The Winner's Kiss

by Marie Rutkoski

  “I can give you a location where the emperor will be, separate from the army, with a light guard.”

  “How did you come by this information?”

  “The court.”

  Kestrel didn’t like this. It was too easy. “You still haven’t said what you want out of this bargain.”

  Risha kept her eyes on Arin. “Promise that Verex won’t be hurt. Protect him.”

  Startled, defensive, Arin said, “I don’t wish the Valorian prince any harm.”

  But Roshar’s face changed . . . and Kestrel suddenly realized why. “No,” she told him, her voice rising. “You musn’t. His death wouldn’t serve you. You should want him to inherit the empire. He’d be a friend to the east.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Roshar said. “Our queen will smash the empire to pieces if she can. Killing the emperor might win the war. Verex might become a political ally. But if he inherits Valoria, that country will always be a threat to us . . . and to you, Arin.”

  “Someone else would step into Verex’s place,” Kestrel argued. “If the prince died, the senate would elect a new emperor.”

  Arin’s gray eyes went flat. “It’d be the Valorian general.”

  Roshar shrugged. “Unless we eliminate him as well. Knock down all the principal pieces in Borderlands, and what’s left for your opponent? Surrender.”

  “You forget an important piece in this game,” Risha said. “Me.”

  Roshar’s shoulders tensed. Kestrel felt a growing disquiet.

  “Verex and I would marry,” said the princess.

  “An alliance between east and west,” Roshar said slowly.

  Kestrel sought Arin’s gaze. When he met her eyes she couldn’t read them.

  “Not so good for you, little Herrani,” Roshar told Arin. “Your peninsula would get lost in the middle.”

  The risk had always been there, even if they won the war: that Herran would be retaken by the west, or dwindle into the east. But now Kestrel saw it as if seeing the future: how a marriage between the empire and Dacra could lead to one power ruling the entire continent. Herran would vanish.

  “Decide,” Risha said, “or I leave. My information for Verex’s safety. Yes or no.”

  Arin met Kestrel’s gaze. Grim mouth, hooded eyes asking whether this was worth it.

  She thought about the emperor’s hand on her father’s shoulder.

  The key Verex had sent to the northern prison.

  A friend. A good heart.

  But Roshar wasn’t wrong.

  Kestrel knew what her father would choose, in her place. She realized that she’d come to rely on his voice in her head, that it had saved her on the battlefield. Even now, the very thought of his advice was soothing . . . even as being so soothed repulsed her.

  It didn’t matter what her father would choose. She was not her father.

  “Yes,” Kestrel said. “I agree.”

  “Then I do, too,” said Arin.

  Roshar gazed at his hands. “No one can promise anyone’s safety. Never. Much less in war.”

  “We can promise to try,” Arin told him. “And you can shield him from the Dacran queen.”

  Roshar nodded, but distractedly, with a disbelieving wince, as if someone had presented him with a portrait where his features were whole, his mutilations erased, and he had no words to express how wrong this vision of him was.

  “I overheard the senate leader say that if Valoria succeeded in seizing the beach, the emperor would move inland with a small contingent and take the Sythiah estate,” Risha said.

  “The manor there is luxurious,” Arin said, “but it has nothing strategically interesting for the emperor or the army. Vineyards. The grapes won’t even be ripe this time of year. There’s little to be gained in terms of supplies. The estate is north of the road to the city; not convenient as a base for attack.”

  Kestrel, however, knew the emperor. “But the manor is beautiful?”

  Arin lifted one shoulder. “The stained-glass windows were well known, before the war. There are rooms that seem to be made of colored light. Or so it was said. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

  “The emperor enjoys beauty.”

  Arin’s hand twitched, as if he’d meant to touch, compulsively, the scar that ran deep into his left cheek, but had stopped himself in time. It wrenched Kestrel’s heart to see him remember how he’d been attacked by the emperor’s minion, his face sliced open.

  She hadn’t been there when it happened. Still, she saw it now as if she’d been a bystander: paralyzed, robbed of sound, her throat raw. Bones like lead.

