The Winner's Crime (38 page)

sides.

He slammed that thought down. Because the truth was

that guessing at what he hadn’t known about Kestrel had

served him badly. He had believed in things that weren’t

there . . . or weren’t there anymore.

“No,” he bluntly told the queen. “No gift.”

“Perhaps Dacra and Herran shared some common an-

cestor, thousands of years ago,” she mused, “and that is

why our languages are close. But no. We are too diff erent.”

“We don’t have to be.”

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She turned to face him. “Stop asking for an alliance.”

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“I won’t.”

SKI

O

“Fool.”

“I prefer to think of myself as an optimist.”

She clicked her teeth: a Dacran way to say
no
. It was an

impatient noise. Arin had heard it used with children.

MARIE RUTK

“Herran has nothing to off er us but lives,” the queen told

him. “I would pack your people into the front lines. When

we win, I would take your country and make it mine. The

word we want for you is not
optimist
. Nor, I think”— she

appraised him—“
fool
. It is
desperate
.”

The rain must have stopped. The pipes hushed.

She said, “I would be, too. I would ask what you ask.

But I would off er more. Then I would negotiate better terms

of an alliance.”

He thought of that emerald earring he’d paid into the

bookkeeper’s hand. He thought not about what it was, but

what it had meant. He held the value in his mind, its price-

lessness, and he cast about for an idea of what could match

it. “Tell me what I can give you.”

She lifted one shoulder in a delicate shrug. “Something

more.”

“Tell me what that is.”

“I will know,” she said, “when you give it to me.”

Arin and Roshar rowed up the river. Soft dawn hardened

into bright day. The castle was at their backs, then gone.

Reeds on the banks tapped a light tattoo against each

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other, and swarms of enormous dragonfl ies rippled like

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fl ags alongside the canoe.

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Roshar steered. When they’d set off from the city, Arin

had noted the crossbow slung across Roshar’s back, and a

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set of throwing knives at his hips. Arin had asked if Roshar

’S

expected re sis tance from the plainspeople who had made

camp upstream. Roshar had blithely said, “Oh, this is for

river beasties,” and looked coy. Then, though Arin hadn’t

THE WINNER

pressed him, Roshar added, “If you must know, I’m going

to hunt a nice poisonous snake and make you eat it. You
do

like to ruin a surprise.”

The canoe slowed. Roshar had paused, so Arin lifted

his oar, too, and glanced behind him. Roshar was looking

into the reeds. His mutilated nose made his profi le jar-

ringly fl at.

The current started to push them downstream. They

took up their oars again.

There was something about the day— the tempo of the

reeds, the dipping of the oars, the dragonfl ies’
brrr
, and

even Roshar’s stunted profi le— that opened something in-

side Arin. If he had had to put what he felt into words, he

would have perhaps said that it was a kinship with the

moment.

He began to sing. For himself, for the day, for the way

it made him feel. It had been a while. It felt good to push

that music up and into the world, to feel how the initial

heft of it lightened on his tongue. The song fl oated out of

him.

He wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t thinking about her. But

then he thought about how he wasn’t thinking about her.

The song became lead. He shut his mouth.

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There was a silence.

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Finally, behind him, Roshar spoke. “Don’t let my sister

SKI

O

hear you do that, or she won’t let me kill you.”

Arin didn’t look back. Then he said, “When I was leav-

ing the capital, I saw Risha.”

The canoe angled its direction. Roshar had stopped

MARIE RUTK

rowing again. “Does everyone there call her that, or just

you?” When Arin glanced questioningly over his shoulder

at the prince, Roshar said, “Her name is Rishanaway.

That’s what strangers should call her. Risha is her little

name.”

Arin wasn’t sure if this was what Risha had asked to be

called by the court, or what they had decided to call her.

He remembered what she’d said to him on his last day

there. Reluctantly, but fi rmly, because he thought Roshar

should know, Arin said, “She told me that her place was in

the palace.”

Arin saw regret on Roshar’s face, and loss . . . but also

relief. Arin didn’t understand it. As he found himself ques-

tioning whether the queen and her brother
wanted
their

stolen sister returned, he realized that some furtive part of

him had been wondering whether
that
would have been

enough to secure the alliance his country needed. If he had

brought Risha with him to Dacra, would that have been

the queen’s “something more”? How would Risha have been

most valuable to Herran— as Tensen’s Moth, or as a bar-

gaining chip with the Dacran queen?

Arin checked himself. These

were questions Kestrel

would ask. Kestrel knew exactly how to calculate what some-

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one was worth. His lips curled in sudden disgust.

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“Pleasant thoughts for both of us, I see,” said Roshar.

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“Oars in the water now, little Herrani, or we’ll never make

the camp before nightfall.”

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’S

The day had gone orange. It hadn’t rained once.

“Nearly there,” Roshar said.

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“Why do the plainspeople have to move camp?”

“They don’t
have
to, but this par tic u lar tribe has camped

upstream of an agricultural village with crops. The villagers

have complained that the water fl owing downstream to

them is contaminated. My sister wants these refugees to

move into the city with the rest.”

