The Unbroken

by C. L. Clark

  Noé’s eyes widened.

  “Come on,” Touraine said. Noé turned tail and sprinted to the southernmost barracks in the southeastern corner, quiet as a fox in a den of gunfire and death screams, and Touraine bolted for its neighbor. Freeing the Sands was their only hope of getting out of this compound alive.

  She sent another rebel after Noé and took a second to assess the rest of their little company. Jaghotai raising a holy devastation through the west of the compound. There was no sign of Djasha and the prisoners.

  Touraine took out the only Balladairan in front of her barracks building before he could level his musket and fix his aim. Blood gurgled from his belly and across his eyes as he screamed. Touraine hadn’t quite gotten the hang of using the long knife instead of her baton, and it showed. She got the important parts, though: poke them hard, hit with the sharp side, and be fast.

  But when she opened the door to the barracks, there was no one there. Just rows and rows of empty double bunks. At a loss, she stepped in farther, even going so far as to kneel and scan under the beds. The room was dark enough to hide in, but it was quiet as death.

  Outside was another case. She listened and watched as Sands and rebels died. She had planned for this. She’d looked as many moves ahead as she could, and she was exploiting every piece, every weapon she had.

  The jail was across from her, on the other side of the packed dirt road from the empty barracks. She didn’t know how many of the rescue squad had managed to get into the jail, but as she watched, prisoners burst from the door, Saïd at the fore with an injured arm, dragging one woman on his good shoulder.

  It wasn’t Aranen or Djasha.

  A sound like a sudden rainstorm made Touraine duck low. A shadow passed over the sky. A massive flock of seagulls blotted out the stars, flying toward the eastern wall. Toward Shāl’s Road, where the Balladairan reinforcements were coming from. Beneath the flapping of their wings, other sounds got sharper: gunshots farther away, outside the walls, and the yelp and snarl and bark of hyenas. The roar of a lioness.

  Touraine let herself smile.

  In a kinder world, she could wait for the Many-Legged to break through. Or she could look for Luca, ask her one last time to stop this. There was no time for either.

  She skirted the chaos of her rebels meeting musket balls to her left, their knives and batons against Balladairan bayonets. To her right, empty training fields, the practice dummies like leering enemies in the dark. In the noise of the night, she was one lone and silent shadow slipping easily across the street and into the jail.

  The jailer was dead, clearly the first casualty inside. He’d been taken with expert knife work: a stab through the ribs followed by a slice across the throat to leave him sprawled across the short entry corridor. His blood was already sticky under Touraine’s boots.

  Along with blood, the place smelled like sickness. Not the clean, disciplined Balladairan prison smell she had taken for granted. Her stomach turned, and she thought about running the other way, back under the sky, but even the open air wasn’t safe today. She didn’t let herself think long on how many Sands weren’t immune to the death pox.

  “Aranen!” Touraine called. “Aranen, are you here?”

  She grabbed the jailer’s lamp and held it high enough to illuminate the sandstone cells as she turned into the jail’s main corridor. Their metal gates were flung open like welcoming arms. The Sands weren’t here, either. She passed cell after cell, afraid each time she looked that she would find the dead bodies of people she knew.

  Where are you, you witch? Where are you, Pru?

  Touraine spun around at the heavy rush of boots at the entrance. The clink and clatter of belts and muskets. A hoarse voice swearing in Balladairan, saying, “Clear it. Anyone not in a cell dies.”

  Maybe two of them, probably three. They hadn’t seen her yet. She had the element of surprise. She took a deep breath, gripped her long knife tighter, and sprinted around the corner. Poke them hard. Cut with the sharp side. Fast, fast, fast.

  She hit the closest blackcoat point-first in the stomach. The blade swooped under the barrel of the blackcoat’s musket and disappeared. It came out through the soldier’s back. Touraine barreled through. Her momentum pinned a second blackcoat against the wall while the first one bled out between them. She anticipated the blow from the third blackcoat behind her and ducked. Her blood-coated knife came with her. The third assailant’s musket butt hit the first blackcoat’s corpse in the face, while Touraine slid her blade into his side. He fell to the ground.

