The Winner's Kiss (29 page)

Another scream broke the night. It came again from the tent.

Arin
strode to the prince. “Roshar. A word?”

“I was wondering when you'd join the fun,” the prince answered in Valorian. He grinned at the girl. “I'll be back.”

When they were out of earshot of the scout, Roshar dropped his smile. “To be clear, this was Kestrel's idea.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Faking a torture.”

Arin thought he understood, and calmed down a little. “Is it working?”

“It might, if you don't interrupt again.”

“Let me know if you learn something.”

“Of course.”

“Where's Kestrel?”

“She wants to be alone right now,” Roshar said after a slight pause. “Better let her be.”

But Roshar's tone made Arin remember how the prince had smiled at him, the reins of two horses in his hands on the grounds of Arin's home. This made him think of Kestrel's refusal earlier, before nightfall, to make him any promises. Ever since the sun had gone down, Arin's nerves had tightened with anxiety even as he'd warned himself not to push things, to be different from how he usually was, to not overreact or feel too much or say too much.
Let her be,
he'd told himself, exactly as Roshar was telling him now. But another scream rose in the distance, and even though Arin knew that this was a trick, it was
Kestrel's
trick. Her tricks tended to be shaped like a nest, each twig and straw in place, hiding a dangerous creature Arin never saw until it was too late.

Arin said, “Where is she?”

Reluctantly, the prince said, “She hasn't left yet.”

“
Left? What?
Where?
”

“Ask her. She'll tell you—against my better judgment, I might add.” Roshar nodded in the direction of his tent.

Arin took one rapid stride toward it. The prince's hand came down hard on his shoulder. “Arin, her plan is a good plan.”

Arin shrugged off his grip and walked away.

He found her sitting on Roshar's cot, lacing up high Valorian boots. She wore trousers—the scout's trousers. Kestrel had bound her breasts with tight cloth. Her midriff was bare, her shoulders and arms, too: skin a dark gold fired by the lamplight.

She'd heard him enter, yet kept her head down, ignoring him, her braid hanging heavily over one shoulder. It swayed slightly as she jerked laces over the boots' hooks and cinched them. When she reached for the Valorian tunic and jacket on the cot beside her, he caught the trace of a mottled line on her shoulder, saw the lash that curled up over her neck. She paused—had she heard the sore thump of his heart? Or the way he'd swallowed, caught in the nightmare of those scars, in the memory of seeing them for the first time, in his awful imagining of how they'd been made?

She stood and turned her back to him. Just before she drew the tunic over her head, he saw almost the full maze of marks, white and raised. She put on the earth-colored jacket. All the scout's clothing, dyed to match the woods.

“Kestrel.” His voice was rough.

She faced him and told him her plan. When he started to
argue
(he couldn't even hear what he said; his pulse was shuddering, the blood draining from him), she said, “Trust me.”

He did, he wanted to say so, then realized that he didn't, that he could not and would not, if trusting her meant
this
. “No.”

She was angry now, too. “You can't keep me in a cage.”

“I'm not—” Yet that
was
what he meant to do, in a way. Even as he saw the wrongness of that, he couldn't imagine letting her go. “It's too dangerous.”

She shrugged.

“Why do you insist on risking yourself? You were caught once. You're not infallible. Are you trying to prove that you are?”

“No.”

“Are you trying to punish me?”

“No.”

“I deserve it, I know, but—”

“This isn't about you.”

“You are going to get caught!”

“I don't think so.”

“You'll be killed. Worse. I can't—”

“Yes, you can. You had better.”

“Why?”

“Because this is
me
.” Her eyes were wet. “This is the sort of person I've always been.”

He wanted to tell her that wasn't true.
You remember wrong,
he could say, and this time he'd be the one who was a good liar.

Kestrel said, “I want to be like her.”

No, you don't,
he'd persuade, even though he'd never
been
able to bear the way she thought of herself as two people.
Not like her at all.
His stomach curled.

