The Winner's Kiss (40 page)

“What
do
you intend?”

She stroked Javelin's nose. “I'm not sure.”

“Black powder is the biggest problem. If the Valorians didn't have so much of it, we'd stand a chance against them.”

“
Well.”

“What?”

“I could destroy it.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and crinkled his brow as he listened to her explain what she had in mind.

He didn't like it.

“You know I'll go anyway.”

He left his horse, dusting his hands free of the dirt from the animal's hooves. When he came close, it felt as if she'd come in out of the cold and stood next to a fire. Arin touched the dagger at her hip and ran a thumb over the symbol on its hilt: the circle within a circle.

“The god of souls,” Kestrel said. “It's his symbol.”

“Hers,” he corrected gently.

Kestrel wasn't sure how long she'd known what the symbol meant. Maybe for a long time. Or maybe she'd only realized it last night. It was the kind of knowledge that, once it enters you, seems like it's lived there forever.

His expression was soft and entranced and puzzled. “Do you feel changed? I feel changed.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He smiled. “It's strange.”

And so it was.

“We could reach Lerralen by nightfall,” she said, “if we press the horses. Will you come with me?”

“Ah, Kestrel, that's something you never need to ask.”

The sun was gone when they reached the wind-twisted bushes that hedged the beach. Beyond were the fires of
the
enemy's camp; the blue-black air smelled of smoke and salt.

Kestrel cleaned her Valorian armor, strapped on a traditional-looking dagger she had taken from the arms supply wagon, and wordlessly handed Arin the one he'd made for her.

“I don't love my role in this particular mission,” he said. “It's mostly watching you saunter into danger.”

“You forget.”

“That? That's nothing.”

“You could get hurt.”

He blinked. “No.”

“You don't ever fear for yourself?”

“Not for something like this.”

“Then what?”

He studied his hands. “Sometimes . . . I think of who I was. As a boy. I talk to him.”

Slowly, she said, “Like you do to your god?”

“It's different. Or maybe I think about him like my god thinks about me. I've made promises to the child. I worry I won't be able to keep them.”

“What have you promised?”

“Revenge.”

“You'll have it.”

Arin nodded, but more in simple acknowledgment than actual confidence.

She looked at him through the smoky night. Just light enough to see his expression, and dark enough that his body smudged into the shadows. Soon, night would truly fall. Waves folded and unfolded against the shore.

“
We should wait for the moon to rise,” she said, “before we go down to the camp.”

“And what,” he murmured, “will we do while we wait?”

She brought his fingers to her lips so that he could feel her smile.

His hand traveled the length of her braid and toyed with the leather string that bound it. He untied the knot. The sound of it coming undone was as soft as a breath. He unraveled her hair, and brought her close.

When the moon was high, Kestrel and Arin gathered what they needed and made their way down to the beach, keeping close to the ragged bushes, blending in with their darkness. They waited, crouched near the edge of camp, where they could see the supply wagons, their domed canvas covers as pale as mushrooms in the moonlight.

Finally, a sentry on his rounds walked close to their hiding spot. In one swift movement, Arin surged up, clamped a hand over the sentry's mouth, and dragged him down to the sand.

“Not a sound,” Arin hissed at the sentry, the point of his dagger pricking the hollow behind the man's ear. Arin forced the sentry's face to turn up to the moon. Eyes wide. Skin strained and white. “Tell us which wagon holds the black powder.”

The sentry shook his head.

“Do you remember,” Arin whispered, “the punishment for runaway slaves? No? Let me remind you.” He lightly drew his dagger over the man's ear, down the tip of his nose. “Which wagon?”

The
Valorian shook his head again, but this time his gaze jerked in the direction of one of the larger wagons.