  And she saw herself in her suite in the imperial palace, dressed in red, her shoulders laced with golden wire. Kestrel had forgotten this. It came to her: the tight, gorgeous bodice. Folds of crimson samite. The emperor had selected her wedding dress. He had selected her, had cut her from the cloth of her home, then stitched her into place beside his son. He had embroidered how she’d look and who she’d become. I have chosen you, Kestrel, and will make you into every thing my son cannot be. Someone fit to take my place.

  It was difficult for Kestrel to move, as if she had indeed become a cloth doll, the stitches drawn tight. She touched Arin’s arm, felt how the muscles had hardened. “You think that he seeks only to destroy.”

  “Yes,” he muttered.

  “Beauty moves him. He destroys it only when he can’t possess it.”

  I asked myself, the emperor whispered in her ear, whether it was really possible that you might betray your country so easily, especially when it had been practically given to you.

  “He loves to shape things.” A remembered helplessness shrouded her. The prince and his sister faded in her vision, were present but unimportant. She felt strange; her blood prickled as if something were growing inside her. “Every piece in place, arranged to his satisfaction. It’s why he enjoys games. You know, don’t you, how a game with a perfect line of play becomes beautiful?”

  Yes. A growing thing. Thorny. A briar.

  Arin’s expression changed. She saw how he read her stillness. She wondered if she’d gone pale. Anxiety stole over his features. “Kestrel, can I have a word with you?”

  Outside the tent, night had come.

  He cupped her face in his hands. “You don’t look right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No. You look like a part of you has dis appeared. Like you’re not really here. Like”—his hands fell away—“you do when you’re plotting something.”

  Which was how Kestrel realized that she was plotting something. That growing briar inside her was an idea.

  “Kestrel.”

  She blinked, then noticed the hurt shape of his mouth. Arin said, “Tell me.” She started to speak. He cut through her first words. “No deceiving,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Not again. After every thing. Don’t keep me in the dark.”

  “Arin, for someone who wants me to tell him something, you’re doing an excellent job of not letting me speak.”

  “Oh.” Rubbing a forefinger and thumb into his eyes, he gave her a rueful look. “Sorry.”

  “Risha could be a trap. We’ve no proof of her true allegiance, and while I know she cares for Verex, this might only make her firmly on Valoria’s side. This story of the emperor at the Sythiah manor could be a distraction. Worse, it could lure us into an ambush. But I also believe that the emperor would leave the battlefield to stay in a luxurious manor known for its stained-glass windows. He’s let my father fight his battles for two decades. As Verex said, the emperor is here only for show. Valoria is likely to win this war—and given our loss at Lerralen, its path to seize Herran’s city is reasonably easy. Having destroyed some of their black powder helps us, but they still have the greater numbers and their tactical position is strong. Why should the emperor not quit the army camp for a feather bed and a view of the vineyards? It would be like him.”

  “Then I’ll lead a small team there. Assassinate him. Death will g
uide me.”

  “No. I have a better plan for how to win this war.”

  She told him what she had in mind, then returned to the tent to ask Roshar for his help.

  Chapter 38

  In the rosy light of morning, Arin raked a fistful of dry grass and scattered the thin yellow blades. Again.

  Kestrel, who sat near him, glanced up from what she was doing. She lifted one brow.

  So he stopped, he knew it was pure anxiety, that if he didn’t do something with his hands they’d tremble.

  Her hands were steady. She dipped a skinny paintbrush she’d made from horse hair, a twig, and twine into the small vial resting on a wide board that had become an impromptu table. A Bite and Sting set lay spread across the board, the tiles all faceup. She flipped four of them and painted their blank backs. The liquid went on clear.

  “Kestrel.”

  “Almost done.”

  “I worry the emperor won’t agree.”

  “I think he will.”

  “But the stakes—”

  “Will amuse him.”

  “He’d gamble the outcome of a war?”

