The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(78)

They split their forces once more. A contingent was sent to Errilith’s manor to make it look ready for a siege. If Kestrel’s father trusted the coded note, he’d run scouts ahead to gather information on the manor.

Roshar sent most of the supply wagons there. All of their cannons, too: a risk.

“Fast and light.” He spoke as if this were an entertaining choice and not a dangerous necessity to leave their main artillery behind. But stealth was necessary (as much as a small army could be stealthy). Speed was important, too, and the terrain was bad for hauling anything. They’d need to work their way south through the forest and up to the hills overlooking the main road.

“I’m worried about the trees,” Kestrel said to Roshar at the end of the first day of their move south. Irrielle birds hunted overhead, swirling into a black fingerprint against the violet sky. Kestrel flicked a playing card to the grass. A rabbit was roasting on a spit over the nearby fire, its skin a crackled brown. Arin slid a knife into it, separating the flesh. Too pink. He added sticks of resinous sirrin wood to the fire. They caught instantly, blazing blue.

“Worried, how?” Roshar glanced at his cards and groaned.

But Arin, who’d been watching their game without taking part, had already guessed what Kestrel was thinking. “We need the trees for cover,” he said, “but they’ll make it hard to use the guns. We won’t have much hope of hitting targets on the road below.”

“Better cut them down.” Roshar took his turn. “The wood’s undergrowth might be enough to screen us if we lie low.”

Kestrel clicked her teeth; an eastern, irritated sort of sound.

“You learned that from me,” the prince said, pleased. “Now tell the truth. Did you mark the cards?”

Coolly, she said, “I never cheat.”

“We can’t cut the trees down,” Arin said.

“Concentrate,” Kestrel told the prince, sweeping up the card he’d tossed down.

“To be clear, I’m letting you win. I let you win all the time.”

“Obviously we can’t cut them down,” she said. “My father will notice a sudden swath of felled trees. We might as well paint a sign telling him we’re there.”

“Or . . .” Arin said.

She glanced at him. “What are you thinking?”

“How much rope do we have?”

“Two hundred and twelve lengths.”

Roshar said, “You’ve been going over our supplies?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Could you rattle off the units by heart?”

“Yes.”

“How many sacks of grain for horses?”

“Sixty-two. Play your card. You might as well. You’re going to lose regardless.”

“Attempts to distract her usually don’t work,” Arin told him.

“You play the winner, then,” Roshar said, “so that I may observe your technique.”

Arin checked the rabbit again, pulled it off the fire. “No.”

A surprised disappointment twitched, insect-like, inside Kestrel’s chest.

Roshar said, “Why not?”

Arin sliced meat off the bone onto a tin plate.

Kestrel, who wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to hear Arin’s answer, said, “Why do you want rope?”

“Let Arin surprise us,” Roshar said. “That’s how we do things. He comes up with something brilliant and I take the credit.”

“Tell me,” Kestrel said.

Arin set down the plate. “I won’t play you because even when I win, I lose. It’s never been just a game between us.”

Roshar, who was stretched out on his side on the grass, elbow crooked, cheek pillowed on his palm, raised his brows at Kestrel.

“I meant about the rope,” she muttered.

Roshar’s gaze slid between her and Arin. “Yes, the rope. Why don’t we talk about that after all, shall we?”



They were in position. Kestrel waited with the gunners behind a thin layer of trees bordering a hill that overlooked the road. A breeze flipped the leaves. Trees creaked. The gunners, mostly Herrani, nervously looked up at Arin’s project.

It had taken nearly all the soldiers the better part of the day, using two-handed saws from the supply wagon. Axes, too. And, of course, the rope.

Arin had tied each tree trunk and staked the rope deep down into the forest floor. Each tree was unique, its height and width and lean calling for a different network of ropes, set at different angles. After the trees had been tied into place, soldiers sawed them at their base—though not quite all the way through.

“When the Valorians come,” Arin had said, “cut the ropes.”

“You want to kill me,” Roshar had said. “Embarrassingly. A prince meets his end in battle. He doesn’t get squashed by a falling tree. I bet you tied those things all wrong.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Arin’s mouth. The air was gritty with sawdust. “After every thing,” he told Kestrel, “I wouldn’t let you be harmed by a tree.”

“Me,” Roshar said pointedly. “You mean me.”

But Arin had already gone. Soon after, Roshar left in the opposite direction.

The plan was an ambush.

“What formation would the general use,” Roshar had asked her, “for a march along a road of that width?”