“Unfortunately, they’re all indispensable at the moment. You’re more than welcome to come back, however. Or better yet, Her Highness can send some of the blackcoats. We’d be happy to oblige her.”
Touraine looked over her shoulder at Tibeau, Aimée, and Pruett. They were all used to his bullying. It was etched in the weary resignation on their faces. It had always been one of the facts of life as a Sand, but this was personal. The four of them had gone up against Rogan and his friends years before and lost, badly. But Touraine knew how to play the Balladairans’ game to get what her friends needed. Knew whose name to drop, whose boots to lick. It’s why she’d been picked for lieutenant in the first place.
“Her Highness has a special interest in the well-being of the conscripts, Captain.” Touraine puffed herself as haughtily as she could, and did her best to imitate Luca’s cold demeanor. “And if she or I learn that you’ve been treating the conscripts poorly or with unnecessary severity, she wouldn’t hesitate to remind you of Guard Lanquette’s particular duty.” Touraine cleared her throat. “I believe it was to separate your balls from your body? Something like that.”
She shoved past him with her arms full of books. The silent rage crossed with embarrassment on his face made it worth it.
It was the best she could do for now, but somehow Touraine would fix this, if she had to kill Rogan herself.
Luca was reading through the list of prisoners in the compound jail, when the letters from Balladaire interrupted her. Guérin bowed over the proffered papers, uncharacteristically buoyant. Luca frowned at her uncle’s name on the topmost.
“Have you received something from home, then?” Luca set the letters on top of the records and ledgers she’d taken from Cheminade’s office. She’d been skimming through the prisoners to see which ones might be worth freeing and which ones might deserve a retrial based on… biased concerns. Luca might be willing to free someone who’d punched a price-gouging merchant, but she wasn’t letting murderers back into the colony.
Guérin smiled with reserve, which might as well have been a grin on her usually somber face. “Aye, Your Highness. My oldest daughter’s got a ’prenticeship with a carpenter in La Chaise.”
That warmed Luca’s heart. “I look forward to commissioning a piece from her.”
At that, Guérin beamed. “She’d be honored, Your Highness, and I don’t reckon you’d regret it.”
There was a commotion outside the office, and Luca heard Touraine’s voice. She was smiling before the urgency in the other woman’s tone became clear.
“Your Highness?” Touraine knocked on the door three times, even though it was open. She wouldn’t maintain eye contact with Luca.
“What have you done?” It came out sharper than Luca intended.
Touraine ducked her head. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. I found this in the city.”
The broadside trembled in Touraine’s hand as she held it out, carefully turning the image away from Guérin’s gaze. Luca approached it like a snake. She didn’t want to take it, afraid it might bite. It had been crumpled and straightened and crumpled again, and was damp with Touraine’s sweat. The image, however, was clear.
Sky above and earth below. This was what she had been afraid of. Even though they had clapped for her, for her decision to help the Qazāli orphans. She wasn’t naive enough to think that everyone approved of the decision, but she hadn’t expected a rebuttal so swift.
The worst part was the way her cheeks flushed and she couldn’t help it. She understood why Touraine wouldn’t meet her eyes and why she’d hidden it from Guérin.
The… artist… had drawn the two of them locked in a dancing embrace. Luca, with the same too-severe bun as before, leering at a poor likeness of Touraine—it had gotten only the short military cut of her hair and the broad shoulders right. She was dressed in poor Qazāli clothing, a ragged hooded vest and loose trousers. No one who had seen Luca recently, which was to say, at the ball, could doubt who it was intended to be.
It was captioned in beautiful calligraphy: “Queen of the Sand Fleas.”
Luca tore the paper in half, then quarters and eighths and more until they fell to shreds she would have to apologize to Adile for.
“Find them,” she growled. When neither Guérin nor Touraine left, she shouted, “Go! Send a squad to rip them off the walls and burn them.”
Luca swore under her breath. “Wait! Touraine.” The soldier stepped back in from the hall outside, eyes lowered and body wary of threat. Luca’s embarrassment was boiling into fury at her impotence. She forced herself to steady her breathing and her tone.