Arin glanced at Kestrel. Enough? his eyes asked. Yes, she mouthed, but—“Don't,” she whispered, ill at the sight of the sentry pressed down in the sand, his eyes as dark as her childhood friend's, as that of any Valorian child. They were gleaming, glassy with the kind of fear a child eventually learns how to hide. But death will do that. It makes you unlearn all you know. “Don't,” she told Arin again.

He hesitated, then slammed the pommel of his dagger against the man's head, knocking him unconscious.

“Be swift,” Arin told her.

She cut into the small bag of black powder tied to her waist. She felt grit flow thinly from the hole. Then she straightened and walked into the camp.

She kept her head down, her tight braid trailing over one shoulder. Her face was dirty, she reminded herself as she passed campfires. She was changed. Her hair had reddened—was redder still, by firelight. No one would recognize her, surely. Not in armor. Not like this, with no trace of cosmetics, no finery, no silk or jewels or glittering gold engagement mark. She was not herself. She was simply one of them. Just another Valorian. But her throat was dry, and her stomach shrank into a stone.

The wagons weren't far off. To reassure herself, she passed her fingers through the little stream of black powder from her bag and thought about how it traced a line between Arin and her.

When she reached the wagon the sentry had glanced at, Kestrel let out a slow breath. She peered inside and saw, in
the
halo of moonlight through canvas, fat mounds of sacks tied with twine.

“What are you doing?” someone demanded.

Slow, very slowly, squeezing all of her sudden fear into the sound of her boot shifting in the sand, Kestrel turned.

It was a guard. The woman looked Kestrel over. “What,” the woman said, “does a scout like you want with that wagon?”

The small sack at Kestrel's waist felt light. It had leaked nearly all of its black powder. Could the guard see it in the shadows? “I'm verifying inventory.”

“Why?”

The words sprang to her lips before she even fully remembered them. “For the glory of Valoria.”

The guard drew slightly back, startled to hear the phrase that indicated a military mission whose details couldn't be discussed. “But . . . a scout?” She stared again at Kestrel's armor, whose color and material (leather, unlike the steel for officers) indicated her low rank.

Kestrel shrugged. The empty black powder bag lay slack against her hip. “It's not for you to question the general.”

“Of course,” the guard said immediately, and stepped aside as Kestrel moved to walk past her . . . and tried not to walk too quickly, but
wanted
to, wanted to run all the way up into the dunes.

Then it was as if a cold, marble hand rested on her shoulder, pressing her down into her boot prints.

There was no hand, she told herself. No one touched her.

Move
.

But she couldn't, just as she couldn't help the way her
gaze
lifted and saw, not fifteen paces away, her father standing in the orange light of a fire.

It cracked her open. It hatched some creature of an emotion: two-headed, lumpy, leather wings, unnumbered limbs, a thing that should never have been born. Kestrel hadn't known until she saw her father's face how much she still loved him.

Wrong, that she felt this way. Wrong, that love could live with betrayal and hurt and anger.

Hate,
she corrected herself.

No,
a voice whispered back, the voice of a small girl.

Her father didn't see her. He was looking at the fire. His eyes were shadowed, his mouth sad.

“Trajan,” someone called from across the camp. Kestrel saw the silver-headed man approach. Soldiers fell away from him like shed water. The emperor approached his general, whose face changed, becoming full of something older than she was.

Firelight striped the emperor's cheek as he leaned to murmur in her father's ear. She saw that slight smile, and remembered the plea sure the emperor took in his games, how he could make a move and wait for months to see its final play. But there was no scheme in his expression now.

Her father answered him. She stood too far away to hear what they said to one another, yet she was close enough to see that their friendship was solid and true.

Kestrel looked away. She walked toward the dunes, careful not to retrace her steps and risk smudging the line of powder that, once lit, must burn directly from Arin to the wagon. The bushes where Arin waited were thick black
scribbles.
Her cheeks were wet. Valorian soldiers didn't look as she passed. She wiped her face. Sand hissed under her hurried boots. She left the camp behind.

She'd almost reached the bushes when she heard someone following her.

