She looked up at General Cantic from the ground.
“Surrender, Lieutenant.”
Touraine wondered if she was imagining the regret in the general’s voice. She focused on that voice, though, and on the aged face it came from, because there, coming from the shadows to Cantic’s right—Touraine didn’t dare look and give Djasha and Aranen away.
“Maybe you should surrender, General,” Touraine said, holding her old mentor’s eyes. She smiled. “And Shāl’s mercy be on you.”
A cry rang out as Djasha jumped forward in one last burst of energy. Djasha’s battle cry or a blackcoat’s warning or even Touraine’s accidental whimper—Touraine would never know. It was lost in the flash of Djasha’s pale palm in the dark, there and gone, like the shimmer of a fish belly. It flopped like a fish to the ground after Cantic severed it, almost faster than Touraine’s eye could follow. And faster still, the sword sliced across the Apostate’s throat in a spray of blood.
Aranen, who had been behind Djasha—so close and yet as helpless as Touraine—wailed as she rushed to her wife’s side, pressing her hand uselessly against the flow of Djasha’s lifeblood.
Moonlight glinted on the general’s bloody sword as she raised it high for another killing blow, and Touraine surged up from the ground on her good leg. She channeled anguish into rage to mask the pain in her cut tendon, and she screamed wordlessly, knife high. Cantic turned to parry the sloppy strike, and the force of it rang all the way into Touraine’s shoulder. It almost sent her sprawling again, but the blade of her knife was the only thing between Cantic’s sword and Aranen’s neck.
Then she heard a familiar voice calling her name.
“Lieutenant Touraine! Where are you?” Rogan’s singsong voice echoed across the sudden lull in fire as the soldiers on both sides realized their commanders were fighting. Touraine wheeled around so she could get Rogan and Cantic both in her sights.
In one hand, Rogan waved a pistol against the sky. In his other, he held an iron chain connected to manacles on Pruett’s wrists.
No.
Touraine looked down at Aranen cradling her dead wife. Djasha’s braids were dull now, and her skin sagged where illness had taken its toll. The vibrant power that had been there just moments before was leaking out with the blood that covered Aranen’s hands. Aranen, hunched over in her grief, bloody hands pressed to her mouth, then bloody lips pressed to Djasha’s brow.
Somewhere, Jaghotai was—Touraine hoped—giving the order to retreat.
“Call them off,” Rogan said. He aimed his pistol at Pruett’s head. Difficult target to miss. “Arms above your head, on your knees. Call them off.”
Touraine’s shoulders slumped.
“I can’t call them off,” she said. “I don’t command them.”
“That’s horseshit,” he spat.
He half cocked his pistol, and the metal scrape was the loudest thing Touraine had ever heard.
“Stop!” she cried out. She fell to her knees and put her hands above her head.
“Order your men into the street,” Rogan barked. “Make them drop their weapons.”
“Tour, don’t you fucking dare,” Pruett said. “I swear on my mother’s name—”
Touraine fought back tears and a helpless laugh. “Fuck that. You hate your mother.” Then, wrecking her throat, she screamed as loud as she could, “It’s over! Drop your weapons!” She said it in Shālan, too, for good measure.
The scattered musket fire stopped. Slowly, rebels peered around corners to see who had given the order, still deciding whether to obey or not. She cast around, looking for the rebel she most wanted. Where was Jaghotai? Jaghotai could call a retreat and save what there was left to save. Touraine would go down with the Sands and Djasha and Aranen. Jaghotai was stronger. Harder. She had nothing but Qazāl. Let us burn. Jaghotai deserved to survive the night. Then, one day, she would pray for rain again.
In the rebels’ moment of confusion, the blackcoats were on them, beating the weapons out of their hands, cuffing them, dropping them to the ground any way they could. Someone shot at her, the musket ball pocking the earth at her side, and she flinched more out of reflex than any desire to live. It would be over soon, though, she had no doubt. Rogan’s face was too smug. Two blackcoats pulled Touraine to her feet. Two more pulled Aranen away from Djasha’s body.
Touraine had promised to fight for Qazāl’s freedom. She had promised to be theirs, and she had kept that promise. She was ready to give her life for that promise.