by C. L. Clark
Well, it was in part, but not near as much as her role in it. And her role in it didn’t make her as sick as knowing Touraine had seen her do it.
Now Touraine was silent, limp in a dead faint, in the arms of a pair of blackcoats. Luca hoped it was just a faint. More soldiers had formed a protective cordon around the gallows while the civilians were forcibly dispersed. Thankfully, the people left willingly, no matter how or what they muttered. Luca didn’t need another city-destroying riot. Was it the sting of Cantic’s metaphorical whip that kept them placid, she wondered, or the honey Luca herself had promised?
And there was that phrase again. We pray for rain. A natural thing to pray for in the desert. Now it was a rallying cry for the rebellion. She hoped the people would ignore it. The message of the hanging was clear: joining the rebels will only bring you pain.
“Release her!” Luca demanded of the blackcoats holding Touraine, as she limped down the stairs.
Luca still hadn’t discovered the knack for praying, so she tried hope. The soldier was breathing but pale.
“What did you do to her?” she asked the blackcoats.
“Nothing, Your Highness,” one of them said, bowing awkwardly with his half of their burden. “She passed out before we got to her.”
Luca pressed a hand to the other woman’s face. Too warm, but clammy at the same time. Touraine was ill. “Take her to my carriage.”
Instead of obeying, the soldiers looked over Luca’s shoulder.
Cantic glared down her nose between Touraine and Luca. “We’ll take her to the brig and sort out what’s to be done with her later.” She wrinkled her nose. “She looks sick.”
The blackcoats flinched. One of them dropped the arm he held. The other held on to discipline but only just. Their face went pale under a spate of sun freckles.
“I’ll have her seen by a doctor at my home,” Luca told Cantic stiffly.
The general’s eyes went wide. “I beg your pardon? This soldier is a traitor to the empire. When I released her into your custody, you said her life was forfeit. We should hang her right there, right now.” She sniffed with anger. “The last thing she deserves is a doctor.”
Luca drew herself up and sniffed back. “With all due respect, General, Touraine isn’t a soldier, and her crime was not against you and the military. My business with her is my own.”
She rounded on the poor blackcoats, who were looking anxiously between their commanding officer and their future queen, as if they realized they probably shouldn’t have been witness to this dispute.
“Take her to my carriage,” Luca repeated. “Be gentle with her, and you’ll be compensated for your trouble.”
With apologetic salutes to the general, they picked Touraine up and started to drag her away. Still, the woman didn’t wake. Luca bit her lower lip. What if she didn’t wake again?
She turned back to Cantic and smiled her thin court smile, a bare quirk of the corners of her mouth.
“If you please, General,” Luca added in a low voice, “I want her to be seen by a particular doctor. You know which one. Have her sent to my town house in the Quartier as soon as possible. Bound, of course.”
Cantic’s face was splotchy with fury, but she was dutiful. She took in the gallows square, the curious and lingering civilians both Balladairan and Qazāli. The rest of them went back to their routines: running their stalls or shopping, cleaning the streets or transporting goods from the docks to some New Medina merchant’s shop. It was strange how eager people were to get back to their normal lives after a death. It was like they wanted to forget.
“This is madness,” Cantic hissed.
A heavy weight settled in Luca’s chest.
“It is madness, General. A very particular madness, and we brought it here.”
Aranen arrived that evening with an escort of five blackcoats. Her wrists were raw with the chafing of her iron cuffs. Her hair was stiff with oil and dirt, and her skin grimy with prison filth. Her bright tunic and trousers were stained and stiff as well. She smelled awful.
Adile hesitated when she led Aranen into the town house. “Are you sure, Your Highness?” The servant kept her distance from the priestess.
Luca nodded. “Bring her in.” She led the way to her bedroom, where she’d set Touraine up in the bed. She put on her gloves and wrapped a scarf around her face and bid Aranen follow suit.
Aranen raised her eyebrows but complied.
Then they went into the room and closed the door, leaving everyone else outside.
