The Unbroken by C. Clark (best novels to read for students TXT) 📗

Touraine fought for another breath. The windows were shuttered tight against eavesdropping. It kept the sun out, but it kept clean air out, too. A room full of sweating men and women shouldn’t be closed off from a breeze. The manacles on her wrists were already slick with sweat. One officer hadn’t put on enough scent to mask his body odor; another officer had put on too much.

“As you say. What next?”

“I… think I was drugged, sir. At the governor-general’s dinner.”

Now someone did laugh. Touraine turned sharply. A muscular colonel with gray streaks in his close-cut beard smiled. “She drank too much, General, and she’s trying to cover her mistakes.”

Touraine ignored him. “Truly, sir.” She tried to explain her logic—the strange drowsiness, the fog—but one of them was picking her nails and another was looking at Touraine like she was something he’d cleaned out of his nails.

“Maybe you could ask the governor,” Touraine said, reaching desperately. “Maybe she noticed someone acting strange that night.” Touraine wasn’t going to throw her life away by accusing the governor of drugging her, no matter what reasons the woman had. Accusing a Balladairan never went well for a Sand.

Cantic laced her fingers and rested them on the desk. “Unfortunately, Lord Governor Cheminade is dead. Furthermore, whether you were drunk or drugged, it is your actions on trial, not your mental state at the time.”

The news shocked Touraine’s body rigid against the chair. How? Why? Was it the rebels? The questions ticked one after another, spinning in her mind so that she didn’t hear Cantic at first.

“Soldier!” barked Cantic. “What happened next?”

Touraine recounted the rest: waking up in custody, the questions her captors asked. She lingered on the woman who had kicked her. Cantic asked her the same questions as she had before. The rest of the panel seemed almost bored until the questions circled back to the Brigāni.

“What did she talk about?” Cantic asked.

“You, sir.”

The jury of officers took a collective breath, and Touraine rushed to continue while she had their attention. “She wants to kill you.”

Cantic raised an eyebrow at the bluntness. “She can get in the queue with everyone else. For the sake of the court, did she say why?”

“You killed her family.”

“Very good.” Cantic’s face was impassive again.

Touraine was losing her, losing all of them. She’d run out of what little good faith they had, if they’d had any. She didn’t know how else to prove her loyalty.

“Sir?” she started. “The Brigāni also implied that the Shālans had magic like the Taargens, sir.” Touraine shrugged apologetically.

The general narrowed her eyes. “Implied? Did she or didn’t she say so?”

“She said, ‘Rumors must come from somewhere.’ I took that to mean there’s a hint of truth even in our stories. If the stories about the Taargens had some truth, so do the ones about the Brigāni. There might be plans to use this magic against Balladaire again. Whatever it was.”

Touraine thought of her arm again and felt the need to rub at it, as if she could pick it raw and learn what had happened to her. She’d bet that was Shālan magic, too, but she didn’t dare show that to anyone.

For a moment, Cantic only shifted her jaw, like she was working something in her mouth. She spun the ring on her right little finger. Even the secretary’s pen stopped scratching as he waited. Touraine had struck a nerve, and all that pain and fury working behind those eyes—she’d suffer the brunt of it.

The princess had lost her stern disinterest. She sat on the edge of her seat, hands balanced on her cane, right leg straight out. When they’d been briefly introduced at Cheminade’s dinner, she had seemed courteous but aloof. Now Touraine saw that she had clever eyes that didn’t miss much.

“This is preposterous, Cantic. Are we holding court or listening to fairy stories?” said the gray-bearded colonel. “I support due process, but this?”

The general waved him down. “Colonel Taurvide, please. Touraine, what of the other rebel?”

“Nothing important, sir. She only kicked me in an attempt at torture, but as I said, I gave her nothing.”

“Anything else in your defense?”

“No, sir, only—two of my soldiers died in my rescue.”

“Yes.”

“They should have a funeral.”

Rogan interrupted. “General, resources are precious. Sacrifices—”

“I’ll pay the funerary expenses. Carry on.” Princess Luca’s voice was cool, matter-of-fact. It was the first she’d spoken since the trial began. Catching the princess’s equally cool blue-green eyes felt like catching a sniper that had you in her sights.

“Captain Rogan,” Cantic said. “Your testimony regarding the accused?”

Rogan stood at attention between Touraine and the jury, grimacing.

“Perhaps one might call Lieut—excuse me, Touraine capable. Her loyalty, however, has always been in question. She has attacked Balladairan soldiers in the past.” His face was grave.

He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it, snapping it crisply before giving it to the general. “I also present the following examination notes on Corporal LeBlanc’s body. In summary, he was attacked with a long, blunt object hard enough to fracture his skull. The… disfigurement… to his face suggests multiple strokes. The wounds are congruent with those inflicted by the conscripts’ batons, sir, and Touraine was the only conscript unaccounted for at the time of his death. The baton found near his body makes it clear, as all other conscripts’ batons are accounted for. I would not put collusion with intent to mutiny beyond her.”

“Any evidence against her own claim? That she was taken by rebels?” Cantic asked without taking her eyes from the paper.

“Wounds can be fabricated, sir, if you’re desperate enough to build a lie. Moreover,” he added, his voice turning somber, haunted even, “I’ll never forget the time she led her… comrades in an attack on my men and me. Late at night. Years ago, but I don’t think that the seed for that kind of insurrection ever quite dies.”

She saw the bait, how he dangled it in front of her. Touraine clenched her