“Who’s that?” she asked the kids, pointing.
The little girl holding on to Touraine’s hand answered in Shālan and thumbed her chest with pride. A relative, maybe, an older sister.
Touraine didn’t completely understand, but she nodded like she did, and sat down to watch them fight.
The other children sat around her or play-fought, imitating the older ones.
That could have been me.
Here. At home. And she had lost that. The fighting girl, or at least, a girl like her, could have been her child, and that had been taken from her, too. She fought the tears until she couldn’t anymore.
“What’s wrong?” the water boy asked, still clutching his charge.
“Nothing, nothing.”
When the older ones stopped fighting, they walked over to their audience, sweaty and radiant. Touraine had never seen anything so beautiful.
“You’re an excellent fighter,” she told the girl. She pulled off her last waterskin and handed it to her. As she spoke, she reminded herself of Cantic. Technical compliments and a gift.
The thought didn’t please her as much as it would have three months ago.
The girl splashed the water into her mouth and over her face before passing it to her friends. The boy beside her already had a blue bruise opening like a rose on his cheek, but that didn’t stop his lopsided smile. Her heart faltered in her chest.
Touraine had been wrong earlier. You don’t find a life. You have to make one, with the people around you and the causes you put your strength into. She’d built a life with the Sands. They had all made the best they could out of a nightmare. But she’d been putting her strength toward other people’s causes for so long and deluding herself into thinking that she had her own reasons.
Now she had a chance to choose her own cause.
The older girl walked on her hands while the proud little girl followed her, kicking her short, chubby legs into the sky until she fell over. The older girl came out of her handstand, teasing the small one before grabbing the little girl’s legs and holding them up in the air. The little girl’s squeals of delight settled the restive aimlessness in Touraine’s chest.
The water bag came back to Touraine, and she pushed it away. “Keep it.”
Touraine left them, the young children and the old, and took the circuitous route around the slum all the way back to the city. Returning through the Mountain Gate again felt like dipping her head into a cool pool.
She was as free now as she ever would be. She could choose what she fought for. She could choose who she was willing to die for.
When she arrived at the temple, the sky was bright, but the air was already cooling down. Touraine shivered. Then she braced herself and knocked on the smaller, less ornate door.
“You’re late—”
Jaghotai’s snarling face went blank as she saw Touraine. Blank only for an instant before the snarl came back.
“Why are you here?”
A good question, and after taking the long way around the city to get to it, Touraine had an answer. Still, she lowered her voice.
“I want to join up. Let me talk to Djasha.”
Jaghotai shifted to keep the entry blocked. “Why. Are you. Here?”
“Jaghotai.”
“They wouldn’t take you back.”
No. Yes. No. Touraine didn’t let the hurt show on her face.
“I’m choosing my own battles now.” Focus on that truth, and she could convince them both.
And though she narrowed her eyes, Jaghotai let her in.
As she entered the temple with her wits about her for the first time, Touraine gasped. The floor of the main hall was still littered with the detritus of using the room as an infirmary—scraps of bandages and clothes, fragments of musketry and stone—but that wasn’t what stopped Touraine’s breath.
The ceiling was made of arching stone and patterned with tiles in shades of blue and green, in white, in gold. Two rows of impossibly delicate marble pillars ran from either side of the main doors to the back of the temple. Sunlight from the windows glinted off the golden caps of the pillars and the shining stones. When a cloud passed and the room sank into shadows, the intricate designs on the ceiling made its height seem unfathomable.
Their boots echoed in the wide, empty hall.
Jaghotai grunted. “Nice, isn’t it?”
Touraine snorted.
They followed sharp voices and the smell of fresh bread into an open panel in the wall leading to an almost-secret corridor. If the door were closed, it would be indistinguishable from the rest of the wall if you didn’t know to look for it. That must have been why Aranen had covered Touraine’s eyes. The corridor must have been for the priests, before the Balladairans banned uncivilized behavior in the city. Jaghotai led her into a small room, where Aranen stood tall and haughty near an oven.