The Unbroken by C. Clark (ebook reader .txt) 📕

“I’m sorry,” Luca said. “I know I don’t deserve your approval and that I do deserve the things you said before. I’m working to earn your loyalty from now on.”

For several steps, Pruett didn’t respond, the silence bordering on insulting, but Luca waited.

Behind them, the men’s boots scuffed gently. The sun burned down, so she tilted her tricorne down low over her brow. Lieutenant Pruett kept her face turned so that Luca could see only the other woman’s sweat-darkened curls clinging to her neck, and the muscles clenched in her jaw.

“You really don’t know?” Pruett’s voice was rough with some kind of emotion that didn’t make sense.

“Know what?” Gently, gently. Luca didn’t want to scare her away from whatever truth—confession—was coming.

Pruett laughed harshly, tinged with a manic edge. “It’s Touraine.”

The red fury returned faster than Luca thought possible. As her hand gripped her cane so hard the handle bit into her skin, she calculated how much force it would take to tip Pruett over the wall and break her neck. She stopped, and Pruett turned back to her with a wry, bitter expression.

“Understand me. I am your queen. Earning your loyalty does not mean I’m your mate to have a joke with.”

Lieutenant Pruett snapped to perfectly erect attention and still managed insolence. “Oh, I understand, Your Highness. I’m telling you the truth, or you can hang me like a dog on your little gallows. If it pleases you.”

“What do you mean Touraine is behind this? Did she leave a plan to be followed upon her death? Are you saying you’re responsible? You, the Sa—the conscripts?”

Pruett quirked her mouth at the casual slip of the pejorative name for the conscripts but enunciated slowly. “No. We’re not. Touraine is.”

“By which you mean to say, Touraine is alive.”

“I do mean to say that, Your Highness. She’s working with the rebels.”

Luca let herself consider the possibility for a moment. If Touraine was alive—that would mean the woman who had betrayed her was alive. The woman she had begun to… care for… was alive and working even now to undermine her rule.

“When I… visited you at the guardhouse, you said you watched her die yourself.”

“That I did. Apparently, I was wrong. She paid me a visit, too.”

A pang in the chest, a writhing in the gut. Pain and jealousy twined together like complementary theories from cruel philosophers. If Touraine was truly alive, why hadn’t she visited Luca? She is a traitor. Why would she visit you?

“And you didn’t tell me this.” Luca tried to keep the tremble from her voice.

There was proud malice in Pruett’s eyes. “You haven’t stopped by since your last visit. It’s why we call it news, Your Highness. It’s new.”

Lanquette stepped between them smoothly and looked down at Pruett with cold eyes.

“You’re addressing the queen, Lieutenant,” he said. His voice was like the whisper of his sword in its scabbard, but his hand was on the butt of his pistol.

“My apologies, sir.” Pruett saluted him first and then bowed nearly in half to Luca.

“Thank you for the information, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed. When you get back down, go directly to the offices, and fill out a report on this visit from Touraine like you should have done before. I want every detail, no matter how personal.” Luca’s stomach quailed to think what she might receive. Maybe Pruett would elide those details anyway. No—she’d probably take a perverse pleasure in the description. “I want it delivered to my desk before you return to the guardhouse.”

Another salute. “Aye, Your Highness. No detail spared.” There was still half a glass of her avocado juice, and she gulped it down indecorously, throat bobbing and glugging. She wiped the last trace of green from the corner of her lips with the back of the hand that held the glass, and then she raised the cup to them all before she swaggered away.

Touraine. Alive.

CHAPTER 31A WARNING

Two weeks passed in a haze of smoking meat and bleating animals. Slowly, Touraine began to blend in with the other Qazāli. With a scarf wrapped around her head to cover her face, she helped herd the animals deeper into the desert, where the Balladairan patrols were weak and Niwai’s Many-Legged would retrieve them. At the temple, she helped Aranen and Djasha make daily meals and ration them out to the Qazāli. Their gambit had cost everyone in the city, not just the Balladairans. The rebels would take care of the Qazāli.

Touraine was in the main hall of the Grand Temple, filling a bowl with couscous and vegetables to hand to a young man with an attractive swoop of dark curls, when someone pounded on the temple’s main door.

The boy flinched so hard that he nearly dropped the bowl of food—nearly. His grip on the bowl was as tight as Touraine’s grip on her knife.

The knock came again, harder, more insistent.

Aranen frowned, but she remained leaning over the table where they served the food. Her flat palms were pressed hard against the stone, though. Once, it might have been an altar. “There’s no meat here. If they ask, it’s only charity.”

Touraine went to the smaller side door, the one that all the Qazāli came through, and cracked it to scout the danger.

Through the door, she saw a single soldier kicked at the ground in aimless irritation, muttering a stream of curses, all of which mentioned Touraine by name. Aimée was about to slap the ornate knocker on the decorative doors again.

“Psst. Hey.”

Aimée spun around, into a fighting crouch. When she saw Touraine at the door, she straightened and walked over, mouth hanging open.

“You sky-falling ugly fuck. You—but you—”

Touraine wanted to say something clever back, but emotions blocked her throat, forcing her quiet.

Aimée kept sputtering. “Pruett said—she named you—when the princess asked who was responsible. I thought it was a shit joke. How—sky a-fucking-bove—”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Touraine said, her voice low. “If the blackcoats catch you here, you’re—they’ll kill you.”

“No, you shouldn’t be