The Unbroken C. Clark (best books to read for self development .txt) 📖

“Correction.”

A stranger stepped through the door, a very large, very golden cat beside them. They wore pale brown trousers and a loose caftan bound at the forearms by a bracer on one arm and a thick falconer’s glove on the other. They wore their scarf differently, too, wrapped in a tight circle around their head except for what draped down to protect their neck from the sun. Their eyes looked unfocused, but their smile was wicked with glee as they scratched their lion between the ears.

“We’re going to finish one.”

The announcement was postponed by a day. As Luca had expected, Cantic had balked, and Luca had spent the day trotting out legal justifications and explanations for her decisions. More irritating was that Cantic wasn’t balking at the solution; she wanted the Qazāli in hand even more than Luca did. She just wanted to hold Beau-Sang’s leash. At least the general had stopped mentioning Touraine.

As Luca rode by carriage to the Grand Bazaar, her stomach rebelled. She blamed it on the stuffy cabin. The heat made the air inside feel dense, suffocating. She missed snow. She missed how the snowflakes dusted up against the stone walls of the palace in Balladaire. She missed the brightness searing through her eyelids, burning everything red. The tingle as her toes went numb, the burn as her fingers came back to life after playing outside. Years since she’d done that, but not so long since her last snowfall. Will I be back in time for winter?

The most she could expect from Qazāl’s seasonal shift was an increase in rain. Spending her days sopping wet or hiding indoors wasn’t her idea of pleasure. Then again, anything was preferable to this bone-leaching heat. She just wanted to wear trousers without feeling as if she’d pissed herself with sweat.

Cantic waited on the gallows platform with her usual stern mask hammered out of steel. The wood made a comforting, hollow thunk under Luca’s cane.

The colonial conscripts waited in ranks behind the regulars, thick swaths of blackcoats. The sun shone on gold buttons everywhere, but the bayonets, of course, would not be outdone, and sparkled with a vengeance.

A pair of blackcoats escorted Beau-Sang onto the platform as well. Bastien had come, too, but he hung back with the other Balladairan civilians in attendance. Waiting for her.

She traced the cracks of tension that had been cracked wider by the “Battle of the Bazaar,” as people had taken to calling it. Qazāli laborers and hawkers grouped together while Balladairan merchants and shoppers clung to each other. Where the borders of each group met, they eyed each other skeptically at best and with outright hostility at worst.

She took a steadying breath and stepped forward. The crowd fell quiet.

With this moment, I make my name.

“Citizens of Balladaire. The Battle of the Bazaar is an unfortunate stain on the relationship between Balladairans and Qazāli. The rebels have capitalized on a divided nation and wish to sow discord where there is none.” That part of her speech was inspired by a speech she’d read from another ruler. She couldn’t remember quite where or who. She tried to make more spit in her desert mouth.

“The rebels threaten the lives of Qazāli and Balladairan alike. To protect you from this threat—coercion by violence, by blackmail, by any number of things—you need a dedicated governor to replace Lord Governor Cheminade. I have appointed the new governor-general, Casimir LeRoche, comte de Beau-Sang. He will be my hand in the governing of Qazāl with an eye for justice and thus for peace.”

She repeated this again in Shālan, the sharp, articulated Shālan of poets and histories she had read with her tutors.

Then Beau-Sang stepped forward, resplendent in his well-tailored coat. He bowed almost to Luca’s knees before turning to the assembled.

As soon as she stepped back, her hands began to tremble, and her leg threatened to sink beneath her. She dug her cane into the wood. She wished that she could grab on to Gil for support.

Beau-Sang wooed the Balladairans in the crowd. They cheered or clapped politely by turns. How does he manage it?

She answered herself: A careful chain of power checks and balances, the strategic application of gossip and other useful information to manipulate reputations for his own benefit. She could quote for herself the scholars of courtly intrigue by rote, and yet applying them in her own life proved difficult.

A gasp rippled through the crowd, followed by the movement of a hundred heads turning. Luca snapped her attention back to the square. Blackcoats dragged two struggling prisoners through the crowd.

That shocked Luca cold. What was going on? Where had he gotten them? She tried to avoid the thought that burned brightest: Do I know them?

Luca glanced at Beau-Sang, hiding her confusion and anger with a carefully arched eyebrow. He only nodded. Either Cantic wasn’t surprised, or she feigned a better face than Luca would have expected.

Beau-Sang was the picture of grim determination, a father doing what must be done, no matter how distasteful.

“Princess Luca and I want to prove to you that we can deliver upon our promise to end the rebels who terrorize the city. We protect those who are ours.”

Luca’s cheeks went tight. She tried to keep the surprise off her face. To keep her sudden nausea from showing. As the soldiers dragged the prisoners up to the nooses, the Balladairans began to applaud. To applaud her. She hadn’t even done anything.

Yes, she had. She had given Beau-Sang this power, and he had named her so no one—not even she—could pretend she wasn’t complicit.

Up close, the blackened swelling of the prisoners’ faces distorted any sense of recognition. One, a woman, head half-shaven and fierce, had a scabbing cut across her biceps. The man’s face was least recognizable, his lip three times any normal size. They both limped, trousers twisted and barely done up. Luca looked at their feet—No, look up. They deserve that much.

Whoever they were, they knew her. The hatred in their