The Winner's Kiss

by Marie Rutkoski

  He wondered if this was a normal thought.

  The sacks were now empty. He brushed his black palms. He needed to rinse. He was a walking fire hazard. A bucket of seawater was kept near the mainmast. He went to it, dunked his arms in up to his elbows, and splashed a little over his shoulders, feeling the water go down the runnel of his spine. He’d itch once the water dried to salt.

  “You look none the worse for drowning.”

  Arin straightened to see the captain leaning near the shrouds, watching him. Arin remembered the man’s expression during the storm, when Arin had hauled himself over the railing, slopped down onto the deck, and retched a bellyful of seawater.

  Arin asked, “How long until the Empty Islands?”

  “Ithrya’s near, but we must give her a wide berth. Two, three days, then, to sail south around Ithrya and up to the islands. Should the winds stay fair.”

  “Do you think they will?”

  “Ask them, why don’t you, and see if they will for you.”

  The sun was in the captain’s face. Arin couldn’t read his expression. The man’s voice could have either been mock serious, or dead serious. Arin cleared his throat. “The gunpowder should be dry by day’s end. No one’s to smoke. Even one stray spark—”

  “We’re not daft, boy.”

  Arin rubbed the nape of his neck, nodded, and thought the conversation was over. He looked out at the sea. Green and dazzling, like his mother’s emerald. He remembered the day he’d traded it away, and wished he’d kept it. He thought that every one should have one precious thing to hold with his whole heart, to know to be incontrovertibly his own. He held the emerald in his mind, felt its cool facets. He imagined placing it in the palm of a hand he knew well, and wondered if it would be accepted, and how it would feel to have someone else hold what he held with his whole heart.

  He blinked, looked away from the horizon. He was sea-dreaming. Imagining things that would hurt him later.

  Now, even.

  “There’ve been stories about you.” The captain was squinting at him. “Well before the storm.”

  It disconcerted Arin, the way people had begun to look at him. There was this shining expectation. He wasn’t sure how much of it really had to do with him. Maybe when people have nothing precious, an idea takes its place. Arin wasn’t ready to be an idea. They’re just stories, Arin wanted to say, but the words died on his lips. He knew better than to deny his god.

  It was as if the captain had heard Arin’s thoughts. “God-touched, you are.”

  Arin said nothing, yet beneath the shyness lay an undeniable plea sure.

  The ship slipped between the Empty Islands and dropped anchor to the east of one island large enough to hide the ship from view of any vessel that might come from the Valorian capital. The crew waited.

  Arin still had no shoes. His feet were too large for the few spare boots on board. He ripped rags, tied them around his feet, and walked carefully.

  He tried to go over the plan with the captain, who interrupted him with a dismissive flick of the hand. “That’s not a plan. That’s simple piracy. You needn’t teach me that.”

  Arin was taken aback. “Before the war, the Herrani were the best at sea. We gained wealth through sea trade. We weren’t pirates.”

  The captain laughed and laughed.

  The ship came. It sailed from the west. A large vessel, weighty with double gundecks.

  The cry came down from the crow’s nest aboard Arin’s ship. The crew heaved at the capstan, weighed anchor, luffed the sails, and drove toward the Valorian vessel.

  Arin’s ship was lighter, which made it faster. But it was lighter because of its single gundeck. Catching up to the Valorian vessel wasn’t the hard part. Boarding her without being blown out of the water would be. If the Valorians were surprised to see the Herrani ship move out from behind the island and ride in their wake, their surprise wouldn’t last long. They’d be ready for an attack.

  Arin went below to the gundeck. The gunports were open now, the mouths of a row of cannons yawning wide. Arin and the crew prepared them. Black powder down a cannon’s belly, a wad of cloth jammed in tight and shoved home with a rammer. The cannonball. Arin cradled it between his palms, smooth and heavy, then pushed it in. All rammed down. He primed the cannon. Hauled on the gun tackles. The sailors dragged each cannon forward until its barrel slid into the gunport and its carriage met the bulwark.

