“Your status would increase dramatically. In addition to being in my service, you’d have my ear and perhaps my influence in certain matters.” Luca raised an eyebrow pointedly. “Some might say that Balladaire owes the conscripts a great deal of thanks.”
“You mean you’d help the Sands?”
Good. She could listen for the words behind the words.
Luca gave a slow nod.
“Thank you, Your Highness.” The soldier bowed again. “You’re generous, and I would be honored.”
“You don’t even know what you’ll be doing.”
A strange mix of emotions flickered across the other woman’s face. Luca caught an initial flash of anger followed by dutiful resignation.
Inside the cell, there was a piss pot in the corner that was pungent with dehydration, and an empty tin bowl with scraps of watered grain drying to paste along its sides. Luca doubted honor had anything to do with the soldier’s eagerness.
“We’ll discuss it later, then. I’ll get the good sergeant to assist us.”
After a silent carriage ride, in which Gillett sat warily across from Touraine and the bodyguard Lanquette sat beside her, they arrived at the town house. They’d taken off the soldier’s handcuffs, but she still held her wrists close together. In the daylight, she was only marginally less imposing. The look on her face, though, was one of such amazement that Luca smiled a little behind the woman’s back.
“Welcome to your new home,” Luca said.
CHAPTER 10
THE ASSISTANT
Welcome home, Sands.
The princess’s words echoed with Rogan’s scorn, and Touraine flinched, but the princess didn’t seem to notice as she led Touraine inside.
Touraine had expected opulence, of course, garish displays of wealth from a woman who had never lived without in her life.
She was not prepared.
The princess’s sitting room was full of books. An entire wall was covered by a shelf more than half-full of books and sheaves of paper and even a few scrolls. The table in the corner was messy with paper and writing materials, and a large book lay open on it as if the princess had been studying and called away abruptly.
There were a few minor flourishes, too, like the Shālan carpets stretched over the floor, springy beneath Touraine’s boots. One of them depicted angles and rigid shapes, and the other had designs of the Shālan script, curled into shapes at the center. They showed slivers of a wooden floor, not earth. Two stuffed chairs sat beside a small table with an échecs board. A rough metal stand held spare canes near the door.
“It’s rather small,” Princess Luca was saying. “When they built this place, they never anticipated… esteemed guests, so I’m afraid I have no private chambers for you. The guards’ room connects to mine, so you’ll share with them.”
Small? To get to the bedrooms, they passed a flight of stairs, the wooden handrail curling up like a cat’s tail to the second floor, and then walked through a dining room. Luca’s rooms were closed off, but even the guards’ room was airy compared to the room she’d shared with Pruett and Tibeau in the guardhouse. And then Luca led her up the stairs—haltingly, for both of them—to a bathing room with a wheeled tub.
The princess gave Touraine the same appraising look she had in the jail. It was different in the sunlight streaming through the window—a glass window!—but Touraine still felt like a new horse getting its teeth checked.
She was suddenly self-conscious of her ragged black coat, the old spare she’d put on before Rogan arrested her. The other one was still crusted in émeline’s blood. She’d worn this coat—or one just like it—every day in her working memory. And the undershirt, stained with blood and dirt and smelling like week-old sweat.
For her part, the princess wore trousers and a black coat as well, a swallow-tailed velvet one that should have been too hot to even dream of wearing. Gold embroidery shaped like braided wheat grains crossed the torso and met at the black buttons in the middle. A shock of gold lace spilled from each cuff. It told Touraine everything she needed to know about her: stiff, formal, and very expensive.
The princess came to the same conclusion Touraine had: “You’ll need new clothes. We’ll have your measurements taken soon. Until then, I’ll send Adile up to start your water, and something spare from Guérin. Do you know they’ve had Balladairan plumbing here for a few hundred years? Before it was even a colony. This is newer, obviously, but still. Isn’t it marvelous?”