by C. L. Clark
Luca should have asked Aranen more about the sickness. Pride had kept Luca from sending for the priestess when she fell ill herself. Aranen had said Touraine’s illness wasn’t fatal, so she’d decided to let the disease run its course. Luca had been a fool to trust her.
There was one person she could trust who might know almost as much about Qazāli diseases, though.
“Lanquette?” Luca called. “Could you send a message to Bastien LeRoche? I need him to bring his books.”
The next day, Bastien LeRoche arrived at the town house, a satchel on his shoulder and his father’s young manservant laden with more books.
When they joined Luca in her upstairs office, he gestured toward Adile, who waited beyond the threshold for any requests, a scarf covering her entire face save her eyes.
“What—oh.” The young lord looked Luca up and down. His smile was warm and charming. “You have laughing pox.”
“It could be dangerous,” Luca said defensively. “Adile will bring you scarves and gloves to protect yourselves, and you should stay back.”
Bastien laughed and shook his head. “It’s not dangerous. I had it before. It’s common here. When I caught it, my father locked me in my room with only water and…” He trailed off. His face held the shadow of latent rage, but there was no sign of it in his voice. “Well, I didn’t die, so eventually he let me out again.”
Bastien’s eyes flicked toward the servant boy, Richard. “You’ve had it, too, haven’t you?”
“Yes, my lord,” Richard said softly. Then he bowed over the books to Luca. His slight shoulders were tight with the strain of the heavy books. “Your Highness.”
“Here, put those on the desk, please.” She gestured to Adile for coffee. Then she sat heavily in her chair.
“If it’s not dangerous, Bastien, why did I get a message from General Cantic about a new plague? She said soldiers are dying. Fever, rash, death.” She rolled up her sleeve to bare a patch of itchy red skin on her arm. “Why am I not dead yet?”
Bastien shook his head again. “I’m not a doctor, Luca, but this is definitely laughing pox. I don’t know what’s happening at the barracks, but it’s different.” He patted the stack of books Richard had just put down. “I take it that’s what we’re going to look for, then?”
She smiled, and he returned it with his own grin. Sky above, it felt good to be understood.
“Richard, can you read?” Luca asked the boy.
“Yes, Your Highness. I can help.” He bowed again.
“No. Take your ease. I have some books you might like downstairs. Fun books. Adventures. Adile will give you lunch and tea, whatever you need.”
Richard looked uncertainly between Luca and Bastien. When Bastien nodded, a hesitant smile curved the corners of the boy’s mouth.
After Adile led the boy down to Luca’s reading corner, Luca and Bastien got to work. It also felt good to do what she was best at.
They spent the afternoon picking through their collective texts, looking for records of a disease like the one at the compound, how it spread, and any known medicines. Luca didn’t know what it meant that the Qazāli prisoners weren’t helping much—did it mean that the healing magic was ineffective or that the prisoners were uncooperative or that there were just too many sick for the priests to cure?
Bastien hunched over the desk, tracing the lines of text with his fingertips, nose barely a handbreadth away from the page. That same lock of blond hair flopped over his hand, and he flicked it back without breaking his concentration.
She hadn’t told him what she had learned from Aranen. It felt like a betrayal of their friendship, since he had helped her in her research before and was helping her now. She suspected her desire to keep it secret was partly because she had failed. She hadn’t been able to do the magic, and she didn’t want him to think her weaker for it.
“Aha!” Bastien bolted upright, startling Luca out of her thoughts.
“What? What!”
He smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s nothing, but I’m just—it seems like—here, he writes about sick people being connected. We know that already, contagious. But it also talks about sick people being connected to dirty animals. The city is full of rats, obviously. And then there are all the sky-falling cats and mangy dogs in the Old Medina. Maybe the soldiers were careless.”
He kept talking, but Luca was no longer listening. The flocks of birds that had swept down on the crops. The farm animals that had vanished without a trace, as if they’d simply walked away. What if it wasn’t just animals thrown out of their habits by the delayed rainy season?
