The Unbroken

by C. L. Clark

  Thinking of Djasha gave the darkness another push. It closed tight around her chest and made it difficult to breathe. She took off her shirt, waded into the water, and stopped fighting it.

  Djasha, dying. Tibeau, dead. Pruett, who hated her. A sob wrenched out of her, and she turned it into a growl.

  Her legs were heavy in the water. She soaked her shirt and used it to scrub herself down. She’d grown so dark in the southern sun, and her wet hair shook out in short dreadlocks and braids. She wasn’t the soldier she’d been so sure of months ago.

  She laughed at herself, at the irony. She wasn’t sky-falling obedient anymore—that was certain. The easy camaraderie of the barracks was so far behind her, it might as well have been a dream. She didn’t believe in Balladaire anymore, either. She would never be content on their side. The last hope she’d had died with Luca. Luca would never make Qazāl accept Balladairan rule. It was sovereignty or nothing at all.

  And she could see the shape of that sovereignty now. In the distance, on the other side of the Mile-Long Bridge, El-Wast was a sprawl of clay squares like the earth’s teeth. The skyline was missing the huge dome of the temple in the Old Medina, but there were smaller domes—smaller temples, shops. Balladairan flags waved at the different city gates, black rectangles that slowly vanished as the sky darkened.

  It was easy to imagine the flags not being there at all. It might not come soon, but she could see the shape of that future in the girl she’d met in the slums, back when Touraine thought she could leave this all behind. The girl and her friends, fighting, fighting.

  Touraine would keep fighting, and she would die. She could see that, too. It was coming.

  It wasn’t here yet.

  She dragged herself out of the canal, shivering. This must be what it’s like to stand at the edge of a cliff and decide to jump. From here on, it would be the rush of air, the speeding inevitability coming toward her, water or rocks—eventually she would make contact.

  When she got back to the tiny rebel camp embedded in the slum city, she found Jaghotai in her tent.

  “Jak?”

  “Come in.”

  Jaghotai was sprawled over a thin blanket laid right on the dirt. It was dark in the tent, but Touraine could make out the darker shadow of the other woman’s forearm across her face.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” Touraine said. “And thanks.”

  Jaghotai grunted and rubbed her jaw. “Feel better?”

  “No,” Touraine laughed, the edge of the dark still there. Yes. “I thought about what you said, though. You’re wrong. About Balladaire. They’re going to come for us, and they’re going to come hard. Waiting a week to prepare will mean the difference between saving anyone who isn’t fighting and throwing them all on Balladaire’s mercy. I know Balladairan mercy. It doesn’t last long.”

  Jaghotai pushed herself up to sitting.

  Touraine continued. “They’ll threaten you. They’re going to come for the children, the way they came for us. The last time that happened, they broke you.”

  Jaghotai made a noise of protest, but Touraine cut her off with a gesture. The water had washed the fog from her mind. She could see the pieces they needed to move. It was the endgame, and there were few ways to win but a hundred ways to lose. She was done negotiating, done trusting Luca. And unlike Luca, Touraine knew battles. She knew blood and she knew soldiers under fire. She knew what it was to have faith not in power, but in the person fighting beside you. Luca didn’t have that.

  She could see something else, too. She didn’t want Balladairan respect. Not after this. Maybe she had been a dog all this time, but she was ready to bite back.

  “Cantic only knew about half of the gun shipment. We can move them in the dark, hide them out here, distribute them. Set people to stockpiling water, hiding it, rationing it. We’ll tighten the food rations.”

  “We have more guns?” Jaghotai whispered slowly, as if saying the fact aloud would make it not true.

  Touraine nodded, smiling briefly before sobering. “What about the terms of surrender? If it comes to that?” Which it probably would. She wasn’t naive about their odds.

  “You mean under what conditions we’ll surrender the city?” Jaghotai sucked her teeth and breathed slowly, taking in the empty tent and the movement outside—their people, still buzzing like a kicked hive. She smiled back. “None.”

