She took a steadying breath and stepped forward. The crowd fell quiet.
With this moment, I make my name.
“Citizens of Balladaire. The Battle of the Bazaar is an unfortunate stain on the relationship between Balladairans and Qazāli. The rebels have capitalized on a divided nation and wish to sow discord where there is none.” That part of her speech was inspired by a speech she’d read from another ruler. She couldn’t remember quite where or who. She tried to make more spit in her desert mouth.
“The rebels threaten the lives of Qazāli and Balladairan alike. To protect you from this threat—coercion by violence, by blackmail, by any number of things—you need a dedicated governor to replace Lord Governor Cheminade. I have appointed the new governor-general, Casimir LeRoche, comte de Beau-Sang. He will be my hand in the governing of Qazāl with an eye for justice and thus for peace.”
She repeated this again in Shālan, the sharp, articulated Shālan of poets and histories she had read with her tutors.
Then Beau-Sang stepped forward, resplendent in his well-tailored coat. He bowed almost to Luca’s knees before turning to the assembled.
As soon as she stepped back, her hands began to tremble, and her leg threatened to sink beneath her. She dug her cane into the wood. She wished that she could grab on to Gil for support.
Beau-Sang wooed the Balladairans in the crowd. They cheered or clapped politely by turns. How does he manage it?
She answered herself: A careful chain of power checks and balances, the strategic application of gossip and other useful information to manipulate reputations for his own benefit. She could quote for herself the scholars of courtly intrigue by rote, and yet applying them in her own life proved difficult.
A gasp rippled through the crowd, followed by the movement of a hundred heads turning. Luca snapped her attention back to the square. Blackcoats dragged two struggling prisoners through the crowd.
That shocked Luca cold. What was going on? Where had he gotten them? She tried to avoid the thought that burned brightest: Do I know them?
Luca glanced at Beau-Sang, hiding her confusion and anger with a carefully arched eyebrow. He only nodded. Either Cantic wasn’t surprised, or she feigned a better face than Luca would have expected.
Beau-Sang was the picture of grim determination, a father doing what must be done, no matter how distasteful.
“Princess Luca and I want to prove to you that we can deliver upon our promise to end the rebels who terrorize the city. We protect those who are ours.”
Luca’s cheeks went tight. She tried to keep the surprise off her face. To keep her sudden nausea from showing. As the soldiers dragged the prisoners up to the nooses, the Balladairans began to applaud. To applaud her. She hadn’t even done anything.
Yes, she had. She had given Beau-Sang this power, and he had named her so no one—not even she—could pretend she wasn’t complicit.
Up close, the blackened swelling of the prisoners’ faces distorted any sense of recognition. One, a woman, head half-shaven and fierce, had a scabbing cut across her biceps. The man’s face was least recognizable, his lip three times any normal size. They both limped, trousers twisted and barely done up. Luca looked at their feet—No, look up. They deserve that much.
Whoever they were, they knew her. The hatred in their eyes was personal.
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 29
THE 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.”