The Winner's Kiss (36 page)

Her limbs were light, as if with fear. Her blood seemed to float. She said, “Not yet,” and saw his sudden happiness.

She helped him clear the vegetation and expose the entire mosaic to the sky.

Every chip of her being slid into place, into the image of a lost world. The boy discovering it. The girl who sees it spark and flare, and understands, now, what she feels. She realizes that she has felt this for a long time.

Lapis lazuli, kiln-fired glass, onyx and gold and shell and ivory. Jade. Aquamarine. Kestrel barely saw where each tile of the mosaic joined, the taut line of contact. Piece to piece. She pressed her palm to its surface and imagined its image imprinted on her skin.

Later, Kestrel wished she had spoken then, that no time had been lost. She wished that she'd had the courage that very moment to tell Arin what she'd finally known to be true: that she loved him with the whole of her heart.

Chapter 31

Kestrel was unusually quiet on the last day's ride to Lerralen. At first, at the temple, Arin had thought that some new, delicate thing had grown between them. But since then she had kept her distance in a way he couldn't explain, could find no cause for. He sifted through his memories of the temple, of her, the hot green leaves, the slick tile, the hidden world of the mosaic, and how Kestrel had wanted to see it, too. He could find nothing wrong. An error lay somewhere, that was sure. Still, each moment of each memory of that day made him want to hold them all in the palm of his hand, to stash them safely and close. In a deep pocket, perhaps. On his person.

He was wary of this impulse. He suspected that he would be revealed as a child with a collection of precious things that were actually nothing valuable. A button, a river rock, a bit of string.

Or a speckled yellow feather. He wished he'd kept it. He wondered if Kestrel had kept it. Most likely it had fallen from
her
hair as they'd galloped from the temple's hill to rejoin the vanguard of the army.

Tawny grass rippled on the bluffs. The air was brackish. They'd soon reach the sea.

When the army stopped to water the horses from the barrels among the provisions (there'd been no fresh water in this land for two days), Arin found Kestrel brushing Javelin's coat. She glanced up at him, then away, her gaze settling on something else that Arin wanted to identify, to understand whether it was him or—what? the white-threaded sky? that gull, tipped up against the wind?—that made her seem suddenly smaller.

Her hair had reddened since coming to the south. Her skin was now the color of toasted bread. Long fingers plucked stray bits of nothing from Javelin's mane.

It was not the sky. It was not the gull.

Arin tried to set her at ease. “So, strategist. What are our chances? Or do we ride to our dooms?”

The corner of her mouth lifted—an acknowledgment both of his effort to ease her anxiety and also that what he'd asked, however lightheartedly, was an odd sort of way to do it. Yet it worked. She became more present. The skittering movements of her fingers stilled.

Not the battle, then.

Not her horse, nor the slight crunch of sand beneath their boots. Nothing, nowhere.

Him.

“There are three scenarios,” she said. “We arrive late, and my father has seized the beach. Or we arrive as reinforcements
for
a battle that has already begun. Or we arrive before my father, and wait.” She added, “Of course, there is a fourth: that I am wrong, he won't land there, and we've disastrously shifted our strengths where they shouldn't be.”

“There is no fourth.”

She shook her head. “I can be wrong.”

“Is that what worries you?”

“Even if I'm not wrong, and we arrive before the Valorians land, it's a mixed blessing. Him landing late means he's landing with a larger force. A robust artillery. More people and more cannon take longer to mobilize. They're also harder to defeat.”

Javelin knocked his nose against her shoulder. Arin saw her smile. A quiet, lost feeling stole over him like sleep or a farewell.

“I told my father I loved him.” Her words were abrupt. “It was the last thing I said to him.”

Arin didn't look at her. He didn't want her to see his face just then.

“I saw a basket when we were in the wheatlands,” she said. “It had lost its shape entirely. You couldn't hold anything in it. You couldn't hold
it
.”

“Kestrel, you are not a basket.”

“I think—” She stopped.