  CHAPTER 36

  REPARATIONS

  We need to launch an offensive,” Beau-Sang said, slamming his fist on the war room’s wooden table.

  Luca, the governor, and the military’s senior officers sat in the planning room where Touraine’s court-martial had been held months ago. Today, the table sat in the center of the room again, with all the puffed-up Balladairan dignitaries crowded around it, trying to figure out what to do with the seething city that had imploded almost a week ago.

  Colonel Taurvide, still just as thick in his head as he’d been before, agreed vehemently with Beau-Sang. “They’re weak. Crush them now and we can crush them for good.”

  “What do you call burning their homes, looting their shops, and destroying their temple?” snapped Luca. She shot the colonel a dirty look. The general maintained that none of the destruction was under her orders, but it was her soldiers—and Taurvide’s, but ultimately Cantic’s—who had escalated the riots instead of stopping them.

  Gil was right. Luca didn’t want to be this kind of queen. She wanted power, yes, respect, absolutely—but her stomach turned whenever she thought of the smoking ruins of the Grand Temple’s beautiful domes. The Rule of Rule said that a feared ruler had all the means to be a great ruler. Yverte would probably agree with Beau-Sang and Taurvide if he were still alive. If Luca didn’t get the city in hand, she would never get to be a ruler, great or otherwise. She couldn’t help thinking about the two cuts on her arm. The second one was scabbed over, the flesh tender.

  “There must be another way,” she reiterated.

  On Luca’s right, Cantic made a frustrated sound low in her throat. “We can’t tell who a rebel is by looking at them. They don’t wear uniforms, and this isn’t an open battlefield. Anyone could be plotting against us.”

  “So we round them up and make an example,” Taurvide said. He knocked on the wood with thick, hairy knuckles. “It worked with my Sands.”

  “And it worked in the quarries,” Beau-Sang added. “It will work now. We’ll show them that anyone can be punished, so everyone must behave. Then they’ll police themselves.”

  Luca shivered at the cruelty, but Beau-Sang had a point. The Qazāli could be frightened out of joining the rebels. A large enough swath of “examples,” and Qazāli civilians would fall over themselves to turn in suspicious neighbors, if only to protect themselves. They would be cowed. For now. Eventually, though, they would rise above the fear to fight again, and Luca would still have to live with a massacre on her conscience.

  Cantic was deep in thought, or perhaps memory, her brow furrowed. Maybe she was thinking about the massacre at Masridān. Had that started like this, a war room full of desperate soldiers and politicians? After the Battle of the Bazaar, Cantic had said it was her job to bloody her hands so that Luca didn’t need to. So that Luca could be the one to build something new out of the blood and shit. Sky above, there was plenty of blood. When would Luca get to grow something?

  When you have it under control.

  “Lord Governor Beau-Sang and Colonel Taurvide might have the right of it, Your Highness.”

  “Indeed,” Beau-Sang said. “I’ve been managing these dogs for decades. That is why you appointed me governor, Your Highness. Let me do my duty to the empire.” He puffed out his chest and raised his chin.

  Still, Luca shook her head. She had spent most of her time in Qazāl changing the way Beau-Sang and the other Balladairans were allowed to treat their Qazāli laborers. She had made him governor so that he could be the sting of the whip, but that didn’t mean there was no place for the honey.

  “No,�
� Luca said finally. “Not yet. General, you say the problem is that anyone can be a rebel. That’s because everyone has a reason to rebel right now. The people are hungry, and the rebels are feeding them. We need to give them a reason to come to us instead.”

  Taurvide huffed. “You’d short our own people for these ungrateful—”

  “They are also my people,” Luca said sharply. “And ‘rebellions begin when the status quo fails to provide for its people.’”

  “With all due respect, Your Highness,” Beau-Sang said, his ruddy cheeks stretched taut in a frown, “quoting Yverte will not get us out of a delicate situation. We all have the experience necessary to handle it.”

