The Winner's Kiss (17 page)

“Kestrel?”

It
was one thing to perfect a weapon that would kill her people. It was another to discover that she hadn't considered her father, had never even thought about his role in this war, though she'd had enough information to guess it without being told.

She realized she didn't regret perfecting the weapon. Part of her
wanted
her father to be a target. Her own father. What kind of person was she?

Abruptly, Roshar said, “I don't remember how I used to look.”

It took her a moment to absorb what he had said.

“When I look in a mirror, this is all I see,” he told her. “There's no memory of what I was before.”

The scent of ilea fruit was heady. She forgot her father. She did not want to remember him. Bringing her gaze up again to Roshar's face, she met his lovely, untouched eyes. And saw the satiny brown skin of his cheek. She asked, “Do you miss who you were?”

At first, she thought his reply would be mocking. Yet he simply shrugged and spoke in a voice that was light yet thin. “Oh, what's the use of missing?” He squinted one eye and, apparently aware of how the mood had changed between them, he said, “You're good with a blade.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “I never was.”

“I said
good
, not divinely talented. You've got an ease that comes from training for a long time.”

“Is that what you see, or what you know about me from before?”

“
What I see. I didn't know you before.”

Kestrel watched him smile yet again, softly this time. She waded into the sheer relief of being with someone who knew her only as she was now.

The piano and the horse were hers in an uncomplicated way.

They didn't talk, which helped. It wasn't that they expected nothing from her. Even the piano seemed expectant, each key ready for the strike. Javelin chewed her loose sleeve and slobbered and shamelessly leaned in for her caress. Yet both the horse and the piano knew her and didn't care how she compared with her former self. They were hers. She was theirs. There were no questions.

She saddled Javelin. It wasn't easy. But if she lifted the saddle to his back every day then a day would come when her weak arms were strong. She tightened the girth. An irrielle bird hopped in through the open stable doors, pecking at the dirt. It cocked its head, watched Kestrel with tiny green eyes. Tipped its long, narrow tail. She got a mounting block, which she thought she prob ably hadn't used since she was a child, and set her foot in the horse's stirrup. The stallion was enormously tall. Mountainous, really. A warhorse. He shouldn't suit her, but he did.

She pulled herself up clumsily, but the horse didn't seem to mind. The bird launched itself back out into the unclouded sky, dipping and weaving. Irrielles don't fly straight.

Kestrel took the reins and spurred the horse to follow the bird.

She
rode away from the house, taking a path that led to another path. She didn't recognize it. It wasn't long until she was surrounded by trees in full leaf. The path stretched out into a green tunnel. She rode for some time. She saw a day owl with her owlets. There was little wind. It wasn't too hot. Good weather for war.

She'd heard enough of the conversation between Arin and Roshar a few days earlier. They were biding their time here. If she were them, she wouldn't stay long.

Her stomach swayed. It matched the horse's movement. She loosened the reins, letting Javelin go as he pleased.

But she found that he was surging forward, hooves clopping. Arin's house lay far behind. The path forked. The horse went left. He was stepping surely. He was, she realized, going somewhere he recognized and she didn't.

She jerked his head around and ground him to a halt. He snorted, hooves shifting.

Kestrel was sweating. Her dress stuck to her skin. She made Javelin go back the way they'd come—fast, then faster, his hooves beating the rhythm of her terrified heart.

She somehow wasn't surprised to find Arin waiting alongside a stream close to his house, but she was surprised that she was grateful. Her heart still stammered inside her chest.

Arin had no horse, though a bit of stable straw stuck to the sole of a boot. He was crouched by the water, fingertips sunk only past the first knuckles. Barely in the water at all. Just feeling the slight current, she thought. He hadn't glanced
over
his shoulder. Still, he was aware that she was there. He listened to the slowing thump of Javelin's hooves. Arin's hair hung in his eyes.

She had wanted to sweep it aside. She remembered this. It had been on the first day. When she had bought him. She had wanted to see him clearly.

She stopped her horse.

Arin straightened, water dripping from his hand. He came close, put his fingers into Javelin's mane, and met her eyes. She was held in the palm of that memory: curiosity, hesitation, a sense of wrong, a violation. Yet still the compulsion to
see
. This person. She remembered his rigid shoulders, hard mouth. He had avoided her gaze. His whole body: a silent snarl.

He wasn't like that now. He looked up at her, his expression was unguarded, growing worried. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” Javelin shifted beneath her.

Arin frowned. “Do I frighten you?”

“No.”

“Your face is bloodless.” He touched her hand. She saw that she was clenching the reins and let them slacken.

“It's not because of you,” she said. Then, because she had decided to be honest, she said, “Yes, you, a little.” She stopped, confused, unable to explain to him or herself the difference between the fear that had sent her tearing back down the horse path and the bright stitch of nervousness that traveled up her skin now as she looked down at him. “In the woods, Javelin wanted to take a path. I didn't. It upset me.”

His
eyes went crystalline. “Where was this?”

“Is there something dangerous in the woods?”

He grabbed the pommel and mounted the horse behind her. “Show me.”

She kept the reins. He drew his sword. It was a different sword than the one he'd had on the tundra. She thought about that, which kept her from thinking about how dread mounted in her throat as they rode, how her breath was again too fast. The damp dress still clung to her, and as she strained to be alert to every thing around them, each little life that moved in the woods, it was hard not to be aware of him, too.

But there was no telltale snap of a twig. No enemy shadow in the trees. Kestrel almost wished there were. It would explain the terror that had seized her . . . and seized her again as they stopped at the fork in the path. The stallion stamped.

Arin sheathed his blade.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It's the way to your house.” She felt his voice travel up her back. There was a long pause. “We could go.”

“No.”

“Nothing's there. It's empty. I'd be with you.”