  Arin snuck a look out the port. He didn’t see the ship yet. But he prob ably wouldn’t see it until his captain brought his ship broadside to broadside, the gunports of one ship mirroring the other.

  He looked away and caught sight of the gray face of the sailor nearest him. Sweat trembled on the man’s brow. He looked ill. He didn’t look how Arin felt. Arin wished he could share what he felt: a dark greed.

  The ship slowed. They must be drawing abreast of the Valorians.

  His lungs were taut, eager. The world was made simple. Arin, who with other things had gone so badly wrong before, who had judged and misjudged and misunderstood, wouldn’t fail at this. Maybe it was his god, or maybe it was only ordinary human determination, but his need to fight felt ready and strong, like sprung steel that wanted to cut its way out of him.

  He smiled encouragingly at the sailor.

  A blast burst through the bulwark. The sailor exploded into bloody chunks. Shards of wood whizzed through the air, driving into Arin’s flung-up arm.

  “Fire,” Arin shouted. He lit his cannon, got out of the path of its recoil. It shuddered and boomed. The sailors were doing the same, and then doing as Arin did: dragging the shot cannon back, swabbing it out, stuffing it again, dragging it up against the bulwark. It went on like that for some time. It was impossible to see what damage the Herrani inflicted. Another blast ruptured a hole in the bulwark. They were high enough above the waterline not to take on the sea, and the Valorians would want to seize his ship as much as he wanted theirs, but they’d sink it if it came to that. Arin reloaded. Fired.

  Then he stepped wrong. A sharp object pierced his rag-covered foot. He glanced down at his right foot. The rags were staining red. He paused, slow now for some reason he couldn’t quite comprehend, but Arin had come to trust these moments when part of him understood something before his mind did. He reached down, dragged out a bloody bit of metal (a bent nail?), and gave it a good brief stare. An idea spread within him, curved. A malevolent sort of smile.

  He grabbed the nearest sailor. “You. Get below, find rags. Make small bags of them. Stuff them with gunpowder and anything little and sharp. Nails. Tie it all up, set a joss stick down the neck of each bag, and bring them all back here, ten at a time. Light them, throw them out the gunports. Try to get them into their gunports, when they pull their cannons back to load them. Understand? Go.”

  Then Arin looked for the sailor whose expression looked most like his own must, and told him to take charge. Arin was going to board that Valorian ship.

  Up onto the deck, into the blue and smoky black. Sword in the right hand, dagger in the left. Valorians on his ship already. Their vessel was close enough to board. Arin ducked. Sliced. His sword beat back a thrust and he drove in with his dagger, found a soft belly. Steaming liquid up to the wrist, running to the elbow.

  Arin worked his way to the railing. He heard crossbow quarrels. They didn’t touch him. His god rose within him: silent, approving. Arin leaped onto the Valorian ship. A blade came at him. He caught it with his own, parried, snaked his sword up for a thrust into the man’s arm where the leather armor joined. Dagger to the neck. Both weapons snatched back out of the flesh, the metal oily red. Body at his feet.

  He saw a package launch out of the Herrani ship’s gun hole. Then another. An explosion belowdeck trembled the boards. Another.

  Then, incredibly, over the din of cannons and screams, he heard a slight sound. He spun, and came face-to-face with a Valorian. A woman. Fair hair, dark eyes.

  He dropped his guard.

  She went for his neck
. He jerked away at the last moment, caught the sword in his left shoulder. A surge of wet, running pain.

  “No,” he said in her language. “Wait.”

  She thrust again.

  He parried her this time, his sword coming instinctively up, his good arm bending her blade back, not even pushing hard. A part of him watched this in horror, saw how easily the woman’s arm bent. She was his age. Her face was not like Kestrel’s but not very different either. As if she were Kestrel’s sister.

  It wasn’t that he’d never seen a woman in battle. He’d just never killed one.

  He knocked the sword from her hand.

  He saw his sister’s corpse in the street. His mother’s jetting blood. His arm moved. He screamed at it to stop. Then he didn’t see anything until he saw that he’d dropped his sword. His dagger? Gone, too.

