The Winner's Kiss (30 page)

“Remind me.”

The lamplight was strong enough that he'd see if she began to inch a hand toward her dagger. She stayed still. Gambling, she told him, “I'm a colonial girl.” The odds were with her; almost all of Valoria was a colony.

“But from where, exactly?”

She coughed again, making the sound murky and wet,
and
tried to think. “From here.” Scouts deployed in Herran would have to know the language. Ideally the terrain, too. The scout—Alis—had been young, Roshar had said. Green, to be so easily caught. If the general chose someone with little experience to gather intelligence on the enemy, it must be because she had advantages that outweighed her inexperience, such as familiarity with the country.

“I'm from here, too,” the officer said softly.

“Yes, sir.” Her heart sped.

“I spent my youth on a farm west of here.” He took a step closer. She held her ground. He wasn't close enough yet to see her clearly; she couldn't see
him
clearly. But she caught, now, the slight accent in his voice. She would have had a colonial accent, too, if her father hadn't ordered her tutors to hammer any sign of it from her voice. In Valorian, she possessed the voice of a capital courtier, polished and pure.

“I want my home back,” the officer said.

“So do I.” She kept her voice low, rough from coughing, but added a subtle lilt—just enough that he might think the accent had been there all along, and that he'd somehow missed it. “What are my orders?” She tried to keep the question steady. Her pulse was relentless.

“Return to your post. I'll inform the general of your report.”

“Yes, sir.” The words came out in a relieved rush.

“Not quite yet.” The officer set the lamp down on the forest floor and backed away. “Pick up the lamp.”

Dread mounted in her throat. “Sir?”

“Pick up the lamp and show me your face.”

“But.” She swallowed. “The infection.”

“
I want to see it. I'll keep my distance.”

“The risk—”

“Soldier. Pick up the lamp. Show me your face.”

Trust me,
she'd told Arin. She remembered the strength in her voice and tried to summon that strength again. She thought, fleetingly, that this must be what memory was for: to rebuild yourself when you lose the pieces.

Slowly, Kestrel walked toward the lamp. She kept her head down, though she didn't think he could see her face yet—she'd seen nothing of his during the moment after he'd set the lamp at his feet, just before he'd backed away. She closed one eye: an old trick her father had taught her for night-fighting that involved torches or lamps. One eye adjusted to see by torchlight. One eye kept in reserve, to see in total darkness if the light went out.

“I don't want anyone to see me,” she told the officer. “The disease has ruined my face.”

“Show me. Now.”

She grabbed the lamp and smashed it against a boulder.

He swore. Her dagger was in her hand. She heard him draw his sword.

I don't want to kill,
she'd told Arin long ago. Even if she'd wanted to, she'd fail. She felt the memory of failure, of her father watching while she couldn't fight back, her arm sagging beneath the pressure of someone else's sword.

“Who are you?” He advanced, his blade probing the shadows: darting, cautious, blind. His sight hadn't yet adjusted.

But it would.

The
officer would capture her and bring her to the general's camp.

There'd be questions. She'd be made to answer. Pressed, split open along her weakest lines. She thought of the prison, her twilight drug, mud and agony. She imagined her father's face as she was brought before him. She saw it in her memory. Her future. She saw it right now.

Pulse wild, stomach tight, she crouched to grasp a handful of soil. He heard her and turned. She flung the grit into his face.

A dirty trick,
she heard her father say.
Dishonorable
.

But dirty tricks were her specialty.

She darted around the man, came up behind him, and slid the dagger's tip into his back, just below the ribs. “Which code do you use to communicate with the general? Tell me.”

“Never.”

She dug a little harder. “I'll kill you.”

He hooked a leg around hers and jerked hard. She toppled. Hit the ground. She scrambled to get up, and found a sword's point at her throat.

“My turn to ask questions.” The officer kicked the dagger from her hand.

A bird sang. Morning was coming. Kestrel was dimly aware of this, and of the horse she had tethered and now would never untether. She imagined Arin, who wouldn't be sleeping. He'd be watching the sky and the road. She felt the grass beneath his hand, damp with summer dew.

