It didn’t feel like the wrong side.
Touraine jostled elbows with Sa?d as they raced for the same pieces of bread. The first time, he popped the stolen bread into his mouth and made a show of savoring it. The second time, she grabbed his wrist and squeezed the small bones until he yelped.
“Merciful—shit!” He dropped the bread and wrung out his hand. “Did you see that, Djasha?”
Djasha smirked. “Why do you think we keep her around? We’re all very good at what we do.”
“So Sa?d’s a very good… bookseller?” Touraine waved her warm, crusty prize in front of him.
Sa?d straightened and pulled his thick shoulders back, cracked his knuckles. “I am.”
Despite the games and the warmth, Touraine felt small around them. The same way she felt around Tibeau and Pruett—that people didn’t follow her for her sake, but because she had older, smarter, stronger friends. It didn’t help that she had betrayed these friends once.
Touraine dunked her bread into her harira, a red soup with small beans and herbs. “Can I ask how you even got into the rebellion?”
“How does anyone?” Malika tore her own bread in half as sharply as she spoke. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Sa?d’s face sobered. “Let Djasha tell it. She’s the storyteller.” He turned a piece of tomato idly in his fingers.
“It’s not my place to tell everyone’s story,” Djasha said softly. She met Touraine’s eyes with a golden stare. “I do think it’s a good time for you to hear it, though.”
Sa?d shrugged his massive shoulders. “I was fifteen, maybe. Old enough to push rocks for Beau-Sang. And I had a younger brother. Bastard followed me around all the time, even wanted to come and work. The quarries weren’t a place for little boys. Shouldn’t have been there myself, but it was tough work. Made me feel strong. And the city being what is was… you have to eat to live,” Sa?d said.
“So I go to work one day, and Sahir sneaks behind me the whole way. Lucky I caught him before an overseer did. Could have put my foot through his asshole. I shook him till he cried and left. I thought he had made it safely home, but when I got home that night, my mother and father were crying, and Sahir was gone. Him and a shipful of other brats.”
His eyes shone when he looked at Touraine. Her blood ran cold, her hand frozen with bread and beans on its way to her mouth.
“I know there were a lot of you. Did you know him? Is he here? He was around ten.”
He described his brother, but Touraine wasn’t listening. She could already see Tibeau so clearly. The thick black curls that grew out only on campaign and the beard to match. The tiny scar on his chin where Touraine punched him once and caught him with her thumbnail. As a child, as a grown man.
Tibeau was not Sahir. He had been Aziz. But maybe somewhere, another Sa?d was telling someone else about his brother; another mother was missing her son. Some of the Sands were missed.
It was only confirmation of yet another way she had failed Tibeau.
“I don’t, no.” Touraine avoided his eyes and forced the hunk of food into her mouth.
Sa?d shrugged. “I figured. I keep hoping I’ll meet him. Or can fuck the Balladairans over for taking him.”
“I’m sorry,” Touraine said. Hollow words to fill the warmth that had filled her, almost suffocated her moments before.
Aranen put a hand on Sa?d’s shoulder. “I’m in this mess because I fell in love with a fool.” She sat behind Djasha now, half casual affection, half support. She kissed Djasha’s braids.
Djasha murmured, “And I was the fool.”
On their other side, Jaghotai rested her forearms on the table, a hollowed-out crust of bread wrapped around half of a boiled egg in her hand. She stared at no one even though she faced Niwai and their lion.
“What about you?” Touraine prodded. It felt good to strike at something she knew would spark into flames. If not the familial warmth, at least anger was heat.
Jaghotai stuffed the egg and bread into her mouth and left, still chewing. Touraine watched her broad back all the way out of the room, imagined the slope of thick shoulders as her mother walked down the stairs and slammed the door shut. Touraine almost stood, her own legs coiled to chase after. She pictured the empty street she would see when she got outside.
Since she was a kid, Touraine had dreamed of nothing but becoming what Jaghotai and Djasha hated most. A hero of empire who conquered for empire, who killed for empire. She had shown an aptitude for learning the geography, the history, the mathematics of warfare. She would be kidding herself to think there could be anything else in the world for her. What else could she become? Sick with vengeance and cloaked with false peace, like Djasha? Bitter and angry, holding love at a distance, like Jaghotai?