The Winner's Kiss

by Marie Rutkoski

  Arin straightened. His shoulders ached. He’d been standing in one position for too long. He sat on the wide windowsill, spine against the frame. He was aware of feeling both inside and outside. He let himself enjoy the balance of it. It cleared his head.

  What happened with Kestrel hadn’t been for nothing. He’d gotten a feel for the way her mind worked. He’d caught her weakness for a sly move. He’d seen just how much she was her father’s daughter.

  Arin wondered how many people he’d need to handle Valorian Rangers coming up the western cliffs.

  He wondered if he, too, was tempted by cunning. Maybe he was drawn as well to the biggest gamble.

  The first morning bird sang.

  The Herrani god of games had once been mortal. Arin knew the tale. She’d gambled her way into immortality, then wreaked merry havoc. The gods were not pleased. They began to lose treasured possessions—a pair of gloves that let the wearer touch colors and sounds, a ring that contained a whole other world within its circle, the god of night’s favorite cat. When she won the sun, every one lost their patience. The god of war was sent to deal with her. But nothing is ever simple between the gods, and the stories of the gods of war and games were many . . . and took certain sensual twists and turns that Arin hadn’t been allowed to hear as a child.

  Arin shut the window. He took his sword, which had been his father’s and forged with beautifully tempered steel. For almost ten years after the invasion the sword had hung on a wall in this house like a corpse on display. It felt good against his palm, and for a moment it felt as if he weren’t holding the sword but his father’s hand. Then the hilt became steel again.

  He made his way (quickly, it was almost dawn) to his stables. He saddled Javelin—Kestrel’s horse, Arin’s now. The animal was strong and smart and fast.

  Arin rode the stallion out into the gray morning. He thought that a commander of any army had better pray to both the gods of war and games. No battle is won without a good gamble.

  As the ground sped beneath Javelin’s hooves, Arin had a fleeting thought of the messenger who’d come to see him.

  Later, he decided, and spurred his horse.

  Chapter 4

  Arin slunk forward on his Belly and inched over the patchy grass. The wind shrilled in his ears. It whipped dirt into his eyes. He blinked it away, eyes streaming, and crept to the edge of the cliff. He heard soil crumble beneath his weight. It sifted down the cliffs.

  Arin’s pulse thumped hard. He imagined the lip of the cliff giving way. He’d plummet fast.

  Quickly, as he’d already done several times that day, Arin dug his elbows into the earth and pulled himself just far enough to look down the cliff. The sea was dizzyingly far below. It foamed white against the rocks.

  There were no ships.

  No Valorians climbing up the cliffs.

  Nothing.

  Arin pushed himself away from the edge, rolled onto his back, looked up at the pale sky, and then at the waiting Herrani.

  He met their eyes. He shook his head.

  Arin had ridden to Etrea, a country estate he’d helped liberate during the Firstwinter Rebellion. The people there were too far from the city and mountains to rely on aqueducts for water; they had wells. They were healthy. Maybe they weren’t born fighters, but Arin would take what he could get. He’d ridden through the village and begged for help. About twenty men and women followed him to the cliffs.

  The bare cliffs.

  The quiet ones.

  Arin looked out again over the empty water and imagined what Roshar must have thought as he’d looked for Arin in the morning light and made his way to the beach without him.

  Arin wondered if his disobedience—or would Roshar see it as cowardice?—had cost him the alliance he’d worked so hard to forge.

  But on the second day, Arin saw them.

  At first, he wasn’t sure it was really happening. He hadn’t seen the arrival of any ships—they must have dropped anchor out of sight, behind the southern edge of the cliffs that bulged out into the water at their base. Arin hadn’t seen the small launches row up to the foot of the cliffs. He only realized what they were (they looked like dark rocks below in the sea) when he saw tiny black figures against the shining white rock.

  Arin peered again through his spyglass. The sun beat against his shoulders. He tasted sweat. His stomach tightened against the stiff grass beneath him.

