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

Her soldiers were split on two sides, to stay or to go, but they weren’t looking to her for guidance. Even though she was their lieutenant, they respected Tibeau and Pruett. But Touraine knew Balladaire. She knew its systems, and she knew how to be what it needed.

“It’ll take getting used to,” Touraine said finally. “I’m not asking anyone to be perfect. Rest up tonight.”

A chorus of “Yes, sirs” followed her out.

“Good luck,” Pruett murmured, squeezing Touraine’s forearm.

On reflex, Touraine winced at the touch. The cut she’d gotten this morning had been clean and shallow, but long enough to feel inconvenient whenever she flexed her skin tight. It hadn’t even bled through the last bandage she’d put on, so she hadn’t bothered to change it when she bathed. Odd thing was, though, it didn’t hurt at all when Pruett grabbed it.

Though Touraine didn’t think Cantic the type to pull a prank, she was still surprised to see the one-horse carriage waiting for her outside the guardhouse in the early twilight. The Balladairan driver just nodded for her to get in the cab. She’d barely closed the door before he set the horse off, and she jostled on the hard seat. A rough start.

Touraine tried not to think about what her soldiers were saying about her in the guardhouse. She had to give them space to work out their feelings without her oversight, and trust Pruett to report any changes in the temperature.

Instead, she turned her thoughts forward. She was exhausted. She’d gone from the ship, to the hanging, to Cantic, to her soldiers’ teetering loyalties, and now to this. Excitement kept her alert. Maybe Pruett was right to be nervous, but Touraine had a good feeling.

Tonight would change everything. She was going to become someone.

Touraine remembered her arm as the carriage trundled through the Quartier to the governor’s home. In the darkness of the cab, she pulled her left arm out of its sleeve. Blood hadn’t seeped through the bandage. Gingerly, she tugged it off.

Before panic could seize her, the carriage stopped.

“Shit.” Touraine stuffed her arm back in her coat and hid the bandage in her pocket just as a footman opened the door. She tried to pull herself together. If she fucked up this chance to catch the Balladairans’ attention, she wouldn’t get another one.

But even as the footman—a footman!—led her from the carriage to the governor’s house, the back of her mind spun in a panic over this new secret.

There’d been nothing but a thin line of blood on the wrap, and a thin silver scar across her skin.

It had already healed.

CHAPTER 3THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL

Princess Luca! It is my absolute pleasure to welcome you to my home and to Qazāl.”

At the sound of her name, Luca Ancier startled in her carriage. The door had been thrown open, and a pale, round Balladairan woman with gray-streaked chestnut hair grinned at her from the ground. Luca had arrived, then, at Lord Governor Cheminade’s home.

It was a short trip from Luca’s town house in the Balladairan Quartier to the governor-general’s, but it felt even shorter.

Luca had been thinking of the hanging. How hot the sun had been. How the sky had darkened in the distance as clouds of sand threatened to engulf the city. How the old man had cried out at the last and the young woman had twitched for long seconds after—Luca didn’t know how long, because she hadn’t the stomach to watch.

Like the heat, the old man’s voice had followed her into her own town house and up to her study as she unpacked her books and placed them on the empty shelves that were waiting for her.

They were the rebels she had come to stop. Them, and men and women like them, perhaps hidden in the crowd. And when she stopped the rebellion and eased the unrest in the colony’s capital city, she could show her uncle that she had the skill to rule. She would claim the throne that was her right.

The governor-general herself handed Luca down from the carriage. Luca saw the woman glance at her leg, but it seemed less boorish curiosity and more careful concern. Luca warmed slightly toward the woman.

When Luca had both feet and her cane on sturdy ground, Lord Governor Cheminade bowed deeply. “Your Highness. It is a pleasure to meet you. Your father always spoke proudly of you when you were a child. You’ve grown into a striking young woman. My household is at your service, as am I.”

At first, Luca was put off by the effusiveness, preparing to fend off the first sycophant. At the mention of her father, she checked the impulse. Of course Cheminade would have known her father. She’d been the governor-general of the Shālan colonies for almost fifty years, as long as Balladaire had called the broken Shālan Empire her colonies. Cheminade would have spoken to her father regularly, surely. Something like jealousy bred with hopeful longing in her chest.

Most importantly, that might make Cheminade an ally as Luca worked to challenge her uncle Nicolas for her throne. First, however, she would calm the unrest in the colony.

“Thank you, Lord Governor. It’s likewise a pleasure.” Luca bowed her head in return.

The governor’s smile reached into full cheeks, plump and still touched pink by the sun. Her eyes crinkled with pleasure. “Come, come. You must be famished. I know a thing or two about ship food. That’s why I haven’t gone back home all these years.” She wrinkled her nose distastefully, then laughed.

She beckoned Luca to follow her into the house, and Gillett, the captain of the royal guard, fell in behind Cheminade. Luca’s two other guards brought up the rear. Her constant shadows.

Cheminade kept talking as she led the princess into the town house, but Luca lost the conversation entirely as she gaped around the woman’s home.

Luca was not a person to be surprised by finery, but Cheminade’s home was cluttered with the bounty of a life of exploration. A massive