  “Maybe, for the plea sure of beating me.” She laid the paintbrush on the board. “But he won’t win.” She turned a snake tile onto its face and moved it close to one that she’d painted. She studied the two blank ivory backs. They looked nearly identical, save that the painted one had a slight shine. She lightly tapped the paintbrush’s wooden end against the painted tile. It left no trace. The tile had dried.

  Arin’s stomach was a wormy knot. “This game could go badly.”

  “That’s why I’m cheating.”

  “Even with the marked tiles.”

  “It’s a good plan.”

  “Yes, but he’ll agree to play only if he believes the outcome won’t matter, even if you win. That is what will amuse him: your expectation that he’ll keep his word. He won’t.”

  “All part of the game.”

  “If anything goes wrong, he’ll hurt you.”

  Kestrel turned away from the board, saw him rake another fistful of grass. It sounded like cloth being ripped apart.

  “Not this time,” she said.

  Arin smelled smoke from Roshar’s pipe before he heard the prince approach from behind. The sun was going down. The sky looked candied.

  “Pretty,” the prince commented.

  “Storm colors. One’s coming.”

  “I was thinking . . .”

  Arin turned to glance at the prince, alert to his quiet tone. Roshar avoided his gaze, but his black eyes were large. Glassy. Arin was about to speak when Roshar cleared his throat and said, “Now is a good time to remind you how generous I am.”

  Arin refused to be distracted into a meaningless conversation where Roshar simultaneously praised and mocked himself. He knew what troubled the prince. “Give Risha time. She’ll forgive you.”

  Roshar continued as if he hadn’t heard. “The very soul of generosity. You ask for an ally in war, and lo, here I am. I dole out favors. Even to your ghost. She asks, I give. What’s more, I’ve selected five elite fighters to accompany her and my little sister to Sythiah’s manor. Truly, I’m confident that Risha would be enough to keep Kestrel safe, but I thought you’d appreciate the extra protection.”

  Arin realized where this conversation was going, and it was as if the storm he’d predicted had already arrived. “No. Wait—”

  “A small team is best for infiltrating the manor. Silently. Efficiently. No more than seven people.”

  “Eight.”

  “Sorry, Arin. You must remain with the army.”

  “You can’t compel me to stay.”

  “Am I not your commander?”

  The sky deepened. Its oranges and reds were resinous. Arin’s pulse leaped with anger.

  But this time Roshar’s voice came low. “I need you.”

  “What?” The air whooshed out of him.

  “The emperor might be in Sythiah. He might not. What we know for certain is that an entire Valorian army whose forces vastly outnumber ours will be traveling up that road with a general who will prob ably continue to fight regardless of what happens at Sythiah. Are we to bet every thing on Kestrel’s game? I say, we deal with the Valorians. I say, no retreat.”

  “You don’t need me to fight a battle.”

  Roshar tipped his head to one side, his shoulders shrugging, and opened his hands as if scattering seeds. The gesture—a Herrani one, used to indicate doubt—made Arin angrier. “You don’t,” Arin insisted. “You’d be fine without me. You’re good at war.”

  Roshar met his gaze. The green paint around the prince’s eyes was fresh, his expression sober. “You’re better.”

  He didn’t like to tell her what Roshar had asked. But he did, focused on adjusting the small lamp they’d set on the canvas tarp that covered the dirt floor of his tent. The lamp didn’t burn well. Its oil was bad. It smoked. As he talked, he tinkered with the burner, the chimney. Then Arin stopped, realizing that he was close to destroying the thing between his hands.

  Kestrel sat up in the bedroll, unbound hair spilling over her bare shoulders. It was the color of candlelight. She said, “Roshar’s right.”

  Arin struggled with his unease, didn’t know what to say, dreaded blurting out the wrong thing. Finally he settled on blunt truth. “You’re taking a big risk. I don’t want you to have to do it alone.”

  She sat in profile to him. Her hair had slid to curtain most of her face, but she shoved it back, meeting his gaze with her own firm one. “It will work.”

