The Faithless by C. L. Clark

Author:C. L. Clark [CLARK, C. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

The Masridāni didn’t pursue them. That wasn’t the message Yoroub wanted to send. He wanted them to return to Qazāl in tatters and remind the council—the rebels—why Balladaire had beaten them in the first place.

Pruett and the handful of survivors she’d found so far—one of the Atyidi, not an Eater, a few Sands, and a big woman from El-Tarīq—licked their wounds. They’d salvaged a couple of camels, too.

The fortress city loomed in the distance.

This was supposed to be her home.

“What is so wrong with me?” she whispered. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and she blinked rapidly. She tried to scowl them away, or at the very least squint like the sun was too bright, and not like a weeping sore inside her was being cauterized.

“Captain?”

“What?” she snapped.

It was Armande, one of the Sands, a tall woman with a knack for artillery. Which they didn’t have. She narrowed her eyes at Pruett’s tone.

“Sorry,” Pruett mumbled.

“Are we heading back to Qazāl?”

How did Touraine do this all the time? Under Balladaire, it was easy. Someone gave them orders and Pruett carried them out. Touraine had had a strange way of smoothing things over with the whole squad. Pruett didn’t have that knack.

“I—I need a minute,” she said gruffly. “Keep looking for… survivors. Set guards. Sleep if you can.”

Armande saluted and Pruett stalked away.

She scanned the sky for Sevroush, but there was no black shape blotting out a patch of stars anywhere above her. She whistled sharply. No answering caw came. She even held her arm out, the makeshift leather bracer waiting as his perch. Nothing.

He had left her, too.

She picked up a rock from the dirt, got a running start, and hurled it at the city walls. As the walls were now miles away and the rock stopped after about fifty yards, it didn’t help. An animal sound ripped from her throat, wordless but utterly intelligible as it came out of the core of her being.

“Fuck you!” she screamed at the city. “Fuck! You!”

She sank to her knees and pressed her forehead to the ground. Her tears soaked the sand beneath her.

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