The Winner's Kiss (38 page)

“Listen.”

Someone was weeping. Her tears fell warm on his brow, his lashes, his mouth.

Don't cry,
he tried to say.

Please listen,
she said.

He would, of course he would. How could she think that he wouldn't?

This felt familiar. Unreal. He had the sense that this had happened before, or
would
happen, that this was either an echo or its source. If he opened his eyes, the world would double. His skull throbbed. Stones weighted his eyes. He was covered with earth. Thick and loamy and loose. A comfort. It eased the nauseating ache.

Yet there were no stones, no earth. A part of him knew this, the same part that clung to the woman's voice.

Her voice was breaking apart. He heard it turn horrible. Soon, he realized, she would scream.

“Don't,” he managed, and opened his eyes, and was sick.

He wondered at it, faintly, her expression: that mix of anguish and relief. Her hands were wholly still for a moment, then instantly busy, lifting a canteen of water to his mouth, trying to worm under his weight and lift. Too heavy. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Arin, you must get up.”

“I don't think I can.”

“Yes. Just to Javelin. Come on.” She was tugging at
him—
shoulders, arms. He didn't have the heart to tell her to stop, that the ache in his head was monstrous, that every jostle hurt. He tried to focus, and saw Javelin standing nearby, saw the undulating crush of soldiers and metal. Fear entered him. This little peace that sheltered him and Kestrel couldn't last long. Impossible, that no one had noticed them, that no one had already brought a sword slicing through her neck as she knelt beside him, and pulled, and begged.

“Go,” he told her.

She recoiled. “No.”

“It's all right.” He tried to touch her cheek, but either his vision was wrong or his hand was. He fumbled, touched her nose and lips. “I don't mind.”

“Don't say that.”

“Ride fast. Far.”

“Don't ask me that. You wouldn't do that. You would never leave me.”

But it's different, he tried to say, then became lost in what he wanted to explain, that this . . . her—what? sorrow?—was dear to him, unexpected. So hard, to heave words into his mouth. He realized his hand had fallen.

Her face screwed into an expression he couldn't read. “Get up,” she said through her teeth.

“Please. Go.”

She curled fingers over the rim of his leather breastplate and gripped it. “
Make
me.”

This time, Arin recognized her expression. Determination. He closed his eyes so that he wouldn't see. You don't owe me anything, he would have said. You'll lose no honor
if
you leave. Arin wondered if she knew the way her whole being could become a vow.

He would say,
Tell me why you can't leave
. Maybe, if his head were clearer, he would know why without asking. For now, he saw only her determination and its danger.

Was this his god's version of mercy: that she would die on this beach with him?

Unbearable.

Through the thump of his head, he discovered a different pain. Traveled down it. His side. His ribs. A dagger. He pulled it out. She made an appalled cry. His side became sticky. He dug the dagger into the sand and gripped her shoulder with his other hand. Felt his head split. Arin pushed himself up, levering off the dagger.

He tried to distance himself from what he was doing, from the spasm that racked his body as he was sick again. On his knees, sky dark—rain? Kestrel's shoulder, frail-seeming in his hand. Not able to bear his weight, surely, but she did, she strained to get him to his feet. Each stumble hurt, and he dreaded how it would be to mount Javelin and ride, but he would.

He did, and she was with him. Eventually he couldn't tell if the sky was raining and dark or if his mind was. Everything was black and wet. As the horse moved beneath them, a quiet grew through the pain. A feeling floated over him like sillage from a rare perfume. He seemed to hear the tinkle of a glass stopper lifted from a tiny flacon. The release of scent. How was it possible, to smell flowers that weren't there?

Arin became aware that his thoughts were hard to hold.
They
vanished into smoke. It didn't matter. He let them go. Smoke, perfume, rain. All lovely, unlasting. The same, maybe, as what ever had made Kestrel swear that she wouldn't leave him.

He wasn't sure what had made her do that. But it had been something. It had been real.

This, he wouldn't relinquish. This, he would hold and remember.

