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

the Balladairan throne seemed small and fragile on the ground, surrounded for her own protection.

“With the help of the Qazāli magistrate, we have spoken with the prisoners”—there was no doubt what spoken with meant—“and we will find the other rebels involved. Anyone found aiding them or feeding them or sheltering them will die with them. However.” General Cantic softened her tone marginally. “What is justice if it is not upheld by the law and the people? If you have any information about the rebel leaders, come to us. You will receive amnesty, a handsome reward, and gratitude for your dedication to our alliance.”

The spectators craned their necks to see them: Touraine and Pruett, the general, the prisoners. Touraine and the Sands were an unspoken lecture: she was born Qazāli, but Balladaire had educated her, trained her to fight, fed her, kept her healthy. She had grown up civilized. The Qazāli could do much worse than cooperate.

General Cantic gave Touraine an encouraging nod.

The first of the condemned was a dark man with salt-crusted black hair that curled around his ears and a thick, close beard covering his chin. She hadn’t seen him this morning, and he refused to make Touraine’s job easier. She stood on tiptoes to loop the noose over his neck. The second person was the young woman, less bullish, delicate even. The fight in her was gone. She watched Touraine calmly and ducked into the noose, murmuring under her breath.

The woman was praying. Touraine had studiously ignored Sergeant Tibeau’s praying in the barracks long enough to recognize the rhythms. Nearby, Cantic cleared her throat. Touraine shuddered and cinched the rope quickly, reciting to herself from the Tailleurist lessons: There are no gods, only superstitions. No superstition can harm you. And yet when their skin touched, Touraine felt a tingling sensation across her body.

She got through the others as quickly as she could, trying to forget the feeling. Instead, she felt only the pressure of everyone’s eyes on her, and the tickle of her own sweat down her coat. The older man was the last one. He tried gamely to stand up straight. His shaggy gray hair hung in his face. It seemed like he’d aged decades since she’d met him at the docks, smiling warmly with his camel. It wasn’t real, she told herself. He’d been a distraction, a pair of eyes. She pulled the noose around his sagging neck. As she tightened the rope, his eyes narrowed at her, then popped wide.

“You look just like—” the man rasped, working around his dry tongue. Louder, he rushed to get the words out. “You’re Jaghotai’s daughter, aren’t you?”

Touraine startled and looked to Pruett, who held the drop lever. Do it now! Touraine said with her eyes.

“You’re Hanan?” The old man’s voice croaked from his throat.

Touraine staggered back at the sound of her old name. Her heart dropped into her gut like the gallows floor, and the air caught in her lungs.

The old man dangled.

Except for a few desperate kicks, the prisoners hanged in silence. Touraine saluted to Cantic and jogged down to stand in front of her soldiers as if nothing had happened. As if her heart wasn’t rattled in its cage. Her men and women formed a tight square, five by five. Sergeant Tibeau caught her eye. He didn’t need words to send a cold drip of guilt sliding between her shoulder blades.

The world felt muffled and slow. Beyond Captain Rogan, General Cantic had descended and left, leading the princess down one spoke of road. The true-born Balladairan soldiers had already marched to the Balladairan compound under their own captain’s orders.

For the first time in over twenty years, Touraine was back in Qazāl. She looked at the swinging bodies. The old man jerked, and Touraine watched until he stilled.

How did he know who I am?

Rogan glanced at Touraine’s platoon and then over to the sandstorm with a satisfied smirk. “Welcome home, Sands.”

Touraine and her squad followed Rogan and the other soldiers north and east through the city to the compound, away from the storm. It would have been a long march even without the wind and dust that managed to thread through the winding roads. Still, the storm couldn’t stop her from gaping now that there was light enough to see by and the city was coming alive.

Everything spiraling out from the bazaar square was clearly the older part of the city. The buildings were yellowed clay lined with cracks, and the roads had once been fitted with stones but were now mostly dirt with rugged juts to trip over. Qazāli workers prodded donkeys and goats—and once, even another camel—through the narrow passages but yanked the animals aside as the Sands marched by. The Qazāli’s faces were swaddled in scarves and shawls against the stray dust. Piles of shit drew flies, and down one road, two filthy children shoveled the driest clumps into baskets.

Like at the bazaar, the shopkeepers here were mostly Qazāli, and so were the shoppers. Touraine wondered where all the Balladairans were. There’d been enough of them at the hanging.

You’re Jaghotai’s daughter.

Touraine wasn’t the only one observing the city in proper daylight.

“This is sick, what they’re doing to this place.” Tibeau covered his face with a thick forearm.

“Huh.” Pruett grunted. “Why? What’s different?”

“Everything. Can’t you tell?” Tibeau looked at Touraine for support.

Touraine shrugged. “I was barely five years old. It all looks the same to me.”

All Touraine could see in her memory were vague senses of buildings, from a very low vantage point. Maybe the buildings were yellow brown, like the ones here, but she didn’t recognize any sounds or people. For all she knew, her memories were just taking the images in front of her and throwing them back at her as if she’d had them all along.

“They’re making us live on the scraps of the city. The Old Medina used to be beautiful. Look at this.”

They passed through a massive, crumbling wall like the ones that surrounded the city, all carved with