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

told Cantic. She broke the deal I made. On purpose. To save the Sands.”

Luca watched as surprise and pain—and, for just a moment, rage—moved across the woman’s face. Then she bowed her head once.

“That’s unfortunate. I didn’t want to heal her at first. Djasha insisted.” Aranen smiled ruefully. “I was beginning to like her.”

“What will stop me from torturing the methods out of you?”

“I would say your conscience, but I suppose that’s not true, is it?”

Luca ignored the prickle of guilt tensing up her shoulders.

“The magic is easy.” She smiled in a way that told Luca it was anything but. “Do you have any fresh meat held over?”

Since the animals had been… vanished… it was difficult at best to find any meat at all at a reasonable price. Some had been requisitioned for officers’ meals, though.

“How fresh, exactly?”

Aranen arched an eyebrow. “Fresh enough for you. Bring me a warm meal of it, and I’ll show you.”

Luca got up and, still watching Aranen from the corner of her eye, poked her head outside the interrogation room. Unsurprisingly, Cantic was still there, fists tight by her sides.

“General. Perfect. The prisoner and I would like some lunch. Have them send us something with meat.” She forestalled the general’s protests with a raised hand. “It’s important.” Then she went back inside the room with Aranen and closed the door, without waiting to see if Cantic obeyed.

“So you need meat. What else?” Luca asked the priestess after she sat down.

“After that, it’s a simple matter of faith in Shāl and devotion to his tenets.” Aranen shrugged and cocked an eyebrow as if to say What else? and the links of her fetters clinked with warning.

CHAPTER 34A MATTER OF FAITH

A matter of faith, the priestess had said.

After Aranen’s demonstration, Luca’s mind was full of possibilities. Full of fear and curiosity. Full of hope. The magic was simple, or at least, simple enough. The only thing she still struggled with was that sharp little word, faith.

When she returned to the Quartier, Luca went straight to her bedroom to contemplate it in private. She sat in one of the comfortable chairs, half reading while she mulled over the question in the back of her mind.

Faith was the purview of the uncivilized. Her father had taught her that, and after he died, her tutors and her uncle. Gods were crutches for the weak willed, they said. Well, she was no stranger to crutches. She smirked to herself. What was one more?

Luca pulled the sleeve of her dressing gown up to look at the small sliver of a scar on the underside of her forearm. Aranen had cut her there. It was smooth under her thumb, as if it had healed years ago. She couldn’t see it without thinking of the cut Touraine had shown her on her own forearm, longer and thicker but just as aged.

A gentle knock on the door jerked Luca out of her thoughts. She let her sleeve fall back down, covering it protectively with her other hand.

“It’s Gillett,” he said.

“Come in,” Luca called. She forced her hand away from the scar.

Gillett closed the door behind him and took the chair from Luca’s small desk. The chair seemed too small for him, crowding his knees into his chest, but he looked at ease.

Then Luca noticed the fan of lines around Gil’s mouth and the wrinkles on his brow.

“Hello, Gil,” she said softly. Before Qazāl, they used to meet and speak regularly, even if he wasn’t guarding her person himself. Now there was distance between them.

“Luca.” His smile brightened his face. “How are you?”

Luca nodded slowly, putting her book on the side table. “I’ve been better, but I’ve also been worse. Things aren’t going as I expected.”

Gil smiled wryly. “That’s the trouble with expectations.” Then he sobered. “Something is bothering you.”

First, Luca shook her head. Then she reconsidered. “What does it mean to have faith in something?”

The guard captain blinked, but he had known Luca since she was an inquisitive child. For certain, this couldn’t be the strangest thing she’d ever asked him.

“It’s the absence of doubt,” he said after only a moment’s pause. “I had faith in your father. I have faith in you.”

“Did you never doubt my father?”

Gil crossed one leg over the other knee. “It’s in our nature to doubt. The key to faith is standing by someone anyway.”

The answer of a man who had devoted himself to serving others: first as a soldier, then as a royal guard. It felt too… unthinking for Luca. To say she didn’t follow others well would have been an understatement.

“What about when he gave you orders you disagreed with?” she asked.

“I followed some of them. I didn’t follow others.” The sudden grief in the old man’s face made Luca’s heart catch. The apple of his throat bobbed hard as he swallowed. “I regret some of the things I did on each side. But I don’t regret standing by Roland. I never have.”

Is that what faith amounted to? Love and devotion? Obedience?

“I see,” she said, looking down at her lap.

Gil cleared his throat. “Lanquette said you spent the day at the prison with priests and doctors.” Disapproval laced his words.

Luca nodded, but she recognized the lecture coming and turned the subject just slightly. “Gil, what if I lift the ban on religion?”

His gray eyebrows shot up his face. “Why would you do that?” he asked slowly.

She picked her book back up and flicked its pages. “I wondered if it would help change things with the Qazāli. Give them less motivation to rebel.”

“I don’t know.” Gil stroked his mustache, his grief and lecture both seemingly forgotten. “It would be hard to convince Beau-Sang or Cantic that was a good idea. And it wouldn’t change how other Balladairans treated believers. Qazāli who want to work with them will still be best served without it, no matter what laws you make.”

Luca tugged at the cuff of her dressing gown. “What if I wanted to follow a god?”

Gil