He wondered if something can be so hard to say that it becomes hard even to say that it is hard. “You can't tell me what you think?”

“No.”

“Why?”

She
whispered, “I'm terrified.”

“Of the battle?”

“No.”

“Your father?”

Her voice was flat. “
He
should fear
me
.”

Arin didn't want to relax his sinewy need for the general's death. It clenched inside him. But if it was this . . . if there'd been no error at the temple, if Arin had done nothing that he needed to undo and instead what had made her seem to try to hide from him in plain sight was dread of Arin's vengeance or her own . . . “Kestrel.” He put it bluntly. He couldn't think of any other way. “Do you want his death?”

Her eyes flashed.

“I won't do it,” he said, “if you don't want it.”

“Kill him if you can. I don't care. He left me for dead. Worse.”

Arin's hatred knotted within him. “If I did, would you forgive me?”

“You talk as if his life or death was your choice.”

“It's been promised.”

She squinted at him. “By your god?”

“Not in so many words, exactly.”

She shook her head.

“Please answer my question.”

“Maybe it will be
my
hand,” she said. “My sword.”

“I need to know your choice.”

“Do it.” Her eyes were wet. “Swear that you will.”

The knot released. “Yes, of course.”

“He changed us both.” She seemed to struggle for words.
“
I think of you, all that you lost, who you were, what you were forced to be, and might have been, and I—I have become this, this
person
, unable to—” She shut her mouth.

“Kestrel,” he said softly, “I love this person.”

But her slim mouth tightened. Her face shone again with fear.

Arin curled his fingers into Javelin's mane. “
I
am what troubles you.”

“No, Arin.” But she had hesitated.

He thought about what it meant that Kestrel's father had had her love, and had cast it aside. He wanted to tell her about the jolt of recognition that had rattled through him when he'd ripped the ivy from the face of his god, how it had been like looking into the black-water mirror Kestrel had described as they'd gazed into the clear night sky. He wanted to explain his hard joy, his relief of feeling fated for something, and how mattering to his god was akin to becoming a son again, or a brother. He wanted to warn her, to say that she couldn't know, not fully, what it was to no longer be someone's child.

Kestrel asked, “Are
you
afraid of the battle?”

This, at least, was easy to say. His smile was free. “No.”

The beach was quiet.

Which wasn't true, of course, not with an entire Dacran regiment camped on its sands. But it quieted Arin to see that the Valorian ships hadn't landed, that there were no sails on the horizon, and even if Kestrel had warned that this could translate to an overwhelming onslaught, he was glad to
see
the empty stretch of rain-darkened sand from the tents to the shore, to see the low tide, the muck of green-plastered rocks, the gulls squabbling over crabs as they picked through tide pools. The wind was dead. The sky, a flat slate. It had stormed the night before. The briny air smelled raw.

Roshar's people were so glad to see the arrival of their prince that Arin doubted the way Roshar styled himself as someone with no political ambition. The queen had her people's fealty. Roshar, their love.

“This is a safe time of day,” Kestrel said, then kneed her horse in the direction of the pale grass on higher ground, beyond which, they'd been told, was a stream that watered the army and its horses.

Arin followed, drawing his horse up alongside hers. “Yes, the Valorians will land at high tide,” he said.

Kestrel looked slightly startled, not at what he'd said but that he'd spoken at all, which made him think that her words hadn't been a start of a conversation but rather just a moment in her mind that had somehow slipped out, and that she'd been deep in her own thoughts. She didn't bother to ask how he knew what she'd meant, prob ably because she assumed that the advantages of high tide for an invading force were obvious.

The sea will carry them swiftly to shore,
murmured death.
It will froth white. Bear the weight of countless black-throated cannons.

Arin glanced at Kestrel. This battle would be very different from the ambush along the southern road. There would be no safe place, only the open arena of the beach.

Don't look at her, Arin. Look at me. You will embrace them.
Your
heart will rise, high and glad. What is an enemy? It is the stick and pull and slash of your sword. It is the clean path you cut between you and what you want. It is the path to me.