Half sitting, half crouching, she backed shakily away from the sword.

It
followed. An axinax sword. She recognized the shorter blade, favored for fighting in forests. She shrank from it, felt a sharp rock dig into her back, and thought, oddly, of the piano. A whole passage burst into her mind, one that she hadn't played in years but had loved for its dramatic swings from high to low registers. She had liked to cross her right hand over and drive the sound down into darkness. She didn't have to stretch hard. Although Kestrel was small, she had long hands. Long arms.

Very good reach.

She groped the forest floor behind her and curled her fingers around the jagged rock that poked into her back. She swung it, smashing the man's hand where he held the sword's hilt.

He made a terrible sound. The sword fell. Its tip glanced off her thigh, slicing through her trousers. It struck the earth. Pain seared down her leg.

But she was up. Her fisted rock crunched into the man's face. His head dented. Her fingers were greasy and warm. Liquid ran under the leather of her forearm guard.

He thudded down. She dropped the rock.

The birds were mad. There was a whole chorus of them now. Her thigh was hot, sticky. There was something meaty on her fingernails. Her hand was a glove of blood.

I don't want to kill,
she had told Arin. She slid into the memory and saw herself sitting in her music room across from Arin. An open window sighed on its hinges. Warm autumn air. Bite and Sting tiles, all faceup.

Her hands were shaking. She was going to come apart.

And if you do?

Her
plan was already in near ruins.

Salvage the situation, then.

Look at the body. Go on. Make certain he's dead.

He was.

Now yourself. Look.

Kestrel peeled back the torn flap of cloth at her thigh. Blood seeped, it hurt, but she thought that maybe it wasn't too bad. Her leg could bear her weight.

She wiped her bloody hand in the dirt.

The tent, she told herself. Go.

She walked unsteadily to the officer's small tent and entered.

A pallet. A caged messenger hawk, hooded, sleeping. A stool, set before a table that bore papers, a pen, an inkstand, and a set of counters.

The papers.

She went for them, snatching a page. Then she dropped it, her stomach roiling when she realized that it was a letter the dead man had been writing to his mother.

Keep looking, she told herself. Forget his broken face.

She examined each page in the small pile, searching for any scrap of a coded message between the officer and her father. Since the military used several different codes, she had to find evidence of which one the officer had been using. Maybe she'd recognize it. Remember. Decode it.

But there was no evidence, only the letter to his mother and blank pages.

She limped back outside and saw, in the rising dawn, the man's crushed brow, the jelly of one eye. She swallowed hard, then searched the man and found his seal.

Relief.
The seal could be useful. But there was no coded message. She had hoped to try to fake a report from the officer to her father.

An impossible thought.

A stupid one.

She didn't know the code, didn't even know the dead man's name. She wanted to bury her face in her hands.

She returned to the tent and sank down onto the stool. Blood leaked from the cut on her leg. She should bandage it. She had no bandage.

The hawk flexed its claws around its perch, shifting its weight with a scratchy, rustling sound. She glanced at it, feeling close to frustrated despair. Then her gaze fell to the counters. Beads of wood that slid along skinny steel rods in their wooden frame. Used for accounting.

Kestrel touched a bead. A memory unfolded inside her.

She unscrewed the pot of ink and found a blank sheet of paper. Glancing at the officer's letter to his mother, Kestrel got a feel for how to imitate the man's handwriting. She inked her pen and composed the first line of code.

Chapter 26

The horse trudged up the hill to the camp, its head hanging. The sun had climbed; it was near noon, and the day promised to be hot. It squeezed Kestrel's heart to hear the horse's breath. She'd ridden him too hard. But her left leg . . .

The wound had stopped bleeding. The flap of her sliced trouser leg stuck to it, hardened with clotted blood. The cut stung and the skin around it felt fiery. She was going to have to peel the fabric away to see what was under neath.