He saw Kestrel's hands on the reins. He felt his body slacken. Hoofbeats hammered his skull.

Someone—deep voice—swore. “You
tied
him to you?”

“He nearly fell,” he heard Kestrel say.

Arin opened his eyes. Roshar was untying the rope that bound him to Kestrel, the prince's gaze fixed on the knots. It wasn't like Roshar not to look at him. “Well,
that
was stupid,” the prince told her. “Didn't you consider that if he truly started to fall, his weight would drag you off, too?”

She was silent. She had considered this. Arin could tell from her silence.

Roshar's arm went around Arin's waist. “Come on,” he said. Arin sort of slid down from the horse and was steadied and held.

“You're bleeding on me,” Roshar complained.

Yes. Arin supposed that he was bleeding. But his head. The ache was worse than anything. Arin let himself sag against Roshar, dropped his brow to the man's shoulder. Then he made himself open his eyes again.

Kestrel stood to the side, arms tightly held to her chest.
Beyond
her lay an army encampment, hastily thrown together. Smaller than before.

“What happened?” Arin asked.

“A bloodbath,” Roshar said. “We retreated. They seized the beach. I blame you.”

Kestrel sucked in a furious breath.

“He doesn't mean that,” Arin muttered.

“Are you going to make me carry you?” Roshar said.

Kestrel said something sharp. It wasn't that Arin didn't hear the words; he was just too weary to absorb them. He heard Roshar's slow, drawling tones, Kestrel's hiss. Arin wanted to tell her,
He's hiding from you
. He wanted to say,
He's worried
. Arin was suddenly overwhelmed by their worry, by how every thing was so unspoken. He stepped away from Roshar's supporting arm and began to walk with no real destination in mind.

Roshar called him a filthy name. Caught him before he fell.

“Bone and blood and breath of the goddess,” Roshar said. “What were you trying to prove?”

Arin was on his back in Roshar's bed, in his tent. The prince stood next to his bedside, posture taut and jumpy.

A heavy warmth rested on Arin's chest. Kestrel, her head pillowed against him as she slept, knelt on the ground, her upper body loosely draped over the bed's edge. His armor and tunic were gone. His ribs were bandaged. Her palm lay on his belly.

“I would have carried you,” Roshar said more quietly.

“
I know.”

Arin's voice woke her. She lifted her head, moved away. Her mouth was thin, her eyes smudged with shadows, braid half undone.

“The war,” Arin asked.

Kestrel and Roshar exchanged a glance.

“That bad?”

“Rest, Arin,” Kestrel said.

Roshar clicked his teeth. “Not too much. He keeps drifting in and out. Not good for a head injury like that. Keep him awake. Don't let him sleep.” To Arin, he said, “I can't stay. I have to organize the retreat to the city.”

Arin's stomach lurched. Retreat to the city was a last resort. “Don't.” He scrounged for a better idea. Kestrel looked silent and grim.

Roshar said, “I
want
to stay with you. I can't.”

Arin lifted his palm to his friend's cheek. This startled the prince. Arin saw him remember the Herrani gesture, yet hesitate before returning it. It made Arin sad. His hand fell. He traced a carving in the cot's frame, feeling awkward to have displaced Roshar from his bed. “Where will you sleep?”

“Have no fear. Many a bed would welcome me.”

After the prince left, Arin asked Kestrel, “Why did the battle go so badly?”

The question upset her. “That's what you want to know?”

“It's important.”

“More important than how you nearly died?”

“But I didn't.”

Her
voice was clipped. “My father has too much black powder. Too many soldiers. Too much experience.”

“But how exactly did he win?”

“A full frontal attack was enough, once he eliminated the guns. I didn't see every thing that happened.”

Guilt pulsed with the doubled heartbeat in his head. “Because you rode away with me.”

Her eyes welled.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Talk of something else. What you like.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Her voice hushed, she said, “Do you remember the mosaic?”

“Yes.”

“How every thing fit. As if each tile wanted to be next to each other.”