On the bed, Touraine lay propped on the pillows. She had gone from bad to worse over the course of the day. She’d been so hot that Luca had been sure she would die. Then a rash had come from nowhere, covering her like dog spots. Then she’d started vomiting. Luckily, the basin for her sick was empty at the moment.
The priestess made a small sound of surprise.
“A bath and a meal for your help,” Luca said simply.
Aranen cocked her eyebrow. “You’re not what I expected, Princess. Give me my freedom, and I will help.”
“No. Help her, or I send you back and take one of the priests who will.”
The priestess’s mouth thinned. “I stand corrected,” she muttered.
She turned and gave Touraine a cursory glance. Stepped closer to tug her collar down and look at the rash along her neck.
“I’ll call for Adile. I had her prepare some food for you. Something with meat, like you said.”
Luca didn’t tell Aranen that she had tried to do the healing magic herself.
“I’ll take the food,” Aranen said, straightening. “I can give her a little strength. But she’s not in danger. Better to save my strength so you can force me to care for someone who really needs it.”
Aranen’s smile was as sharp as her words.
Luca looked down at Touraine. Her brown skin was ashen except for the blotchy rashes.
“She’ll be fine,” the priestess reassured her. “It’s just a bad childhood disease. But if you care so much about her…” She gestured around what was clearly once a royal bedroom now turned infirmary room, her brow furrowed. “I know you’re not like the old king. You’re not like the Blood General. So why are you doing this to us?”
Luca went to stand beside the priestess and next to Touraine’s sleeping form. She put a gloved hand on the long curve that was the soldier’s shin. There was probably a rash there, too. Luca imagined she could feel the throb of Touraine’s fever through the blanket.
The old king. Luca’s father.
She met Aranen’s dark eyes, not expecting the tenderness she found there. The sorrow, open but unjudging.
Aranen put her bare hand on Luca’s glove, the iron a heavy weight on them both.
“You don’t have to do this.”
Yes, I do. Luca slipped her hand away before Aranen’s became too comforting, and held it across her chest. She couldn’t afford to doubt now. But what if Aranen was right? What if Gil was right?
“I’ll send for Adile,” Luca said curtly. “She’s already drawn up your bath. Dinner is ready, too. Which would you like first?”
Aranen took a deep breath, but she didn’t push Luca any further.
“A bath, Shāl willing.”
Luca stroked Touraine’s hair. The other woman’s forehead was warm still, even through Luca’s gloves, and damp with sweat. Even though Aranen said the sickness wasn’t fatal, it had been two days. She would have Adile burn the gloves later. Extreme, perhaps, but Luca was afraid of the risk. Luca wore a scarf wrapped around her face, and her breath was hot and cloying beneath it.
She caressed Touraine’s cheek and let herself imagine what things might have been like if they had been different people or met at a different time. Before her father grew more aggressive in his desire for Shālan magic, Shālans had visited La Chaise often. She’d known her Shālan tutor had had a Balladairan lover. She smiled as she pictured Touraine in the formal garb of a Qazāli ambassador or council member on a state visit. Th
e line of her shoulders in elegant cloth, as dashing as she had been the night of Luca’s ball. And the tender strength of her hands on Luca’s leg the night before everything fell apart. Mere months ago, and yet it seemed a lifetime.
With a low mewling that might have been adorable under other circumstances, Touraine woke. Luca yanked her hand back, heat flushing up her cheeks. Not that Touraine would have noticed. Her eyes were still unfocused, and her mumbling was incoherent. More fever dreams. Inexplicable disappointment settled back into Luca’s stomach.
“Luca?” Then sharper, alarmed: “Luca, what under—” Touraine fell into a fit of coughing.
“Here.” Luca held a cup to Touraine’s mouth. The other woman hadn’t kept anything down for the last couple of days. The empty sick basin waited on the side of the bed, just in case.
Slowly, the fog in Touraine’s eyes cleared. She pushed herself up, then fell back against the pillows, too unsteady.
