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

matter? If she’d been given the choice, she wouldn’t have said no. All the same. She was glad she hadn’t had to make the choice.

Still, all she had left was the Sands. Maybe. She needed to see Pruett. She needed to apologize. She needed to be with them.

She pulled her hood up. The Grand Temple was in the Old Medina, but the massive fountain in front of it made the area a quiet plaza. At least, there was the illusion of quiet. She could still hear the roll of carts and shouts from vendors on the next streets over. In her head, though, she heard gunshots over it all. She shook her head and reoriented herself toward the guardhouse.

Touraine liked the heat on her bare arms, but the bright light was merciless. That wasn’t why she kept her hood pulled low over her forehead, though; the height of the buildings and the narrowness of the streets kept the sun off unless she turned into a square with a miniature bazaar.

No one recognized her as the treacherous Balladairan dog she was. With her rich imitation-Qazāli clothing from Luca bloodstained and ripped beyond repair, there was nothing to mark her as the villain but the knife at her hip.

Already, the city moved on. Like soldiers. This wasn’t callousness. It was necessity. You marched on. If you didn’t, you were admitting to the enemy that you’d been injured. Wounds had to be licked in private, closed off inside temple walls.

Clothes, shopping, even poets chanting their verses in the streets. Cats wove around her ankles; dogs napped in alleys, tongues lolling. Everything to distract her from the meandering journey. What did she expect from Pruett, anyway? They had always been a team. Pruett cleaned her cuts, and Touraine reloaded Pru’s gun (when the Sands were permitted them). Then they docked in Qazāl, and things went wrong one after another. Pruett couldn’t have stopped any of that. Throw Luca in the mix and it was doomed.

If she went back to Luca, she would be safe again. She would have her fancy kit back and not have to look for Rogan over her shoulder, unless—until—Luca learned that Touraine had betrayed her. Cantic, though. The general would take her back. Touraine had proven herself loyal to the army, if not the princess herself. That had to count for something in Cantic’s eyes.

She slowed as she reached the sector claimed by the Balladairan soldiers. Here, a sharp-boned Qazāli man swept the refuse—human and non—away with palm leaves tied into a bunch. The guardhouse rose innocuously, looking like another yellow-gray clay home—if every home had soldiers posted at its door, on its roof, and at the corners of its street. Any Qazāli passing through did so on the other side of the street.

Rogan would be here, too, or nearby. Horse-fucking bastard. She ducked her head like someone avoiding the glare of the sun and circled around to the alley behind the guardhouse complex.

As Touraine passed the back of the building, still thinking about her approach, she heard a musket click, ready to fire. She spun and crouched, then cringed in pain.

“No Qazāli here. Count of five until I shoot you.”

Touraine’s cold wash of fear became relief, then fear all over again. Pruett.

She raised her hands slowly, pulled down her hood, and looked up. She kept her hands in the air. The musket barrel held steady on her, and Pruett wouldn’t miss from this distance. Touraine swallowed, and her jaw ached in memory.

Five long seconds before Pruett lowered the gun. Touraine couldn’t see her expression well, but the silence was telling.

“Stay there.” Pruett vanished.

Several minutes later, she reappeared in the alley. “Pull your veil up,” she said before jerking Touraine by the arm. Pruett dragged her around several corners until they were in a dead-end, L-shaped alley. No one could see them from the street, and the walls of the buildings around them cooled them with shade.

Pruett pulled Touraine around so that Touraine’s back was to the alley’s mouth, and then she tore Touraine’s veil down again.

For seconds, Pruett blinked at her until finally saying, “What the sky-falling fuck?” Dark shadows marked her eyes, and her cheeks were pink with sun. The lines around her eyes deepened as she squinted, searching for the miracle. “You… I… watched you… Sky a-fucking-bove.”

“They did it. The magic. To me.” Touraine pulled at the shirt covering her healed torso.

A small bit of sun lanced into the alley to mock Touraine, shining on Pruett’s new lieutenant pins, the wheat fronds polished to a gleam. The alley smelled like stale piss and stale sex. Not quite stale enough, either of them.

“Why did you bring me here?” Touraine gagged.

“No one will come looking for me if they think I went to get laid, but whorehouses are expensive and this alley is almost as private. It’s the best we’ve got right now, so start talking.” She rested her head against the wall and looked down her nose at Touraine. “I’d hoped you were dead.”

“I’m sorry, Pru.”

Pruett looked away. “Killing my best friend’s not a shit fucking thing you can apologize for.”

“He’s my best friend, too. I didn’t want him to get hurt. It was an accident.” Touraine wanted to put her hand up to Pruett’s jaw, like she had countless times before, but she kept it against the wall. “I didn’t want to hurt you, either. None of you. You’re my soldiers. I was just trying to help—”

“Your soldiers? We were your family, Touraine. And you betrayed us—for who? For the princess? For some sand flea–bitten beggars? What do you know of them? What do they know of you that we don’t?”

Flecks of Pruett’s spit landed on Touraine’s cheek.

“I—”

“Have they seen you bleed? Have they seen you kill anyone? Does she know your voice when you’re scared? Could she pick your laugh out of a crowd?”

Touraine sagged under the weight of the accusation. Between Jaghotai and Djasha and Luca… it was laughable that any woman could come