The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(17)

“I couldn’t see into the wagon. Its walls were solid. The doors, too. I saw her at the window.”

“Describe her.”

“I can’t.”

Arin tried very hard to speak evenly. “What do you mean, you can’t? You saw her. You said so.”

“Well, yes, but”—the man was clearly frustrated, too—“I saw only her hand.”

“What color was her skin? Like mine? Yours?”

“More or less. Less, I guess. Kind of pale. The color of a house slave’s.”

Not Dacran. “ There must be something else you can tell me.” It felt increasingly difficult for Arin to sit still. “What happened to the prisoner?”

The man rubbed his weathered neck, avoiding Arin’s gaze. “The guards hit me. My head was ringing. I couldn’t hear what they did inside the wagon. I don’t know what they said. But her voice sounded horrible.”

“And then?”

“The wagon drove north, toward the tundra.”

Dangerously, Roshar said, “You believed my little sister was spying for Herran and you didn’t see fit to mention it?”

“I’m mentioning it now.”

“Arin, sometimes I really don’t like you.”

“It wasn’t my secret to share. Tensen said that his in formant insisted on keeping her identity anonymous. I pressed him, he gave me a name. I admired her. Every one in this city would be dead if she hadn’t told Tensen about the poison in the aqueducts. If she wanted to be anonymous, I had to honor that.”

“You had to honor saving your own skin, you mean. The queen and I might have felt a little differently about you if we’d known you were using our sister for information she could have been killed for obtaining.”

“It wasn’t your sister.”

“That’s not the point!”

“I know, but what would you have done in my place?”

Roshar stared moodily into the library fireplace. No fire had been lit there for months, but the smell of cinders remained. He played with his ring, a thick band that looked as though set with a dull black stone. It was unusual for an easterner to wear a ring; they liked to keep their hands free of any ornamentation. This ring, Arin knew, had a particular purpose: what appeared to be a stone was in fact a vial that contained a numbing serum. He’d never asked, but he suspected that the serum could also kill. Roshar wiggled the ring. “Arin,” he said quietly, “you’re really pushing things.”

“I know,” Arin said again. “I’m sorry.”

“So. Your Moth is not my sister.”

“Yes.”

“She’s Herrani.”

“Yes.”

“A dead Herrani.”

Arin shook his head. “She was sent to the tundra’s prison camp.”

“As good as dead,” Roshar amended.

“It’s a work camp. You can’t make a dead body work. This was only a month ago. She could be alive.”

Roshar swiftly met Arin’s eyes. “No. Oh no. Don’t even think what I think you’re thinking.”

“I could lead a small force north—”

“Stop right there.”

“She could have valuable information.”

“Not worth it.”

“She doesn’t deserve to be there.”

“She knew what she was getting into. All our spies know the risk.” Gently, Roshar added, “You can’t save every one.”

Arin let out a slow breath. He pressed palms to his eyes. His hands were cold. Kestrel’s hands were always cold, at first, to the touch. He used to like to feel how they would slowly warm . . .

Arin pulled himself up short. He was suspicious of the way his mind worked, how it leaped for no reason to Kestrel, how this reminded him of so many times before, the way his thoughts would turn to her and bank home, like he was a hunting bird and she was the spinning lure.

“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Roshar said. “We’ve had enough of that. I’m simply going to ask you—you, who I will admit have some preternatural gift for strategy—if you think it’s smart to send soldiers north, away from the war here, to attempt to rescue one woman from prison when you don’t know how many lives this rescue would cost, or even the identity of the person you’re looking for. Well, Arin? Is it smart?”

“No.”

“Are you going to do it anyway?”

“No,” Arin said reluctantly. “I won’t.” And he meant it.





Chapter 5

Arin’s hand twitched against the pillow. His legs twisted the sheets.

He opened his eyes. The moon was large and yellow in the window. He wondered how the moon would look from the rooftop gardens, and he suddenly was in the gardens—both of them at the same time, even though the eastern garden and the western one were separated by a locked door. The smooth stones were cold under his bare feet. He was somewhere between sleeping and waking. Then he forgot this realization and was fully inside the dream without knowing that he was.

He heard someone’s footfalls on the other side of the garden wall. But he was on both sides, in both gardens: his and Kestrel’s. He was alone. He was still. He was not making that sound.