“Don’t move. You’re all right. I’m—you’re at my house. In the Quartier.”
Luca realized her hands were twitching in her lap while Touraine eyed Luca’s room suspiciously. She clasped them together and took a breath to steady herself.
“You killed her.”
“No, I—” This wasn’t how Luca had expected Touraine to start. “I tried to get Cantic to stop. She refused—military discipline is out of my purview until I’m crowned.”
Touraine turned away. The tendons in her jaw stood out. So did the ones in her hand where she clenched Luca’s plush blankets. Luca put her own hand over Touraine’s, expecting the other woman to jerk away.
Touraine didn’t. After several long, silent breaths, Touraine turned her hand over and clasped Luca’s fingers in hers.
Luca’s stomach fluttered like pages of an open book left in a pleasant breeze. It always came to this ache and flutter of her insides, this feeling that things could be more right if just this—
They stared at their linked hands, Luca’s in her black glove, Touraine’s bare and freshly scrubbed.
“Why am I here?” Touraine’s voice was hoarse. She still wouldn’t meet Luca’s eyes.
“Cantic wanted to arrest you, but I took you instead.”
“Why?” Touraine finally looked up. Her half-lidded eyes were bruised with sickness. Purple-red splotches crept along her skin, too. Up and down her torso, peeking from beneath the collar of the shirt Luca had dressed her in.
Because I owe you.
Because I wanted to take care of you.
Because I wanted to spite Cantic.
“Are you… in disguise?” Touraine asked before Luca could find the right response.
Luca blushed behind her scarf, suddenly self-conscious. With her other hand, the hand that hadn’t touched Touraine, she pulled the scarf down just slightly.
“You’re sick. The—doctor says you’ll get better, though.” Mentioning Aranen would only bring up more questions that Luca couldn’t answer.
“So you put me in your room. In your bed.” The look Touraine gave her was too much like Cantic’s.
“It’s quarantine enough. And we’ll sterilize everything. We’re all taking precautions.”
And they were. Every time she left the room, she stripped the robe she was wearing and the gloves and the scarf and left them in a bucket that Adile took away to boil. It was the best they could do, short of leaving Touraine alone in her fever. She didn’t want to bring Aranen back and face down that knowing stare.
Luca gripped Touraine’s hand tightly. She fought the urge to bring it up to her lips, instead just stroking Touraine’s fingers with her thumb.
“The things I said before, Touraine—” She couldn’t take them back. She still meant them. She had made the calculations. She was right. And yet there were some things she hadn’t calculated for. “I’m so sorry for the temple. Do you think that Djasha would accept funds for its repair?”
Touraine snorted a laugh that turned into dry coughs. “Repair?” she said when she caught her breath. “You haven’t been out to see it.”
Luca busied herself with a loose thread in her robe. “Gil and Cantic… advise against it.”
Touraine leaned back against the pillows. “Of course they do. You’ve really fucked things up, Luca. I don’t know why I hoped for better.”
“I hoped you would understand now.”
“Who gave the order for her death?”
“Pardon?”
“Who ordered Aimée executed? For what crime?”
“Cantic. Desertion. They caught her trying to escape to join the rebellion.”
Touraine closed her eyes and slipped her hand out of Luca’s. “I think I’m going to be sick again. Do you mind?”
The dismissal was so abrupt it caught Luca mid-justification, and it made something unpleasant lurch in her chest. Her eyes burned, but she stood calmly.
“Of course.” Luca retreated into formality. “Ring the bell when you’re finished. Adile will come.”
She took off her contaminated clothing, dropping it in the basket for Adile, and left without looking back. She didn’t want Touraine to see how much her words had hurt.
When Luca returned the next morning, Touraine was gone.
Touraine stumbled back into the slums, half-conscious. The fever was back. The rashes up her body were itching more than she remembered them itching at Luca’s.
That’s because you were unconscious, idiot.
A cry went up as the children, serving as both official and unofficial lookouts, saw her.
