After passing door after plain door, Touraine knew instantly when she arrived. She knocked three times on the ornate wood.
The general’s door was smooth with age and nicked by travel, but well cared for. Touraine smelled the polish. Carved rabbits chased each other along the bottom panels, and birds flew at the top. The middle panels were taken by smooth deer, two fawns and a buck grazing while the doe looked warily around for a threat.
Another rumor: before Cantic became the Sands’ instructor, she was a captain in the field, instrumental in expanding the empire under King Roland. When her husband and two children died in the last Withering plague, the grief broke her. She couldn’t fight anymore. The army brought her home to teach and recover.
Touraine reached to brush her fingertips across the buck’s antlers.
The door swung open under her hand.
General Cantic stood in the doorway, looking sour. Not a good start.
“Are you deaf, soldier? I said come in.”
“Apologies, General.” Touraine saluted. “Your door. It’s beautiful.”
The general’s eyes might have softened. Then the moment was gone, and her eyes were the blue ice chips Touraine remembered from her childhood.
Cantic had taken off her black coat with its golden arm, and her tucked shirt hung loose on her wiry frame. Her skin had leathered and freckled with sun and age more than Touraine had realized on the gallows. She still wore a thick grief ring on her right middle finger and a small one on each little finger.
Cantic finally cracked a smile. “Touraine. Lieutenant Touraine. I am glad to see you well. I always knew you’d advance. This morning was very well done.”
Touraine smiled back, flush with pride and hope. “I think of your lessons regularly, General. It’s good to see you again, sir.”
“Good.” Cantic sat behind a desk carved with as much artistry as the door. Her face sharpened from impressed teacher to inquisitor. The familiar eyes searching for missteps. “Now, first. Who was that man to you? The one at the gallows.”
“No one, General.”
“No one?”
“No one I know, sir.”
The truth, no matter who asked.
“You know me better than he does,” she added. “I’ve spent my entire life in Balladaire. My commanding officers are Balladairan. My teachers are Balladairan.” She nodded at the general. “Sir.”
Cantic nodded slowly, her face a bit too pinched for Touraine to think the general would dismiss this entirely. She shuffled the papers on her desk in silence, as if she were looking for a particular topic she wanted to discuss, and Touraine’s heart crawled up her throat while she waited for the silence to break.
“I’m glad to hear it. Here, have a seat. Would you like some water?”
The sudden turn made her body lock in suspicion even as her stomach flipped with giddiness.
Cantic flicked her hand impatiently and poured water from the pitcher on a small side table. “Sit. You just marched through the whole sky-falling city, and you look drier than old balls.” She caught herself and smirked. “I suppose you’ve heard worse by now.”
Touraine took the cup out of reflex and sat slowly—an order was an order—but she wanted to look over her shoulder, just in case. This wasn’t turning out to be the moment Touraine had dreamed of for months, of going from lieutenant to captain, of ousting Rogan. She didn’t know what it was, but it was dangerous.
“You fought the Taargens. How was it?”
Touraine took a drink to delay. The water was lukewarm, but it felt like bliss on her dry throat, rinsing away the dust. Somehow, the question was a test.
What are you asking?
Yet another rumor: Cantic’s loyalties were suspect; she hailed from Moyenne, the disputed region between Balladaire and its neighbor Taargen to the east; the spelling of her family name smacked too much of Taargen influence. Training the Sands had been penance and loyalty test, both. Touraine always cut down whoever brought this up. Cantic’s loyalty was no more suspect than her own.
“We won many of our engagements. They weren’t equal to our training, sir.”
Their one notable loss was caused by an anti-Shālan captain of a Balladairan company who refused to send his men to help a “den of sand rats.”
“No, of course not. God-loving bastards. They’ll stay on their side of Moyenne for now. Tell me about your time behind their line.”
Touraine’s mouth went dry again, and there was not enough water in the world to wet it.
“As you said, sir. They’re uncivilized.”
Uncivilized. It meant they kept a god close. Touraine had never believed in magic. It was the sort of crutch the Tailleurist books urged the Sands away from. Gods were myths, and holding them close was the sign of a weak mind. Touraine had honed her mind against them.
“The Qazāli and all the other Shālans are just as uncivilized.” Cantic leaned her elbows on the desk and stared at her. As if she could read the fear in the shape of Touraine’s grip on the cup.
“You’ll be stationed in the main guardhouse in the city, off rue de la Petière. Captain Rogan will rely on your leadership to set steady patrols in the city. The buildings are close together, so you’ll want to watch the rooftops. And beware any proselytizing. Too many damned dissidents trying to stir up trouble.”
Cantic gestured at a parchment on her desk, and Touraine realized it was a map of El-Wast. Smaller maps detailed the various quarters and medinas, but they all oriented themselves by the River Hadd flowing west of the city.
Touraine had never seen a map so beautiful—or, probably, so expensive. The Hadd’s thick blue line flowed south from the sea, separating Qazāl from Briga and El-Wast from the abandoned Brigāni capital drawn in a faded gray. Small green flourishes denoted the rich farmland between the docks and the city; more elaborate ones indicated the Mile-Long Bridge that arched above that land (that wasn’t an exaggeration; the walk from the docks to the city had felt like an