  Beau-Sang opened his arms to include the veteran officers sitting at the table. Taurvide, with his graying beard and his bluster, one hand in a fist, the other ready to rap knuckles on the table again for emphasis. Cantic, her face haggard though her blue eyes were clear and alert, smelling of cigarette smoke and the coffee in front of her. Even Gil was included in this, though Luca’s guard captain remained silent. When she met his eyes, though, he nodded and gave an almost imperceptible smile. That was enough to bolster her.

  “I don’t doubt your experience, any of you. However, I want different results. We try this my way first. If it doesn’t work, there will be plenty of time to go murdering my innocent subjects at your leisure.”

  Taurvide, Beau-Sang, and Cantic all stared at Luca blankly, surprised either by the words or by her vicious sarcasm. This wasn’t the cool and collected princess they were used to. Luca stared them down in turn until finally, Cantic nodded.

  “That will be expensive, Your Highness, but it could work. We’ll begin preparations.”

  Colonel Taurvide began to object, but Cantic silenced him with a look. “We’ll begin preparations, Colonel.”

  The colonel nodded stiffly, though he shared a dark look with Beau-Sang. The governor, however, calmly bowed his head to Luca and said, “Indeed, Your Highness. We’ll see it done.”

  His acquiescence came almost too easily, and she wondered what machinations were turning behind those small, calculating eyes. Not for the first time, she thought of Aliez’s suspicions about her father and Cheminade. But thinking of Aliez made Luca think of Aliez’s missing lover, and that made Luca think of Touraine, so she pushed all the thoughts away again.

  “Very good,” Luca said. She straightened. “I’ll have the writ signed and announce the changes to the city afterward. You’re dismissed.”

  Ink dripped from Luca’s pen as she hovered over her signature. The ink of her name was still wet, glistening in the low lantern light of her office on the compound later that night. Though Beau-Sang was the governor-general now, she had grown attached to the space.

  The writ she had just signed would—if all went as planned in a city where nothing she’d ever done had gone according to plan—save the Qazāli and kill the rebellion in one blow.

  She had just—to think the rest of the sentence made her sick to her stomach with guilt, but she made herself finish the thought. She had thought she could win the city back more cheaply. She had thought the rebels would relent when she had the doctors and priests as hostages. There was no better way to say it.

  The greatest benefit, more than the soothed populace, was that the proclamation would douse the rebellion’s fire before the rebels could stoke the coals of Qazāli anger in the wake of the tragedy.

  All the Qazāli who brought proof or notification of dead family, injuries, or damaged property would be given recompense from the hand of the throne itself.

  She would be paying a lot. And using soldiers to monitor the claims.

  Luca lit her sealing candle and waited for the wax to heat, to make the slow transition from a single cohesive block to disparate drips. Slow. She’d chosen the gold wax this time, and the flames streaked it black.

  She’d demanded the reports from Cantic since Gil and the general both agreed that it wasn’t safe to have her in the streets. The fires—literal and metaphorical—hadn’t been put out. It had been nearly a week since she’d run to the window at the sound of the thunderous explosion. She couldn’t see the temple from behind the Quartier walls, but that hadn’t stopped her from imagining the slow motion of the domes collapsing on themselves every day since. When she’d left the Quartier, just to see, the night sky had been bright with the burning heart of the city.

  Luca pulled her shawl tighter against a shiver. She snapped to and realized the wax puddle was larger than she’d intended. She blew the candle out and stamped her rearing horse into the mess, with the L. A. of her initials in faint relief.

  She had also sent a letter to dear Uncle Nicolas before the bastard could get any orders back in this direction. It was going to be hard enough to deal with Cantic in this situation.

  Speaking of the wolf… the sharp click of military confidence only one person in the world could have stopped outside of Luca’s office door.

  “Come in,” Luca said.

  General Cantic gave her usual salute and curt bow before handing Luca yet another stamped letter. This one was on cheap military stuff, likely scraped over and over again. It crinkled as she held it. The black wax in the corner bore the seal of Balladairan commanding officers, a fist clenching a wheat sheaf and crossed arrows, Cantic’s own signature beside it.

