The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(113)

He ripped open the man’s jacket. Arin reached for the inside breast pocket, located exactly where the man had tried to touch his chest as he had lain bleeding on the road.

Arin’s fingers met paper. He pulled it out, its texture suede-soft from having been handled so much. It had been unfolded and folded many times.

It was sheet music. At first, Arin didn’t understand what he looked at. Kestrel’s handwriting. Herrani script. Musical notation in crisp black. His own name leaped off the page.

Dear Arin.

Then he recognized the music as the sonata Kestrel had been studying when he’d entered her music room at the imperial palace in late spring. It had been the last time he’d seen her before the tundra. He had thought it would be the last time he would ever see her.

Arin hastened from the tent. He couldn’t read the letter here.

But he didn’t know if he could read it anywhere, if any place would be private enough, because being alone meant he’d still be with himself, and he hated to remember how he’d left Kestrel that day, and what had befallen her after.

He was desperate to read it.

He couldn’t bear to read it.

He resented that her father had kept it.

He wondered what it meant that her father had kept it.

Arin was only vaguely aware of having stumbled through the noisy camp and into the woods. The thought of reading the letter felt like a violation, like he’d be reading a letter meant for someone else.

Yet it had been addressed to him.

Dear Arin.

Arin read.

“Are you all right?”

Arin glanced up at Roshar, then returned his attention to the horse. He ran a hand down the inside of its front left leg and picked up the hoof, cupping its front. With his free hand, he cleaned the hoof with a pick, brushed it off, and used a knife to probe the outer edges of the hoof, looking for the source of the problem. Steam rose from a nearby bucket of hot, salted water. It was near noon.

“Arin.”

“Just thinking.” Kestrel’s written words still radiated through him, making him feel larger inside than he had been before, as if he’d swallowed the sun and it somehow fit, and blazed and ached and left him dazzled: half-blind but still seeing things more clearly than before.

“Well, stop it,” Roshar said. “You’ve been looking either dour or dreamy and neither really suits the victorious leader of his free people.”

Arin snorted. The horse, feeling his knife touch a sore spot, tried to pull her hoof away. He held it fast, supporting it from below with his knee.

“You could at least make a rousing speech,” Roshar said.

“Can’t. I’m riding to Sythiah.”

Roshar made a strangled sound.

“Not on this horse,” Arin said. “She’s lame.”

“What are you doing?”

“She was limping. It hurt to look at her. An abscess, I think. She must have stepped on something sharp.”

“Arin, you’re not a damn farrier. Someone else can do this.”

“Tssah,” Arin hissed in sympathy when he found the abscess. The horse tried again to tug away, but he punctured the sealed wound, which instantly dribbled black pus. He worked on opening the abscess, then pressed the rest of the pus out. “Bring that bucket closer, will you?”

“Oh, certainly. I live to please.”

Arin lowered the hoof into the bucket’s hot water. The horse, already in pain, stamped, splashing the water as she reared her head, but Arin grabbed the halter and brought her head down, soothing her as he watched the foot to make sure it stayed in the bucket.

“Arin, why are you so transparent? Whenever you worry, you start fixing things. Draining nasty gunk from a hoof is the least of it. I don’t know what’s worse, watching you do that or knowing how hard it will always be for you to keep yourself to yourself.”

Arin stroked the horse’s neck. She stamped again, but began to calm.

“We won,” Roshar said, “and Kestrel is fine. We’ve discussed this. That poison is highly toxic.”

“But she’s not back.”

“She will be. You need to seize your political moment. If you don’t, someone else will.”

Arin squinted at him. “You call me ‘transparent’ as if that’s a bad thing, but I don’t need to make a speech for my people to see what I am.”

Roshar shut his mouth. He looked ready to say something else, then didn’t, because Kestrel and Risha rode into camp.





Chapter 41

The army moved at a slow pace toward the city, some on foot, and many wounded. Kestrel stayed away from the wagons that carried them. “I can’t see him,” she told Arin when the army paused to rest. But part of her wanted to use this time to see her father.

“You don’t have to,” Arin said. In the silence that followed, as they walked away from the wagons, fragments of every thing he had told her gained shape and terribly vivid color: her father’s severed arm, Arin’s lost vengeance, the letter that she hadn’t even recognized when Arin gave it to her.

It was a moment before Kestrel realized that a jittery energy had come over Arin. He was biting his lower lip and his hands were making stunted gestures as if he were trying to speak but couldn’t. Finally, he said, “You asked for his death. I didn’t do it. Should I have? Did I do the wrong thing?”