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

And yet—here was a change. A hint of wryness in the other woman’s voice this time.

“If not study, what would you call it?”

“Only living, Your Highness.” Touraine grunted as she was pricked by a pin.

For almost an hour, Madame Abdelnour and her daughter molded Touraine up and down like one of the miniature wooden figurines that stood posed around the shop. They held bolts of cloth up to her body, discarding some and draping others across her shoulders. For almost an hour, they all looked to Luca for approval.

Make those you would lead want you.

As Touraine stood there, it grew easier for Luca to understand why Touraine admired Cantic so. Touraine was a soldier. It was written in the straight lines of her, the breadth of her shoulders, the steady strength of her legs at attention. The same steel that held up Cantic and Gil—and Guérin and Lanquette, for that matter. Rigid as a rifle.

Luca, on the other hand, had a leg with a tendency to give out at inopportune moments and a cane to keep it from showing.

But Luca wasn’t weak. She also had a rapier inside the cane, thin and flexible but strong.

She would pull Touraine to her, her own way. Something else from Yverte: know a person’s desires, and you have leverage—give a person their desires, and you have an extension of your own will.

Touraine wanted a place. She wanted respect from Balladaire’s powerful—why else chase after Cantic’s approval?

Luca could give her both and much more.

CHAPTER 12THE BALL

On the day of the ball, Luca woke up swearing, her bad leg cramped and burning.

Auspicious beginnings.

Luckily, she had spent the last two days ironing out every detail of her welcome ball so that she wouldn’t have to rely on the auspices of fate. She wasn’t nervous at all. She had prepared for everything.

A knock on the door.

“Come in,” she said, gritting her teeth against the pain.

Touraine opened the main door, not the door connecting Luca’s room to the guards’ room. She bowed, eyes averted. She’d taken to the formalities of interacting with Luca easily enough. Her manners irritated Luca this morning. She’d seen the way the soldier’s eyes had flicked immediately to Luca’s legs and now looked studiously everywhere else.

“Your Highness, Guard Captain Gillett wants to talk about final preparations for tonight.” She sounded as if she’d been a butler all her life.

Luca tossed the covers off and inched her legs off the bed. She must have slept on them wrong. Not that she knew of a right way to sleep on them after almost twenty years.

“Give me a moment.” Luca went behind her dressing screen and traded her nightgown for the shirt she’d worn the day before. Sitting on her dressing stool, she tried to pull on the trousers she had discarded, too, but they tangled and twisted around her knees. She swore. The painted birds on the screen mocked her with their open beaks. The ball had flustered her. Touraine had flustered her. She took a deep breath. Yanked again, achieving an excruciating inch. She turned a near whimper into a grunt.

“Princess?” It was Gillett at the door now, concerned.

And Touraine silent. Luca could imagine the contempt. But Luca Ancier was the sky-falling princess. No one would sit in contempt of her from afar.

“Touraine?”

“Yes, Highness.”

“Come here.” The chill of her court voice frosted Luca’s words.

There was no hesitation before obedient footsteps.

Behind the screen with Luca, Touraine bowed slightly, not looking at the princess’s scarred, naked legs and the mess of trousers around her calves.

“Look at me,” she said with soft menace.

Touraine raised her eyes. Luca expected the usual blank obedience. Instead, Touraine’s dark eyes were steady, poring over her, seeing everything, unflinching. There may even have been anger in the cant of her eyebrows—but there was no pity.

“May I help you?” she asked, soft enough for Luca’s ears alone.

Luca’s heart stuttered like a flame in a storm. She swallowed and nodded.

The soldier’s hands surprised her. They weren’t gentle, not truly. They were efficient, however, without being rough. They didn’t hesitate with disgust or uncertainty as Touraine slid the trousers up Luca’s legs. She helped Luca stand, placed her arms around her neck.

“Put your weight on me.”

Luca did. She clung to the woman’s neck like a drowning sailor. The woman smelled heavily of sweat, and her collar was damp. She must have come from her exercises. Her breath was warm against Luca’s ear.

In one final, deft movement, Touraine pulled Luca’s trousers over her hips. Then she knelt until Luca was seated on her stool again.

“Will that be all?”

Luca nodded. She didn’t trust her voice.

Touraine nodded and left. The door closed.

“Luca?” Gil said.

She limped back to her bed and picked up her cane. “I’m fine. A rough sleep is all.”

He looked suspiciously at the door Touraine had shut rather harder than necessary.

“We’ve done none of that,” she said, reading his look. Her face burned.

He grunted, frowning.

“Of course, it’s an option,” Luca said in a low voice. “She’s attractive, for a Qazāli.” Touraine was attractive, period. More handsome than any of her previous lovers, men or women. That wasn’t something Balladaire’s queen regnant came out and admitted. “However, as an ambassador in my employ, it’s hardly professional.”

Gil snorted. “Really? I recall a seamstress, a coachman, a chambermaid—”

“Fine! All right. That’s not the reason, but for the stars’ sake, it’s none of your business, Gil. I’m too busy trying to quell a rebellion started by her people.”

“A rebellion started by her people to protest the fact that we came and invaded in the first place. Your Highness.”

Luca blinked, stunned. He bowed his head slightly but kept his eyes locked to hers.

“Do not mistake me, Luca. I’m loyal to you and the crown. As loyal to you as to your father.” The old man ran his thumb absently along his own grief ring for the king. He spoke gruffly, but there was a wry tilt of an eyebrow as he said, “Maybe we should change the way we