“Where’s everyone else? Djasha?” Jaghotai?
Aranen’s face tightened, and she glanced across from Touraine. Another blanket-covered figure. As her eyes adjusted, Touraine recognized Djasha. The woman’s cheeks were gaunt, her dark skin pallid, even accounting for the poor lighting.
“Is she—”
“She’s fine,” Aranen said sharply. “But running around after you is not helping her.”
Touraine had actually been wondering if Djasha was contagious. Her face burned.
“Can’t you just…” Touraine gestured at her own body.
For a second, the doctor—the healer—let worry breach her scowl. “We don’t know. I’ve tried. Whatever I do is temporary before it comes back, sometimes worse than before. Sometimes it’s dormant for months. Sometimes weeks.”
Touraine had seen Djasha over the last month. Whatever illness this was, it wasn’t dormant.
Aranen sniffed sharply. “What are your plans now, Mulāzim? Are you finally with these fools?”
“Am I being held hostage, or can I leave?”
Aranen made a noise of disgust. Touraine didn’t blame her. She sounded ungrateful and ungracious in her own ears. She couldn’t stay. This was too much.
“This way. Close your eyes.”
She dragged Touraine by the wrist until the heat of the sun warmed Touraine’s face. A door slammed shut with an echo.
Touraine opened her eyes and was blinded. The sun turned the white domes of the temple into mirrors that radiated light on everything around the massive building. A god might actually be proud of something like that. A god whose magic could keep her alive, pull her back together.
She hadn’t meant to sound ungrateful. She didn’t want to be dead. If magic is what kept her here, breathing underneath the sun, what did it 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.