  The Valorian had her dagger in her hand. There was the flash of an incredulous, vicious grin. Then she drove the heel of her boot down onto his rag-covered foot and stabbed toward his heart.

  His foot seemed to explode. He reeled, then somehow managed to turn the movement into a sidestep away from the dagger’s thrust. He snatched her wrist. Forced her hand to open.

  With her free hand, she punched his throat.

  Arin.

  Dimly, gasping, he became aware of the bright arc of her dagger coming toward him.

  You’re going to get yourself killed.

  He swerved away. The weapon came again, cut him. He couldn’t tell where.

  In my name, you said.

  You swore to serve.

  Arin went low.

  Are you not mine? Am I not yours?

  His hand fumbled and grabbed.

  To whom else would you ever belong?

  Listen, my child.

  My love.

  Listen.

  His ears were loud with silence. He saw.

  Wide brown eyes. A slender body folded over his sword.

  Which was in his hand.

  The bloody dagger fell from hers.

  Afterward, the captain directed the plunder of the ship. It was well stocked with food—and, more important, black powder.

  The captain was pleased. He called Arin’s little explosive bags a gods-given stroke of brilliance. They’d surprised the Valorian gunners, who took nails in the flesh and couldn’t see through the smoke. “Very nasty, very nice.”

  Arin said nothing.

  The captain studied him, lingering over the bloodier parts. “You’ll heal fine.” He squinted down at Arin’s feet. “You need boots.”

  Arin shrugged. He realized that he didn’t dare speak. He felt hollow, horrified at what he’d done even though he would have been killed if he hadn’t, and it shouldn’t have made a difference whether a Valorian he fought was a man or a woman. If he’d been asked before this whether both men and women had the right to war, he would have said yes. If asked whether men and women were equal, he would’ve said yes. Should they be treated the same? Yes. By that logic, no mercy to men meant no mercy to women. But Arin didn’t feel logical. He disgusted himself.

  She’d been fierce, determined. Kestrel would have been like that.

  Fear opened wide inside him, funnel-shaped, draining away every thing else.

  Her father had wanted the life of a soldier for her. She’d nearly agreed. He imagined her at war. His throat tightened.

  “Here.” The captain had come back. Arin hadn’t noticed him leave. The man held out a pair of boots. “Try these.”

  No need to ask where they’d come from. Bodies were all over both ships. The captain surveyed the scene. “This is good work. If we keep at it, their general won’t have an easy time attacking the mainland. Soldiers can’t fight if they can’t eat.”

  What would happen if Valorians landed on the peninsula? If they pushed, unchecked, to the city? His cousin. His friends.

  And what of Kestrel? Escaped prisoner. Traitor to her people. Would her father spare her? Arin couldn’t even ask himself the question. That question would lead to other questions, and a worming sort of knowledge reminded Arin that the general hadn’t acted to save his daughter from prison, which meant that either he didn’t know she was there, or he knew and didn’t care, or . . .

  No. Arin had sworn to himself not to try to guess what Kestrel couldn’t recall.

  But he was sick, he was sore.

  He was certain that the general would have no mercy.

  So there was no room for Arin’s mercy.

  Arin put on the boots.

  They’d seized another ship and anchored it off the eastern shore of an island, as they had with the first, when Xash arrived. He sailed up alongside Arin’s ship and boarded. “I’m taking over,” he told Arin. “Return to the city.”

  This was unexpected. Possibilities teemed in Arin’s mind, and he didn’t like any of them.

  “My queen has arrived in your city,” Xash told him. “She wants you.”

  Chapter 16

  It was now clear why Roshar had stayed in the city. He’d been waiting for his sister.

  The queen wasn’t what Kestrel had expected. She’d imagined someone older, but this woman looked no older than Roshar.

  Kestrel had gone down to the harbor with the rest of the house hold, as surprised and curious as the others. The crowd had eyed her from the moment she slipped in among them. She didn’t know what stories had been told about her, but what ever they were, they made the Herrani and Dacran strangers look at her with fascination, but leave her alone.

