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

thinking if I had my way. Me and him both need you. The Sands need you. The Balladairans listen to you. That’s why you’re lieutenant. That’s why you’ll make captain.” She punctuated each sentence with a gentle kiss on Touraine’s shoulder, but the sensation was distant, and exhaustion pulled Touraine toward darkness.

A pounding on the door yanked Touraine from sleep. The stabbing in her ribs clenched her up.

“Sky above and earth below,” she groaned. Fully conscious, she registered pain everywhere, as if she’d been beaten in the training yard a week straight.

Pruett startled awake beside her. She jumped back into her trousers.

The banging came again. “Lieutenant Touraine, open this door immediately.”

Rogan’s sharp accent stopped them cold, Touraine with an arm in her sleeve, Pruett with her hands on her trouser buttons.

Justice had always been a tricky thing with the Sands, even when they were innocent. It was hard to meet the fear in Pruett’s eyes. Touraine cleared her throat and gave her the steadiest smile she could. Even though standing straight made her chest ache, and her brain felt too big for her skull.

“It’ll be all right,” Touraine promised. She was glad Pruett let her keep the lie.

She swung the door open. The morning was beautiful. Touraine could tell from the clear sunlight shining into the courtyard and into her room. It lit up the tapestry, a dark burgundy under the gray dust. The three cots, two pushed together, one untouched. The sun sparkled on Rogan’s sleek dark hair as he grinned, wrist irons in his hands.

“Lieutenant Touraine, you’re under arrest for sedition and the murder of a Balladairan soldier.”

CHAPTER 7THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL, AGAIN

The morning after her visit to the bookshop, Luca didn’t have time to finish composing her request for Nasir to come work for her. Instead, she was woken from a deep, self-satisfied sleep by an urgent knock.

“Luca.” Gil stepped inside and closed the door. “The general’s come. It’s an emergency.”

That snapped Luca awake. “The city.” She pointed for a pair of trousers—Gil shook his head. No time even to dress? Luca splashed her face with water and then wrapped herself in her evening robe, a voluminous thing of dark silk embroidered with pale roses.

General Cantic stood when Luca entered the sitting room. She held her tricorne in one hand against her chest. She was elegant in her well-tailored black uniform, gold sleeve gleaming in the morning light. Black boots polished to a high sheen rose to her knees. She must have been sweltering, but she didn’t show it.

“Lord Governor Cheminade is dead, Your Highness.”

Luca stopped midstride. Her hand jumped to her throat in surprise. “Killed?”

Cantic frowned sharply and shook her head like a displeased horse. “We aren’t sure. She was found in the streets of the Old Medina. There were no visible marks of struggle or murder.” But there was a but, and Cantic hadn’t let go of it. She was frustrated over the failure of her people’s examination, Luca could see.

Luca tried to placate the gaping ache she felt with logic. Otherwise, the loss of her first true ally felt too large to grasp. “She wasn’t young. It’s possible she suffered an attack of the heart, isn’t it?”

As shock relinquished her limbs, Luca made her way to her own chair near the window. She gestured to the servant standing at the edge of the room. “General. Will you have a drink?”

“Thank you, no, Your Highness.” Cantic didn’t even take her seat. She stood with her arms behind her back. “I have other business to attend to this morning. I just wanted to give you the news and—”

The general began to steeple her fingers to pursed lips and then aborted the gesture, gripping her hat instead. She looked uncertain. The general was not a woman to look uncertain.

“We’ll need to replace her immediately, Your Highness. The city is too strategically important to be without a governor, and she was also responsible for managing the lieutenant governors in the other provinces of Qazāl. There’s correspondence to monitor, complaints from citizens to address regarding tariffs…” Cantic’s voice rose in frustration before she controlled herself again.

“You won’t take the seat yourself? You’re the highest-ranking official here—”

The general bent her neck as if to stretch out tightness. She cleared her throat. “No, Your Highness. I’m not.”

Ah. No, indeed, she wasn’t.

“Anylight, only despots put cities under martial law,” the general added.

“So you want me to take the position.”

“Only as a stand-in, Your Highness. Temporarily until we find someone suitable. I wouldn’t presume to give you a job, of course. Only to let you know that there is a vacancy that must be filled as soon as possible.”

Luca looked out the window, picturing the city beyond, full of people pressing and pressing against each other in the Old Medina and avoiding each other in the New Medina. She thought of Cheminade’s wink and the tender hand on her husband’s. An ache spread through her chest and made her eyes sting. She blinked it all away.

She said, “If I take on Cheminade’s duties—the governor-general reports directly to the metropole. I am the metropole.”

“With the duke regent, of course.”

Luca ignored that. As governor-general, there would be no middle official to wrangle. She could change policies in Qazāl herself, without weighing them over meeting after meeting. She would rule this city, the nation, every colony in the region, and the success would be hers. It would show her uncle and the people that she was formidable and sensible. A worthy ruler. The rebellion would be hers to end.

Any failure would be hers, too. No one to hide behind, to blame decisions on, except, perhaps, for Cantic.

“As regent, he only wants to maintain King Roland’s empire, Your Highness. He won’t jeopardize it.”

Luca had no response for this. Her uncle had come up with the Droitist theories, ostensibly, yes, to integrate the colonies into the empire. His attitude and the theory itself, meant to curtail children with pain and rigid rules, would never achieve