“Am I the only one who's supposed to worry?” she asked. “As I did when you went to sea. As I will tomorrow. Every day after that. You can worry for me like I worry for you.”

He looked at his hands. They trembled.

“Trust me,” she repeated.

He felt the misery of his fear, the desperate certainty that he would lose her again. He trusted that certainty. He trusted his fear. It ruled him like a god.

“Arin.”

He met her eyes. They were strange and familiar—rich, in his mind, with every thing he knew about her, and with the mystery of her thoughts, which he'd never know for sure. He saw—the knowledge cracked open his shell of fear—that death wasn't the only way to lose her. He would lose her if he couldn't do this. He didn't trust her. He did not. Yet he understood that there are some things you feel and others that you choose to feel, and that the choice doesn't make the feeling less valid.

“Do you?” she asked.

He made his choice. “Yes.”

She stepped into his arms. He held the rope of her braid gently. He was drowning. He was far below the surface. He'd forgotten how to breathe.

Then his lungs opened and his mind grew quiet and clear. “Come back to me,” he murmured.

“I will.”

Chapter 25

She rode hard. Crouching low over the saddle, Kestrel pressed the horse to a gallop, drove it straight down the main road from Errilith to the south. The map was in her mind. She saw again the shaky mark made on a forest two leagues from the general's camp. Roshar had brought the map to her with the scout's token.

And now: the clatter of hooves. A cream of sweat on the horse's neck. Wan moonlight. Hard to see pits and cracks in the road. If the horse stumbled at this pace, it'd shatter a bone. Toss its rider. Kestrel would break her neck on the paving stones.

She dug her heels in. She had mere hours before the sky blued and lightened. There'd be no chance then to pretend to be the scout.

Black trees jolted and wavered on either side of the road. Her throat was dry. Sweat salted her lips.

She remembered Arin's hand slipping down the length of her braid, letting go. The way he'd looked at her.

The trees gave way abruptly to grass and seemed to
topple
back, crash noiselessly behind her as she sped forward. The horse's stride lengthened along the meadow. It felt like she rode over a black sea.

A smudge of trees in the distance. West.

Off the road now. Slower. Cantering over the meadow toward the western forest. She let the horse walk, felt its sides bellow and heave against her legs.

Low branches to duck under. Watch the knees. The trees grew close together; no path here. Straining to see through different shades of shadow, Kestrel picked a way through the woods until it didn't make sense anymore to ride.

It was when she tethered the horse (there was no sound of fresh water, and that was cruel, she hated to leave the horse like that, neck drooping, coat furred with sweat) that Kestrel first felt it. A slow fear, heavy, like sadness . . . which made her realize that her fear
was
a kind of sadness, because she couldn't be better than her fear. She had believed that she could be better when she'd stood before Arin and demanded that he trust her. When she felt, finally, the truth of his trust, warm and solid in his long limbs.

But this was how it ended: her, alone, stepping through the woods, afraid.

She paused, tipped her head back, and glanced up at the sharp stars.

See how brave they are,
whispered the memory of her father's voice. She'd been very young when he'd said this.
Bright and still. Those stars are the kind of soldiers who stand and fight.

A rush of anger.

Even the stars.

Don't
just stand there, she told herself. Run.

She jogged through the trees. Her breath rasped. She abandoned what she'd been feeling and thought only of the mark on the map and reaching it while it was still dark.

It was the owl's hour. One last loop of the night, a final hunt before dawn crept in.

Kestrel slowed. Her legs were jelly. She drank from the canteen strapped over one shoulder and across her chest. Swished and spat. Her bad knee throbbed a little, but she realized—distantly, curiously—that her body had grown strong. The days of riding had hardened her legs. It felt good to run.

But her strength also reminded her of her weakness, of how easily her body had given out on the tundra. The unlocking of the prison gate. Relief, joy. Then the chase. Legs collapsing, mud, rope. The dress ripped open along her spine.

