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

“No, Your Highness.” Cantic curled her hands so that her knuckles rested on the table instead. “I wade through the shit and the blood so that you don’t have to. So that you can build something better from it. That is what our families wanted.”

Luca looked away, to escape the words without lowering her head. Through the window, she saw the bare dirt of the compound.

What good could come from blood and shit? Harvests, of course, with proper seed. What Balladaire was known for. Was it necessary, though? Like this?

Then the general cocked her head. “But, Your Highness—I don’t understand. What exactly did you plan to do when Lieuten—when Touraine told you the rebels had guns? Let them keep them? They would have used them on us, maybe even on the civilians to force our hand.”

“When Touraine told me—” Luca caught herself in time. In the back of her mind, the scholar in her extrapolated beyond the general’s words, finding motives and consequences all before the woman could find the breath to ask the question that the scholar already knew the answer to.

The call of orders and running boots outside of Cantic’s office came back in a too-loud rush. She reached unconsciously toward her ears, as if blocking the sound would block the unwanted knowledge. Touraine had told. Touraine was the leak.

“I’m sorry, General. I didn’t realize. I suppose that changes everything.”

Touraine fluttered into consciousness and immediately wished she could go back under again. So much pain. She groaned.

Pain shattered through her jaw. She wanted to scream, but animal instinct kept her jaw immobile. Dislocated, if not broken entirely. A throaty growl escaped.

Someone was carrying her. She swayed with the rock of a litter. A jostle as they met stairs and then the cool darkness of a building.

“Unghh.” Another ripple of pain and the too-loud grind of bone against bone. Broken, then.

“Ya, my teacher, ya, madame—” A man went on in Shālan. Touraine didn’t understand the rest. People were speaking Shālan everywhere. She caught only snippets of the most basic—

“Here!”

“No, there!”

More jostling. More groaning. Through the fog in her brain, her nose was attacked by smoke and spices.

“Touraine?” Djasha.

Touraine blinked her sticky eyes open enough to see the Apostate leaning over her. Beyond Djasha, a tall ceiling swirled and made Touraine dizzy enough to close her eyes again. She wished she were dead. Or at least unconscious.

“Touraine, can you hear me?”

Touraine tried to croak, without moving her mouth, “Not… Luca.”

“What?” Djasha switched to Shālan and yelled above the noise in the echoing hall.

There was only one place they could be. So many voices speaking over each other, shouting, chanting, praying in Shālan.

“Ya, Aranen!” Djasha’s shout made Touraine wince.

Above her, Djasha had a sharp conversation. Touraine recognized a few words—princess, it’s necessary, Shāl. Aranen’s voice came into focus, frustrated and exhausted. Finally—

“Fine, okay. Touraine, we’re going to move you one more time. We have—field doctors. They’re—”

Touraine opened her eyes enough to see Djasha exchange a long look with her wife. Aranen’s eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed.

“Touraine.” Aranen put her hand on Touraine’s sweaty forehead. “We’re going to do surgery. Shāl willing, all will be well.”

I don’t need false hope, she tried to say, but her jaw—sky-falling fuck! Tibeau! She lurched, climbing the other woman’s sleeve to sit up.

Aranen pushed her back down with surprising force—or maybe Touraine was just weak. Her torso was on fire. Her vision spun with dizziness.

“Ti… veau… Ti… veau!” Touraine’s jaw wouldn’t form his name, no matter how hard she tried. Her face was wet with tears.

More Shālan above her:

“What?”

“I don’t know—come on.”

Someone held her down as she tried to sit up again. Moved her. Laid her on a stone. Tibeau was lying in the dirt in the street. Cold seeped into her skin. Into her chest.

Aranen took a knife to a makeshift bandage of dirty fabric—no, it was Touraine’s own clothing, her fine shirt from Luca thick with blood.

“Don’t die on me now, Mulāzim,” Aranen grumbled. She slipped between Balladairan and Shālan as she muttered and prepared for the surgery. Touraine couldn’t help thinking about Guérin, missing a leg. The guard would never fight again. She flexed her own hands and feet in panic, just to make sure she still could.

“If my scheming wife says we need you, then we need you. But this war… this cruelty!” Aranen’s voice broke, and she took a deep breath.

The room was heavy with incense and roasted meat.

The next time Aranen spoke, the quality of her voice had changed. Like a song, joined by a few other voices. Like the woman on the gallows. Then Aranen’s fingers plunged into Touraine’s wound and sent her back into blackness.

PART 3REBELS

CHAPTER 26A DUTY

When Touraine didn’t return to the Quartier, Luca went to look for her at the main guardhouse. That other woman met her at the door. Lieutenant Pruett.

When Luca asked for Touraine, she wasn’t prepared for the full-body visceral reaction the lieutenant gave, a great flinching, like something taut cut loose.

“Her body wasn’t recovered.” The lieutenant frowned, as if the news disappointed her. “Is there anything else? Your Highness?”

Luca caught herself on her cane, barely. “Her… body?”

The soldier edged back, warily. Suddenly, she was hesitant. “You didn’t know.”

“How?”

“She was shot.”

“By whom? How do you know?”

Though the lieutenant’s mouth spoke the words, Luca could barely comprehend their meaning.

“I saw her fall.”

In the silence, Luca’s mind conjured up the moment. A carefully aimed shot through the breast, and Touraine lying in the dirt, eyes open.

“Your Highness?”

“Nothing else, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed.”

Lieutenant Pruett bowed, just barely within propriety, stepped to the side, and stood at attention, staring into the middle distance. Luca wanted to slap her across the face. As she turned, however, Luca noticed the sheen on the other woman’s eyes and recognized the tension in her jaw. It was the look of someone trying very hard to keep a neutral face. Luca couldn’t help the irrational spike of jealousy—that Touraine