  Valorian Rangers were climbing up the cliffs in pairs. One held the rope at the bottom. The other, tied to the rope, moved up, setting pitons and strange pieces of gear into the rocks. The climbers clipped the rope to the gear (each looked somewhat like a horse’s stirrup) so that the rope passed through freely. Then the climbers scaled the cliff as their partners below fed out slack on the ropes.

  There weren’t many. A hundred, by Arin’s count.

  He watched the climbers reach the end of their ropes. They used their gear to anchor themselves to the cliff wall. Then they pulled up the rope, taking in the slack as their partners below began to climb the same path. When they met at the anchor, they repeated the whole process of climbing up as far as the rope’s length would let them.

  For a moment, Arin let himself imagine how they must feel. The wind screaming. Their skin dusted, lips chapped. Their fingers trembling over the rock until they found a hold. Relief when the grip was good. A jolt of fear when their toes slipped on glassy rock. Their feet cut away. They hung, arms blazing in pain. The rope held. Their feet found purchase and dug into the cliff. Hands bloody, mouths dry, they kept climbing.

  Arin pushed back from the cliff. He stopped thinking about what the Rangers felt. They had come to steal his country and kill his people. He didn’t need his god to tell him what to do.

  He had his small group of armed Herrani fall back and crouch behind nearby bushes that were stunted and twisted by high winds.

  Arin waited until the first set of climbers had hauled themselves up over the cliff’s lip. They staked themselves to the ground, then began pulling up the rope as their partners below made the final ascent.

  Once the Rangers were nailed to the ground and their hands were full, the Herrani emerged from the bushes.

  Arin was the first to fall upon them, to show the other Herrani what to do.

  A Ranger turned, brown eyes wide. He was still staked to the ground. Arin’s sword sliced the long, gathered rope in the Valorian’s hands. It zipped away, spun down over the cliff. A scream floated up from below.

  Arin cut the Ranger’s anchor and set the point of his sword to the Ranger’s sweat-shiny throat. “The blade, or the rocks below?” Arin asked in Valorian. The words sounded airless, scratched raw by the wind.

  The whites of the Valorian’s eyes showed clear around.

  After one loud heartbeat, Arin realized the Ranger was too afraid to answer. Arin made the choice for him, and stabbed.

  “I’m not talking with you,” Roshar declared as he dropped the flap of the tent’s opening in Arin’s face. Arin pushed through anyway.

  “You’re bleeding on my floor,” the prince said. “That stain will be impossible to get out.”

  Arin glanced down. The tent’s “floor” was sand. Blood was trickling from his side, darkening the sand in coin-size drops. A Valorian dagger had worked its way past Arin’s hardened leather armor, got in right at the ribs where the armor buckled. It had happened on the beach, after Arin had dealt with the Rangers and rode to meet the eastern army.

  “You were at the back, I suppose,” Roshar said, “away from all the fun. That’s what you get for being late.” Roshar pulled his sweat-drenched tunic away from his skin. “Fugh. I stink.”

  “Roshar—”

  “Will you shut up? I said I’m not talking with you. You can’t do anything right, can you?”

  “But the general—”

  “Yes, retreated. Yes, without his precious Rangers. I heard what you did. Tossed them from the cliff, eh? Very sporting of you. But you were late to my battle when I nee
ded you and I told you and whose land is this anyway that I just fought to keep?”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  The prince snorted.

  Arin, unsure what to say, fumbled with his armor buckles. The cut along his ribs stung.

  “I see that no one’s helped you out of your armor yet. Poor baby. Now, me”—Roshar gestured at himself, dressed only in tunic and trousers, arms bare and muscular and smeared with someone else’s blood—“I got out of armor as soon as the Valorians cast off from the beach, because I am a prince, and I told someone to take it off me, and people do as I say.”

  Arin said, “That’s what you want from me?”

  Roshar lowered his arms.

  “Do you really want me to do every thing you say?”

  No answer.

  “Doesn’t it matter that I was right about the cliffs?”

  Roshar winced. “Honestly, that makes it worse.”