A fi st squeezed Arin’s heart. He remembered the

woman with the cloth baby. He thought about being forced

from his home, and how it would be to build a new home,

and to be forced from that one, too. “So they suff er yet

again.”

“Arin, do you think I
want
to ask them to move? My

sister always gets me to do her dirty work.” Roshar sighed.

“I suppose my face must be good for something.” When he

caught the startled quality of Arin’s silence, Roshar said,

“Yes, poor prince, maimed by the empire. Don’t you want

to do what he asks of you, ye people of the plains? Look at

him. Look at his face. He has lost something, too.” Roshar

swore under his breath.

Arin looked back, even though he knew that Roshar

wouldn’t want him to see his expression then. It was in

moments like these, when the emotion in Roshar’s eyes

matched his mutilations, that the prince looked most dam-

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aged.

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Roshar spoke again, clearly this time. “Dacra will take

SKI

O

the plains back. General Trajan is in the imperial capital

now. It’s the right time. We’ll take back what they stole.”

“No. Don’t.”

“What?”

MARIE RUTK

“Burn the plains.”

“
What?
Never.”

“Curse the empire,” said Arin. “Curse them. Burn that

godsforsaken army out of your land. If they want it so

badly, let them burn for it.”

“But we can take the plains back. I know we can.”

“And when the general returns to the front? What do

you think he’ll do?
He
will set
you
on fi re. You’re lucky he

didn’t do that to begin with.” Something twinged inside

Arin. Something that had to do with Kestrel. And he was

so sickeningly furious with himself, for the way his mind

kept reaching for her, at the way his body remembered

her, even now, even here, half a world away, that he

ground what ever thought he had been about to think

into dust.

“Arin.” Roshar was still horrifi ed. “That’s our
land
.”

“Sometimes you think you want something,” Arin told

him, “when what you need is to let it go.”

The sky was dusky pink when Roshar announced that

they’d reached their destination. Arin didn’t see an en-

campment, only a rust- colored screen of reeds. Beyond it,

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Roshar said, were grassy fi elds and the refugees.

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They paddled to shore and slid into the mucky shallows

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to drag the boat into the mud and reeds. Roshar loaded his

crossbow. He caught Arin’s glance. “Just a precaution.”

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“I thought you were joking about the snake.”

’S

Mournfully, Roshar said, “And
I
thought you believed

every little word I said.” He pushed ahead through the

reeds.

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Arin wasn’t sure what worried Roshar— he hoped not

snakes; a crossbow wasn’t a practical weapon against them—

but he, too, was worried now. Roshar, a good distance in

front of him, looked small in the reeds. Arin moved to catch

up. Mud sucked at his heels. “The queen shouldn’t have sent

you alone.”

Roshar turned. “I’m not alone,” he said simply. “You’re

here.”

Arin was about to ask for a weapon. He was closing the

gap between them.

There was a ripple in the reeds. A prowling wave.

The beast surged from the reeds and spread its claws.

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36

THE TIGER SLAMMED INTO ROSHAR. ROSHAR

fl ung an arm up just as it struck him down. The beast bit

the limb, snarling low, its muzzle wet with blood. Its jaws

opened to reach for the neck, then closed again on the arm

that got in the way.

Arin turned and ran for the canoe. It rocked under

the heave of his body against its side. He snatched an oar

from its well, stumbled back through mud and bent reeds,

and cracked the oar down on the tiger. He beat its face

aside.

A roar. The massive striped body recoiled. Roshar

rolled away, crimson with his own blood. His hands were

empty. He made a gasping sound that was, for one split

instant, the only thing Arin heard.

Then the tiger came down on Arin.

He was shoved onto his back into the mud. He sank

down. He was swallowing mud, straining the oar up be-

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tween him and the tiger, who bared broken teeth. Its breath

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the one making that sound. Claws were in his shoulders.

Pain curled in. He tried to push back with the oar and

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block the jaws, but he knew how this would end. His arms

’S

would give out. The oar would splinter. The tiger would

fi nally get the right angle and close in on his neck.

Black nose. Pulsing stripes. Wild amber eyes. The col-

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ors of Arin’s death.

But he remembered Roshar’s empty hands.

He remembered a crossbow.

And although he knew that a crossbow was no good

(how could he aim it
and
keep the tiger at bay? Gods, was

it even still loaded?), he risked a glance. He looked away

from the tiger’s teeth. He looked into the reeds. He saw a

snapped crossbow quarrel, its leaden tip sticking out of the

mud.

An arm’s length away.

“Roshar,” he choked out.

Arin heard the reeds rattle. He couldn’t see Roshar

move, but the prince did, and that was enough.

The tiger’s attention lifted from Arin.

Arin reached out, yanked the quarrel from the mud,

and drove it into the tiger’s eye.

He felt the tiger roar. He dug in deeper. Hot liquid

spilled between his fi ngers. He pushed the quarrel in.

The body heaved onto him. Claws slackened.

Somehow that was when fear set in. The tiger was