  Touraine turned back to the second blackcoat. The woman had lost her human shield, slumped in a heap at her feet. She held her side, where Touraine’s knife had nicked her through the first blackcoat’s body. Her other hand hung slack around a musket, fixed bayonet gleaming in the shadows.

  “Please,” she whispered. Her lip trembled. Her dark eyes were wet with terror or pain.

  And Touraine hesitated. This blackcoat wasn’t an officer. She hadn’t given the order to kill anyone outside a cell. But she was a part of this, and she had never stopped it. She was Balladaire’s pawn.

  So were you.

  “Get out,” Touraine growled in disgust that was half directed at herself. “And don’t come back.”

  The blackcoat nodded and started to run.

  “Leave the gun,” Touraine barked.

  The other woman dropped the musket and fled into the night. Touraine got back to her search but kept her ears open for more visitors.

  She found Djasha and Aranen embracing in the last cell at the end of the corridor. Tears streaked the women’s faces in the brig’s lamplight. Relief weakened Touraine’s knees.

  “Ya, Mulāzim.” Aranen pulled away from Djasha and wiped the Brigāni woman’s tears away with a thumb. Aranen’s usually short-clipped hair was a thicket of overgrown weeds. Her voice sounded sick and hoarse.

  “We’re breaking you out, if you haven’t noticed,” Touraine said. She would find Pruett and the rest somewhere else. Maybe Jaghotai had already freed them. She let herself hope. She couldn’t bear the alternative. “Let’s go.”

  The two older women shared a glance. “Can you make it, love?” Aranen said softly.

  Only then did Touraine see how much Djasha leaned on her wife. “I can make it far enough.”

  Outside, shots still popped in the air, but they were slower and one-sided.

  Her back ached under the contortion of supporting Djasha and carrying the dead blackcoats’ muskets, but they couldn’t stop.

  “Go ahead,” Touraine huffed. She pointed straight ahead. “The southern wall, southeast corner. I’m going to help Jaghotai.”

  Aranen nodded.

  Around them, her soldiers—no, not her soldiers, Jaghotai’s soldiers, the rebels and a handful of Sands—were dying. The growls and cries of animals outside the walls had died down, but the number of blackcoats in the compound seemed just as thick as before. She wasn’t sure she had anything under control.

  Djasha hadn’t moved. Her feet were planted as she stared down the wide dirt road that led to the gate. The blackcoats had formed a line two rows deep and were taking turns shooting at the rebels, who used the barracks and supply building as cover. Touraine and Aranen could both see, in the flash of musket fire and torchlight, who had caught the Apostate’s attention. Cantic’s golden sleeve was a flag in the night.

  Standing behind the line and barking orders was the Blood General. She was like a matchstick in the dark, her thin figure a dark silhouette, her blond-white hair and its flying strands like a flare. The cords of her neck bulged as she shouted to fire, load, change weapons, over and over. Firing on Touraine’s people. She understood the struggle on Djasha’s face.

  “No.” Aranen tugged Djasha’s wrist, the word already broken with loss as she said it. “Djasha, come with me. Please.”

  Djasha took a dazed step toward Cantic anyway. Touraine threw her arm in front of Djasha to stop her, and the Brigāni woman wrapped her hand
around Touraine’s forearm. Touraine almost screamed at the burn of the woman’s touch. She jerked her arm away.

  Djasha turned back to Aranen and gripped Aranen’s arms with both hands, as if her touch wasn’t fire.

  They spoke in Shālan too rapid for Touraine to follow, but the plaintive look on both of their faces told Touraine enough.

  Then Aranen whispered, tear choked, “You’re going to die.”

  Djasha’s smile was haggard in the shadow. “I will either way. But I can finish this. Go.” She pointed the same way Touraine had, forward, to the southern wall where the rebels might still be waiting for more prisoners, the injured, and the coming retreat.

  “No. Together.” Aranen squeezed Djasha’s hand hard.

  They were resolute. Touraine understood. Cantic had broken their lives. She had broken Touraine’s life, too, in a way, even as she had built it. They all had some kind of unfinished business with the Blood General.

  “I take it you still have Shāl’s magic?” Touraine asked, holding up her burned wrist.

  “I have enough.”

