“I don’t know—” Touraine started through gritted teeth, but the woman spoke over her.
“So a foolish youth buys a camel and catches the first ferry to southern Briga to put her mind at ease. She finds embers and char when she arrives.
“How does she know this is her family? The Brigāni are nomads now—it could have been anyone. However, there are distinguishing factors. A father’s belt buckle. A mother’s bangles melted into each other nearby. A sister’s jeweled knife. Frankincense mingling with smoke.”
The silence when she finished pressed on Touraine’s ears like the knife pressed on her chest, tearing through her shirt. A bloom of red spread across the cloth. She clenched her jaw until her teeth hurt.
The deep lines between the stranger’s eyes deepened. “Do you want to ally yourself with people who murder indiscriminately? Or will you help me stop the Blood General?”
The Blood General. Another name for Cantic, fuel for darker rumors. After the statesmen in Masridān surrendered, she invited them to a party to cement the alliance and murdered them all. No, even worse, she drowned their children in the city baths when they refused her terms. No, it was like this—on and on, but Touraine never believed the rumors, because she knew who they came from. The Sands could get creative about the instructors they didn’t like.
“Tell me about her,” the Brigāni said.
It wasn’t the knife that made Touraine tremble. She’d been cut before, and worse. Strips of skin gone with a bad whipping. Sky above, she’d never forgive herself if she pissed her trousers now. You are not weak, she chanted in her mind. You are not uncivilized. No superstition can harm you. But the woman had said healing priestess. Touraine’s mind flicked back to the new scar on her arm, and she pulled it away just as fast.
The Brigāni took the blade back and stared at the line of Touraine’s blood sliding down the knife. She licked her lips. Skimmed the blood off the knife with her thumb and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. What could she do with that blood? Control her, like the Taargens, turn her into a beast? She looked away, beyond the Brigāni. Fixed her eyes on the swirls of an old tapestry on the wall, pale with dust. Anything to get away.
“I can’t. I don’t know anything about her—none of us do.” Touraine’s voice wavered. “That’s not how this military works. A private is a private, and the Sands are even lower than that.”
“A pity. Well, if you remember anything useful, let me know. I’ll be back soon, after I’ve made things ready for you.”
She stood and rolled Touraine back onto her belly. Her muscles cramped immediately. The lamplight vanished, and her soft boots padded away.
CHAPTER 5THE FIRST BROADSIDE
The next day, Luca disregarded Cantic’s “suggestions” and went on her first proper visit to El-Wast, to the largest bookshop in the city, run by a Balladairan man with a squint and a shining bald head. She had hoped to go with Cheminade, but the governor-general was busy with the fallout from the hanging.
She had woken this morning to a small unmarked parcel. It was a book about Shālan history. There was no name card or note, though it seemed like the sort of gift Cheminade might give. But why wouldn’t the governor leave a note?
The text was simple, but not in a foppish way. More like it was an introduction to a work that could be longer with more research. She didn’t recognize the author, whose name was inscribed only as PSLR. It included an intriguing discussion of a Shālan text about the last emperor of the Shālan Empire, before it shuddered under its first blow five hundred years ago—The Last Emperor by bn Zahel. The author had never read this elusive book, or even seen it, but said the last emperor was rumored to be a sorcerer and that it was sorcery alone that allowed her to so devastate Balladaire’s coastal cities.
Luca tried to tell herself that her research itself wouldn’t save or ruin her attempts in Qazāl. In the back of her mind, however, she thought about how easy it would be to rule Balladaire if she had magic on her side. If magic actually existed. How people would look at her if she managed what her father could not.
And if she failed? How would people look at her then? If they thought she was chasing down gods to worship, as uncivilized as the colonials?
She wasn’t doing that, though. She had no interest in savage gods or prayers. She just wanted to learn magic. To see its proof, to use it for Balladaire. No one could fault that. They were two very different things. Magic was a tool, perhaps even a weapon. Religion was folly dressed as hope.
Luca was skimming the shelves when she heard women tittering noisily near the door. She huffed loudly and did her best to shut them out, but the shop was small. They kept on. She huffed again, louder.
Her newest guard, Lanquette, shifted uncomfortably on his feet. Luca shot him an annoyed look, then caught the women’s conversation.
“She looks exactly like that, leg and all. I saw her at the hanging. I told you, I was there.”
“She can’t possibly be that—why, she looks like—have you seen those tall, spotted horses at my mother’s menagerie back home?”
“Those giant, skinny things? A… zeeraf?”
Luca’s face burned as she stepped out from the shelves and approached the entrance. The two young women stood outside, parasols raised against the sun, staring at something on the wall of the building. One had dark hair, the other fair, both in a braid that coiled about the head in the style of the colonial nobility—supposedly elegant yet cool. Luca wore her hair in its usual bun, pale wisps tucked behind her ear.
“A giraffe, exactly like them.” The