Would the Taargens be so bold as to risk a practically brand-new peace treaty? She closed her eyes to better remember the wording on the treaty. Though the Taargens weren’t allowed to take up arms or “perform acts of aggression” on Balladairan territories and subjects, it wasn’t spelled out explicitly that they couldn’t interfere with the colonies’ food supplies using… animals.
She opened her eyes again. Bastien was staring at her, waiting for an explanation. Her eyes fell, however, on the small snake skull on her desk. Luca had taken it from the governor-general’s office on the compound. It had been one of Cheminade’s, like all the trinkets in the command office.
The late governor had said the lion pelt in her house was a gift from the wild tribes that roamed the desert. Call themselves the Many-Legged, for the animals they worship.
“Sky above,” Luca swore, jumping up and grabbing the snake skull. “Shit. Shit shit shit.” A wave of dizziness knocked her back into her seat. “It’s not the Taargens.”
“Luca?”
The call was echoed from the other side of the door as Gil knocked on it.
“Come in. It’s all right,” she said to both men. Only it wasn’t all right. “Gil? We need to see Cantic.”
Gil and Bastien looked at each other quizzically.
“We’re under attack. The rebels are using the animals.”
“Your Highness, I heard you were sick. Why are you here?” Cantic met Luca at the door to the administration building. The scarf around the general’s face was black and gold, her blue eyes fierce above it.
I am sick, Luca thought. She drew herself up and planted her feet. I am also a queen. “This is the rebels, General. We’re under attack.”
Around them, the compound’s clean orderliness had vanished. It was everything she’d been afraid of. Bodies burning on the plague fires beyond the walls. Plumes of smoke sent her back in time, to Balladaire and the Withering Death. To her parents’ funeral and the pillars of smoke that had loomed in every direction beyond the walls of La Chaise.
Only here, instead of withering into husks in their beds…
The sick bay overflowed, and blackcoats vomited and moaned outside the building. The healthy ones rushed about the compound, spare shirts or handkerchiefs or even arms over their mouths. They were bees in a kicked hive.
“It’s a plague, Your Highness—”
Luca pushed past Cantic, careful not to touch her. Just in case. Careful not to show the remnants of her own body’s weakness.
Cantic followed Luca into the general’s office, past that beautiful doe door.
“Where are the Qazāli healers?” Luca asked for Cantic’s ears only.
The general looked askance. “I pressed them as hard as I could. They went unconscious. Some of them haven’t woken back up.” She shrugged, frustrated in her helplessness. Luca knew exactly how she felt.
Luca swore. “I thought they’d be able to stop the worst of it. This is an attack, General. I think the rebels allied with the Many-Legged tribes.”
Cantic sneered with distaste. “Those jackalfuckers in the desert?”
Luca grunted, surprised at the general’s break in decorum. “I think they’re like the Taargens.”
The general froze. “How do you mean?”
“They have some sort of link with the animals. Paul-Sebastien LeRoche and I were doing research. Animals can pass diseases to people. It all ma
kes sense, all the way back to the animals vanishing from their farms, the birds destroying the crops. This is planned, Cantic. Something is happening.” Touraine. Djasha. Touraine knew tactics. And Djasha…
Had Djasha been the one to take down Cantic’s company, back when Cantic was a captain? She would know how weak the military was under plague fear. So would Touraine. They would be idiots not to press an advantage.
“How weak is the compound?” Luca asked.
“It’s not—”
“How weak, General? How many soldiers are down?”
Cantic leaned over her desk on flat palms and closed her eyes. She shook her head. And her shoulders shook, and her hands trembled on the desk. She said something, but in such a low whisper that Luca didn’t hear it.
“What did you say?”
“I said, it’s my fault. In four days, I’ve lost a third of my soldiers. A full fourth of them dead—the rest are just on their way, and it’s my fault, Your Highness.”
Four days ago. Touraine had snuck away seven days ago.
“What do you mean?”