  “Then you come at her from this way. I’ll loop behind that building”—Touraine pointed to the administrative building—“and come at her from the gate side. Attack when she’s busy with me. Take these.” She unslung the muskets. They felt cumbersome to her now. She moved better without them.

  The two priestesses nodded, and Touraine took off. She ran through the empty darkness between the north wall of the compound and the jail, the command building, and the infirmary, with the noise of Cantic’s line to her left. Occasionally, a wild shot from the rebels pinged the ground near her, but nothing hit flesh. She slipped through the alley between the infirmary and the command building. It was already stacked with corpses, but they were too orderly to be anything but plague deaths the soldiers hadn’t taken to the fires yet.

  Touraine looked back down the road, to her left, where Djasha and Aranen were waiting for her.

  Cantic’s back was to her right. She was flanked by a junior officer on each side, their pistols in hand, their swords on their belts. One of them was speaking to an aide, and Touraine waited for them to finish, for the officer’s attention to return to the battle. Her long knife was both slick with fear sweat and sticky with blood. As the aide ran off to relay their message, Touraine finally stepped out.

  The noise that had been muffled a moment ago now hit Touraine with full force. Cantic’s voice was raw and ragged as she shouted orders. The yelling was interspersed with gunfire and cries of pain. They were all so busy with the fight in front of them that Touraine stabbed the junior officer to Cantic’s right before anyone realized an enemy had gotten behind their lines. She stabbed the one on the left clumsily, trying to hurry as Cantic turned. The young officer staggered back, almost taking Touraine’s knife with him.

  “General.” Touraine straightened in the middle of the street, holding her long knife en garde.

  The general’s open coat fluttered in the night’s gentle wind. She looked at her two guards, one dying, the other hunched over, trying to get a grip on his pistol. She held out a hand to stop him.

  “Lieutenant,” Cantic growled. She barked at the young officer, “Take over the line. Keep the sky-falling dogs pinned.” Then she turned to Touraine, drawing her officer’s sword.

  Touraine told herself that she was not afraid to die. She told herself that she didn’t care if she died now or thirty years from now. That she didn’t care if she never saw Pruett or Jaghotai or even Luca ever again. Each thought was a lie, but she acted as if she believed it. She looked up at the night sky above the compound and inhaled deeply. The dust of the desert had a distinct smell, and Touraine caught it even in the stench of battle.

  Hurry, Djasha. Then she focused on the moment—and the steel—in front of her.

  Another rumor the Sands had spread in their bunks long ago: Cantic had been the best sword fighter of her age, second only to the princess’s guard captain. Touraine hoped that particular snatch of gossip, at least, was stretched.

  “I’m sorry things will end this way, General.”

  Touraine tested Cantic’s defenses with a jab of her long knife. She didn’t have to win. She just had to buy Djasha time.

  With your life?

  Djasha was the reason Touraine was still alive, despite everything. She had saved Touraine’s life and given her a place to belong. She’d shown Touraine mercy when she could have destroyed Touraine with the flick of a wrist. This was the least Touraine could do.

  Cantic lazily parried Touraine’s blade to the side.

  “You’ve lost your mind, Lieutenant.” Cantic stepped closer, her sword pointed toward the dirt. “Tell me they have some magic hold on you.”

  “No.” Draw this out. She settled her weight on her back leg, coiling her power there. “More like they cleared my eyes, sir.” But Touraine wasn’t good with words. She wasn’t like Luca, stabbing cleverly at just the right weak spots. Touraine’s best weapon had always been her body.

  She sprang at Cantic, knife aiming for the older woman’s chest. She ducked under the expected parry, twisting under and away like Jaghotai’s fighting dancers. She skipped back in again.

  But Cantic had nearly fifty years of experience. If Touraine’s dancing was unexpected, her face didn’t show it. She blocked Touraine’s strike with a subtle twist of her wrist, and her steady, icy eyes never left Touraine’s. She pivoted, and her counterstrike came deceptively heavily for Touraine’s head.

