The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(57)

“I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Even better. Makes it seem more authentic. Convenient, you understand, when sending people to their deaths.”

Arin looked at his stolen Valorian boots and felt the fire’s heat in his cheeks.

“Too late to have qualms about death and dying and killing,” Roshar said. “You’re in it. Some people were born to be in it.”

Arin wondered if that’s why Kestrel hadn’t come: because she could smell death on him.

Roshar said, “You’ll do well.”

“I know.”

Roshar crossed a leg over one bent knee, sat up slightly to knock spent ash out of his pipe by rapping it against a boot, then eased back against his bedroll. “I smell rain.”

“Hmm.”

“The leaves of the trees are cupped for it.”

“You can’t see that in this dark.”

“I see it in my mind.” The smoke from his pipe lingered. He folded his arms across his chest. His body looked close to sleep. “Arin.”

Arin, who was sitting with his forearms propped on bent knees, fingers loose, felt nowhere near sleep. “Yes?”

“How do I look in the dark?”

Startled, Arin glanced at him. The question had had no edges. It wasn’t sleek, either. Its soft, uncertain shape suggested that Roshar truly wanted to know. In the fired red shadows, his limbs looked lax and his mutilated face met Arin’s squarely. The heavy feeling that Arin carried—that specific sadness, nestled just below his collar bone, like a pendant—lessened. He said, “Like my friend.”

Roshar didn’t smile. When he spoke, his voice matched his expression, which was rare for him. Rarer still: his tone. Quiet and true. “You do, too.”

Alone in his tent, Arin must have fallen asleep at some point. He woke expecting Kestrel to be beside him. Her presence seemed clear and real, as real as when she’d stood before him in his rooms. That thin shift. The sear of her hot skin. I want to remember you.

Go back to sleep, he told himself. You can’t hold her to any promise.

He curled onto his side. There was a clap of thunder. The sky opened. Rain pattered the canvas, and grew loud.

It didn’t let up. Water streamed down the horses as they walked. After noon looked no different from morning, which hadn’t looked a lot different from night. Every thing was a muddled gray. Arin was soaked to the skin. Rain ran off his nose.

Progress was slow. Arin fell back to the middle lines and stopped to help shoulder a wagon wheel out of a slick rut between split paving stones. He’d just mounted his horse again when he realized that a halt must have been called. Every one stayed where they were.

He rode up through the ranks to Roshar. “What is it?” he asked the prince.

“A parting of ways.” Roshar nodded at the road ahead, and he pulled a waxed map from a tube in his saddlebags. Arin took a roughly woven blanket from his and sidled his horse along Roshar’s, reaching the blanket over him and the prince as a shield to keep the worst of the rain off the map.

The road would soon fork. West lay Lerralen.

“I’m going to listen to your advice,” Roshar said. “We split. Most to the west. Some south. Lay your bet, Arin. It’s your country. Where will the action be?”

Arin studied the map, worrying his lower lip between his teeth.

Mmm, said death. Those estates look nice.

A few unwalled villages stood near them. The estates were far enough south that it’d be easy for the general to run his supplies from Ithrya onto the mainland.

“One of these,” Arin said, rain dripping from his mouth. It felt like he was spitting. “If the general gains a foothold there he can strengthen his position, take almost every thing he needs from the estates, except black powder. He could creep up, spread out, form flanks to the east and west. Scoop us up. Push to the city.”

Roshar rolled and stowed the map. Arin lowered the blanket, which was soaked. He’d have a wet night.

Roshar looked up into the rain, blinking. “Almost feels like home.” He squinted at Arin. “Do you want to go with Xash to Lerralen?”

Arin shook his head.

“That’s what I thought.”

The army divided. Arin rode south with Roshar.

Near dusk the rain stopped, but it had been falling so long that Arin seemed to still see it dribbling across his vision.

The diminished army set up camp for the night, swearing at the mud, the mood miserable. Arin’s tent had stayed mostly dry in its tarp. A change of clothes, too, buried at the bottom of a saddlebag. Every thing else was damp. He unbuckled his leather armor, which shed water and smelled like a soggy cow. Shrugged off his tunic. Had nothing to hang it with. He draped it to dry on a low-hanging branch of a nearby tree, then sighed when a breeze showered droplets down from high leaves.

Every one wanted a fire, but the wood in the forest along the road was wet. Nothing would burn. Arin resigned himself to the damp. He pitched his tent, peeled a broad strip of thick bark off a tree (the unexposed side was dry), and sat on it rather than the mud outside his tent while he used his one dry shirt to wipe rain off anything metal so that it wouldn’t rust: his sword, dagger, shield, armor buckles, the horse tack.

It felt nothing like summer. Arin was chilled, the skin along his back unpleasantly tight. A lock of wet hair flopped down along his cheek. He shuddered, brushed it away, and kept polishing with the shirt, rubbing at the bit and buckles on the bridle and girth. He warmed a little from the activity.