“Stay back,” she rasped at them. “I’m sick.” So the children gawked at her and whispered.
“You have the laughing pox,” one of the little ones said, happy to be a know-it-all. “Like Hamid last week.”
Oh. The children she’d been playing with.
It wasn’t long before Jaghotai came up to meet her. Her mother only grunted, but Touraine could see the slouch of relief in her shoulders. “Your man Noé said you’d been taken. He’s been a mess. Thought for sure we’d see you strung up the next day.” Jaghotai came closer and examined a spot on Touraine’s neck. She whispered, “I just thought you’d gone back to your master. Glad to see I was wrong. Was I?”
She pulled back and bared a jackal grin.
“You’ve got laughing pox,” she added. “Makes sense. You didn’t have time to catch it as a child before the Balladairans took you.” She said it almost wistfully.
“Can I just… go lie down?” Touraine growled the words between gritted teeth. “It was a long walk.” Touraine was half a second from passing out, right there in the dirt. Jaghotai grabbed her by the arm to carry some of Touraine’s weight and lead her through. Touraine didn’t have the energy to jerk away.
“Stop. You’ll get sick, too.” Her protest was feeble, and they were already walking. Jaghotai shooed people back.
“Nah. I had it when I was a kid.”
“Am I going to die?”
“If we all died from it, there wouldn’t even be a Qazāl. It’s a weird thing.” Instead of lapsing into her usual glaring silence, Jaghotai kept up the idle chatter as they walked. Touraine wondered if this meant Jaghotai was becoming… friendly. “I don’t really understand it, but Aranen and Djasha do. You get it once, you don’t get it again. It also keeps you from getting the death pox.” Jaghotai helped Touraine slide back into her old bedroll.
The hand supporting Touraine went suddenly slack, and she slammed into the dirt.
“Sky above, Jak—” Touraine groaned and rolled over. “What’s wrong?”
“We don’t get the death pox,” Jaghotai whispered, a hopeful and calculating expression spreading on her face, “because we’ve already had the laughing pox. We need to talk to Djasha and Niwai. We need that Many-Legged priest’s animals again.”
CHAPTER 39
A PANIC
Three nights after Touraine slipped out of the town house like a ghost, Luca dreamed, wild with her own fever.
In one dream, on the se
cond night of Luca’s sickness, Touraine led her by the hand, smiling, smiling, and behind Touraine, the gallows, and waiting on the gallows, Cantic, an empty noose swaying in her hand. Above them, a mixed flock of birds blotted out the sun. Crows, seagulls, pigeons cooing and screeching and cawing as they passed.
“You don’t have to do this,” Cantic whispered in her raspy voice as she placed the noose around Luca’s neck.
“Your Highness,” murmured Lanquette, shaking her awake with his gloved hand. “Princess.”
Her eyes fastened on him in the haze of afternoon sunlight. “Something’s happened?”
“You cried out.” Lanquette averted his eyes and removed his hand. “I thought it best to wake you, Your Highness.”
Luca sank back into the pillows, damp with sweat but feeling properly coherent for the first time in a day. She looked her guard in the eye and swelled with sudden gratitude. “Thank you, Lanquette.”
Her relief was short lived. The next day, while she recovered her strength with chicken broth and soft grains, a letter came from the compound with a young soldier wearing a scarf around his face. He left the letter and departed without a word.
That told them enough, even without opening the letter. The compound was suffering from some sort of outbreak, too.
Cantic’s handwriting was hasty: Soldiers ill. Rash, vomiting, death. Does not affect Qazāli prisoners. Using them to try to heal the others. Not helping much. Stay away.
Luca pieced the message together. It seemed like the soldiers had something similar to her and Touraine—except for the death. She was already starting to feel stronger. Was it only a matter of time before it got worse again? Was Touraine dead in the city somewhere? She exhaled sharply, irritated that she even cared.
Cantic was using Aranen and the others to heal the sick soldiers, or at least to help care for them, but there was nothing about how many had succumbed and how many had recovered.
