The Winner's Crime(85)

“Tell me, Arin, the solution to this tempting conundrum. If you had a child assassin with lovely, innocent eyes, a princess your enemy was sure to snatch up if given the chance, what would you do? Would an idea cook in the heat of your mind? Maybe your older sister is the cunning one. She’ll tell you the way to topple the empire. You: middle child, only boy, what do you do? You explain things to your little sister. You ride with her into enemy territory. You pretend to be her servant. You make yourselves noticed. You are conspicuous. And when you’re captured, you let her go.” Roshar’s expression grew embittered, sly. “And then you wait. You wait, your queen waits, to see if Risha will put a knife in the emperor’s neck.”

It made unexpected sense to Arin. It explained Risha’s claim that she belonged in the palace. It explained her haunted look. But … “She was captured years ago. What is she waiting for?”

“Revenge, maybe, on a brother and sister who used her. After the first year, we thought that she was waiting for the right opportunity to kill the emperor. More years passed. Now … we think she’s become Valorian. Maybe that’s what happens after someone grows up and understands that she was betrayed by her own family.”

“You shouldn’t have told me this. Why did you tell me this?”

“Because I know that what I said about that dagger isn’t true. I knew, that day when they cut my face in your country, that you would never sell yourself. I could see it. You would never sell what’s dear to you. Look at you, Arin. You’re made of so many splendid, stupid limits.”

Arin saw, in his mind’s eye, the burning gloves, their curling fingers. He smelled that acrid reek. He remembered the Moth’s coded news. “I don’t think Risha is the empire’s friend.”

In his memory, flames shriveled the knots’ message: Have you secured the eastern alliance?

Roshar’s eyes were starving for news of his sister. Arin’s people were starving, having run through the hearthnut harvest more quickly than thought. And Arin was starving as he remembered how the gloves had burned. He was hungry. He was hungry for this: to put his trust where it belonged.

He drew Roshar’s attention to the long metal barrel on the worktable. “Let me tell you what this will do.”

*

It took time to complete the parts of the miniature cannon. There was a chamber at one closed end for a paper twist of black powder, which rested on an internal pan behind where one placed the little metal ball. Arin cut a short, stiff fuse. He inserted it into the black powder twist.

He knew how to work leather from his time in the Valorian general’s stables. He wrestled with stiff stuff used for saddles, making a packed leather handle for the end where the barrel would be lifted, leveled, and loaded with explosive. When Arin slid the barrel’s end into the slim, hard leather box, he thought, oddly, of his family gardener. Long before the Herran War, the gardener had bred trees in the orchard, inserting a slip of one tree into the thick stock of another.

Arin attached his strange stock to the fitted barrel. He set steel pins through punctured holes in the stock and then soldered them to the barrel. Last, he cut a long strip of leather and fashioned a strap. This weapon was meant to be carried.

Arin slung it over his shoulder like he would a Dacran crossbow. Then he summoned the queen and her brother.

*

They cleared the castle yard outside the forge. Just before Arin fitted the black powder twist and metal ball into their chamber, he had a vision of the whole device exploding in his hands and taking his head with it. He’d used black powder before. He’d felt a cannon’s burst. He’d heard it: that single, booming heartbeat of the god of war. But it wasn’t fear that he felt when he lit the fuse and set the stock against his shoulder. It was hunger.

The fuse burned.

The weapon cracked the air. It slammed into Arin’s shoulder, punched the breath out of him. It seared his palm. He almost dropped it.

There was a brutalized silence. Shock had changed Roshar’s and the queen’s faces. A wisp of smoke trailed from the broad, blessedly big kitchen door. Arin’s aim had been terrible. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was the little lead ball, buried deep in the door. What mattered was the queen pacing the yard to stand tiptoe before the door. She touched the smoking hole.

Yes. He willed her to say it. As Arin found his breath again, his mind didn’t think words like alliance or trust or even something more. Just yes. Later, he would consider the weapon fully. Later, he would shrink from what he’d done. But now there was only no or yes, and he’d had to choose. He’d had to find what would give him the word he wanted.

“That,” Roshar said. “That against the empire.”

“Think about how much black powder it takes to fire a cannon,” Arin said. “The Valorians don’t care. They have a lot of it. We don’t, but we won’t need much with this, and it can go anywhere. Let them drag their heavy cannon. Let them waste horses and soldiers maneuvering artillery into position. I know”—Arin shook his head—“the device isn’t precise. Not yet. I can make it precise.”

Roshar and the queen still stared at him.

“Come with me,” Arin said. “I want to show you something else.”

He led them into the forge, which was hot from the vat of molten metal Arin had prepared. Arin unslung the weapon. He strode toward the vat. There was a choking gasp from the queen as she realized what he was about to do. He dropped the weapon into the vat.