The Winner's Kiss (44 page)

The emperor made a surprised half laugh of a sound.
He
lightly traced the deepest line of his brow, then unfolded his hand in a flourish. “What would
I
gain, should I win?”

“What you like. What ever I can give you.”

He tapped one finger to his lips, considering. “That's not much.”

“I'm sure you can think of something.”

“And if I agree, and lose? You'd trust me to keep my word?”

“A Valorian honors his word.”

“Yes,” he said, drawing out the word. “He does.”

“Risha goes free, no matter what the outcome.”

“I'll wait here,” said the princess. “With your guards, if you like.” She gave them a disdainful look, making clear that she thought little of their chances of survival if she chose to finish what she'd started. “Until the game is done.”

Kestrel said, “We play in private.”

“You set quite a lot of terms,” the emperor said, “but this particular one I wouldn't have any other way.”

“So you agree?”

“I confess, I'm curious.”

“Do you
agree
?”

“A fair warning. I'm better at this than you are.”

“We shall see.”

Arin heard a crash in the trees.

A Herrani scout. He ran to Arin, his face shiny with sweat.

The Valorians were coming.

The
emperor led her to his bedroom. The summer hangings on the bed were gauzy, the sheets disturbed. She could see the dent left in a pillow by his head. The room smelled of his oils: powdery pepper, bitingly sweet balsam. Rain tapped the black windowpanes.

“Wash your face,” he said.

There was a mirrored basin in the corner. Kestrel did as ordered, though her face wasn't particularly dirty. She was startled by the stranger in the glass and tried not to stare at herself. She caught a glimpse of shocked, light eyes, made lighter by tanned and freckled skin. A strong face.

She folded the towel and joined the emperor where he stood near an octagonal table. He had produced a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“I'll serve,” she said, which made him give her a sleek look of amusement. She poured the red wine, but neither of them touched their glasses, and they both knew that the other suspected that some sleight of hand had poisoned the cup.

“Disarm,” he said.

“I will if you do the same.”

He unbuckled his dagger and set it gently, yet heavily, on the table. Her fingers fumbled as she undid hers.

The dagger Arin had made her looked plain next to the emperor's—but strong, like her unexpected face in the mirror.

“Interesting.” The emperor stroked it where it lay. “A new acquisition? Perhaps this will be my prize when I win.”

“If that's what you want.”

“I haven't decided what I want.”

She
opened the satchel, set the velvet bag of tiles on the table, and moved to sit.

“Not yet.” He held out his hand. She gave him the satchel, which he examined. Satisfied that it contained nothing else, he dropped it to the floor, then said, “You'll have no objection, I'm sure, if I make certain that you hide no weapons on your person.”

Her skin prickled. “I give you my word that I don't.”

“The word of a traitor is hardly to be trusted.”

So she stood rigid as his hands moved over her unarmored body. They didn't linger, except when he pressed his fingers to her throat, and then pressed harder to feel her pulse jump and run.

He said, “You're welcome to do the same to me.”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” He seemed to dare her to admit that she didn't want to touch him.

“I trust you.”

“Well then, little liar, let's play.”

The approaching Valorian army shone in a silver river under the sun.

Arin looked through a spyglass. He couldn't find the general.

There was a thin, whistling whine.

Arin lowered the spyglass.

The whine stopped.

A cry of pain.

An arrow, studded into a Herrani soldier's throat.

More
arrows sped through the air. Valorian Rangers were shooting at them from the trees on either side of the road.

They sat. Kestrel, her back to the bed, loosened the velvet bag's tie and poured the tiles onto the table.

She reached to mix the tiles, but as she had thought he might, the emperor stopped her. “Let's confirm that this set is standard, shall we?” he said.

He checked the tiles to account for their values. When he saw that the set showed the proper amount of each Bite and Sting tile, he turned them onto their faces and mixed them. His face was calm, but his gestures were eager. He touched each tile, but barely. He wanted to get to the game.

Kestrel studied his smooth expression. He didn't seem to notice that four ivory tiles were shinier than the rest. The gloom of the late hour helped. He drew his tiles.

Her stomach clenched to see the four shiny tiles left in the boneyard, from which she and the emperor would pull tiles throughout the game.

She drew her own hand. Arin had warned her that when she had a high chance of winning, her very lack of tells showed her confidence.
I don't think most people notice,
he'd said.
Your expression doesn't change. You've no tic or gesture. I just get the sense that there's an energy inside you I can't reach, and that if I did, it'd strike like lightning.

She tried not to think about her plan, worrying that even the mere thought of it would show on her face. She felt her expression harden as clay does in a kiln.

Play,
Kestrel.

She set down her first tile. The emperor did the same.

She found herself praying to Arin's god.
Please, let this be over soon
.

But she heard no answer.

“Stand your ground,” Roshar shouted as arrows drove into the army. Eastern crossbows fired into the trees.

Roshar ordered Xash, his second-in-command, to lead a company into the forest to the left of the road. Roshar would take another company to the right. “We'll take care of the Rangers. You,” he said to Arin, “take command of the road.”

Arin snagged the prince's shoulder. “You'll get bogged down in the mud. The Rangers will shoot every one down on the open land before you reach the trees.”

“Not much choice. Continue to return fire. The Dacran archers are plainspeople. They're good.”

“They're not gods.”

“They
will
be, to protect their prince.”

