“I’m not dying without seeing her again, Jak. If not this, something else. Soon.”
Djasha didn’t see Jaghotai’s eyes close in defeat or the dampness on her eyelashes. Her back was turned. She probably didn’t hear Jaghotai’s voice crack when the fighter whispered, “Fine.”
Djasha didn’t, but Touraine did.
Touraine stood, stepped gingerly behind Djasha. “If we surrender, she might release some of them.”
Djasha’s thin, hunched back heaved with the weight of her sigh. The Brigāni woman turned, her golden eyes seeking Jaghotai’s across the room. Her fingers played idly over the kitchen knife. Something passed between them that Touraine couldn’t read, and Jaghotai nodded, her jaw tight.
“Touraine,” Djasha said, “there is no ‘we.’ The only reason you’re not dead now is because I asked my wife to heal you. It would be a waste. Go, and this time, don’t come back.”
And yet Touraine felt like she had been stabbed, for all she’d expected it, for all she deserved it. She tried to step back, but her legs wouldn’t obey. She opened her mouth to plead her case, but nothing came out.
Jaghotai stepped in beside Djasha, and they made a threatening wall.
“Get out.”
Touraine backed out of the room on unsteady legs.
The last time Luca had ducked into the cool dark of the compound jail, she’d offered Touraine a choice. She’d never imagined that choice would lead her here. A miscalculation of strategy. She could never have predicted it, in this combination.
Less than a year, and so much had changed.
The jail was louder than she remembered, the stench stronger. The blackcoats had come back with a dozen doctors or suspected priests, or at least Qazāli suspicious enough to warrant questioning. Each of them is your fault, Touraine. You chose this for them.
Some of them cursed her from their cells. They clung to the bars, the better to aim their insults in the dim lantern light. The jailer barked back, kicked through the gaps, even if he could understand only half of the disgusting things they said. Some of them ignored her, kneeling with their hands folded in their laps or sitting with their knees pulled up to their chests. Meditating, thinking, praying. To find peace somewhere like this—they had to have some god. Whatever their outer appearance, she knew they hated her deep down, as much as those swearing at her did. They had to. She would, in their place.
Would you do it again?
She was queen. This should be the least she was capable of. So why did it turn her stomach?
She steeled herself before entering the side room where Cantic waited with the woman who would have the answers.
Cantic sat on a stool, looking for all the world as if she were in a commoners’ public house. Which, Luca realized, might be as much a mask as her own icy facade. Strangely, it reminded her of Touraine. False casual, always on edge. If Touraine were colder.
Touraine, who was alive. Touraine, who had been healed.
Aranen din Djasha sat across from her, hands in irons behind her back, feet locked together. Bruises lined her face in fresh purple and stale yellow. Her crisp short hair stuck up at all angles as if tousled by sleep.
“Good afternoon, Aranen din Djasha. I’m sorry that the general’s soldiers were so rough with you. I hope the military medics were sufficient?”
“Their hands are rougher than necessary, Your Highness.” Though the woman spoke to Luca, her eyes never left Cantic. They burned with fascination.
“Do you know the general, Doctor? General, are you two acquainted?”
The deep triangle of lines around the general’s mouth deepened as she frowned. She leaned this way and that to get a better angle in the flickering of the lantern light, but she shook her head in the end.
“The general knows my wife, Your Highness.”
“Djasha din Aranen, leader of the rebel council?”
“The one. Also called the Brigāni witch by some.” The doctor blinked brown eyes slowly at Cantic.
Cantic stiffened at the mention of the Brigāni, like she always did. There were some mistakes that left scars in you no matter how long ago you made them. Was Luca making a similar mistake, or would she look back on this and feel justified?
She was too close not to try.
“Why is she called the witch? Did she have anything to do with Lieutenant Touraine’s healing?”
In that fateful court-martial months ago, Touraine mentioned a Brigāni witch, and it was Djasha who had promised magic.
Aranen straightened, the irons around her wrists banging. She met Luca’s eyes for the first time. “No. She didn’t. I did.”