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

The blackcoats yanked sacks over their heads and looped them into the nooses. One soldier looked smug and satisfied; the other moved perfunctorily.

Beau-Sang gestured, and the soldiers parted to reveal several Balladairans, unbound now but ragged in triumph. The hostages. Some ran immediately to relatives in the crowd. Aliez ran to Bastien. The rest stood still, fixed on—their savior? Beau-Sang? Or their captors who waited to die?

Beau-Sang’s flair for drama embrittled the tension across the square—as if it weren’t near to breaking before.

“Princess Luca and I will not let rebels like these divide us. They threaten your lives and livelihoods for desperate, misplaced ideals. We will not let them.”

Luca’s stomach flipped. This wasn’t what she wanted.

Yet there were the Balladairans she wanted to rescue, rescued. There were those responsible for their abduction, arrested. She had thought there would be more time to adjust herself to the tasks at hand.

The rebels swung on their nooses. She was close enough to hear their necks snap, and it made her stomach heave. She clamped her teeth shut.

This was necessary.

CHAPTER 29THE MANY-LEGGED

Be welcome, Niwai of the Many-Legged. You’ve come a long way, and the desert is dry,” Djasha said formally. Touraine had a feeling she spoke in Balladairan only for Touraine’s benefit. “Drink tea with us. Share our bread.”

She gestured to a tray with a battered teapot and several glasses too many.

“Thank you. You are more generous than the stories say.” A smirk stretched across the stranger’s face as they accepted the tea with their bare hand. Their Balladairan was strangely lilted and had the rolling gait of a camel.

Jaghotai bristled. “That’s not what you said the last time you and your jackals went goat raiding.”

“You can’t find our methods so distasteful if you call yourself Jackal.” A more wicked, knowing smile. “Oh, don’t look like that. My eyes and ears tell me many things. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? What exactly is it that you want me and mine to do?” They took the remaining chair and straddled it backward.

Touraine could already tell that Niwai would fit right into the bickering rebellion. The rebels would be lucky to accomplish anything at all.

“How fares the situation in the east, cousin?” Djasha asked. She seemed to ignore their jab. “Have things gotten so bad that you’re willing to fight with us now?”

They cocked their head very much like a bird. “The Balladairans are curtailing our herd lands to build settlements and hunting our companion animals for exotic decorations. Have you tried to feed many legs with starving cattle? It’s like that from the Middle Desert all the way to Masridān.”

“And in what capacity are you here, Niwai? Are you on your own, or do you speak for the Many-Legged?”

They shrugged and looked sideways at Touraine. Those eyes. Where Djasha’s eyes were unsettling, a surprising and intense color, Niwai’s were unnatural. They seemed to be looking somewhere a world away at all times, and the irises were the deep orange of a desert vulture.

“I’m not a rogue, if that’s what you mean. I serve my god as I must. Just like each of you.” Their unfocused gaze moved away from Touraine to linger on Djasha, then Aranen.

“I mean accords.” Djasha sat up straighter, effort in her face and her voice. “If we strike one with you, will all of the tribes hold it?”

“We are many legs of one beast. We move best when we move in concert.”

Jaghotai rolled her eyes. Niwai turned that distant gaze onto her, and Touraine was satisfied at the shiver that passed over the other woman.

“Imagine if you had your own jackal. I think you’d like that.”

Jaghotai’s disgust was plain on her features. Niwai turned back to Djasha, the only person to meet that unnerving stare without flinching.

“Whatever you want, it will take at the very least a healing trade agreement with all of the Many-Legged.”

Aranen sucked in a sharp hiss.

“You asked us for help. I came. Help isn’t free.”

“Fighting the Balladairans back across the sea helps you, too. We’ve even enlisted some of the Brigāni nomads. As you said… we would move best if we moved in concert.”

“The Brigāni. As in other Brigāni. Not you?” The desert priest cocked their eyebrow.

A terrifying smile spread across Djasha’s face, baring her teeth. “As in others like me.”

“Now that is interesting. And what about this one?” Niwai turned the full weight of their gaze on Touraine. “According to my eyes and ears, she shouldn’t be here.”

Jaghotai grunted and muttered, “That’s true enough.”

Djasha joined Niwai with her own appraising look, but there was a question in it, too. Why are you here?

“I fight for Qazāl now.” Touraine used her command voice, the steady one that stiffened soldiers’ backs. Just wearing that voice made her feel more certain of her steps, even as she walked on this uncertain path.

Four pairs of eyes watched her, and she waited for one of them to tell her she wasn’t welcome. Jaghotai, with her clenched fist resting on the table, her mouth shut tight against what she actually thought. Aranen, the exhausted worry lines pulling at the corners of her eyes and lips. Djasha, with a slight smile like a card player who knows she has the winning hand. Niwai, looking at her and beyond her.

“Very well,” Niwai said, bowing their head. “It seems we all pray for rain. When do we get started?”

“We’re waiting on two more of our council,” Djasha said. She slumped back in her seat, which was clearly an ages-old Balladairan castoff that was only a couple months from the woodpile. “Jak. Did they tell you they’d be late?”

Jaghotai rubbed the stump of her left arm absently, frowning with impatience. “No. I’ve told Malika before—”

“I have a feeling,” Niwai said, “that they’re at the party in town.”

The desert priest’s ironic lilt had Touraine and Jaghotai standing, reaching reflexively for weapons.

“What party?” growled Jaghotai.

“There’s a woman calling herself the queen regnant. A big man with a big nose. They’re standing