“That Brigāni bitch planned this. It’s vengeance. I know it. She’s doing it again.”
Luca stilled, worried that Cantic was having a mental breakdown. “Doing what, General?”
The tightly coiled tension left Cantic’s shoulders. She faced Luca, eyes bleak above the mask. “The stories are real, Your Highness.”
“Your attack on the Brigāni tribe is a matter of state record. You were moved to the education division to teach the Sands. I know the story.” Luca tried to speak soothingly. She needed the general whole and ready.
Cantic shook her head. “If only.” She twisted the thick grief ring on her right middle finger for a quiet moment before she continued. “That witch destroyed my entire company. After the… incident… I rode off to—mourn my family. I came back to carnage you can’t imagine, Your Highness. Only one of my soldiers survived, and it broke him so badly that he ran away to find the southern monks. For all I know, he died in the snow, raving mad.”
Luca searched Cantic’s eyes for anything less than lucidity, and the calm grief she found there frightened her even more than madness. “If it’s real, why haven’t they used this magic on us before?”
Cantic gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know, Your Highness. My only guess is that they can’t. Or they’re preparing to. I’ve been afraid of this since Lord Regent Ancier sent me down here.”
Luca pinched her temples. She didn’t know how to fight that kind of magic.
Cantic rubbed her own forehead. “But if they attack us, they risk getting sick themselves.”
“You have their healers in your custody. Have you asked them?” Luca was practically yelling and had to pause to catch her breath. “Get answers.”
Cantic scowled. “I’m not going to torture the only people who can help my soldiers, Your Highness.” Then, surprisingly, her voice went solemn and thick. “On the subject of the doctors. You should know… I promised Aranen din Djasha that if we captured her wife, we would let her see her again. She says the bitch is dying.”
For a second, Luca lost her breath. “You promised her… what?” she stammered. “Why? Did she give you something else? Something good?”
“For healing my soldiers.” Cantic sighed. “You’ve never given your life to someone, only to learn they’ve been ripped away from you forever. People think I’m ruthless. A monster. But even I know that some things are just right, Your Highness. And some things aren’t. I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done for the benefit of your father or your uncle. Even the statesmen in Masridān. All sky-falling one hundred sixty-one of them, Your Highness. It secured the eastern reaches of your empire, so it was worth it.” The older woman stared Luca down, as if she were willing Luca to understand. Like she wanted someone to hear her and tell her what she had done was justified. “But when I lost Berst… our children… I made a mistake, that night with the Brigāni. That wasn’t for Balladaire. That was for me. And I regret it.”
Luca’s heart lurched down to her stomach. She had felt something like that when she thought Touraine had died. She and Touraine had never been married, had maybe never even loved each other, but there had been rage in her heart, and if she could have killed the ones she deemed responsible, maybe…
That didn’t matter, of course. She already knew who she would give her life to: her citizens came first.
“Whatever you need to do to fortify the compound, do it. We have other bases in Qazāl. Send for reinforcements. Where’s Beau-Sang?” snapped Luca.
The general snapped back, “The rich coward you picked to run this city is buying the first free berth out of it.”
They stared at each other, mouths hanging open at Cantic’s words, and perhaps even at the way she’d said them. Even Gil’s eyes went wide.
“He’s doing what?” Luca said, her voice small.
Cantic scrubbed her hand over her eyes above her black face scarf. “He’s fleeing the city, Your Highness. He was packing up his town house in the Quartier this morning.”
“How do you know?”
Cantic shared a look with Gil. “I’ve had him watched.” She twisted her grief rings around, around. Luca almost reached for her own rings.
“Watched.” Luca looked between the general and her most trusted advisor, who had clearly known about this but hadn’t seen fit to tell her. “Watched.”
“You said you wanted to be careful with him,” Gil said softly. “A leash?”
“I didn’t mean have it done behind my back,” Luca snapped. If Gil could do this behind her back, how could she trust his opinion of Cantic?
