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

main hall of the temple above it. The ceiling matched the temple above, cold marble with dark veins and mosaic tiles, but the tiles here were dark—brown or black—and white. With the light of the table lanterns, it made the room feel cozy and comfortable instead of grand and expansive. Patients lay on pallets or sat on cushions, depending on their dispositions. Curtains separated certain sections, but enough were pulled back that Touraine saw there weren’t very many patients right now. They greeted Aranen and Touraine in Shālan as they entered. Some of them were older, nursing bandaged wounds. A child lay cradled against her mother while the woman sang a gentle song.

Aranen plucked a cone from her box, set it on a beaten metal tray on a small altar near the door, and lit it. The tray looked like it had once been a plate before meeting a spray of musket fire. The scent that wafted up was heavy and burned Touraine’s nose.

“Why do the Balladairans let this place stand?” she whispered to the priestess.

Anger laced Aranen’s chuckle. “They know they can’t get away with anything else.”

“Doesn’t it just stay here as a bastion for Shālans? It’s the biggest in the empire, right? Seems like the Balladairans would want to remove the temptation.”

“In the old empire, yes. People came to do pilgrimage here and to study at the university. That empire is broken and her people divided.” She gestured above, to the main hall. “They gutted the entire building—except the hidden rooms and the infirmary. Gold, holy artifacts—gone. We bring incense and cushions from home. We do our best.”

Touraine followed Aranen with the tray of food from patient to patient as Aranen changed bandages, threw the used ones into a reed basket, and offered reassurances in that mélange of Shālan and Balladairan that was common in the city. Sometimes, Aranen put a hand on them, closed her eyes, and prayed. Sometimes, the patient joined her.

The sheer religiosity of it made her nervous. The whip scars on her back tingled.

One patient, a young man lying flat on his back with a broken arm in a sling, passed out after Aranen whispered with him.

“What happened to him?” Touraine murmured.

“He fell in the quarry. The Balladairan overseer left him for dead.” The priestess gently adjusted his legs, tugging them slightly. “Broken back, broken legs. Healing so much damage takes a lot out of a patient. And the healer.” Aranen sighed wearily as she pushed herself to her feet and headed to the child and her mother.

Touraine stared grimly into the last two bowls of food. “A long time ago, you told me that Shāl was a just god. What’s just about this? Why would a god let all of this happen?” Touraine waved her free hand to encompass all of Qazāl.

Aranen’s dark eyebrows lowered over her deep brown eyes. “Shāl is balanced. Technically, that’s the Second Tenet.”

Balance sounded nice. Something out of reach but worth working toward.

Touraine reached to hand the bowl to the child with a smile, but all thoughts of balance vanished when she realized the kid was covered in patches of rash. She flinched and held back the bowl, afraid to seem afraid, but also afraid of disease. Touraine might not have been Balladairan, but she had grown up with the same healthy fear of the Withering, of any contagion, that every native Balladairan had.

Aranen raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Surely you’ve already had the laughing pox?”

“Uh,” Touraine stammered. The kid was staring at her, wide brown eyes watery and pitiful. “I don’t know?”

Aranen chuckled again and took the bowl from Touraine. “It’s okay. It’s very contagious but mostly harmless. We usually expose children to it on purpose so that they don’t get anything worse. Jaghotai will know if you had it or not.” The priestess shared a comment in Shālan with the kid’s mother, and they laughed together as Touraine’s face heated. The mother and child took their bowls with thanks.

By then, the incense had diffused through the hall, no longer cloying and intense but relaxing and sensual. Aranen led Touraine back upstairs through the priests’ corridor and into the kitchen. The roasted meat still smelled delicious, even mingled with the incense clinging to their clothing. They sat in the rickety chairs, Aranen with her long legs stretched out.

“Don’t look so disappointed,” Aranen said to Touraine when she caught the soldier eyeing the kebabs. “I need it for my work. Short supply.”

“Your work? You mean healing them. Like you healed me.” Touraine held her left forearm out so the thin scar shone. “The girl I—the assassin did this. How does it work, exactly?”

Aranen traced the scar with a sad smile. She considered Touraine carefully before answering.

“Shāl requires flesh to mend flesh. That’s what the meat is for. We eat it, we pray, and if Shāl blesses us, we heal.”

“Or you use it like Empress Djaya. To destroy. Djasha said—”

“No,” Aranen said harshly. “That’s forbidden.”

Touraine bowed her head in acknowledgment. “Anyone can do it, though?” she asked shyly. “Heal, I mean.”

“No. It is and always has been a matter of faith. And training. If you don’t know the body, you can’t knit it back together properly.”

Touraine dragged her eyes from the lamb and picked a stray incense cone up from the table, rolling it between her fingers. She thought of balance again. The balance of a flawless knife. Of standing steady and strong on one leg. Finding your place between two parts.

The cone of incense broke in half, one part a solid chunk. The other half crumbled to a smear of fragrant dust against Touraine’s skin. “If I wanted to pray, could you teach me?”

“What?”

Touraine clenched her fist around the broken cone, crushing the other half as she fought her embarrassment.

Aranen took Touraine’s hand and opened it, letting the powder fall to the floor. “It’s all right. I just thought you would have asked Djasha instead.”

Touraine snorted and dusted her hands on her trousers. “She only tells me stories about