The human stench of the camp had lifted. Kestrel and Arin had ridden far enough away. There was only the swampy saline of low tide, the exposed underbelly of the sea. It smelled good.

You can wonder about her all you like,
whispered death.
But I am the only one who will have you.

Kestrel had ridden a few paces ahead. She turned, catching Arin's glance. A bead of rain fell on his cheek. The back of his neck.

You are mine. I am yours. Is it not true, Arin?

Her expression closed. He thought of a box shut so firmly that one cannot see its seams.

Yes.

That night, Arin stood with Kestrel and Roshar on the bluffs. Moonlight glazed the sea. The water sparkled black and white. The moon coated the sand with silver.

“Pretty,” Roshar commented, “though it puts me in mind of pure worm poison, the way it dries to a clear sheen.” He asked Kestrel, “How do you think the battle will go?”

Arin answered instead. “For them and us, it will be the kind of battle where a general puts his soldiers in such a desperate situation that the fear of death and difficulty of retreat push them to fight their utmost, because there is no other choice.”

Roshar
coolly lifted one brow. He looked ready to say that Arin was being needlessly dramatic.

But Kestrel nodded.

The alarm came at noon. There was a faint drizzle. The sun was somewhere, but couldn't be seen. Off to the east was a solid ridge of gray cloud. And at sea: a faint pale line of sails.

Gunners flanked the beach. The Dacran-Herrani army waited in a wedge formation, the cavalry spearheading the bristling mass of people.

Kestrel's face was taut, her hands white-knuckled on the reins. Javelin lifted and dropped one hoof. A muffled thud.

There were flat, open Valorian boats on the water, thousands of them, heavy with horses and cannon. They rowed from the anchored ships. Oars lifted and dipped in the rain.

Arin couldn't hear the Valorian command. The sound of it was lost over the sea. But he saw when Valorian soldiers began to prime the cannons. He could practically smell the black powder. For a moment, he wasn't on his horse with a sword in hand but on an unsteady boat, palms gritty with powder, hands ramming the charge home.

They'd fire even before they reached the shore.

A plea rose within him, surging hard as if unexpected, although if he'd examined himself more thoroughly earlier he would have known all along what he'd beg in this final moment, despite his promise to trust her.

Arin
touched her shoulder. She startled, keyed to an extremity he knew very well.

“Change your mind,” he said. “Turn back, go to the bluffs, please.”

“No.”

Finally, he felt the fear that infected every one else. “Then stay close to me.”

What ever she said in reply was lost as the first explosion split and broke the world.

Chapter 32

He didn't see where the first cannonball hit, but he heard the sick thud and felt the impact judder up from the beach into his boots. The shriek of horses, human cries. Deep into the left flank. Roshar's army returned fire, mostly missing, because it was harder to hit moving targets on the waves. Geysers sprayed where cannonballs hit the water. One speeding iron ball punched into a boat and splintered it. Horses and men slid into the sea.

Black smoke plumed across the beach.

The first Valorian boats nudged up onto the shore. Soldiers dropped into the water, knee-deep. Horses were led down ramps. Cannons would soon follow.

“Shatter them all,” Roshar ordered.

His gunners riddled the first wave of Valorians. But there was a second wave, and a third, and finally a Valorian cannon was maneuvered into position to blast one flank of gunners into a bloody smoking screaming heap.

Arin's horse reared. He wrestled it down, pressing his weight into his seat. He held the horse between his tight
knees,
preferring that than to tug at the bit, and he was distracted, every thing was loud. Even after he calmed his horse he no longer trusted it to obey him. Then came a little sound he shouldn't have been able to hear, a dry swallow.

He glanced at Kestrel. Javelin—magnificent war horse, steady beast—was stock-still. So was she. But her skin stretched thinly across her cheekbones. Her eyes were too large and pale.

Please,
Arin prayed.
Give her your mercy.