The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(116)

Arin paused his horse. Javelin stopped, too. Flowers flurried down around them. He said, “It would hurt me to suspect him.”

“That’s why I do it for you.”

A cloth dropped onto his head from above, from a window of one of the tall, narrow homes near the market. Startled, blind, Arin tugged it from his face, his horse shying beneath him.

It was an old Herrani flag, stitched with the royal crest.

Arin said, “But the royal line is gone.”

“They’re looking for something to call you,” Kestrel said, nudging Javelin forward.

“Not this. It’s not right.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll find the right words to describe you.”

“And you.”

“Oh, that’s easy.”

“It is?” It seemed impossible to name every thing she was to him.

Kestrel’s expression was serious, luminous. He loved to see her like this. “They’ll say that I’m yours,” she told him, “just as you are mine.”

When Sarsine saw Kestrel, her eyes narrowed to mere cracks and Kestrel became very conscious that Sarsine was a tall woman. “For someone with a reputation for being so smart,” Sarsine said, “you act like you haven’t a thought in your head. Did it never occur to you that I’d worry when you dis appeared from the city with no word?”

“I didn’t exactly mean to leave.”

“Oh, so it just happened.”

“Yes.”

“The gods made you do it.”

Kestrel laughed. “Maybe they did.” Then, earnestly, she said, “I’m sorry, Sarsine.”

Sarsine folded her arms. “Then make it up to me.”

“How?”

Sarsine’s expression softened. Now there was an inquisitive gleam in her eye. “Start with the night you left. End with this very moment. And tell me every thing.”

So Kestrel did.

There was to be a city-wide feast to celebrate the military victory, with a banquet at the governor’s palace, where Queen Inishanaway would preside. The cooks in Arin’s house were hard at work, slaughtering every chicken in the yard, pulping erasti fruit and thumping dough against floured tables.

Arin was in the still room, trying to soothe the anxiety of a woman who was saying that she had just preserved the jams, and must all of them be used for the banquet, every last one? She didn’t think the Dacrans appreciated ilea fruit. Why serve something they wouldn’t love as much as the Herrani did? It would be best, surely, to keep at least those jars for winter.

Trying to explain the politics of such lavish consumption tangled Arin up in frustrated half sentences, because it didn’t make much sense to him, either, to consume every edible thing in one night.

And then he heard Roshar’s accented voice in Herrani drifting down the hall from the kitchens.

“. . . you don’t understand. The piece of meat must be the finest, cut from the loin, seasoned with this spice, not that one . . .”

Arin excused himself, told the woman he’d discuss jams later, and followed the prince’s voice.

“. . . and it must be well roasted on the outside, almost charred, yet bloody inside. Bright pink. Listen. This is crucial. If anything goes wrong, the banquet will be ruined.”

Arin entered the main kitchen to find the prince haranguing the head cook, who slid a half-lidded look of annoyed sufferance at Arin.

“There you are.” Roshar beamed. “I need your help, Arin.”

“For the preparation of meat?”

“It’s very important. You must impress this importance upon your cook here. The fate of political relations between my country and yours hangs in the balance.”

“Because of meat.”

“It’s for his tiger,” said the cook.

Arin palmed his face, eyes squeezed shut. “Your tiger.”

“He’s very particular,” said Roshar.

“You can’t bring the tiger to the banquet.”

“Little Arin has missed me. I will not be parted from him.”

“Would you consider changing his name?”

“No.”

“What if I begged?”

“Not a chance.”

“Roshar, the tiger has grown.”

“And what a sweet big boy he is.”

“You can’t bring him into a dining hall filled with hundreds of people.”

“He’ll behave. He has the mien and manners of a prince.”

“Oh, like you?”

“I resent your tone.”

“I’m not sure you can control him.”

“Has he ever been aught but the gentlest of creatures? Would you deny your namesake the chance to bear witness to our victorious celebration? And, of course, to the vision of you and Kestrel: side by side, Herrani and Valorian, a love for the ages. The stuff of songs, Arin! How you’ll get married, and make babies—”

“Gods, Roshar, shut up.”

Even if Arin hadn’t known how much Kestrel hated to enter the palace built for the Valorian governor during the period of colonization, he would have seen it in her tense shoulders, the way she touched the dagger at her hip, and practically snarled at Roshar when the prince had suggested that surely she could forgo, this one night, the barbarism of openly bearing a weapon.