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

“You’re trapped in bed until you heal enough to get up again—if you heal at all. You struggle to learn the crutch, the balance of it all. When you feel like you can walk again, you fall flat on your face because you forget a whole sky-falling leg is gone. It doesn’t feel like it. It even itches, and you’re half-mad with wanting to scratch it. You feel weak, with nothing to stand on. Less than everyone else around you.”

Luca raised an angry eyebrow. “I have a certain empathy—”

Touraine shook her head, tears of fury on her eyelashes. Too many of her men and women had lived through this—too many of them had not. She pointed at Luca, pointed at the sky-falling queen of Balladaire. “No. No, you don’t. Take off both your legs and look at all you have left.” She threw her arms wide. Luca just stared at her. “I said, look!”

Slowly, Luca turned her head marginally, flicked her eyes right, left. Plush carpets and carved wooden tables, upholstered chairs, everything but the servants pretending not to hear the future queen and her pet Qazāli shouting to the rafters.

“You will never have nothing. Not like we have nothing. Not like the Sands have nothing, not like the Qazāli have nothing. Not like a carpenter’s daughter in Nowhere, Balladaire, has nothing.” You will never have to sell yourself to live.

She stopped to swallow away the hitch in her throat. “Guérin lived by the strength of her legs, the speed of her sword arm. You lived by them.”

Luca’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. Lamplight broke on a streak of tears on her cheek.

“And now she will live by me. She’ll have a lifetime pension. She and her family will never want for anything.”

“Of course. Nothing but her leg.”

Luca sniffed, but Touraine could see her jaw working as her teeth ground. The ice was cracking.

“I just wish I knew… If we had access to Qazāli magic, maybe we could have healed her. Or maybe our own magic could have helped. That’s why I’m doing this, Touraine. Don’t you understand? It’s not just about this city or these rebels. My people have been plagued by disease and war for decades. I would do anything for the power to save them.”

Touraine’s fists shook as she turned.

What was Touraine willing to do for the Sands, these pawns? What would she give up to keep them on the board a little longer? Everything.

Behind Touraine, a palm slammed against a table, and a chess piece clattered on the board.

“Touraine.” Luca’s voice cracked, and Touraine stopped midstep.

Touraine’s pulse throbbed somewhere low in her stomach. It made her want to throw up. She turned slowly.

“The magic is real, Luca.” Touraine slid her sleeve up her forearm so the silvery brown of the scar shone in the lamplight. “I don’t know if it does more than this or how it works. All I know is that I was hurt, and the cut shouldn’t have healed as quick as it did.” Her only theory was that the girl on the gallows had done it. The tingle as their skin had touched, when Touraine slipped the noose around her neck. The girl’s prayer. Could it be as simple as that?

“The problem is,” Touraine continued, “I don’t trust them. I don’t trust the Jackal. She wants a fight.”

Luca stared at Touraine in silence, her lower lip caught in her teeth. Her eyes trailed from Touraine’s arm to her eyes and back again.

“Say something,” Touraine whispered after a full minute of silence.

Luca held Touraine’s eyes and drew out the tension a moment longer. Finally, she said, “Tell them… tell them I’ll give them one hundred guns. For the magic. I want to know how it works. I want teachers—or healers or what have you. Nothing less.” Luca began to right the échecs pieces she had knocked down.

“What?” Touraine stepped forward, unsure she’d understood. “You want to give them guns? What about the Jackal? I just said—”

“One hundred guns,” Luca repeated. “They get the message that I trust them, but they won’t do more than scratch us if they decide to attack. Trust me.”

“But—”

“Enough,” Luca snarled. “That’s my decision.”

Touraine froze. Then she snapped to attention, as if the habit were activated by the command in Luca’s voice.

“As you command, Your Highness.” Touraine bowed. When their eyes met, Luca’s lip was trembling. Touraine glared to keep her own angry tears at bay. “How will they get them? They’ll want to know details—”

“I don’t have details yet. Just tell them I will. I need time to figure out the rest. And if that’s not enough for them, walk away. I’m done negotiating.”

One hundred guns. Pitiful, compared to the thousand Balladairan soldiers garrisoned just outside the city. And yet more than enough to ruin Luca if anyone found out.

Touraine walked into the meeting and dropped a basket of food unceremoniously in front of the Apostate. The Jackal half rose from her sprawl. Malika and Saïd frowned.

The witch straightened. “She’s made a decision.”

Touraine nodded. She’d tried to shake off the piss-poor mood, but it clung like the smell of shit to a latrine pit, even though she had good news for once. She nodded her chin at the Jackal.

“She says a hundred guns. A hundred and five, more likely, because they’re packed in crates of fifteen. That, or we’re done here.”

The silence held. Dragged.

“One hundred?” the Jackal finally snarled. “Why doesn’t she add a handful of couscous and call herself generous?”

“She did.” Touraine pointed to the food at her feet. The wicker basket steamed with the fresh grain mixed with vegetables and spices. It would have smelled delicious if her stomach hadn’t been knotted up with hurt and anger. “Do you even have a hundred people who can shoot?”

“We have enough who can teach.”

The Apostate’s raised palm silenced them both. “And if I recall correctly, you were an esteemed lieutenant in the Balladairan army. That should help.”

Touraine snorted. Good luck talking her way