Then Roshar was gone, and Arin snapped his attention back to the road, because the enemy was upon them, thundering down the road, almost here, almost here.

Here.

As they played, the rain lessened and stopped. The glasses of wine sat untouched. The boneyard still held the four shiny tiles hidden among the others.

It
was the emperor's turn. He reached for a tile, then paused, too much drama in his movements. He wasn't truly hesitant, or even pretending to be hesitant, but rather making an open mockery of hesitancy that he knew she'd recognize as such.

“Play your tile.” Her voice grated.

“I'm thinking.”

She said nothing.

“Don't you want to know what I'm thinking?” He leaned back in his chair, his short, silvered hair a bright bristle in the lamplight. The emperor passed his fingers over his mouth with enough pressure to pull slightly at the slack skin of his cheeks. His touch explored the grooves age had made near his mouth, and he seemed pleased.

Then she saw that his gaze had shifted to her hands.

They were trembling. She pressed them down against the table.

“I'm thinking about what I'll claim from you when I win,” he said. “The particularly appealing part of the deal you struck is the
openness
of your offer. ‘What ever you like.' ”

She wished she'd phrased things differently, though she didn't know what else she would have said, since part of what had made him agree to the game was his anticipation of the plea sure of what he was doing now.

“I could make you bring Arin of Herran to me,” the emperor said. “He'd surrender, for you.”

The world deadened.

“I never finished what I started with that boy's face.” The emperor pushed the hilt of Kestrel's dagger with one finger.

The
sound it made, though small, scraped down her spine.

“Or perhaps it's not
his
face that appeals to me most. We could see what might be done with yours.”

Silence.

“No, Lady Kestrel?”

His gaze drifted over her shoulder. He continued to speak, voice soft as his list continued, and Kestrel's mind jumped between thinking that he chose to name the things that would torment her most, and meant none of it, or that he
did
mean it and wanted her to hope that he didn't, and that this hope was his most delicious form of brutalization.

Her heart was loud in her ears. This wasn't working. She'd made a grave mistake in coming.

“But of course,” the emperor finally said, “with such an offer as you made, I could exact it
all
.”

Arin ordered his vanguard to fall to the sides of the road.

The black powder sacks were lit.

The Valorian cavalry reared back from what they saw too late.

The sacks burst under their hooves. Chunks of paving stone exploded into the air.

“Do you forfeit your turn?” Kestrel asked.

“Not at all.”

“You're afraid to play.”

“We both know,” he said, “which of us is afraid.”

She
reached for her wine glass and drank.

“I do admire your love for a gamble.” He took her cup and drank from it as well. “I was simply thinking out loud earlier. There's no harm in thinking.”

“I have my own thoughts. I am wondering why my father ever respected you.”

The emperor set down the cup. “He's my friend.”

“Yet you say the things that you say.”

“He's not here, and if he were, he wouldn't care.”

“Yes, he would.”

The emperor scrutinized her. “You don't look like him. Except the eyes.”

“Why?” The word burst from her lips.

His reply was gentle. “Why
what
, Kestrel?”

Her throat closed. Her eyes stung. She realized that she had forgotten the game . . . and that maybe this had been the emperor's intention. She didn't want to ask her question. Yet she couldn't help it . . . or the hurt evident in her choked voice. “Why did he choose you over me?”

“Ah.” The emperor rubbed his dry palms together and templed them with a little pat. “You've provided me with an entertaining evening so far. I feel I owe you something in exchange. So: the truth. Trajan wasn't my friend—not at first. He was necessary for what I wanted. Military prowess. Imperial expansion. I, in turn, was an opportunity for what
he
wanted, which was nothing less than for his daughter to one day rule the empire. An understandable ambition. Or perhaps our friendship didn't begin there, after all. We've known each other since well before your birth. He's a man of rare intelligence. There's plea sure in finding one's equal.
Perhaps
things began with that. As to how it has grown . . .” He shrugged. “Maybe it's because he knows how I am with every one else, and knows that I'm not like that with him. I value Trajan. Ultimately, when he held your treasonous letter in his hand and saw how you had lied to him, the choice between me and you was the choice between someone who loves him and someone who didn't.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks.

The emperor patted her frozen hand. “I suggest that we not discuss your father.”

He played his tile.

The air reeked of sulfur and scorched horseflesh. The screams were so many and so loud that Arin couldn't really hear them. Just noise. His ears buzzed.

Valorians floundered in their blood on the broken road. Ranger arrows continued to furrow the sky. A blasted paving stone, Arin saw, had smashed into a Herrani soldier's face. Her body lay half in the mud, half where the road had been.

Arin couldn't spot the general. The Valorian army was vast. Only a few ranks of cavalry had been decimated in the blast.

Another unit of Valorian cavalry moved forward into position.

Kestrel was losing. Earlier, the emperor had delayed in order to unsettle her, to revel in it, to spear her like a worm and
watch
her writhe. Kestrel's tactic of delay was different. She took as much time as possible to draw the game out. Earlier, she'd wanted the game to be over quickly. Now she needed more time.

The four shiny tiles in the boneyard winked at her. She knew their values. The wolf—she could use that if it were in her hand. Or even the bee.

Her frustration rose.

The tears had dried on her cheeks, the skin tight with salt. She couldn't help returning to what the emperor had said about her father. The memory of how her father had told her that she'd broken his heart.