Aranen, who had been behind Djasha—so close and yet as helpless as Touraine—wailed as she rushed to her wife’s side, pressing her hand uselessly against the flow of Djasha’s lifeblood.
Moonlight glinted on the general’s bloody sword as she raised it high for another killing blow, and Touraine surged up from the ground on her good leg. She channeled anguish into rage to mask the pain in her cut tendon, and she screamed wordlessly, knife high. Cantic turned to parry the sloppy strike, and the force of it rang all the way into Touraine’s shoulder. It almost sent her sprawling again, but the blade of her knife was the only thing between Cantic’s sword and Aranen’s neck.
Then she heard a familiar voice calling her name.
“Lieutenant Touraine! Where are you?” Rogan’s singsong voice echoed across the sudden lull in fire as the soldiers on both sides realized their commanders were fighting. Touraine wheeled around so she could get Rogan and Cantic both in her sights.
In one hand, Rogan waved a pistol against the sky. In his other, he held an iron chain connected to manacles on Pruett’s wrists.
No.
Touraine looked down at Aranen cradling her dead wife. Djasha’s braids were dull now, and her skin sagged where illness had taken its toll. The vibrant power that had been there just moments before was leaking out with the blood that covered Aranen’s hands. Aranen, hunched over in her grief, bloody hands pressed to her mouth, then bloody lips pressed to Djasha’s brow.
Somewhere, Jaghotai was—Touraine hoped—giving the order to retreat.
“Call them off,” Rogan said. He aimed his pistol at Pruett’s head. Difficult target to miss. “Arms above your head, on your knees. Call them off.”
Touraine’s shoulders slumped.
“I can’t call them off,” she said. “I don’t command them.”
“That’s horseshit,” he spat.
He half cocked his pistol, and the metal scrape was the loudest thing Touraine had ever heard.
“Stop!” she cried out. She fell to her knees and put her hands above her head.
“Order your men into the street,” Rogan barked. “Make them drop their weapons.”
“Tour, don’t you fucking dare,” Pruett said. “I swear on my mother’s name—”
Touraine fought back tears and a helpless laugh. “Fuck that. You hate your mother.” Then, wrecking her throat, she screamed as loud as she could, “It’s over! Drop your weapons!” She said it in Shālan, too, for good measure.
The scattered musket fire stopped. Slowly, rebels peered around corners to see who had given the order, still deciding whether to obey or not. She cast around, looking for the rebel she most wanted. Where was Jaghotai? Jaghotai could call a retreat and save what there was left to save. Touraine would go down with the Sands and Djasha and Aranen. Jaghotai was stronger. Harder. She had nothing but Qazāl. Let us burn. Jaghotai deserved to survive the night. Then, one day, she would pray for rain again.
In the rebels’ moment of confusion, the blackcoats were on them, beating the weapons out of their hands, cuffing them, dropping them to the ground any way they could. Someone shot at her, the musket ball pocking the earth at her side, and she flinched more out of reflex than any desire to live. It would be over soon, though, she had no doubt. Rogan’s face was too smug. Two blackcoats pulled Touraine to her feet. Two more pulled Aranen away from Djasha’s body.
Touraine had promised to fight for Qazāl’s freedom. She had promised to be theirs, and she had kept that promise. She was ready to give her life for that promise.
Not the Sands’ lives. Not Pruett’s. She couldn’t do this math. This was the line she couldn’t cross. The Sands were her first family, and she belonged to them, despite everything between them in the last year.
Pruett stood across from her, her eyes screwed shut. Sky above. It isn’t supposed to happen like this. The last of the rebels emerged in a trickle, hands over their heads in surrender, muskets trained on their backs. Finally, Touraine spotted Jaghotai, who held both arms high. A battlefield bandage on her long arm was already soaked through with blood. She let a blackcoat cuff her hand to a long chain that linked the rebel prisoners. The soldier kicked her in the back of the knees to drop her to the ground, in line with the others.
“Jaghotai!” Touraine didn’t move toward her, but the blackcoats wrenched her arms back anyway. A blow to the head left Touraine dazed.
“Easy, Lieutenant.” Rogan called Touraine’s attention back to Pruett. To the pistol at Pruett’s head. He cocked the pistol all the way.
Before Touraine could scream, Rogan turned the pistol onto her. The strike of the flint on steel hissed through the night air. Pain ripped through Touraine’s calf, and she fell back to the ground.
“You sky-falling bastard,” she growled as the man’s smile spread across his face.
They had lost.
The next punch came to her temple.
CHAPTER 41TO UNKNIT
When Gil at last permitted Luca to step outside, the compound, which had become a battlefield, was quiet. The shots she’d heard firing outside her window had ceased, and Cantic had given the all clear. The fighters’ shouts had died. The prisoners—except for Touraine—were cuffed and held under guard at the far end of the compound. Balladairan soldiers dragged the dead outside the compound to be carted away and the wounded to lie outside the already overflowing sick bay. Beyond the yellow walls, the plague fires still burned; the orange glow lit the sky. As if the world had broken and the sun with it, setting on the wrong side of the sky.
Their plan had worked, but at a cost.
It smelled like blood. It wasn’t coppery, like it tasted in your mouth. It was thick and heavy, mingled with voided bowels to make a stench like a thick fog that she had to push through to get to the jail.
Beneath
