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

the curling shapes of Shālan script. Swirls and slashes and stylized squares, and how they amounted to words, Touraine would never know. The ceiling of the archway had been painted blue several times. The most recent layer had chipped to show a different shade of blue in some places, bare yellow stone in others.

“The New Medina used to be ours, too. Now it’s their shops, their cafés, their homes.”

He shot a dirty look at the pristine neighborhood they were passing through. Here—where the stone pavers were carefully placed and there was barely a whiff of animal or human shit, where the buildings were freshly sealed and sturdy—were the Balladairans. They poked their heads out from wooden shutters to check the progress of the storm.

“It’s not just Balladairans, though.” Touraine nodded toward brown faces over doublets, hair short and styled with Balladairan sleekness. “They don’t look hungry.”

“Because they’ve sold themselves to Balladaire.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about—”

“Children, please.” Pruett cut in, glaring meaningfully up ahead. Rogan walked with one of his men, but they were too close for loud, philosophical bickering.

Touraine and Tibeau slowed to match Pruett’s pace. When Pruett spoke again, her voice was low and probing.

“So—did you recognize him?”

“What?” Tibeau looked between them. “Who?”

“On the gallows. The old man—he called her Hanan.”

The look that Tibeau gave her was jealous and livid all at once. “So? Did you?”

The question caught Touraine off guard, though she’d expected it. She hadn’t been able to let go of the memory of the man’s face the entire walk. Or the way the woman had caught Touraine with her songlike prayer. A seed of doubt, trying to root.

She yanked it out like she always did. She was safer, stronger with Balladaire than without it. It looked like the Qazāli in this section of the city had learned that, too, and that was why they lived more happily than any other Qazāli in El-Wast.

“Do you remember Mallorie?” Touraine asked instead of answering Tibeau’s question.

Tibeau and Pruett both flinched. Of course they remembered. Every Sand did. Mallorie, who’d been of an age with Tibeau and Pruett, had run away when she was fourteen, just a few years after they’d been brought to Balladaire. Cantic—a captain then—had Mallorie whipped, doctored in the infirmary, and kept under watch for months. Every Sand breathed a sigh of relief, even Touraine, who was only nine years old. The moment the Balladairans eased the leash, she ran again. Five Balladairan soldiers were in the firing squad that executed her when they caught her again.

“Do you remember what she looked like?”

Silence. Tibeau and Pruett were both taller than her, but they shrank for just a moment.

“Because I don’t.”

Pruett sucked her teeth. “Fair point. How do you know your memory’s so sharp, anylight, Beau? It’s been two sky-falling decades. Looks like the usual I-have-some-and-I-have-none split to me. Doubt it was nice and even when it was just Qazāli here.”

Tibeau glared at them both. “You two can both go fuck off.” He walked beside them in silence for a little while longer before falling back. His lover Émeline had already gone ahead to the compound. If she’d been here, she might have mediated better.

Once he’d left, Pruett ducked her head to look Touraine in the face. “Tour. Love. You’re not all right.”

“Course I am.” Touraine forced herself to meet Pruett’s gray-blue eyes.

“You just killed someone who knew you from before. Who knew you as Hanan. You aren’t bothered?”

It was only the dust in the air that dried her mouth, that made it difficult to tell the truth. “I’m curious, I guess, but I don’t know who Hanan is any more than you do. And that man didn’t know me.”

What would Cantic do to her if she thought that Touraine would run to the other side?

A smile quirked across Pruett’s lips. “You forget—I did know Hanan. She was a stubborn clod of shit. She punched the biggest kid in the balls when she was six, and she’s been insufferable ever since.”

Touraine snorted. She did remember her first practice fight with Tibeau. She shook her head. “I was already Touraine by then. That’s me, Pru.”

You’re Jaghotai’s… No, she wasn’t. She didn’t know Jaghotai. She didn’t want to.

They marched through the city, covered in dust, shielding their eyes with their arms and field caps, the perfect picture of Balladairan military might. They passed from the New Medina through another massive archway etched with stylized script in the shape of what might have been the sun. From there to the north, small town houses were clustered together like sheep. Directly east from the city gate loomed the yellow-gray walls of the Balladairan compound, constructed some fifty years or so ago.

It made Touraine thirsty just to look at it. Or maybe that was just the long city march. Her legs ached; she’d kept up with her exercises on the ship, but nothing quite prepared a person for a couple hours of marching like a couple hours of marching.

The only similarity to her old compound in Balladaire was the layout. Nothing green grew inside these walls, and the roads were trampled yellow dirt. Instead of thick gray stone blocks sealed with mortar, the walls were gritty chunks of sandstone wedged together. The yellow-brown buildings on the right were all the same—great square blocks. The barracks. The buildings on the left curved away from the street, making a small, dusty courtyard. The biggest building of the lot would be the administrators’ building and their quarters. That would include General Cantic.

Balladairan guards stood up straight when Rogan approached the gate. One sneered as Touraine and the other Sands followed. His eyes were wide, incredulous, as if he were watching trained dogs marching in parade. She stared him down as they passed.

Touraine trudged to the mess hall. She wanted food and a chair and to take off her boots and maybe even drown herself in water. Before she could find shelter under the cool stone, though, a Balladairan boy ran up