She sprang at Cantic, knife aiming for the older woman’s chest. She ducked under the expected parry, twisting under and away like Jaghotai’s fighting dancers. She skipped back in again.
But Cantic had nearly fifty years of experience. If Touraine’s dancing was unexpected, her face didn’t show it. She blocked Touraine’s strike with a subtle twist of her wrist, and her steady, icy eyes never left Touraine’s. She pivoted, and her counterstrike came deceptively heavily for Touraine’s head.
Touraine ducked again, felt the whip of air above her head. Fear almost turned her knees to water. As she lost her balance, she tucked, rolled, and sprang back to her feet. Close to Cantic’s line of soldiers, who were still firing at the buildings on the south side of the compound. Touraine hoped Jaghotai had called a retreat by now, but the Jackal wouldn’t leave until everyone was accounted for, dead or alive.
From the corner of her eye, she saw one of Cantic’s blackcoats notice Touraine and the general fighting. He turned the musket he had just loaded on Touraine instead. Her blood ran cold. She remembered other musket fire, other pain, ripping through her and spilling her out in the street.
With the blackcoats to her right and Cantic to her left, Touraine was still facing where Djasha should have been coming from. The woman was sick and flagging, she knew, but if Djasha didn’t show up and do her unknitting, her distraction was going to die.
Then Cantic held up her empty hand. “Hold your fire,” Cantic barked at the blackcoats. “We’ll take her surrender.”
The few other blackcoats who had turned now hesitated. Cantic held her empty palm out to Touraine now, ready to take the hilt of her knife.
“Fuck off.” Touraine hawked a gob of spit at the general’s gleaming boots. The blackcoats surged forward, but Cantic held her hand up to stop them again.
“This isn’t like you, Lieutenant.” Cantic approached warily, like she would a rabid dog that needed putting down. Despite their quick clash, she wasn’t even breathing hard. “Don’t forget, I know you. I fed you, taught you, cared for you. Surrender.”
Touraine blinked rapidly to keep her vision clear. All it would take was one signal from Cantic, and the blackcoats would fill her with lead. But Cantic wouldn’t do that. She had always liked her students to admit their wrongs before she let them go.
Balladaire, land of honey and whips. That poisonous combination of fear and hope had kept the Sands in line for ages. Had kept Touraine in line for ages. Every moment of her life had been spent dodging the pain of punishment and striving for a reward from Cantic or someone like her. Including Luca. Until recently.
Since Tibeau died, since she woke up from what should have been her own death, Touraine had made her own choices. She was her own sword, pointed where she willed. She submitted to Djasha and even to Jaghotai because in the end, they were right. The rebellion was right. And they respected her, however begrudgingly at first.
Be the rain.
She deserved to place her own steps, and the Qazāli deserved to govern themselves. And she believed in the bonds she’d made. The bonds of the family she’d built.
“Sorry, sir. Not surrendering.” Touraine ran at Cantic with the knife again.
This time, when she got close, she let Cantic focus on the incoming blade and aimed a kick at the general’s knee. Cantic pivoted away at the last minute, off balance for the first time, and Touraine’s blade sliced across the general’s rib cage, beneath the open coat.
Cantic hissed in pain, but that was all the time she took to acknowledge the hit. Touraine scrambled to get out of the way of the master’s flashing blade and was lashed by the tip. No time for fancy flips. Cantic pushed Touraine back on her heels. Each parry was desperate, each kick was frantic. Wisps of Cantic’s hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. Blood glued her shirt to her torso. Sweat trailed down Touraine’s own brow, too, despite the desert cold, and it stung in a dozen fresh cuts. A drop clung just above her eye, threatening to blind her with salt. And there, just there, was a shadow that was too deep to be just a shadow, creeping from behind the command building.
When the end came, Touraine didn’t see it arrive.
Faster than Touraine thought Cantic could move, the general thrust her blade at Touraine’s face, closing the gap with her feet at the same time. Touraine’s training fled. She bent back, pulling her head away from the thrust as she raised her own knife to parry the blade clumsily away. Only, the blade was already gone.
It bit into Touraine’s ankle, severing the tendon. She crashed to the ground immediately, crying out as pain shot from her toes to her hip. She felt, more than heard, Cantic’s boots crunch in the dirt as the general approached her. Touraine saw the boots first, gleaming in the darkness, and then the blade of the officer’s sword, wet with her own blood. She propped herself up on her palms. Her knife. She crawled for it, dragging her bad leg behind her. Better to die with a blade in her hand.