  “I’m not going to obey you. You’re my friend, not my master.”

  Roshar looked away, his mutilated nose blunting his profile. He studied the tent’s blank canvas wall, which glowed in the sun. Roshar sighed, tugging on one cropped ear. Then he turned back and faced Arin squarely. His mouth was a long, tired line. “Here.” He jerked at Arin’s armor and began unbuckling it. “Stop bleeding. Oh, just look at you. Arin, you’re a mess.”

  “I didn’t need you anyway,” Roshar told him as they rode back to the city, having left behind several battalions to keep the beach secure. “I happen to be very good at war. It’s because I’m so handsome. Like one of your gods. People see me and their minds go blank. I run my sword right through them.”

  Arin tchicked at Javelin, urging him ahead of Roshar’s horse.

  Roshar caught up. Like most easterners, he rode without reins, guiding his horse solely through knees, heels, and the shifting of his weight. This left him free to gesture expansively as he talked. “Are you listening?” He leaned to poke Arin in the shoulder. “I’m not sure you appreciate the magnitude of having a god in your midst.”

  “Can I pray for you to go away?”

  Roshar grinned. “We took a few Valorians prisoner.”

  “Why?”

  “For information, obviously. Not much has come out of Valoria lately. Our spies have been quiet. Yours?”

  Arin hadn’t heard anything from Tensen or his Moth. He shook his head.

  “Well.” Roshar rubbed his palms together. “Let’s see what a little questioning reveals. I’m sure the prisoners will be happy to talk.”

  Arin shot him a sidelong look.

  “Arin, you injure me. Torture is the furthest thing from my mind, I assure you. People love talking to me. I promise I’ll ask my questions very, very nicely.”

  Arin held his breath underwater until his lungs ached, then broke the surface of the bath. His bathing room echoed with the sound of splashed water. Dirty lather lapped around his knees. He touched his side, and his fingers came away pink. The cut along his ribs was bleeding again. It was too shallow to stitch.

  He found himself wondering how many scars the general had. Arin’s lungs burned as if he was still holding his breath, which made him realize that he was, and that it hurt to feel such hatred and know that no scar could be enough, that the general could suffer no pain that would ever make Arin feel better.

  The general and his daughter didn’t look alike. Arin remembered how he’d hated to notice this during his first months as Kestrel’s slave. He’d wanted to see the traces of that man in her, and it had unnerved him that he couldn’t. There was something similar about the eyes . . . but hers were a much paler brown. Arin wasn’t even sure he could call them brown. Honey wasn’t brown. And the shape. Different, too. Slightly tipped up at the corners. Arin remembered making such comparisons, and how his desire to see something in her that he could hate shifted into self-disgust at far too much attention paid. Then, slowly, a curiosity to find her so different. And then came another emotion, one both softer and harder . . .

  Arin got out of the bath. He got dressed, and got out of his rooms.

  Sarsine stopped him on the stairway that ran down from the west wing. He smiled. “You look better.”

  She crossed her arms. “It’s been a week.”

  His brow crinkled. “Since what?”

  “Since that messenger came.”

  “Oh. I forgot.”

  “You’ve been busy.” Her tone was dangerously even.

  “I’ll talk with him now.”

  “You’ve been busy,” she repeated, “throwing people off cliffs.”

  “That’s an exaggeration.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “What do you want from me, Sarsine?”

  “You blamed Kestrel for changing, but you’ve changed, too.”

  His voice was hard. “This is not the same.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He turned his back on her. He jogged down the stairs, the tempo of his boots beating fast and sure.

  “I tried to get here as soon as I could,” said the messenger. He was a short man, all knobby wrists and elbows and knees. An oddly tiny nose. There were bags under his eyes. The irises were greenish, which reminded Arin of Tensen.

  They sat in the receiving room of Arin’s childhood suite. He didn’t like being there. He looked at his childhood instruments, still hung on the wall. He remembered Kestrel touching them, her fingers plucking a string. He saw the birthmark on her right hand, in the middle of the soft web between forefinger and thumb. It had been like a little black star.

