The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(106)

A streak of pride. Her mind ringed with hungry rows of foxlike teeth.

Later, at dawn, when the emperor pulled Kestrel’s dagger from its sheath and touched its tip to her throat, she remembered that Sythiah’s manor had always been a trap. The question had only been whether it was a trap she set for the emperor, or one that she’d fall into.

Kestrel touched Risha’s hand. “Thank you.”

The seven of them moved through the dark to the house.

The dawn broke bright. Clear sky. A sheen of water wavered over the road toward Lerralen, deeper in the cracks between paving stones.

Arin and Roshar had moved the army as quickly west as they could. They had reached the location Arin had chosen.

The first task: to unload the hundreds of sharpened staves Arin had ordered made.

The second: to drive them into the sodden earth bordering the road.

The third: to set their last sacks of gunpowder on the road. A snug and deadly little bundle.

And the fourth: to wait, to try not to think about Kestrel, about how she must have already reached Sythiah by now, and might have already played Bite and Sting against the emperor, and had won or lost.

The seven of them wound their way through the night-shadowed corners of Sythiah’s manor. Risha moved with ethereal fluidity, and when they encountered a pair of Valorian soldiers stationed in a hallway, her knife split their skin as smoothly as if cutting through cream. The Valorians made no sound. It was quiet enough to hear the drip of blood.

They accessed the upper floors and began checking bedrooms. Kestrel knew where they’d be situated—Herrani architecture usually had bedrooms face east or west. Risha crept in alone, her posture stiffening with annoyance when the other Dacrans made as if to accompany her. She let out a low hiss. They didn’t follow.

She’d return, her blade wetter than before.

“Enough of this,” she whispered.

“We must go quietly,” Kestrel reminded her. “We need to get to the emperor’s room without waking the entire house. We can’t fight them all.”

Risha snorted. “I can.”

The princess’s impatience wore thin. The next time they encountered Valorian guards—again, a pair of them—she let a Dacran soldier shoot one of them with a crossbow, but pulled the other Valorian out of the quarrel’s path at the same time that her other hand came down on the woman’s mouth.

Risha touched her knife to the fragile skin beneath the woman’s wide eye. “Stay silent,” Risha whispered, “and you’ll keep your eyes. Lead us to the emperor’s suite.”

The soldier led them to a broad door made of tiger maple, the wood smooth in the Herrani style, with little carving other than the rippled doorjamb. An oil lamp glowed in the hallway’s sconce, its stained glass casting a jeweled light over the wood’s natural stripes.

“Here?” Kestrel asked. Light glowed through the door’s keyhole.

The woman nodded.

Risha killed her. The body slumped. Blood welled up to Kestrel’s boots. She made herself remember the girl’s lost shoe, the Bite and Sting set, Arin’s scar, the way he heard the god of death because he believed he had no one else, the small houses in the wheatfields, the baring of her back to the cold tundra air, the way she had hoped that the nighttime drug would make her forget.

“Open the door,” she whispered.

One of the Dacran men, selected by Roshar for his skill at this, knelt and unfolded a leather-wrapped set of tools, then he inserted two of them—long and thin, like knitting needles—into the keyhole. He poked, then levered the tools until they heard the soft clunk of the lock’s tumblers releasing.

He eased the door open—softly, as if his hand were no more than a small gust of wind.

Risha first, and Kestrel behind her, they entered the suite’s antechamber.

They were attacked by the emperor’s personal guard, who had been waiting as they’d listened to the clicking of the picked lock.

Arin set the army into formation on the western road. He made the vanguard’s ranks broad, running across the road and the bordering wet earth, all the way up to the trees. Behind the vanguard, the center ranks were confined to the road.

Roshar’s horse flicked its tail, shifting. The prince eyed the forest. “Those trees turn this place into something resembling a ravine. We won’t have much room to maneuver.”

“Neither will they.”

The morning light was sheer and fresh, as pale as the flesh of a lemon. Arin imagined squeezing it down his throat. It would taste like how he felt: stingingly alive.

Kestrel couldn’t count them, couldn’t see how the guards carved open the bodies of the Dacran soldiers, couldn’t fathom Risha’s speed, the way the princess had shoved Kestrel against a wall, creating a halo of safety around her. The snick of Risha’s knife against a windpipe. Her swivel and dance. Unerring strike. Counter. Bodies thumped to the floor.

“Hold,” someone called. “I want to see.”

The Valorians pulled back. Risha’s knife flicked blood as it arced through the air. She had no intention of obeying the voice. Kestrel caught her arm. The princess spun, her face frustrated, as if she’d been listening to a voice whose last words had been lost in the interruption.

The emperor stood at the threshold where the antechamber flowed into the rest of the suite, his posture light and easy. For a moment, there was no sound but the rain on the roof. “You,” he said wonderingly as his gaze found Risha.