Thirty soldiers filed past her, but Tibeau held back. He stared back at the civilians, searching faces. “Sergeant?” Touraine said softly.
“Do you think anyone will recognize us? The rest of us, I mean.” His voice was barely audible over the city’s noise. There was a longing in his voice that made her heart beat faster.
“No.” The word came out sharper than she’d meant. “And in case you haven’t noticed, most would rather stab us than share dinner.”
A gang of kids ran by, slowing to stare at Touraine and her squad, the Shālans in Balladairan uniforms. Did the children find them strange? Being so close to the main commercial section of the city, Ibn Shattath was a mix of the lowest and the highest and everyone in between, from Qazāli merchants in Balladairan clothes to Balladairan servants running errands. With the spectacle of soldiers gone, most moved on quickly.
Touraine chanced a look at Tibeau’s face. The smile she found was grimmer than she was used to, more like Pruett’s. “Someone recognized you,” he said.
It felt like a shove. A friendly sparring match turned cruel. She met him stare for stare as he tested her, asking her to bend.
“I was ten when I was taken,” he added. “I’d already had time to grow into my delicate features.” He batted his lashes over brown eyes full of desperate hope. He tried to hold on to the joke, but his voice cracked. “I should be even more recognizable, shouldn’t I?”
Touraine forced a chuckle despite the growing tension between them. Tibeau wasn’t what someone would call a pretty man. Like her, he was crossed by scars from growing up with the instructors and pocked by even more from going to war for Balladaire. When Touraine first met him, she’d just learned what a bear was from a lesson book. With his short dark hair, furry arms speckled with moles, and taut belly, he’d looked like a cub. Now he was full-grown. She still sparred with him for practice, but she beat him only four out of ten times, maybe. It hurt, now, to watch the tentative slump of his shoulders.
A scrawny man wearing only loose trousers ran a rickshaw past them, barefooted. He avoided colliding with them, but his cargo still shouted at him. A soft, blond Balladairan man, the lace from his clothes dripping from the cab. She felt Tibeau’s anger pulling taut like a bowstring.
She gripped the back of one of Tibeau’s thick arms. “Don’t bring trouble on us, Beau.”
“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not as stupid as I used to be.” It had been almost ten years since Touraine had gotten her friends whipped for fighting with Rogan, before he was their captain.
She tugged him toward the guardhouse with one last look around the emptying street.
The entryway to the home had a clever partition that denied large groups a quick entrance. If anyone tried to attack, they would have to enter one or two at a time; and using muskets would be impossible. Probably not the original intent of the design.
The building rose in a square surrounding a courtyard with a gurgling fountain. It was the wettest sound since the ocean, and the air within had a clean smell. Touraine felt more comfortable already, with everyone outside cut away. Immediately, everything was simple again.
She divided everyone into rooms on the first and second stories, four or five to a room. To the left of the entrance was an office, already set up with papers. That would be Rogan’s domain, then, and the biggest room would be his. Probably at the far end, opposite the entrance. To the right, there was a room with a couple of low tables and pillows to make a rough common room.
Touraine nodded, satisfied. It was already better than any of their other postings. She squeezed Tibeau’s shoulder. “Be easy, Beau. Find Émeline. Let’s have a drink.”
“Easy.” He grunted. “Right. So easy.”
He and Émeline joined Pruett and the other Sands in the common room for games of tarot and cups of nutty-flavored beer. Touraine beckoned Pruett with a look. Her sergeant followed her out of the common room and back into the open courtyard.
It might have been a beautiful place before. Back when water flowed from the pale stone petals of the fountain and the planting troughs were full of living flowers instead of dried husks on their way to decomposing. The ground was scattered with dirt and dead leaves and animal shit, bird and otherwise. Someone would go on cleaning duty.
Pruett sidled in close. “What’d you do this time, Lieutenant?” When Touraine didn’t smile back, Pruett dropped the wryness. “Did Cantic say something?”
“I’ve been invited to a dinner,” Touraine whispered. “Tonight. With the governor.”
“What the sky-falling fuck?”
“Shh. I don’t want everyone to know—wait, should I tell them?” Touraine glanced over her shoulder. “Everything is so tight. It feels like one wrong move and—”
“Like someone’s got a flame hovering over a fuse, and all you’d have to do is spook them at the wrong moment. I know.” Pruett nodded gravely. She took Touraine’s hand briefly and squeezed it before dropping it again.
Underneath it all, the unspoken hung. She felt it in the other Sands’ glances at her, some covert, some frank and curious. They were home, and she had been recognized. They were home, and allegiances were up in the air. Only, they weren’t. She’d have to address it before she left for the governor’s dinner. Leaving her soldiers like this, on edge, in the middle of such a mess, was a bad idea.
“It feels like I have a chance, Pru.” Touraine searched Pruett’s eyes for any hint of validation. “Like maybe they’re starting to take us seriously for once.”
Her sergeant raked her hands through her short hair, dried stiff and at odd angles from sweat. “Sky above. The governor.” Pruett