The horse slowed and sighed. Kestrel didn't have it in her to force him forward. She shifted to dismount, then winced and stopped when the movement opened the cut along its edges.

Thirsty. The sun made her queasy. At the scout's station, she'd splashed water from her canteen onto the wound. In the forest, when she'd untied the horse, she'd poured water into her palm for the animal to drink, and did it again until there was nothing left.

Now she could see the pale peaks of tents along the rise
of
the hills. She was close. And really, her poor horse. She'd moved again to dismount when she heard her name.

Arin was coming down the steep hill, skidding on the grass in his haste yet keeping his balance. A breeze tore through his hair, kited his shirt. His descent became a breakneck run, and Kestrel wondered wryly whether the god of death watched over him after all, or maybe the god of grace, or heights, or goats, or what ever god might allow Arin to run like that and not trip over a hillock and come tumbling down. It seemed a little unfair.

He jogged up to her, his hair heavy with sweat. His skin had darkened on the trek south, but he seemed paler now as he looked up at her, shadows under his eyes. He hadn't slept.

He noticed her hand first. Her left side was hidden from his view. It touched her how his gaze went straight to her bloody right hand, his eyes flashing with the same thing she'd feel if her fingers were damaged, if she couldn't play, and had to hobble along the piano keys when she wanted to fly.

He stripped off her forearm guard, swearing at the straps.

“That's not my blood,” she said.

“You're not hurt?”

“Left leg.”

He came around the horse, saw, and went quiet. “All right,” he said finally. “Come on.” He helped her down. “I can carry you.”

She heard the question in his tone. “No. Roshar will see. He'll tease us mercilessly about it.” She smiled, because she
wanted
Arin to smile. She didn't like the way he looked: the drawn lines around his mouth, eyes hooded with worry.

He didn't smile. He cupped her face with both hands. An emotion tugged at his expression, a dark awe, the kind saved for a wild storm that rends the sky but doesn't ravage your existence, doesn't destroy every thing you love. The one that lets you feel saved.

Nervousness rose within her. It simmered, sickened.

Unreasonable. She knew that she could lift her parched lips to his and taste the truth of his love on his tongue. Still, she couldn't say what she wasn't sure she felt.

Her thigh throbbed. “No carrying,” she said lightly. “But I'll let you help me up the hill.”

Leading the horse behind them, they moved slowly through the camp, Arin's arm under Kestrel's shoulders. He brought her to his tent.

“I think—” He hesitated. “Inside. You could stay outside. But.” He glanced down at her bloody thigh. “The trousers need to come off. I can fetch someone else—”

“No. You.”

His eyes flicked to hers, then away.

She went inside the tent. There was no canvas floor, only grass and a bedroll. She sat on the ground.

Arin glanced at her dry mouth. “You're thirsty,” he said, and left.

He returned with a canteen, a bowl of water, a small pot, and clean gauze.

She drank. The water seemed to fall down a long way
inside
her. She thought about the water, how amazing it felt to drink. She thought about that and not him.

Arin knelt beside her. She set the canteen aside. The cut was a dull pain: almost nothing in the wake of her heightening awareness of him, her rapid heart. Outside the tent, cicadas sang.

He unbuckled her armor and lifted it gently away. “Nowhere else?”

“Just my leg.” It was a relief, at first, to be out of armor, yet once it was gone she felt exposed and too soft.

Arin didn't move. She knew what she was supposed to do next. Her fingers fumbled as she reached to unfasten the fall of her trousers.

“Wait,” Arin said. “Just.” He stopped, then continued, “Leave them on.”

He reached into the rent in the left trouser leg and ripped it open, carefully forcing the path of the rip to circle her thigh. Soon the cloth was almost entirely detached, save for the flap still stuck to the wound. He tipped water onto it to soften the fabric. “This will hurt.”

“Do it.”

He peeled the flap from the wound. She sucked in air as blood ran. He pulled the cloth free, leaving her left leg almost entirely bare.

He rinsed the wound. “Ah.”