aranen shrugged and cocked an eyebrow as if to say What else? and the links of her fetters clinked with warning.

  CHAPTER 34

  A MATTER OF FAITH

  A matter of faith, the priestess had said.

  After Aranen’s demonstration, Luca’s mind was full of possibilities. Full of fear and curiosity. Full of hope. The magic was simple, or at least, simple enough. The only thing she still struggled with was that sharp little word, faith.

  When she returned to the Quartier, Luca went straight to her bedroom to contemplate it in private. She sat in one of the comfortable chairs, half reading while she mulled over the question in the back of her mind.

  Faith was the purview of the uncivilized. Her father had taught her that, and after he died, her tutors and her uncle. Gods were crutches for the weak willed, they said. Well, she was no stranger to crutches. She smirked to herself. What was one more?

  Luca pulled the sleeve of her dressing gown up to look at the small sliver of a scar on the underside of her forearm. Aranen had cut her there. It was smooth under her thumb, as if it had healed years ago. She couldn’t see it without thinking of the cut Touraine had shown her on her own forearm, longer and thicker but just as aged.

  A gentle knock on the door jerked Luca out of her thoughts. She let her sleeve fall back down, covering it protectively with her other hand.

  “It’s Gillett,” he said.

  “Come in,” Luca called. She forced her hand away from the scar.

  Gillett closed the door behind him and took the chair from Luca’s small desk. The chair seemed too small for him, crowding his knees into his chest, but he looked at ease.

  Then Luca noticed the fan of lines around Gil’s mouth and the wrinkles on his brow.

  “Hello, Gil,” she said softly. Before Qazāl, they used to meet and speak regularly, even if he wasn’t guarding her person himself. Now there was distance between them.

  “Luca.” His smile brightened his face. “How are you?”

  Luca nodded slowly, putting her book on the side table. “I’ve been better, but I’ve also been worse. Things aren’t going as I expected.”

  Gil smiled wryly. “That’s the trouble with expectations.” Then he sobered. “Something is bothering you.”

  First, Luca shook her head. Then she reconsidered. “What does it mean to have faith in something?”

  The guard captain blinked, but he had known Luca since she was an inquisitive child. For certain, this couldn’t be the strangest thing she’d ever asked him.

  “It’s the absence of doubt,” he said after only a moment’s pause. “I had faith in your father. I have faith in you.”

  “Did you never doubt my father?”

  Gil crossed one leg over the other knee. “It’s in our nature to doubt. The key to faith is standing by someone anyway.”

  The answer of a man who had devoted himself to serving others: first as a soldier, then as a royal guard. It felt too… unthinking for Luca. To say she didn’t follow others well would have been an understatement.

  “What about when he gave you orders you disagreed with?” she asked.

  “I followed some of them. I didn’t follow others.” The sudden grief in the old man’s face made Luca’s heart catch. The apple of his throat bobbed hard as he swallowed. “I regret some of the things I did on each side. But I don’t regret standing by Roland. I never have.”

  Is that what faith amounted to? Love and devotion? Obedience?

  “I see,” she said, looking down at her lap.

  Gil cleared his throat. “Lanquette said you spent the day at the prison with priests and doctors.” Disapproval laced his words.

  Luca nodded, but she recognized the lecture coming and turned the subject just slightly. “Gil, what if I lift the ban on religion?”

  His gray eyebrows shot up his face. “Why would you do that?” he asked slowly.

  She picked her book back up and flicked its pages. “I wondered if it would help change things with the Qazāli. Give them less motivation to rebel.”

  “I don’t know.” Gil stroked his mustache, his grief and lecture both seemingly forgotten. “It would be hard to convince Beau-Sang or Cantic that was a good idea. And it wouldn’t change how other Balladairans treated believers
. Qazāli who want to work with them will still be best served without it, no matter what laws you make.”

  Luca tugged at the cuff of her dressing gown. “What if I wanted to follow a god?”

  Gil grunted as if he’d been punched. “And why… would you do that?”

  “Because I’m curious.” It was hard for Luca to say the next words aloud even though she had been thinking them all day. “The magic comes from their god. The magic is real. That means the god must be real, too.”

  Gil’s hand floated between his mustache and his short steel-gray hair.

