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

The woman beneath her stared up with glassy eyes. The man beneath the woman squirmed under the combined weight. Touraine jumped up and snapped his neck with her boot.

The four Balladairans left gaped in confusion, still dumbly holding their sections of the couch. Two civilians, two blackcoats. Only one civilian had sense enough to flee from the look in Touraine’s eyes. She yanked her knife from between the conductor’s ribs and flicked it toward the others. They flinched as blood speckled their pale faces, and she leapt before they could coordinate themselves.

Shāl, if you really give a shit about anyone here, let them be safe… Touraine was out of practice on the prayer bit. I promise I’ll do better if I make it out of this alive.

Her first slash caught one blackcoat on the inner forearm, and his hand flopped uselessly without its tendons. Then the blade was through the man’s stomach and up, up into his heart. Then she ducked the blow she knew would come and shot her heel back and up. A satisfying crunch of contact.

One blackcoat left.

The soldier had his rifle back in hand. He lifted it to fire as one of the Qazāli rebels ran up behind him on silent feet. Faster, faster—

The energy in Touraine’s legs bunched and coiled, and she sprang backward through the air, like Jaghotai had taught her, one hand grazing the ground. When the world had righted itself, the last soldier was dead, a gash on each side of his throat.

“Thanks, brother,” Touraine said in Shālan.

“Mulāzim.” The rebel dragged Touraine by the arm, looking over his shoulder. His scarf covered most of his features, but she recognized his green eyes, wide in horror. His cheeks were wet as firelight from the temple danced across his face. His name was Faran, one of the younger rebels, like Malika, who was either below the theoretical “prime age” or not yet born when the Droitists took the Sands for “reeducation.”

Touraine coughed as the incense-heavy smoke filled the air. Sky above and earth below. Surely Cantic hadn’t ordered this. Luca wouldn’t sanction it.

“We have to get them out,” Touraine said. She dragged frantically at the heavy couch. “Grab it—help me!”

Smoke crept from the cracks of the main doors. When she ran to the small side door, she had to jerk her hand away from the heat. Whatever the torches had caught burned quick and hot. She let her palm hover in the space, unable to move for several heartbeats.

“They’re smart, Mulāzim. They’ll take the tunnels.” Faran’s choked-up voice brought her back to herself. He nodded back to the center of the city. He sniffed. “We should help the Jackal.”

Right. Jaghotai had told her to gather her fighters and organize them. She could already see pockets of flame and smoke blossoming in other areas of the city like morbid night flowers. The boy’s tears made Touraine feel like the lieutenant again. She grabbed his shoulder, forced him to look at her and not the smoking temple. “No. If there are tunnels, get to them. Help people get out. If you see any more of the Jackal’s fighters, take them with you. Evacuate any civilians. They need you. I’ll help the Jackal.”

It wasn’t hard to make the words. She had a lot of practice sweetening the stench of death to come. And the rebel bought the words as easily as any of her soldiers ever did—meaning he barely bought them at all. But it was enough to put his battle fear to work for him instead of against him.

Touraine didn’t have high hopes for Jaghotai’s rebel fighters against the blackcoats. They were underarmed, with little training and no strategy. Whatever the Jackal said, this was a losing game. She wasn’t going to send the boy into the thick of the fighting to die.

And this is the side you chose.

She heard shouts and rounded the corner of the temple. A pair of blackcoats knelt beside the building. A moment later, they jumped up and ran, straight for her. They were surprised to see her, but they had a wild look in their eyes and didn’t stop to engage her.

We are fucked.

For a split second, she paused, and the world paused with her. Her instincts screamed for her to follow them, but it took so long to issue the command to her body. She turned. Her legs reached. Then the world moved at normal speed again, with a sound like a thousand cannons fired at once.

A rush of hot air at her back pushed her through the air. Flat on the ground, she watched the high bowls and spires of the temple shudder and sway, like a mirage. Slowly, as if fainting, it collapsed, spraying a shower of dust and chunks of stone.

For a moment, everyone nearby was transfixed, Touraine and the Balladairans all. Then the cloud of dust expanded like a stampede, and the Balladairans fled.

Touraine buried her head and let the cloud pass over her. She tasted blood in her mouth. Blood ran down her face, too, and she felt like she’d been trampled by a horse. She considered lying there and not getting up until it was all over.

Instead, she rolled over to her hands and knees and spat a gob of blood and phlegm and marble grit. The dust hung in the air like fog and was just as hard to see through.

She was here because she was a soldier. A fighter. She didn’t know anything else, and she was good at it. Cantic had made sure of that. And Touraine enjoyed it. She could still feel the glee of punching Tibeau for the first time. It would be the death of her, but she’d always expected that. She’d been raised for this, and she had nothing but this, even though she had tried so fucking hard to find something else.

She was needed here. She got back up.

She went to fight with the Jackal for the Qazāli.

Shāl, have mercy on