“That you stop being so squeamish, for starters. I thought you were a soldier.”
Touraine could almost feel her hands gripping around their throat. They sighed and stood, and she tensed.
“They used the weapons they had at their disposal. The Balladairans abandoned their god, and that’s no fault of ours. They have no right to determine how the rest of us live. We have our own weapons. Are you saying we shouldn’t use them?”
“There are guns—” sputtered Touraine.
“If Djasha and Jaghotai had enough guns to win this, I probably wouldn’t be here.” They added with a grim smirk, “Besides, guns kill people just as dead as magic does. Sometimes less so, and that’s another kind of evil entirely.”
Everything they said seemed like a philosopher’s wind.
Aranen and Jaghotai stepped into the main hall—Aranen suspicious, Jaghotai smug to see Touraine on edge.
“Is everything all right?” the priestess asked. Priestess. Not doctor.
Jaghotai crossed her arms over her chest. “When I called you a dog, I didn’t expect you to be such a cowardly one.”
Touraine tightened her fists until her pulse throbbed in them. A stupid goad, for puffed-up kids without real experience and sense.
It worked.
She was following them back into the infirmary when the small temple doors swung open.
Malika and Sa?d came in, Sa?d looking cautiously over his shoulder. Malika’s normally composed face was contorted with fear, anger, pain. Anger most of all, Touraine guessed.
In the infirmary, Jaghotai’s expression went even darker. “So it’s true, then. Who?”
“Maru and Nanti, a young brother and sister.” Sa?d sighed heavily. “Were the hostages your idea, Jak?”
“What?” Jaghotai asked. Jaghotai turned to Djasha, shaking her head. “No. This wasn’t me.”
Malika leaned against a wall and let her head tilt back against it. Elegant, even in distress. Djasha stared at Jaghotai with golden eyes narrowed.
“It wasn’t me,” Jaghotai growled.
They got their marching orders a few days later. Touraine was to go with Niwai.
“No.” Touraine snagged Jaghotai by the arm. “I’ll come with you instead.”
Jaghotai’s face was caught between stunned disbelief and a snarl as she looked between Touraine and the fear-tight hand around her biceps. Jaghotai was still angry from the chastisement Djasha had given her over the hostages.
“You’ll need support. I’m one of the best fighters—you know this.”
Jaghotai shook Touraine’s hand off and huffed. “I do know that. That’s why I want you with Niwai.”
Touraine stepped closer still and spoke in a hushed, definitely not desperate voice. “Is this about me and you? Do you want me to humiliate myself?”
“Mulāzim, I have no idea what you’re talking about. As much as you need to get humble, I’m not about to sabotage an entire mission to make you look like even more of a fool. You asked to help. Djasha and I said you could stay. Now you’re my tool, and I’m telling you where you’ll help.”
Touraine’s heart swam up to her throat. She looked toward the corner where Niwai and Aranen sat talking about gods while Djasha looked on with a wan smile.
She couldn’t do this. She could accept the magic as a tool, even allow that one of them would be an ally, as long as she didn’t have to deal with it right in front of her. She couldn’t help Niwai do it, though. She couldn’t watch them use that magic against the Sands. Against Luca.
But Touraine had made her choice when she returned to the Grand Temple and threw her lot in with the rebels. Who was she to tell them what weapons they could or couldn’t use? Especially when Balladaire had them so badly outnumbered and outgunned.
Really, though, none of that was the point.
Niwai watched her, their eyes glittering amid dark kohl. They cocked their head at her even as they nodded at what Aranen was saying.
The point was the heat and the sweat pricking at Touraine’s skin, the vomit creeping up the back of her throat when she thought not of Niwai but of the Taargens, murdering her soldiers for their magic right in front of her, reaching for her next—
“Please, Jaghotai.”
Something in her voice finally caught Jaghotai’s attention. Comprehension finally dawned in the other woman’s eyes. Her mother’s eyes. Had Touraine hit at some maternal instinct to protect her? Sky above, please, yes.
“I’m sorry, Touraine. That’s an order. That’s how Cantic would say it, sah? We need you there.”