Beau-Sang threw his head back and laughed, his shoulders shaking. Luca stepped back to avoid being jostled. He was the kind of man who thrived on control of the bodies around him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of so much as a shove.
“I’m glad you’re so thrilled,” Luca said. “General, we’re done here. Bring in your men.”
Cantic nodded and signaled for the blackcoats to come in with their irons.
Beau-Sang smiled broadly the whole time. “You don’t have enough to convict me for murder, Princess.”
“Two young Qazāli have been reported missing. You hanged them the day you took office.”
The comte’s eyes widened just enough that Luca knew it was true even though he scoffed. “Those Qazāli were hanged for kidnapping Balladairans. They were rebels.”
Across the room, Aliez’s hands covered her mouth in horror. Luca grimaced. She wished Aliez had stayed back.
“Rebels or not,” Luca said, with all the certainty she didn’t feel, “they didn’t commit the crime you executed them for. You did.”
They all watched her now, silent, hanging on her next word. It was a thrill she’d never felt before, this frisson of power. They were hers and she was queen, and for once, every part of her was aligned.
Cantic’s blackcoats arrived, and she directed them wordlessly. Aliez and Richard made space for them, both looking rudderless. Gil stood just off to the side, one hand on his pistol and one hand on his sword, which he was wearing for the first time in months.
Beau-Sang growled as the soldiers cuffed him. “Your uncle will learn what you’ve done,” he snarled at Luca, face purpling with fury. “You’ll never touch that throne! You are a disgrace.”
Luca flinched, but she said nothing as they dragged him away, only stood among his belongings as if they were now hers. She kept her jaw hard and steadied her trembling leg with her cane as one by one, the room emptied.
By the time Luca made it outside, Cantic and Aliez were watching Beau-Sang’s carriage roll to the compound. Cantic stood beside her horse.
“I wonder how many civilians know what’s happening.” The general looked askance at Beau-Sang’s daughter beside her, as if gauging the girl’s capacity for gossip.
Now that Beau-Sang was gone, Luca felt as if she were slowly deflating. This was only the beginning. “If the illness hits the city or the Quartier, we’ll have chaos.”
It did hit the city.
The first case was a merchant whose brother was a soldier. Or maybe the merchant gambled with soldiers or sold to soldiers—the facts were unclear, and rumor carried the day. The important part was that the entire family took sick, and the merchant died on the third day, covered in a blistering rash.
The chaos was immediate.
As the illness spread from merchant to customer to child to child to parent, Luca could practically hear the wail of terror rise up from the city.
Because of her choices, everything was crumbling around her. Even the city she was supposed to stabilize as proof that she could steer an empire.
Where El-Wast had seemed lifeless and hollow following the burning night, reports said it was now a corpse infested with maggots. The harbor was overrun, civilians storming every seaworthy vessel. Luca could see the picture in her mind. Balladairans shoving forward, waving money and sheaves of paper, shouting their names and affiliations and influences. Whatever would help them escape.
CHAPTER 40A SACRIFICE
In the weeks since the Grand Temple fell, the ranks of the slums had swollen. The displaced Qazāli crowded around the edges of the tent “quartier,” huddled against the elements with nothing but heavy blankets and the dung fires to stave off the desert night’s chill.
Though the children roamed freely, occupying themselves with mischief, the adults and some of the older children, like Ghadin, moved through the camp on edge. They knew that something was coming, even if they didn’t know what.
Only Touraine, Jaghotai, and the other rebels knew the edge of the cliff they overlooked while the Qazāli death pox ravaged the Balladairans. Only they knew how far they had to fall if they took one false step.
The night Touraine and the others were to attack the compound, they held a feast for everyone. Another circle of fires, another night of dancing and music, and the luxuriously average meal of dried goat meat, beans, and stringy vegetables shared thinly among the slum dwellers. The fires fought back the night, casting the walls of the New Medina in gold as if it were sunset. The worn Shālan script seemed to come alive in the flickering of the firelight. In a way, it was alive; the dancers cast shadows on the wall, which danced in turn.
Touraine tried to pull her head back to the celebration. She sat around a fire with Noé and the few other Sands who turned coat the night the temple fell. Their silence was familiar and comfortable. The noise was not, though she was glad the Qazāli had some joy to scrape out of the ashes Balladaire had made of their city.
She thought again of walking away, but it was only idle now. This celebration was as much for her as for the civilians who’d spent the last weeks mired in fear and grief. It was to celebrate Niwai’s rats and dogs and the ingenuity of decimating the enemy with what they feared most, and to celebrate that Balladairan fear. And it was to atone for the deaths of Qazāli caught in the cross fire of the disease, those who hadn’t caught the laughing pox as children. It was one last night of life for Touraine and Jaghotai and all the fighters who would likely die for Qazāl later that night.
And to prepare Djasha to become another kind of death plague, one that would