  Cantic shrugged, hands clasped behind her back, so Luca skimmed it. Then tracked back to the beginning and read more carefully, unable to account for the way her heart lurched in her chest.

  “You’re executing them? In public?”

  Cantic nodded sharply. “You asked earlier to be kept informed of our actions. This is merely a courtesy, Your Highness.”

  Luca sat back. “I wanted to be informed so we could discuss the best steps. We just discussed how volatile the city is, General. Give it more blood and—”

  “You can be informed, Your Highness. Not dictate the military consequences. I already involved you more than I should have once, and that’s done us no good.”

  “Make it private, then, General.”

  “They tried to defect, Your Highness. I’m making an example of them. It’s hard enough to trust the rest of the Sands right now as it is. I’m reminding them of their place.”

  “That sounds very Droitist of you.”

  Luca clenched the paper, and it trembled with her. She didn’t know if it was sadness or anger or guilt or dread.

  Cantic sighed and pointed to the other chair in the room, the one Touraine used to sit in. “May I?”

  “As you like.”

  “Ruling a nation is like being a teacher, Your Highness. The Droitists and the Tailleurists fight back and forth over the minute details, but the core principles are the same. You cannot be the guide and the friend. A teacher, like a king—or queen—needs a firm hand that’s willing to cause pain or discomfort even if the student doesn’t understand why. They don’t need to understand fully; they only need to trust you enough to accept that you have their best interests at heart. With that trust, they’ll take any amount of unsavory medicine.”

  “And executing two Sands for their benefit is unsavory medicine?”

  Cantic pulled a face and looked all the more haggard for it. “No, Your Highness. That’s discipline.”

  Luca pushed her decree across the desk.

  After Cantic read it, she gave an approving grunt and a nod.

  “And that is how you build trust. One must have both. Excellent.” One edge of the general’s mouth turned up. “You can announce it before the hanging.”

  Luca opened her mouth, but Cantic preempted her.

  “Tomorrow, sunrise. That should give you time to ready one of your speeches.”

  “I already have a speech. I’m going to announce it today.”

  Touraine stared at the dark roof of the tent she shared with Jaghotai while the other woman’s heavy, steady breaths filled the small space. It put her too much in mind of the cell she’d been left in on the compound before
Luca had pulled her out.

  Luca, who was already turning their game against them.

  Touraine felt nauseated, feverish with frustration, just thinking about the princess.

  By the time word of Luca’s plan to repay Qazāli for their losses on the burning night reached them, it seemed like half of the slum had already emptied out, racing to collect.

  Jaghotai had gone from a foul, if determined, mood to rage in an instant. That sky-falling liquor had to be the only reason the Jackal had even fallen asleep.

  Touraine couldn’t sleep. All the mistakes she’d made rattled in her head like dice. She wouldn’t sleep well until she knew how they’d land. Not until she knew who would have to pay for Qazāl’s freedom and how much. Her gut told her she wouldn’t like the answer.

  It didn’t help that she wasn’t feeling well today. She thought it was the cloistered air of the tent and staggered up to get some fresh air. A wave of fatigue made her stumble, though, and she caught herself on the tent flap.

  “Are you going back to her, too?”

  Jaghotai’s voice was thick from where she lay on the other side of the tent. It was too dark for Touraine to make out the colors of the blankets or the expression on her mother’s face.

  “I know you sold us out to Cantic.”

  Touraine’s retort dried in her throat. She hunted the dark for Jaghotai’s weapons. Desperation coiled in her stomach, but shame held her still. She felt warm. Too warm.

  “What I couldn’t figure is… your princess seemed so attached to you. I kept wondering why you never went back to her, kept asking myself if maybe you really were here for us. I don’t think so. You could have had anything at her side. Only reason to leave would be if you knew she wouldn’t want you there. So why wouldn’t she want you there? You’d have to have done something she couldn’t forgive.”