Kestrel capped the canteen, screwed it.

She ran again.

The sky was dark blue when she saw a flicker of orange in the trees. An oil lamp.

Her heart hit her ribs. She slowed her run, moving toward the clearing. The lamplight swung. She'd been heard.

“Hail,” she tried to call as she threaded through the last copse of trees, her sides heaving. She had no breath. She coughed and tried again. “Hail Emperor Lycian, General of
Wolves,
father of a hundred thousand children.” It was his military title as well as his political one. Though the emperor hadn't fought in a war since the conquest of Herran, he retained his rank as first general, the only person to whom her father must answer.

“Alis?” called the voice behind the uplifted lamp.

“Stay back. Sir.”

“You sound strange.”

Kestrel dug out the token. “Catch.” She flipped it into the air and heard the man snag it—or heard, rather, the nothingness of the coin not hitting earth.

The lamp moved closer. Kestrel couldn't see the features of the man who held it, only his tall broad form as he approached.

Kestrel coughed. “No, please stay where you are, sir. I'm sick.”

“Come to my tent, then, and report there. Rest.”

“It's a disease, something eastern. The barbarians brought it. I might infect you.”

The officer's boots came to a gritty halt. “What kind of disease?”

“It starts with a cough.” Kestrel hoped it'd explain any difference in voice. “Then pustules. The sores weep. I hadn't realized that one of the wagons held bodies. I'd crept close to their camp and looked inside the supplies to see how well fortified they were.” It felt strange to speak in Valorian again. “The rebels mean to withstand a siege. They have plague bodies to launch over the walls of Errilith manor. They'll infect us when we attack. They seem to be immune.”

“
You need a physician.” He sounded genuinely concerned. “We can quarantine you.”

“Please, let me continue to do what I can for our victory.” Kestrel conjured the ghost of her very young self as she spoke. She remembered that little girl, so eager to be her father's warrior. She spoke with that girl's voice. “As long as I can stay on my feet, I can still scout. I want to. Let me bring glory to the empire.”

He hesitated, then said, “The glory is yours,” which were the traditional words offered when a soldier accepted a mission almost certain to end in death.

The Valorian officer shifted in the shadows and was quiet. The sky appeared to grow a little lighter, but Kestrel told herself that it was her imagination, that the sky couldn't possibly do that in the span of two heartbeats. She was letting anxiety rule her.

“Your report, then,” the officer said. “Tell me their numbers.”

“One thousand soldiers. Maybe fifteen hundred.” Roshar's force near Errilith numbered nearly twice that amount.

“Components?”

“Little cavalry, mostly infantry.” True. “From the looks of it, young.” True. “Inexperienced.” Not true. “Light cannon, and not many of them.” True, unfortunately. “Some tension between the Dacran and Herrani factions.” Less than she'd expect. “Tension over who should command.” Not true. Not exactly. Sometimes, though, she caught the way the prince eyed Arin with pensive hesitancy, as if he secretly
believed
Arin to be a wholly other creature than human, that a day would come when Arin's skin would split and whatever was lurking inside him would climb out.

In fact, most people looked at him that way.

“Position?” the officer asked.

“By now they'll have reached the manor.”

“Tell me about the formation of their units, their positions within the army.”

Kestrel answered, relieved. He seemed to believe her. This was easier than she'd thought. She mixed her lies and truths, setting them down like planks of joined wood, sturdy enough to bear the weight of this man's trust.

But when she stopped speaking, the silence lasted longer than it should have.

“Alis,” said the officer, “where are you from?”

She pretended to misunderstand the question. “Sir, I came from the rebels' camp.”

“That's not what I mean. Where are you
from
?”

Her confidence vanished. He suspected her. She didn't know anything of the scout's history. Kestrel had taken the token and the map and had left as quickly as she could.

Carefully, Kestrel told the officer, “I thought you already knew.”