The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(45)

Arin snuck a look out the port. He didn’t see the ship yet. But he prob ably wouldn’t see it until his captain brought his ship broadside to broadside, the gunports of one ship mirroring the other.

He looked away and caught sight of the gray face of the sailor nearest him. Sweat trembled on the man’s brow. He looked ill. He didn’t look how Arin felt. Arin wished he could share what he felt: a dark greed.

The ship slowed. They must be drawing abreast of the Valorians.

His lungs were taut, eager. The world was made simple. Arin, who with other things had gone so badly wrong before, who had judged and misjudged and misunderstood, wouldn’t fail at this. Maybe it was his god, or maybe it was only ordinary human determination, but his need to fight felt ready and strong, like sprung steel that wanted to cut its way out of him.

He smiled encouragingly at the sailor.

A blast burst through the bulwark. The sailor exploded into bloody chunks. Shards of wood whizzed through the air, driving into Arin’s flung-up arm.

“Fire,” Arin shouted. He lit his cannon, got out of the path of its recoil. It shuddered and boomed. The sailors were doing the same, and then doing as Arin did: dragging the shot cannon back, swabbing it out, stuffing it again, dragging it up against the bulwark. It went on like that for some time. It was impossible to see what damage the Herrani inflicted. Another blast ruptured a hole in the bulwark. They were high enough above the waterline not to take on the sea, and the Valorians would want to seize his ship as much as he wanted theirs, but they’d sink it if it came to that. Arin reloaded. Fired.

Then he stepped wrong. A sharp object pierced his rag-covered foot. He glanced down at his right foot. The rags were staining red. He paused, slow now for some reason he couldn’t quite comprehend, but Arin had come to trust these moments when part of him understood something before his mind did. He reached down, dragged out a bloody bit of metal (a bent nail?), and gave it a good brief stare. An idea spread within him, curved. A malevolent sort of smile.

He grabbed the nearest sailor. “You. Get below, find rags. Make small bags of them. Stuff them with gunpowder and anything little and sharp. Nails. Tie it all up, set a joss stick down the neck of each bag, and bring them all back here, ten at a time. Light them, throw them out the gunports. Try to get them into their gunports, when they pull their cannons back to load them. Understand? Go.”

Then Arin looked for the sailor whose expression looked most like his own must, and told him to take charge. Arin was going to board that Valorian ship.

Up onto the deck, into the blue and smoky black. Sword in the right hand, dagger in the left. Valorians on his ship already. Their vessel was close enough to board. Arin ducked. Sliced. His sword beat back a thrust and he drove in with his dagger, found a soft belly. Steaming liquid up to the wrist, running to the elbow.

Arin worked his way to the railing. He heard crossbow quarrels. They didn’t touch him. His god rose within him: silent, approving. Arin leaped onto the Valorian ship. A blade came at him. He caught it with his own, parried, snaked his sword up for a thrust into the man’s arm where the leather armor joined. Dagger to the neck. Both weapons snatched back out of the flesh, the metal oily red. Body at his feet.

He saw a package launch out of the Herrani ship’s gun hole. Then another. An explosion belowdeck trembled the boards. Another.

Then, incredibly, over the din of cannons and screams, he heard a slight sound. He spun, and came face-to-face with a Valorian. A woman. Fair hair, dark eyes.

He dropped his guard.

She went for his neck. He jerked away at the last moment, caught the sword in his left shoulder. A surge of wet, running pain.

“No,” he said in her language. “Wait.”

She thrust again.

He parried her this time, his sword coming instinctively up, his good arm bending her blade back, not even pushing hard. A part of him watched this in horror, saw how easily the woman’s arm bent. She was his age. Her face was not like Kestrel’s but not very different either. As if she were Kestrel’s sister.

It wasn’t that he’d never seen a woman in battle. He’d just never killed one.

He knocked the sword from her hand.

He saw his sister’s corpse in the street. His mother’s jetting blood. His arm moved. He screamed at it to stop. Then he didn’t see anything until he saw that he’d dropped his sword. His dagger? Gone, too.

The Valorian had her dagger in her hand. There was the flash of an incredulous, vicious grin. Then she drove the heel of her boot down onto his rag-covered foot and stabbed toward his heart.

His foot seemed to explode. He reeled, then somehow managed to turn the movement into a sidestep away from the dagger’s thrust. He snatched her wrist. Forced her hand to open.

With her free hand, she punched his throat.

Arin.

Dimly, gasping, he became aware of the bright arc of her dagger coming toward him.

You’re going to get yourself killed.

He swerved away. The weapon came again, cut him. He couldn’t tell where.

In my name, you said.

You swore to serve.

Arin went low.

Are you not mine? Am I not yours?

His hand fumbled and grabbed.

To whom else would you ever belong?

Listen, my child.

My love.

Listen.

His ears were loud with silence. He saw.

Wide brown eyes. A slender body folded over his sword.