  He thought of the Bite and Sting tiles carefully stowed in a velvet bag. He scrubbed the heel of his hand against his scarred cheek, saw Kestrel’s quiet regard, how her expression changed the way a story does: subtle, with shifts of detail. Revealing. It calmed him a little to see her intelligence, vivid and clear.

  “I believe you,” he said. “I’ll stay with the army. But it’s strange to me that Roshar changed his mind. He was ready to retreat to the city.”

  “Seeing Risha changed him.”

  “Even so. It’s hard to know what he really wants.” Arin explained how Roshar could lay claim to Herran, and in the eyes of his people he’d only be taking what was legally his.

  Kestrel said nothing at first. Then: “It’s not like you to question someone’s friendship.”

  With a nauseated jolt, Arin thought of Cheat, who’d been his first friend after the invasion. “Maybe I should.”

  “Maybe it would make you less yourself, if you did.”

  “And you? Do you trust Roshar?”

  She considered it. “Yes.”

  Arin let out a resigned sigh. “I do, too . . . even if I shouldn’t.”

  “Let the morning keep what belongs to the morning,” Kestrel said, but as if she wasn’t paying attention to what she said. Then she blinked. Her jaw tightened. She blew out the lamp.

  He drew her to him. “What is it?” he murmured. Her heart beat against his palm.

  “It just means that you shouldn’t borrow tomorrow’s problems. Deal with today’s.”

  “But why does it upset you?”

  “It was something my father would say.” She grew smaller in Arin’s arms. “I can’t face him.”

  “You won’t have to,” he promised. This, he could do. Arin sensed his god listening. He felt the god’s assent fall on him, light and warm, like ash.

  Give him to me, said death.

  As Kestrel neared sleep, it occurred to Arin that the emotion that spread through him—delicate, and unable to be named at first, because so unfamiliar—was peace.

  He held the feeling close before it could be lost.

  Chapter 39

  The rain began the next morning and showed no signs of letting up. Mud sucked at Arin’s boots as he helped Kestrel ready her horse. The rain intensified, dropping down like little stones.

  Arin squinted up at it. “Terrible day to ride.” He hated to see her go.

  She wiped water from her fac
e, glancing over at Risha, whose head was tipped back under the rain, eyes closed. “Not for every one,” Kestrel said, “and the rain will make it less likely a Valorian scout will notice that a small band is riding from camp.”

  True. The middle distance was a gray fog. Arin raked dripping hair off his brow. He tried to be all right. His nerves sparked the way a blade does against the grinder.

  Kestrel touched his cheek. “The rain is good for us.”

  “Come here.”

  She tasted like the rain: cool and fresh and sweet. Her mouth warmed as he kissed her. He felt the way her clothes stuck to her skin. He forgot himself.

  She murmured, “I have something for you.”

  “You needn’t give me anything.”

  “It’s not a gift. It’s for you to keep safe until I return.” She placed a speckled yellow feather on his palm.

  The rain fell in a veil behind her.

  The ground oozed. Mud splattered Arin’s trousers as he helped load a supply wagon. He was worried, he kept thinking about the Bite and Sting set in Kestrel’s saddlebag, and the mud made his work sluggish. He grew frustrated.

  Oh, I don’t know, said death, slightly smug. I like the mud.

  Arin stopped what he was doing. You do?

  There was no reply other than the rain.

  Arin considered his army. He considered the general’s. A strategy slowly formed, one that released an emotion close to plea sure. It was, he realized, the promise of revenge: right at the tips of his fingers.

  In the prince’s tent, the rain loudly percussive against the canvas, Roshar studied the map marked by Arin.

  “Your people will fight better in the rain,” Arin said.

  “The rain might end by the time our army is in position.”

  “But the mud will remain. Think of that heavy Valorian armor the higher ranks wear. We wear leather. Most of them will flounder.”

  “Not on a paved road.” Roshar wasn’t challenging Arin’s strategy, just prodding it to test its solidity. “Their cavalry is superior. The general will take into account the soggy terrain on either side of the road. Armed infantry fares worse than horses in mud. They’ll try to flank us with cavalry.”