“Your Highness, I—did you even read the letters I sent you after the skirmish in the bazaar?” the general said.
It was hard to think back to that cloud of overwrought pain and anger. She had glanced at Cantic’s letters; most of them were updates on missing persons from the battle, and all of that was to be expected. And then came the hostage letter and accompanying finger, and then Beau-Sang as governor-general.
“Of course I did. They didn’t say anything about him.”
The deep lines in Cantic’s face deepened. “There was something strange about the missing people and how quickly he found these so-called hostages. And the culprits.”
It would take a particular kind of gruesomeness for a Balladairan to cut off another Balladairan’s finger just to get himself a place in the government. A kind of gruesomeness that sounded less and less far-fetched when taken with Aliez’s own fears about her father. Luca hadn’t even had a chance to check on the girl.
“You think he orchestrated the hostage taking.”
Cantic nodded.
“Do you think…” Sadness rose in Luca’s heart, not for herself but for a young woman whose father had had her abducted and held for a very different kind of ransom. “Do you think he had anything to do with Cheminade’s death?”
“I don’t doubt he’s capable of it, Your Highness. I’m only saying that I never found the proof.”
“Then why aren’t we sky-falling arresting him?” cried Luca. “Let’s go. Bring a squad of whatever soldiers look healthiest.”
When they arrived at the comte de Beau-Sang’s town house, Richard the servant boy was carrying a small wooden box out of the house while two Qazāli men carried out trunks and loaded them into a large carriage. The boy froze midstep when he saw Luca, his eyes wide like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
“Beau-Sang!” Luca called. She turned to the boy while the grown men looked between her and the house. “Richard, will you take me to the comte, please?”
“Yes, Your Highness.” He bowed over the box he still held. It was a dark wood inlaid with stylized pearl lilies, perhaps a jewelry box. He scurried away without even placing it into the carriage with the trunks. Luca and Cantic followed.
Not everything in the house had been packed, but enough of the Balladairan touches—the painted forests and stags
and chevaliers—were gone that the place felt hollowed out. The sudden emptiness made the sitting room feel less like a museum of Balladaire and more like an ancient tomb.
“Your Highness?”
Luca turned to see Aliez halfway down the stairs, a surprised look on her face. She did not look like she was preparing to leave. She wore tight Balladairan trousers under a bright green Qazāli tunic; her hair was in a careless bun, and her feet were bare. She seemed smaller than Luca remembered, and Luca wished she had better news for the girl.
“We’ve come for your father,” Luca said softly. “Is Bastien here?”
The young woman inhaled sharply, then padded down the stairs to join them. “He’s out.”
“You aren’t trying to run, too?” Luca murmured.
Aliez scowled up at Luca. “Qazāl is my home, Your Highness.” Then she added in a hesitant whisper, “Did you find her?”
Luca shook her head, not because she didn’t know but because her suspicions were too horrid to drop in Aliez’s lap so suddenly. The girl’s restraint was admirable; she only bowed her head in solemn acceptance, as if she’d let the flame of hope die out some time ago.
“You should go back upstairs,” Luca said.
“No. I want to see this.”
Beau-Sang was in his office, loading his papers and books into watertight boxes himself. Richard announced them, even though the Comte stopped as soon as they walked in.
Casimir LeRoche de Beau-Sang smiled, as if the two most powerful people in the colony hadn’t just walked into his office with Balladairan soldiers at their back.
“Your Highness.” He bowed. “General. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
“Sky above, Beau-Sang, you’re the governor-general,” Cantic shouted, pushing into the room. “You’re supposed to be running the colony, not cowering in your study!”
“It’s a dangerous time. I would be willing to submit the city to temporary martial law.” He shrugged his broad shoulders and turned back to his desk.
“Martial law means I can shut down every ship in port.”
“And watch the Balladairans riot again? I’m sure the Qazāli would love that.” Beau-Sang turned his smile on Luca. “How deep do the crown’s coffers go? Deep enough for another round of reparations?”