  Roshar’s gaze had cut her way when he’d ridden past her into the city. Kestrel didn’t recognize what his expression meant. She saw a flash of discomfort, then his face had shuttered and he’d ridden on.

  He was all ease now, on the pier at his sister’s side. Kestrel watched him offer pleasantries she couldn’t hear and wouldn’t understand if she did. She’d never learned the eastern language.

  Her father had wanted her to learn. She remembered this. She didn’t like the queasy feeling remembering gave her.

  He had pressured her. She had refused.

  It’s dangerous not to know the language of your enemy, he’d said. When you go to war—

  I won’t go to war.

  The words throbbed in her brain.

  Kestrel felt Arin’s absence. She wondered what he would make of this woman on the pier. But then Kestrel reminded herself that Arin knew the queen already, must know her well, quite well, if he’d been able to persuade her to take his side in war.

  The queen (her name was Inishanaway, Kestrel heard someone in the crowd murmur) listened as her brother spoke. Her face was so still that it was easy to see its magnetic quality. A deep sort of mouth, ears so small that they looked like ornamentation, the nose softly shaped. Yes, beautiful, Kestrel decided, yet she didn’t understand why that thought dug hard into some vulnerable place.

  Kestrel wanted her horse. She wished she hadn’t tethered Javelin in the marketplace and continued to the harbor on foot. She wanted to ride away. Now.

  Foolish. If she felt dingy and small, it was her own fault for comparing herself where no comparisons could be made. She’d seen a mirror.

  As she tried to understand it—this compulsion to compare—she began to realize slowly that the queen’s features were familiar. It wasn’t because they resembled Roshar’s, though they did.

  A little sister. Kestrel had known her at court. Risha, the eastern princess, the youngest child of the three, beloved of the Valorian crown prince . . . who had been engaged to Kestrel.

  Kestrel felt dizzy under the lemon-yellow sun. A sour taste in her mouth. Her father had been pleased, she remembered. He had hoped for Kestrel to marry Prince Verex, had hoped for it even when they were babies. His daughter: an empress.

  She told herself that now she understood her fascination with the queen. It had been the familiarity, which Kestrel had needed to place. Or maybe it had been discomfort, to be powerless and behold someone with great power.

  Maybe. But she
still couldn’t explain the rotten ooze in her heart.

  Kestrel saw Roshar’s gaze touch upon her, and dwell. He said something only the queen could hear. The woman’s eyes went to Kestrel.

  Roshar murmured in his sister’s ear, his smile as light as a little knife.

  There was an obvious reason for the way the queen looked at her: Kestrel was Valorian. She was to be questioned, doubted. Picked apart. Kestrel felt the dissecting gaze. She had a sudden image of herself as her namesake: a small hunting hawk, feathers plucked, wings lifted, spread back, pinioned.

  Kestrel crossed her arms over her chest. The sun was hot. She was thirsty, throat dry. She stared right back at the woman and understood that the way the queen looked at her wasn’t because Kestrel was Valorian, or her father’s daughter. It was because of a secret Kestrel didn’t know, and wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  “Ah, Kestrel. I hoped to find you here.”

  She looked up from currying her horse and glanced over Roshar’s shoulder, but no one lingered behind him. They were alone in the stables. She blew a wisp of hair out of her eyes and kept at her task.

  “I have a favor to beg,” he said.

  “No need to speak so prettily, princeling.”

  “My sister . . .”

  Kestrel felt it again: a sore wariness. Something was coming. Something sure to hurt.

  “. . . I had thought she’d reside in the palace of the former governor. However, it seems to not quite meet her standards.”

  “It’s grander than anything else in the city.”

  “She likes this home.”

  Kestrel stopped brushing Javelin’s coat. “What does that have to do with me?”

  Roshar coughed, clearly uncomfortable. “Your suite.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s the only set of rooms suitable.”

  “I see.”

  “Would you mind?”

  With a flash of feeling, she said, “This is Arin’s home.”

  Roshar muttered in his language.

  “What did you say?”

  He met her eyes. “I said, ‘Yes, precisely.’ ”