  Finally, he clasped both his hands in front of him, resting his elbows on his knees. “I take it you want to learn the magic yourself.”

  “That would be uncivilized of me,” she said bitterly.

  “Who did you talk to?”

  Luca didn’t have to ask what he meant. “Aranen din Djasha.”

  Gil’s face went slack. Enunciating word by slow word, he said, “You kidnapped the wife of the leader of the rebels you’re trying to subdue.”

  “I didn’t ask for her specifically, but I did ask for doctors and suspected priests. This is what came up in the nets. It’s paid off.”

  Only now, though, was Luca thinking about Aranen’s ironic smile as she said her wife would never use magic to destroy a company of soldiers out of vengeance. She sniffed matter-of-factly. “The priests are valuable hostages. We’ll use them to negotiate their surrender.”

  Gil worked his jaw as he sat back again, tension slipping from his body. “I suppose that might work.” He covered his eyes with his hand. “But I thought you wanted to be a new kind of queen? I can’t see how this is any different than what your father or even Nicolas would do.” His brown eyes flashed with angry heat when he uncovered them again.

  “You heard Touraine,” Luca snapped. “She wants to give me an ultimatum. I’m giving her one back.”

  “This is about her, then. You’re taking your anger at her out on an entire city?”

  Her face warmed with anger and embarrassment both. “No, I’m not. This is about strength, Gil. This is about ending this on my terms.”

  Touraine had made her choices, and Luca was free to make hers.

  He nodded slowly, frowning with distaste without meeting her eyes. He stood. “Your will, Your Highness. As I said, I have faith in you. That means I’ll stand by you.” He sighed heavily. “But I thought I taught you better than this.”

  “I’m doing my best, Gil,” she said. Luca pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes as if she could avoid Gil’s disappointment if she couldn’t see it. “I don’t have anyone to show me.” She looked up and saw his broad back where he’d paused with his hand on the door handle. “I want to be a good queen,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper around the tears in her throat. “I can’t do that if I don’t have the throne. You know Nicolas will keep it from me if he has any excuse.”

  Gil spun slowly on his boot heels. The sound was muffled on the thick Shālan carpet. “What does it mean to be a good queen? To show everyone your power? Do you want people to respect you or just obey you? Or do you want them to believe in you?”

  Yes. All of it. She wanted all of that. And yet she knew that wasn’t the answer Gil wanted her to give, so she kept her mouth shut and buried her eyes in her hands again. She heard the door open and close, and then she was alone.

  Touraine had nowhere to go. She wouldn’t be a Sand again. Luca wasn’t going to take her in again.

  So she lurked in alleys in the Old Medina to keep a low profile while she debated whether it was worth it to spend the few sovereigns she had with her on time at a smoking house for a water pipe and a cup of sweet Shālan tea. Even coffee wouldn’t be bad. She just needed time to think. There still had to be a way she could help.

  In the end, it was her stomach that chose for her. Instead of a smoking house, she headed to the Grand Bazaar. The sky was clear and peaceful. The sun was setting, and the thin clouds were melting into the desert sunset that Touraine was growing to love. Seabirds in the air spiraled in their rounds, looking for food in the bazaar: dropped crusts, discarded fruit too rotten even for cheating someone—or discarded after the cheating had happened.

  Fruit and vegetables were almost as expensive as meat, since they were the next best source of food for the Balladairans. The fruit carts were almost empty as Touraine shuffled through to find something to eat and, yes, something she could carry with her when she inevitably joined a caravan.

  The phrases she’d learned of market Shālan echoed in her head. A few sovereigns jangled in her pocket. None of the writs from Luca today. If she ran into any trouble, she might be able to say the usual: The Jackal sends his regards. It was a sly code to cloak Jaghotai’s identity while using the Jackal’s reputation. At the thought, Touraine couldn’t help but frown behind her mask. She had fucked up. Again.

  It was so easy to slip back into the mundane bits of life, even when you knew the world around you could break at any minute. Even though Aranen had been taken, even though a part of her was begging to run to Luca and ask her to free her, another part of Touraine slipped easily, almost gratefully into chores like haggling over food.

