“I see.” Luca bit her lip. Then she held out her arm for a soldier’s clasp. Surprised, Touraine took it weakly. Luca squeezed until Touraine was forced to strengthen her grip. “Thank you for everything, Touraine.”
Touraine couldn’t quite loosen her fingers, though. Her resolution was coming undone with the feel of Luca’s pulse under her fingertips. Luca’s fingers on her skin. Would it be so bad if she just—？
With her other hand, Touraine pulled Luca’s head closer and kissed her. She smelled like rose water and sweat and ink and tasted like coffee. Touraine was breathless when they finally pulled away.
Luca looked stunned, even though one hand was still warm against Touraine’s waist.
“And you’re—”
“Staying.”
The sun was shining, and there were joyous rain clouds on the horizon the day the Qazāli tore the gallows down.
As the last Balladairan ship filled with soldiers, and the princess left with her household, Qazāli and Brigāni and Sands alike took turns with the axes.
They hacked and cheered and sang and drank and ate and celebrated as the rain came down.
EPILOGUE
TO KNIT
Touraine sat on the rooftop that used to be Djasha and Aranen’s, and watched the rain change the city. The streets were always, always, always yellow-orange muck. Touraine had stopped wearing her boots, because it was easier to wear sandals, or no shoes at all, and rinse her feet off. The city was full of people, almost claustrophobic compared to the fear-spawned emptiness of half a year earlier. Farmers and nomads and the homeless all sought shelter or dry land in the city at the top of the hill. The city wasn’t especially dry, but the river hadn’t swallowed it whole. Qazāl’s flatlands—and Briga’s on the other side—had drowned.
The river raced to devour it all, like a soldier to her rations between long marches. Touraine smiled ruefully, remembering marches with Pruett and Tibeau at her side. Before she was promoted and could order them around. Before they came here.
Someone cleared their throat behind her. Touraine recognized Pruett’s rattle of phlegm. Touraine gestured to the spot on the edge of the roof next to her. Pruett’s hair was slicked to her forehead, only just starting to dry. She still kept it soldier short. She looked even more dour than usual, which was saying something. Touraine hadn’t seen her smile much since the Balladairans pulled out of Qazāl. Only barely when Touraine had woken from her coma.
It was possible that Pruett just didn’t want to smile around Touraine. That would have been more than fair. Tibeau was dead because of her. Touraine had cast Pruett aside for a Balladairan princess, and when Touraine cast the princess aside, she hadn’t come back for Pruett.
They had tried each other again once in the last few months. Several cups of Shāl’s holy water between the two of them and they fell into each other like a tongue in the groove. Even excellent craftsmanship wears under enough strain, without maintenance. They got far enough, but the touches were wrong. They fell into awkward silence after. Since then, though, the relationship had warmed. A little. It was as if knowing what they couldn’t be made it easier to learn to be friends again.
At least, that’s what Touraine had thought.
Pruett didn’t sit. She brandished a folded letter with a black wax seal of a rearing horse. Touraine’s heart leapt. She tore it open immediately. Her eagerness hurt Pruett. And yet she couldn’t stop herself. The most she could do was unfold the letter more carefully. As if she hadn’t been praying to Shāl and any other god for a letter from Luca. Touraine hadn’t expected to miss her so much. Hadn’t expected to miss her at all.
She read the first lines. The letter was exactly the kind of letter that Touraine didn’t want to read in front of Pruett. She refolded it without reading any more.
“Is it bad news?” Pruett asked. The note of hope in her voice made Touraine smile. It was how Pruett had spoken to her before all of this. A strain that hadn’t been there before, but the same jabs.
Touraine shook her head and peered off to the river. If she looked closely, she could imagine it had stolen a farmer’s tools or a lady’s basket. It was wide and hungry enough to take much more than that.
Pruett sighed and sat cross-legged just behind her, away from the edge of the roof. “She still wants you to go back.”
Touraine hadn’t gotten that far in the letter, but the trajectory… Dear Touraine, I don’t deserve anything of you. Not as a soldier, not as a woman.
“Will you write back this time?”