The Winner's Crime(84)

When they broke again, he almost didn’t mind. He would make more. One day, they would be right.

*

Arin had told the queen and her brother not to enter the forge. Roshar did anyway, his arm still heavily bandaged, the little tiger padding behind him.

“I think”—Roshar surveyed the disarray—“that you should have taken that dagger and been happy with it.”

Arin handed him a list. “Supplies.”

“My, how the lowly have risen. I’m not your messenger boy.” He read the list. “What do you want that for? What are you making?”

“Your queen’s something more.”

Roshar laughed. “She asked you for ‘something more’? I doubt that this”—he flourished the list at Arin’s latest disaster—“was what she had in mind.”

The tiger nipped Arin’s ankle. He gently nudged its face away. “Roshar, why are you here?”

“I’ve named the cub. I named him after you.”

“Roshar.”

“When Arin grows up, you’ll be sentenced to death by tiger in the Dacran arena. Arin will eat you alive.”

Arin looked at Roshar’s feral grin, and at the soft, mazed face of the tiger. The fire caught its eyes.

Roshar said, “I came to tell you that we burned the plains yesterday.”

Arin glanced up. The green paint that lined Roshar’s eyes made them look narrower, bright. Roshar’s smile changed. It dug in deep. “Casualties?” Arin asked.

“Many.”

“Good.”

“Not quite good enough for you, I’m afraid. You gave sound advice, I admit, but that won’t buy your alliance. I don’t see how this will either.” Roshar looked contemptuously at the items littering the forge’s worktable.

Arin was tempted to explain his idea. “Do you remember the weapons in Risha’s dollhouse?”

Roshar’s expression closed. “Do you remember that seal on your pretty dagger? That knife is a lady’s weapon. Don’t think we don’t know whose.” He shoved at a broken mold. Ceramic dust scraped across the table. Yet Roshar saved the real damage for what he said before leaving, the tiger at his heels. “Don’t wonder, Arin, why we won’t ally with you.”

*

Another article of clothing arrived for Arin. A pair of trimmed gloves. Tensen’s woven code told him that the Moth had uncovered a connection between the water engineer and the emperor’s physician. Sarsine reported that conditions in Herran had worsened. Had Arin secured an eastern alliance? the knots asked. He should return home.

Tensen, despite Arin’s insistence that Kestrel have no colored thread, managed to work her in anyway. Firstsummer had almost arrived, Tensen said. She was a glowing bride. Be happy for her, Arin, said a knotted line as bumpy as a badly healed scar.

But Tensen didn’t know what Arin knew. Tensen didn’t know how cynically Kestrel had sold herself to the person with the most power. He hadn’t seen her face above the sticky tavern table when she admitted her role in the murder of so many people.

Arin threw the gloves in the forge’s fire. They smelled like burning flesh.

Kestrel would never have his happiness.

*

Roshar came again some days later. “It looks like a big, metal reed.” He poked at the cooled object resting on one half of the opened mold. “I think I know what you’re doing, Arin. I think it won’t work.”

“I told you to stay away.”

“And didn’t I? Notice that this time I didn’t bring the tiger with me. Arin makes you nervous. As you see, I am attentive to your every wish, spoken or otherwise.”

“Then leave.”

“How did you ever survive, little slave, with that mouth of yours? Did you pray to your god of luck?” Roshar studied him, his gaze lingering on the left half of Arin’s face. The scar seemed to prickle under Roshar’s scrutiny. “You are luckier than I.”

Roshar was right, Arin shouldn’t have survived, not with his great skill for saying what he shouldn’t. Arin said, “Were you with Risha when she was taken?”

“No.” But it sounded like “yes.”

“Was that when you were enslaved?”

“I will kill you.”

“Why do you come here, if it’s not because I’ll say what no one else will?”

“What I want,” Roshar said, “is for you to accuse me. That is what no one else will do. Not my people, who think I’m the victim. And never, ever the queen.”

“Accuse you of what? Escaping when your sister didn’t? Surviving?” Gently, Arin said, “If that’s your crime, it’s mine, too.”

“Did you sell your sister?”

Arin recoiled. “What?”

“When the Valorians came for your country, did you trade her for something better? That’s what we did with Risha. Our little girl. So gifted, even that young, with a blade. No river reed dolls for her. No, her bedroom was a fencing salle. Her toy box was an armory. Our older sister saw it. She knew what to do.

“We’re twins, the queen and I. Did you know that? No? Well, if you cut off her nose and ears you’ll find that we look very much alike. But oh, the key difference of four minutes. She was born before me. She got the country. Not that I wanted it. I didn’t know what I wanted. But this is what I was: expendable.