  Arin should take those instruments down. He should get rid of them.

  “It happened about a month ago,” the messenger said.

  Arin’s attention snapped back to him.

  “Someone gave me something.” The man knotted his hands together. “She told me to give it to you, but I don’t have it anymore.”

  “What was it?”

  “A masker moth.”

  “What?” Arin’s voice was sharp.

  “One of those Valorian moths. The kind that change color. A prisoner gave it to me.”

  Arin’s heart picked up speed. “Who gave it to you?”

  “A Herrani woman.”

  “That’s not possible.” Tensen had told Arin that the Moth, his valued spy in the capital, was Risha. No one could mistake Risha for a Herrani. Like all easterners, her skin was brown, a much darker shade than even Arin’s, which was tanned from years in the sun.

  “I know what I saw,” the messenger said.

  “Tell me every thing.”

  “I take care of horses along the road that runs north of the Valorian capital. A prison wagon stopped. They go by sometimes. I was watering the horses while the guards were stretching their legs. The woman called to me. She was reaching through the bars, and asked me to give you the moth, but the guards saw. That’s why I don’t have the moth anymore. It got crushed. The guards were rough with me. Her, too.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see. Anyway, they drove off.”

  “That’s it?”

  The man shifted uncomfortably at Arin’s tone. “Should I not have come?”

  “No, yes.” Arin briefly squeezed his eyes shut. His pulse was going too fast. “You were right to come.”

  “I’m sorry I lost the moth.”

  “I don’t care about that. Just . . . she spoke to you in Herrani?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  The messenger gave him an odd look. “I can recognize my own language. She was mother-taught, like you and me.”

  I don’t speak Herrani, he remembered Risha saying. She’d also never said that she was the spy. Arin had taken Tensen’s word for it. “You said you couldn’t see. What couldn’t you see?”

  “I couldn’t see into the wagon. Its walls were solid. The doors, too. I saw her at the window.”

  “Describe her.”

  “I can’t.”

  Arin trie
d very hard to speak evenly. “What do you mean, you can’t? You saw her. You said so.”

  “Well, yes, but”—the man was clearly frustrated, too—“I saw only her hand.”

  “What color was her skin? Like mine? Yours?”

  “More or less. Less, I guess. Kind of pale. The color of a house slave’s.”

  Not Dacran. “ There must be something else you can tell me.” It felt increasingly difficult for Arin to sit still. “What happened to the prisoner?”

  The man rubbed his weathered neck, avoiding Arin’s gaze. “The guards hit me. My head was ringing. I couldn’t hear what they did inside the wagon. I don’t know what they said. But her voice sounded horrible.”

  “And then?”

  “The wagon drove north, toward the tundra.”

  Dangerously, Roshar said, “You believed my little sister was spying for Herran and you didn’t see fit to mention it?”

  “I’m mentioning it now.”

  “Arin, sometimes I really don’t like you.”

  “It wasn’t my secret to share. Tensen said that his in formant insisted on keeping her identity anonymous. I pressed him, he gave me a name. I admired her. Every one in this city would be dead if she hadn’t told Tensen about the poison in the aqueducts. If she wanted to be anonymous, I had to honor that.”

  “You had to honor saving your own skin, you mean. The queen and I might have felt a little differently about you if we’d known you were using our sister for information she could have been killed for obtaining.”

  “It wasn’t your sister.”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “I know, but what would you have done in my place?”

  Roshar stared moodily into the library fireplace. No fire had been lit there for months, but the smell of cinders remained. He played with his ring, a thick band that looked as though set with a dull black stone. It was unusual for an easterner to wear a ring; they liked to keep their hands free of any ornamentation. This ring, Arin knew, had a particular purpose: what appeared to be a stone was in fact a vial that contained a numbing serum. He’d never asked, but he suspected that the serum could also kill. Roshar wiggled the ring. “Arin,” he said quietly, “you’re really pushing things.”