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 close to sharing what Touraine had shared with Pruett and the other Sands. No one but a Sand could understand where she came from.
She almost told Pruett about Jaghotai. Almost. What would she have said? I met my mother. We hate each other. She’s tried to kill me. She hates all of us. I don’t want her, but she’s here. She’s real.
The disgust in the suck of Pruett’s cheeks was too strong. Pruett had made no secret of what she felt about her own family, wherever they were, somewhere in the east of the broken Shālan Empire. She’d been sold by her own parents, and she was smart enough to know it, even as a kid. She didn’t like Balladaire, but she didn’t have high hopes about home like Tibeau did. Touraine understood that much. It wasn’t the sort of thing you forgave. Touraine and Jaghotai would probably murder each other if Touraine didn’t leave, but at least Jaghotai seemed almost as angry at the Balladairans for taking the Sands as she was that Touraine had come back.
Instead, throat thick, Touraine asked, “How is everyone?” She couldn’t ask the real question: Does everyone hate me?
“If you gave a ripe shit, you’d never have left.”
“I left for you.” Desperately, grasping. “I betrayed her and the rebels for you.” She had risked her life, an entire city, for them. For Pruett.
The other woman cocked her head sharply. “What do you mean?”