  Touraine ducked again, felt the whip of air above her head. Fear almost turned her knees to water. As she lost her balance, she tucked, rolled, and sprang back to her feet. Close to Cantic’s line of soldiers, who were still firing at the buildings on the south side of the compound. Touraine hoped Jaghotai had called a retreat by now, but the Jackal wouldn’t leave until everyone was accounted for, dead or alive.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw one of Cantic’s blackcoats notice Touraine and the general fighting. He turned the musket he had just loaded on Touraine instead. Her blood ran cold. She remembered other musket fire, other pain, ripping through her and spilling her out in the street.

  With the blackcoats to her right and Cantic to her left, Touraine was still facing where Djasha should have been coming from. The woman was sick and flagging, she knew, but if Djasha didn’t show up and do her unknitting, her distraction was going to die.

  Then Cantic held up her empty hand. “Hold your fire,” Cantic barked at the blackcoats. “We’ll take her surrender.”

  The few other blackcoats who had turned now hesitated. Cantic held her empty palm out to Touraine now, ready to take the hilt of her knife.

  “Fuck off.” Touraine hawked a gob of spit at the general’s gleaming boots. The blackcoats surged forward, but Cantic held her hand up to stop them again.

  “This isn’t like you, Lieutenant.” Cantic approached warily, like she would a rabid dog that needed putting down. Despite their quick clash, she wasn’t even breathing hard. “Don’t forget, I know you. I fed you, taught you, cared for you. Surrender.”

  Touraine blinked rapidly to keep her vision clear. All it would take was one signal from Cantic, and the blackcoats would fill her with lead. But Cantic wouldn’t do that. She had always liked her students to admit their wrongs before she let them go.

  Balladaire, land of honey and whips. That poisonous combination of fear and hope had kept the Sands in line for ages. Had kept Touraine in line for ages. Every moment of her life had been spent dodging the pain of punishment and striving for a reward from Cantic or someone like her. Including Luca. Until recently.

  Since Tibeau died, since she woke up from what should have been her own death, Touraine had made her own choices. She was her own sword, pointed where she willed. She submitted to Djasha and even to Jaghotai because in the end, they were right. The rebellion was right. And they respected her, however begrudgingly at first.

  Be the rain.

  She deserved to place her o
wn steps, and the Qazāli deserved to govern themselves. And she believed in the bonds she’d made. The bonds of the family she’d built.

  “Sorry, sir. Not surrendering.” Touraine ran at Cantic with the knife again.

  This time, when she got close, she let Cantic focus on the incoming blade and aimed a kick at the general’s knee. Cantic pivoted away at the last minute, off balance for the first time, and Touraine’s blade sliced across the general’s rib cage, beneath the open coat.

  Cantic hissed in pain, but that was all the time she took to acknowledge the hit. Touraine scrambled to get out of the way of the master’s flashing blade and was lashed by the tip. No time for fancy flips. Cantic pushed Touraine back on her heels. Each parry was desperate, each kick was frantic. Wisps of Cantic’s hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. Blood glued her shirt to her torso. Sweat trailed down Touraine’s own brow, too, despite the desert cold, and it stung in a dozen fresh cuts. A drop clung just above her eye, threatening to blind her with salt. And there, just there, was a shadow that was too deep to be just a shadow, creeping from behind the command building.

  When the end came, Touraine didn’t see it arrive.

  Faster than Touraine thought Cantic could move, the general thrust her blade at Touraine’s face, closing the gap with her feet at the same time. Touraine’s training fled. She bent back, pulling her head away from the thrust as she raised her own knife to parry the blade clumsily away. Only, the blade was already gone.

  It bit into Touraine’s ankle, severing the tendon. She crashed to the ground immediately, crying out as pain shot from her toes to her hip. She felt, more than heard, Cantic’s boots crunch in the dirt as the general approached her. Touraine saw the boots first, gleaming in the darkness, and then the blade of the officer’s sword, wet with her own blood. She propped herself up on her palms. Her knife. She crawled for it, dragging her bad leg behind her. Better to die with a blade in her hand.

  She looked up at General Cantic from the ground.

  “Surrender, Lieutenant.”

  Touraine wondered if she was imagining the regret in the general’s voice. She focused on that voice, though, and on the aged face it came from, because there, coming from the shadows to Cantic’s right—Touraine didn’t dare look and give Djasha and Aranen away.