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

grave. Thanks to her, Touraine wouldn’t even go to a firing squad like a soldier but hunched like a beggar.

The worst thing about the darkness was that even when she opened her eyes, her mind could still project one of two pictures on a black canvas:

Pruett’s fear-gray face, stormy eyes wide as Rogan locked cold iron around Touraine’s wrists and led her away, or—

Cantic’s face, red with anger held in check, words toneless in disappointment.

No, worse than that was not knowing which woman’s face had been the greater blow. Didn’t matter. As a lieutenant, she’d failed them both.

If Cantic would just listen to her, if there was a way to get the rebels, to bring them in and prove she was innocent and loyal—if she could make the lock open by waving her fingers over it, if she could kill Rogan just by saying his name and biting her tongue. As Aimée liked to say on campaign—and in the canteen, and in training exercises—wishes were like assholes. Full of shit.

Touraine pushed herself off the ground. Her body was tight, but her headache had eased. The food and water the jailer had brought after she’d arrived were basic but satisfying to a starving body. She hadn’t eaten since that fancy dinner with the fancy governor and her fancy guests. Perhaps Lord Governor Cheminade would reach out again. Little silver threads of hope to trail after.

It helped to go slowly through her fighting forms. To give herself some occupation instead of letting the fear coil into desperate energy that would only chew at her from the inside. It ordered her thoughts. When she was moving, she was powerful. Her body rarely let her down. She knew its faults and its compensations, knew when to back away from the pain and when to dig into it, even when injured. She knew what her body could do, what she could teach it to do, and what it never would do. It was hers.

Or so she thought. The more time she had to think, the less everything made sense. It didn’t seem right that she would pass out like she had that night. She hadn’t had more than two cups of that wine, one with dinner and one with Cheminade. If it had been that strong, she would have felt the effects sooner. Wouldn’t she?

It had felt more like she’d taken a dose of valerian, the sleeping herb the Sands took when nightmares or pain kept them awake. Or like the valerian and a kick to the head. But if Touraine had been drugged, it meant someone at the dinner had done it. Maybe even Cheminade. Why? She was just a Sand.

Probably a dead Sand, at that. She would never prove she was drugged before trial, and no one would take her word over a Balladairan’s. Even if she survived, the dream of her promotion was dead. She was a compromised soldier. The best she could hope for was low camp-follower duties, like digging latrines or scrubbing dried blood out of uniforms.

At this remove, losing the dream felt like being cut adrift in the ocean and forgotten. No—not exactly. Balladairan justice was a swift shot or a short drop. So this was more like being cut adrift and then torn to pieces by a sea monster with rows of dagger teeth and—

Touraine stopped and straightened, shook the acid burn in her body away. She slumped against the bars of the cell door and let them dig deep into the tight muscles. She slid from side to side, reveling in a friendlier pain.

Until she found the cracked rib instead of the muscle.

“Ugh.”

Her pain sounded bizarre in the emptiness. Had she ever been so alone before in her life? No complaints, no jokes—no hushed moans of a covert fuck in crowded barracks, no whispered arguments.

Actually, this was the worst thing, worse even than her Sands at Rogan’s mercy: if she was left drying to leather on some gallows frame, the Sands would break apart. Tibeau and his band would go. They’d run to find family or to disappear in a desert of brown faces. That would leave Pruett and those sensible enough—or too afraid or too attracted to Balladaire’s gifts—to take the punishment instead. Whips, docked pay, brands, hunger, more—Balladaire’s gold stripes were full of creative ideas, Droitist and otherwise.

And when the blackcoats found Tibeau, they would kill him.

Touraine found herself short of breath just thinking of it. She didn’t know how it could be more terrifying than leading them into battle after battle, and yet…

Balladaire was a land of gifts and punishment, honey and whips, devastating mercies.

When she was a child and new to the green country full of massive trees and covered in grass and flowers, she ate too much. Always afraid the food would be taken away—or that it would run out. Such luxury, to sit at a full board every day. One day, she ate herself sick, and a young Cantic carried Touraine in her arms like a baby to the infirmary for a miracle medicine. Perhaps she hadn’t been so far from that. A baby.

Then there was the first time she’d fought with Rogan, ended up on the wrong side of a midnight brawl. If Pruett and Aimée, Tibeau and Thierry hadn’t come to rescue her, Rogan would have had his way with her a long time ago. The next morning, their captain (Cantic was long gone by then) led Touraine to the infirmary. She’d scarcely believed her luck! For one delusional moment, she’d thought Rogan and his flunkies would pay. Justice was sweet enough to ease the shame of her helplessness.

The whip snaps and the screams filtered in through the infirmary’s open window. She couldn’t see outside, but she knew Pruett’s raised voice. She knew Tibeau’s yell and Thierry’s shriek and Aimée’s swearing growl, and Touraine had to listen to them all as she wept into her bandages.

They’d all been whipped when Mallorie “came home,” too. While Mallorie watched. Before they