  Just like she and the Sands had learned to completely dissociate themselves from the reality of their lives, on campaign or off. They would go mad if all they thought about was the next battle they were marching to. Some of them had. Setting up camp, digging latrines, drinking and fucking and fighting and laughing, it was all part of real life. And if they gave up that, they’d be admitting they had nothing else but the war, and if they believed that, what exactly were they fighting for?

  Like everyone else, she pretended to ignore the gallows as she meandered toward the fruit stalls. No bodies hung from the ropes today.

  The noise that Touraine had thought was only bickering and haggling in the market became clearer as she approached. The shouting clarified itself. Shouting for apples and oranges in both languages. And the word thief. At the center of it, a Balladairan merchant stood in front of a cart heavy with apples. They must have come from Balladairan orchards. Then again…

  She didn’t notice the kid until he rammed into her gut. One apple fell from his hand and rolled back toward the crowd. He held another clutched tight in a grubby fist. He shook, and his lips trembled, his eyes already shining with tears.

  “Steady on, kid,” she said. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” Then it dawned on her. This filthy boy hadn’t paid half a sovereign for an apple. Definitely not for two. And she wasn’t the only one who noticed.

  A Balladairan in a well-tailored jacket dragged the boy back and smacked him in the face so hard that the boy fell and dropped the second apple.

  “Sir! It’s all right. I’ll pay for them.” She tried to wedge herself between them.

  The man in front of her was handsome, with gleaming dark hair and cruel dark eyes. The kind of man used to putting people underneath him. Touraine would have bet her life he was a Droitist.

  He swung his backhand at her next. How dare she stand between him and his rightful duty? He would put her in her place, too. She should have let him hit her, or at the very least dodged, but she’d spent enough of the day with her head bowed, and to people who deserved it. Besides, Touraine had always preferred the offensive. One of her weaknesses.

  Before she realized it, she’d blocked him with a forearm and shoved him back. He fell to the ground, half-shocked, half-furious. She looked for the boy, hoping to grab him and blend back into the crowd. He was already gone.

  In his place, the crowd of Qazāli had grown. “Give us the apples,” they chanted. “Give us the apples.” It echoed through the bazaar and filled Touraine with sudden, sharp pride.

  Then a volley of disciplined Balladairan musketry took out one of the men standing beside her. Another volley, and the crowd scattered. The blackcoats had come to restore order.

  Touraine almost crashed into Jaghotai as the other woman was running out of Djasha and Ara
nen’s apartment. The other woman’s scarf was wrapped around her face, too.

  “What in Shāl’s name did you do this time?” Jaghotai asked, eyes wide with fury or fear, Touraine couldn’t tell. She noticed that the two emotions tended to coincide in the older woman.

  Touraine turned with her, and they loped in the direction of the bazaar. The orange glow of sunset had turned into the burn of torches and lanterns, but instead of being a sign of the cozy revelry of the city in the evening, it sent a forbidding shiver up Touraine’s back. Her soldier’s instincts screamed against it.

  “Food riots finally cracked.” Touraine still hadn’t found the street boy. “And the Balladairans are taking it out on everyone.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone that’s not Balladairan.”

  “What about the blackcoats?”

  “They’re ‘helping’ the Balladairans, obviously.”

  Jaghotai swore.

  “The people know to get to the Grand Temple,” Jaghotai said between breaths. She was flagging. Sometimes Touraine forgot that the woman had to be fifty years old or near enough. “They’ll be safe there.”

  “Will they? That’s where Rogan found me and Aranen, remember? It’s compromised.”

  “Djasha.” Jaghotai stopped abruptly and swore again. “She and Malika went to check on the patients. Meet them there. It’s the closest thing to a fortress we have. Our people will go there for instructions if they don’t get caught up sooner. I’ll see what’s to be done in the bazaar. You organize them from the temple.”

  Touraine blinked in surprise. “You’re putting me in charge of your fighters?”

  “You’re not up to it, Mulāzim?” Jaghotai was ready to run off again, chest rising steadily.

  Despite the situation, the other woman was poised with a seemingly unshakable calm. Like Cantic. Like Djasha. Was this something that came with age? Was that why Touraine’s stomach still roiled with guilt and anxiety at the prospect of ordering men and women into battle? She tucked those thoughts away. If nothing else, she was good enough at pretending to be calm.