The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(12)

Arin, laughing, embraced his friend.



He choked on his first lungful of smoke. “This is vile.”

“I told you you’d like it.” Roshar bit the stem of his pipe, lighting the tobacco. He shook the match out. For a few moments, he smoked in silent contentment. Both the silence and the contentment were, in Arin’s experience, rare for the prince. “Try it again,” Roshar said, “or I’ll think you’re rude.”

Arin, ignoring him, went to open a window. Sweet warm air washed into his father’s study.

“Arin,” Roshar complained. “Shut the window. I’m cold. Why is your country so damned cold?”

“It’s summer.” The first day of the season, which Valorians celebrated as Firstsummer, had already passed.

Roshar shuddered. “I want to go home.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Admit it. You missed me.”

Arin looked at him. Softly, he said, “I did.”

The prince squinted at him through a cloud of smoke. “You seem better.”

Arin frowned, leaning against the casement. “I wasn’t aware that I seemed all that bad.”

Roshar snorted. “As one of Dacra’s royal line and educated in the finest points of grace and discretion, I shall pass over any description of exactly how you were when you set your no-good, illegal foot in my city.” Roshar eyed him closely, then his gaze wandered to the sword that Arin had unbuckled and slung by its belt over the back of a chair when they’d entered the study. “What happened to your dagger?”

“Gone.” Arin had dropped Kestrel’s dagger into the sea.

Roshar toyed with his pipe. “As for why I’m here, the queen thought that you could use someone with authority.”

“I’ve been managing fine.”

“So I understand. Xash is impressed. Also, he hates you. But your delightful little power struggle is moot now that I’m here and outrank you both. Don’t I?”

Slowly, Arin said, “Of course.”

Roshar smiled. “The queen sends her greetings.”

Arin was silent.

“Hoping for something a little more friendly? Well”—Roshar’s voice went sly—“you know how she is, don’t you?”

Arin flushed. “I think we should discuss possible scenarios for a Valorian attack.”

“Boring.”

“We don’t have time for—”

“Oh! Oh! The Valorians are battering down the door right now. We have to do something.”

“You can go home now.”

Roshar settled comfortably into his chair. “Speaking of Valorians, I hear that Lady Kestrel and Prince Verex married in secret. Yes, word has it that they were so consumed with passionate love that they disappointed hundreds of wedding guests with a private ceremony right after the lady’s birthday at the end of spring. The amorous couple simply couldn’t wait.”

Arin doubted that “passionate love” had much to do with it. He shook his head. “She wants the empire. She gets what she wants.”

“They’re on a lovers’ holiday in the southern isles.”

Arin shrugged. His shoulders felt tight. Roshar didn’t appear to notice. “You are better,” said the prince.

“Can we talk about the war now?”

“What ever you want, little Herrani.”

Arin unrolled a map and spread it across his father’s desk. They studied the western coastline, the cliffs and rocky shores that would offer the Valorians an opportunity for a surprise attack, and the beach, known as Lerralen, that led to flat land running right into the southern Herrani estates.

When daylight had darkened and Roshar’s eyes grew slowly heavier, Arin realized that the prince’s gleeful needling had hidden a genuine fatigue from his journey. Arin told him he should rest.

“Choose what ever suite suits you best,” Arin said. “But please: keep that tiger in his cage.”

“Arin’s a kitten,” Roshar protested. Purely for the purpose of annoying Arin, it seemed, Roshar had named the tiger after him. “He’s sweet-tempered and polite and very good-looking . . . unlike some people I could mention.”

“You’re wrong,” Roshar said.

They were leaning over a map in Arin’s library. Arin kept his fingers stubbornly pressed down on the cliffs along his country’s western shore.

“Wrong,” Roshar insisted.

Arin shook his head. “You’re underestimating the Valorian general.”

“He’s not going to send soldiers up cliffs. He doesn’t need to. He’s got the numbers. He can land his ships on that beach and take the countryside with sheer force. He doesn’t have to be clever.”

Arin remembered Kestrel. “I think he enjoys being clever. I think he might be undercut by his own cunning, if we can catch him at it.”

“Those cliffs are monstrously high.”

“His Rangers are capable of it. If they scale the cliffs and come south while we’re dealing with the Valorians that have landed on the beach, they’ll flank us and squeeze us between them.”

Roshar made a dismissive noise.

Frustrated, Arin said, “Are you so proud that you think no one can outmaneuver you?”