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

Luca still hadn’t discovered the knack for praying, so she tried hope. The soldier was breathing but pale.

“What did you do to her?” she asked the blackcoats.

“Nothing, Your Highness,” one of them said, bowing awkwardly with his half of their burden. “She passed out before we got to her.”

Luca pressed a hand to the other woman’s face. Too warm, but clammy at the same time. Touraine was ill. “Take her to my carriage.”

Instead of obeying, the soldiers looked over Luca’s shoulder.

Cantic glared down her nose between Touraine and Luca. “We’ll take her to the brig and sort out what’s to be done with her later.” She wrinkled her nose. “She looks sick.”

The blackcoats flinched. One of them dropped the arm he held. The other held on to discipline but only just. Their face went pale under a spate of sun freckles.

“I’ll have her seen by a doctor at my home,” Luca told Cantic stiffly.

The general’s eyes went wide. “I beg your pardon? This soldier is a traitor to the empire. When I released her into your custody, you said her life was forfeit. We should hang her right there, right now.” She sniffed with anger. “The last thing she deserves is a doctor.”

Luca drew herself up and sniffed back. “With all due respect, General, Touraine isn’t a soldier, and her crime was not against you and the military. My business with her is my own.”

She rounded on the poor blackcoats, who were looking anxiously between their commanding officer and their future queen, as if they realized they probably shouldn’t have been witness to this dispute.

“Take her to my carriage,” Luca repeated. “Be gentle with her, and you’ll be compensated for your trouble.”

With apologetic salutes to the general, they picked Touraine up and started to drag her away. Still, the woman didn’t wake. Luca bit her lower lip. What if she didn’t wake again?

She turned back to Cantic and smiled her thin court smile, a bare quirk of the corners of her mouth.

“If you please, General,” Luca added in a low voice, “I want her to be seen by a particular doctor. You know which one. Have her sent to my town house in the Quartier as soon as possible. Bound, of course.”

Cantic’s face was splotchy with fury, but she was dutiful. She took in the gallows square, the curious and lingering civilians both Balladairan and Qazāli. The rest of them went back to their routines: running their stalls or shopping, cleaning the streets or transporting goods from the docks to some New Medina merchant’s shop. It was strange how eager people were to get back to their normal lives after a death. It was like they wanted to forget.

“This is madness,” Cantic hissed.

A heavy weight settled in Luca’s chest.

“It is madness, General. A very particular madness, and we brought it here.”

Aranen arrived that evening with an escort of five blackcoats. Her wrists were raw with the chafing of her iron cuffs. Her hair was stiff with oil and dirt, and her skin grimy with prison filth. Her bright tunic and trousers were stained and stiff as well. She smelled awful.

Adile hesitated when she led Aranen into the town house. “Are you sure, Your Highness?” The servant kept her distance from the priestess.

Luca nodded. “Bring her in.” She led the way to her bedroom, where she’d set Touraine up in the bed. She put on her gloves and wrapped a scarf around her face and bid Aranen follow suit.

Aranen raised her eyebrows but complied.

Then they went into the room and closed the door, leaving everyone else outside.

On the bed, Touraine lay propped on the pillows. She had gone from bad to worse over the course of the day. She’d been so hot that Luca had been sure she would die. Then a rash had come from nowhere, covering her like dog spots. Then she’d started vomiting. Luckily, the basin for her sick was empty at the moment.

The priestess made a small sound of surprise.

“A bath and a meal for your help,” Luca said simply.

Aranen cocked her eyebrow. “You’re not what I expected, Princess. Give me my freedom, and I will help.”

“No. Help her, or I send you back and take one of the priests who will.”

The priestess’s mouth thinned. “I stand corrected,” she muttered.

She turned and gave Touraine a cursory glance. Stepped closer to tug her collar down and look at the rash along her neck.

“I’ll call for Adile. I had her prepare some food for you. Something with meat, like you said.”

Luca didn’t tell Aranen that she had tried to do the healing magic herself.

“I’ll take the food,” Aranen said, straightening. “I can give her a little strength. But she’s not in danger. Better to save my strength so you can force me to care for someone who really needs it.”

Aranen’s smile was as sharp as her words.

Luca looked down at Touraine. Her brown skin was ashen except for the blotchy rashes.

“She’ll be fine,” the priestess reassured her. “It’s just a bad childhood disease. But if you care so much about her…” She gestured around what was clearly once a royal bedroom now turned infirmary room, her brow furrowed. “I know you’re not like the old king. You’re not like the Blood General. So why are you doing this to us?”

Luca went to stand beside the priestess and next to Touraine’s sleeping form. She put a gloved hand on the long curve that was the soldier’s shin. There was probably a rash there, too. Luca imagined she could feel the throb of Touraine’s fever through the blanket.

The old king. Luca’s father.

She met Aranen’s dark eyes, not expecting the tenderness she found there. The sorrow, open but unjudging.

Aranen put her bare hand on Luca’s glove, the iron a heavy weight on them both.

“You don’t have to do this.”

Yes, I do. Luca slipped her hand away before Aranen’s became too comforting, and held it across her chest. She couldn’t afford to doubt now. But