Pacing the sand. Right in her tracks. Coming up close.

She slowed, hand on her dagger, heart in her mouth.

She turned.

“Kestrel?”

Chapter 36

Her hand dropped from her dagger's hilt. “Verex.”

He stood awkwardly in the moonlight: long and slopey, shoulders narrow, eyes large, his fair hair ruffled and feathery. When he met her gaze, he let out such a large breath that his chest seemed to cave in. “I was so worried for you,” he said.

Kestrel crossed the sand and flung herself into his open arms.

“I tried to help,” he murmured.

“I know.”

“I sent a key to the prison camp.”

“I got it.”

“I'm ashamed of myself.”

“Verex.”

“I couldn't do more. I wanted to. I should have.”

She pulled back, stared at him. “That key was every thing to me.”

“Not enough. My father—”

“
Did he find out?” Her blood went cold. “Did he punish you?”

“He talked as if he knew it was me. ‘Well, dear boy, have you heard? A prisoner tried to escape the north. Somehow—
how
, do you think?—she laid her filthy little hands on a key.' Never acknowledging that the prisoner was you. Never accusing me of having sent the key. Just watching and smiling. He said—he told me that the prisoner was tortured. Killed. And I—” Verex's face twisted.

“I'm all right, I'm here.”

He didn't look convinced.

“What did he do to you?”

Verex flopped one hand. “Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Nothing that mattered. I think he enjoyed it: that I knew, that I tried. Failed. I have my spies in the court—I must—and when you dis appeared I found out too quickly what had happened to you. He wanted me to know. All the while, he said nothing of your absence, only informed me of the story he'd tell the court, and that I'd be sailing to the southern isles. He said he'd watch over Risha while I was away.” Verex thrust his hands in his pockets, slumped his shoulders. “He said, ‘I know how you care for the eastern princess.' ”

“Did he—?”

“No.” His voice went hard. “He knows that if he did anything to her I'd kill him. She's safe in the capital.”

“What are you doing here? Verex, you're no fighter.”

He laughed a little. “I'd have said the same of you. Yet look at you.”

“
You knew it was me.”

“You have this way when you walk. You stride.”

“I didn't expect to see the emperor here, let alone
you
.”

“I'm mostly here to be looked at. The emperor came with me in tow for the morale of the troops. There've been a few military setbacks in this campaign.” He peered at her. “
Your
doing?”

She wasn't sure how to answer. For the first time, it occurred to her that it might not matter that Verex was her friend. Maybe he would seize her anyway.

Maybe he'd cry an alarm.

Maybe he couldn't be her friend when it seemed so obvious that she was his people's enemy.

She took a step back, then stopped when hurt flickered across his face.

“I think,” Verex said gently, “that your father knows it's your doing.”

“My father?”

“I didn't make much of it before, but after the Valorian victory on the beach, an officer mentioned the ambush along the road near Errilith. Said things about Arin. What would be done to him, if caught alive.”

Kestrel's stomach twisted.

“Said something about that . . . slave with the clever tricks.”

In Verex's pause, she could hear the foulness of what he didn't repeat.

“Your father made no reply at first. Then: ‘Not
his
tricks. Not his alone.' And the officer smirked and said, ‘You mean
the
no-nosed barbarian.' But I don't think, now, that the general
did
mean the eastern prince. After the battle on the beach, I saw him searching . . . he went among the prisoners taken. He turned over bodies in the sand. The way he looked . . .”

“ Don't tell him you saw me.”

“Maybe he should know.”

“Verex, don't. Swear.”

Worriedly, he scanned her face. “You have my word. But . . .” He raked a hand through his fine hair, then peered at her through narrowed eyes. He lifted the empty bag at her hip, dropped it, rubbed his fingers and thumb together, and sniffed the unmistakable odor of black powder. A slow horror stole over his face. “What exactly are you doing here?”

“Just let me walk away. Forget you saw me, please.”