“I don't want to.”

He took the reins from her frozen hands. He turned back Javelin, who showed more reluctance this time. Arin kept the pace slow, at a walk.

They were silent as they rode. Then Kestrel heard herself say, voice low, “I feel foolish.”

“
No, Kestrel, you're not.”

“There was no reason to be afraid.”

“Maybe we just don't know what your reason is.”

Javelin, whose ears flicked crankily to have been thwarted twice in his plans to take the fork in the road, whuffed and shook his head. “Shh,” Arin told the horse, and hummed a few low notes. Then he stopped and was quiet before saying, “Even if you had no reason at all, fear isn't foolish. I get frightened, too.”

She remembered how he'd held his sword earlier. “You thought there were Valorians in the woods. You weren't frightened then.”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what are you afraid of?”

“Spiders,” he said gravely.

She elbowed him.

“Ow.”

She snorted. “Spiders.”

“Or those things with a thousand legs.” He shuddered. “Gods.”

She laughed.

Quietly, he said, “I was afraid when I came to the stable and saw that Javelin wasn't in his stall.”

Startled, she turned her head, catching a glimpse of the line of his jaw and the shadows of his throat. She returned her gaze to the road. Lightly, she said, “Worse than spiders?”

“Ah, much worse.”

“If I ran away, I wouldn't get very far.”

“
In my experience, it's a very bad idea to underestimate you.”

“But you didn't try to ride me down.”

“No.”

“You wanted to.”

“Yes.”

“What stopped you?”

“Fear,” he said, “of what it would mean for me not to trust you. I saddled a horse. I was ready to ride . . . but I thought that if I did, I'd be nothing more than a different kind of prison to you.”

His words made her feel strange.

He changed his tone. There was mischief in it now. “Also, you're a little intimidating.”

“I am not.”

“Oh, yes. I didn't think you'd appreciate being followed. I've seen what happens to people who get on your bad side. And now you know my weakness, and will drop spiders down the back of my shirt if I cross you, and I'll have a hard life indeed.”

“Hmph,” she said, but she had calmed. Her bones didn't feel so jammed up against each other in tensed certainty of a blow about to fall. There was the day. It was green and blue and gold. There was the powerful slow horse. His steady step. A murmur in the trees. Branch and twig. Arms on either side of her. Roots buckling up and disappearing back into the ground.

Words clogged in her throat. But there was a soft feeling in her chest, a warmth that gave her courage to speak.
“
You said that we don't know the reason I stopped Javelin from taking the path to my house. What do you
think
is the reason?”

He hesitated. Finally, he said, “I have no thoughts.”

“You
always
have thoughts.”

She felt some quality of surprise in him. He'd been surprised by the familiarity of her tone.

“Tell me,” she said.

“I'm thinking that I don't want to assume anything. It's—” He broke off. “Dangerous for me. Where you're concerned.”

As they neared his home, they had an easy rhythm in the saddle. He rode one-handed now. She was a bit sorry for Javelin, who had to bear both their weights. She'd make it up to him. She knew where the carrots were kept.

But eventually her mental list of which treat to offer and which curry brush to use came to an end. She was left with images that wouldn't go away.

The fork in the path. Arin by the creek. That brief memory of the first time she'd ever seen him. His refusal to look up. His face bruised, armored by hatred.

She said, “Was I horrible to you when you worked for me?”

“No.”

“Did I hit you?”

“Kestrel, no. Why would you ask that?”

“I remember you bruised.”

“You didn't do that. You wouldn't.”

“Well,” she pointed out, “I
have
hit you in recent memory.”

“That was different.”

She
remembered how powerless she'd felt when she'd struck him. She thought she understood what he meant. “How was I, then, when I owned you?”

There was no sound but the leaves and Javelin's hooves on the dirt. The trees thinned. Arin's house rose into view.

Kestrel said, “You hated me.”

He stopped the horse. “Please look at me.”

She turned in the saddle and did, meeting his gaze.

“At first I hated you,” he said. “It was for what you were, not who you were. I didn't know who you were. And then I did, a little. You seemed kind. Kindness isn't good in a master. Not to me. It's another way of making you beg. You become grateful for things you shouldn't be grateful for. When I was a child I was so grateful for it. Then I grew, and I almost preferred cruelty because it was closer to the truth, and no one hid behind the lie of being
nice
. I broke rules. Especially with you. I kept pushing for you to punish me. I tried to force your hand. I wanted you to show your true self.”

His expression was difficult to read. The crook in her neck was painful. She dropped her gaze to Javelin's mane.

“But this
was
your true self,” he said. “Intelligent, brave, manipulative. Kind. You made no effort to hide who you were. Then I found that I
wanted
you to hide it. This was the luxury of your position, wasn't it, that you didn't have to hide? It was the doomed nature of mine, that I did. And that's true. Sometimes a truth squeezes you so tightly you can't breathe. It was like that. But it also wasn't, because there was another reason it hurt to look at you. You were too likable. To me.”

She
wasn't sure what to say.

“I'm trying to be honest,” he told her.

“I believe you. But it's hard to believe you could have really known me. Some of what you say doesn't make sense.”

“Which part?”

“My character seems contradictory.”

“Why?”

“I don't think you can be manipulative and kind at the same time.”

He laughed. “
You
can.”

There was a silence. Javelin shifted beneath them.

Arin touched a fingertip to the nape of her neck. He found, beneath the edge of her dress at her shoulder, a healed scar, thin and long. The skin where the whip had fallen was deadened, but the skin that bordered it was alive, and shivered. She was glad that she no longer faced him.

“You are changed,” he murmured, “and you are the same. Honorable. I honor you.”

That shiver dissolved into fear. Fear, for the fork in the path that loomed in the forest behind them. For what it meant that Arin knew her before and knew her now and honored her.