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

to ease Touraine’s fears. “I’ve heard worse. And yes, I know. We’ll use that to our advantage. You’re going to play both sides.”

Understanding dawned on Touraine’s face, followed closely by horror. Another tick against her diplomacy skills.

“You’ll go to them as my negotiator. See what it would take for them to ally with me. If that doesn’t work, you can pretend to betray us by giving them choice information. Locations of food deposits, things like that. First, though, we’ll start with peace. Either way, you know them. They know you. Any knowledge is better than none at all.”

A leader should never give more information than necessary. Better not to mention tugging out the secrets of Shālan magic just yet.

Touraine’s eyebrows shot up. “As you command, Your Highness.”

“Do you know how to find the rebels who held you?”

After a moment’s thought, the woman shook her head.

That was disappointing. It would have sped things up tremendously. “You’ll have to speak to the locals, then. Sniff around for them. We could do you up a disguise.” Luca waved her hand mysteriously.

“I’ll do my best, Your Highness. I don’t speak Shālan, though.”

Luca sat upright, feeling the sudden panic of plans disintegrating from the inside out. “You don’t?” She shook her head before Touraine could even open her mouth again. “No, of course you can’t—even the Tailleurists wouldn’t allow that. That’s shortsighted of them.” Shortsighted of her, not to have thought of that.

“You said you can read Balladairan, though?”

Touraine’s cheeks flared, and she looked down at her lap, hands gripping tighter on her knees. “Of course, Your Highness.”

“Can you lie?”

Touraine looked startled and then flushed. “I suppose?” she stammered, showing that her lies probably wouldn’t go unnoticed by any but the most oblivious party.

Sky above. “What else can you do?”

The woman sat back and crossed her arms peevishly. “I can kill people. Scout. Plan military maneuvers. Organize a hundred soldiers, wounded and well, their food, their pay, their leave. Simple soldier things.”

Ah. There was the bite Luca was looking for. Whatever else Touraine lacked, Luca could work with a backbone. And above all, she was loyal. Even Cantic had vouched for her loyalty. And so here they were.

At Madame Abdelnour’s shop, ready to outfit Touraine as the loyal servant of Balladaire that she was.

“Your Highness, your presence is an honor.” A short woman with long curling dark hair bowed and led them in, to a small table. Luca saw the high chairs and sighed internally with relief. Two cups of steaming tea waited for them. Luca sat. Touraine didn’t sit until Luca gestured to the second chair. Even so, the ex-soldier eyed Guérin and Lanquette, who stood beside Luca and by the door, respectively. It would take the woman some time before she stopped thinking of herself as a soldier.

“How may we serve you, Your Highness?”

Madame Abdelnour’s back was hunched from years over a seamstress’s table, and she wore spectacles, likely as a result of the same. She was elegant in a simple red robe over an orange underdress. A gold belt wrapped around her plump waist before hanging down in the middle. The colors complemented the deep brown of her skin. Luca would have looked like scraped parchment.

“I need to outfit my new assistant as befits someone of her station.” Luca gestured at Touraine’s current outfit. More of Guérin’s off-duty clothes, well made but ill fitting. “She has a military background, and I don’t mind if the clothing reflects that. I’d also like it to reflect a unity between Shālan and Balladairan sensibilities. And of course, comfort in this heat. Can you make something like that?”

Madame Abdelnour’s eyebrows hung somewhere near her hairline. “Military background, you say? Unity, you say? Of course, Your Highness. It will take some time to design and test pieces, but we can make some simple ones immediately.” The modiste studied Touraine as if she could size the woman right there, in her seat. She probably could. Still, she gave Touraine a small bow and beckoned with one crook of her finger. She strode to the center of the room without waiting for Touraine to follow.

At the modiste’s shrill whistle, a few young women appeared from a back room. One of them had the same thick dark hair and bold nose as the modiste, plus a vivid scar on her chin. A measuring tape hung across her shoulders.

“And, madame—she’ll need something formal. Appropriate for a ball.”

Touraine stumbled as she walked to a stool. “A ball.”

Luca drank her tea. It was light and sweet. Saturated with mint. “In two days. I know it’s soon, and I’d rather we didn’t have it at all, but…” She was the first of the royals to visit the colony in too long. It would have to be celebrated with the proper pomp and preening and ingratiating, and as a member of Luca’s staff and household, Touraine would have to be there.

“Your Highness, I’ve never—”

Madame Abdelnour snatched Touraine’s left arm up to run the measuring tape down from Touraine’s armpit.

“I don’t know—” Panic was writ clear on the other woman’s face. It was the closest she’d come to outright dissent. Like each time before, she stopped herself. The fear vanished, replaced with that impassive wall again. “Of course, Your Highness.”

Luca turned the cup in her hands. Her grief rings clinked against the fine clay. The gold band inset with onyx for her father, the thinner gold band with a black diamond for her mother. Make those you would lead depend on you. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re ready. Can you dance?”

“No, Your Highness. It wasn’t—” Touraine yelped as the modiste’s daughter pushed her legs wider to measure the inseam of her trousers. She blushed and cleared her throat. “It wasn’t considered a training priority for us, even by Tailleurist standards.”

Luca perked up. “You study the theorists?”

That blank expression. Again. Luca was beginning to recognize the topics that sent her new assistant into stony obedience.

“I don’t know if study is the right word for it, Your