“Yes.” But he was confused, he wasn't sure what the mosaic meant to her, or why she thought of it now. She talked about it as if trying to explain that left was really right, or that it was both left and right . . . which made him realize that he knew that left and right were important, but he couldn't grasp their meaning or difference. He closed his eyes.

“Arin, don't.”

“Only for a little.”

“No.” She gripped his hand.

“Shh.”

“Stories,” she blurted. “The mosaic told stories, didn't it?”

“Yes, old ones.”

“I'll tell them to you.”

His eyes cracked open. He didn't remember closing them. “You know those tales?”

“
Yes.”

She didn't. This became clear as she began to tell them. She knew bits and pieces, cobbled together in ways that would have made him smile if smiling didn't hurt. “You,” he breathed, “are such a faker.”

“Don't interrupt.”

Mostly pure invention. She remembered the images—it pleased him, how vividly she knew the temple floor's details. Which god curled around which, or how the snake's tongue forked into three. But the stories she told had little to do with his religion. Sometimes they didn't even make sense.

“Do this again,” he said, “when I have strength to laugh.”

“As bad as that?”

“Mmm. Maybe not. For a Valorian.”

But eventually every thing grew slow, unthreaded. He thought of raw cotton pulled apart, fibers trailing. Maybe Kestrel had talked for hours. He didn't know. When had she rested her cheek against his heart again? His chest rose and fell.

“Arin.”

“I know. I shouldn't sleep. But I'm so tired.”

She threatened him. He didn't hear the whole of it.

“Lie with me,” he murmured. It bothered him to think of her kneeling on the ground.

“Promise not to sleep.”

“I promise.”

But he didn't mean it. He knew what would happen. She slipped in beside him. Every thing became too soft, too dark, too velvet. He sank into sleep. He sighed, and let go.

Chapter 34

When she woke, he was gone.

Kestrel's heart crashed against her ribs and didn't let up, not even when she pushed her way out of the tent and found Arin making tea under the hollowed blue of a near-dawn sky. He stoked the little fire.

“What do you think you're doing?” she demanded.

“I found a box of tea in the tent.” Arin saw her expression. “Roshar won't mind.”

“
I
mind.”

His gaze traveled between her and the pot of boiling water. “What's wrong?”

“You shouldn't have slept.”

“I'm better for it.”

Maybe. But it hurt her to see his face, the inky bruise that spread over his brow and cheek and into the corner of his eye. The broken skin where he'd been struck at his temple. He wore a dirty tunic, perhaps because he didn't want to soil a clean one; dried blood flaked the skin of his bare
arms.
An awful bubble expanded inside her chest. “
I
shouldn't have slept.”

“You needed to. The battle. The ride. It can't have been easy.”

“No, it wasn't.”

Arin turned the closed tea box in his hands. The dry leaves whispered. “Thank you for saving me.”

“I thought you were dead. That you would die.”

He considered the box. “I know how hard it is to watch someone die.”

“Not ‘someone.'
You
, Arin.”

He nodded, but winced, set the box aside, and didn't seem to truly hear her.

She sank to sit by the fire, her crooked arm resting on a bent knee drawn to her chest. She pressed her mouth and chin against her inner arm. “You're still in pain.”

“Not so much anymore, which is why you must talk to me.”

“Arin, I am.”

“About the war.”

She looked at him.

He said, “We can't retreat to the city.”

“We can't face them in open battle. Not the entire Valorian force. Lerralen proved that.”

“Inviting them to lay siege to the city is no answer. I already tried once to hold the city against the general. He made short work of its defenses. He breached the wall.”

“It's repaired. This time, you have the east as an ally.”

“If you weren't trying to protect me right now with false optimism, what would you really say?”

The
sky had lightened. She heard the camp begin to stir.

“Be honest, Kestrel.”

“About the war.” Her voice was flat.

His expression shifted slightly. He set his thumb against his jaw, fanning dirty fingers over his scarred cheek. “Is there something else?”