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 3
REBELS
CHAPTER 26
A 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.”