The Winner's Kiss (45 page)

If he were here, she would howl at him. He had broken
her
heart, over and over, for years. He'd tried to force her into the mold of his own idea of honor. What he wanted her to be. Not what she was.

Kestrel felt her spine straighten.

Damn his devotion to honor.

When it came her turn to pull a tile, she didn't choose any of the marked ones.

“Steady,” Arin called. His horse tossed its head. His vanguard still held formation: those few files of broad ranks, running across the road and up to the trees.

The Valorian cavalry nudged toward them, looking ready to tear through Arin's ranks. Arin watched the cavalry shape into a wedge. The left and right sides would pull up in the clash, and would try to flank the center ranks of Arin's army
by
galloping up alongside the road once Arin's vanguard had collapsed.

Yes,
said death.
Good.

The emperor pulled a shiny tile. Kestrel bit back a sound, glancing away so that he couldn't read her expression.

The windows had lightened. For the first time, she registered their intricate patterns of stained glass. In the dead of night, they'd looked black. Now they blushed with faint color. She saw what they would soon fully show. Flowers, gods, the prow of a ship. A bird's flung-open wings.

This was an eastern room. When dawn came, it would be glorious.

The armies clashed. The center of Arin's vanguard coalesced around him. But the edges—as planned—disintegrated, the soldiers appearing to retreat into the forest.

The left and right flanks of the Valorian cavalry hurtled straight into the open spaces along the road that the edges of Arin's vanguard had hidden.

Valorian horses impaled their stomachs on the sharpened staves Arin had had driven into the mud.

The emperor set down a fox. He examined the game in play. “Things don't look so good for you,” he told Kestrel.

A
movement amid all the others—the torque of bodies, the muddy struggle, collapse, rise, murder—caught Arin's attention. On the periphery of battle where gutted war horses flailed, there was some rabbitlike thing. He couldn't look directly; he was too busy kneeing his horse out of the way of a rearing Valorian stallion's plunging hooves. Then grappling with the stallion's rider. Distracted, Arin seized the rider's arm.

Not a rabbit.

Much too large for a rabbit.

Still, that impression of something—
someone
—out of place. A softness. An innocence.

Arin felt the arm pop from its shoulder.

The rider screamed, but Arin wasn't paying attention. He impatiently killed the Valorian. He'd seen, now, what that strange movement far off to the side of the road was, among the bloody staves.

It was Verex. He was struggling to free his leg, trapped beneath the body of his fallen horse.

He was easy prey.

Arin saw his soldiers see the prince . . . but not see him
as
a prince, not as the one they were warned not to kill.

This, a prince?

Covered in mud, his only visible feature that straw-colored Valorian hair, Verex tugged, all thin limbs and terror. He didn't see the Dacran archer's taut bow, arrow nocked and drawn.

Arin was too far away. He shouted
No,
but the word was lost in the roar of war.

The archer aimed, and released her arrow.

“I almost wish I'd lose,” the emperor mused. “It'd be a novel experience. Is it wrong for me to hope that, at least, this game will last longer? Improve, Kestrel, or this will be over too soon.”

Kestrel reminded herself that there are ways to lose even if one holds the highest hand. She played her tile.

Helpless, Arin watched the arrow slice a low, true path toward Verex. It struck him, glancing off his metal armor. Undaunted, the archer nocked another arrow.

Get down,
Arin willed as he tried to force his way to the edge of the road. He'd never reach Verex in time.
Use your horse as a shield
. But Verex, who now saw how the cloud of danger around him had condensed to the point of an arrowhead, froze.

Arin's gaze swiveled back to the archer, whose face underwent a curt shift of emotion just after she loosed the arrow. Her expression slackened with horror.

Arin saw what she saw: Roshar, hurtling toward the Valorian prince and into the path of the arrow.

Roshar flattened Verex into the mud. The arrow sailed over his shoulder.

Then Risha's brother raged at the stunned Valorian, dragged him out from under the horse, and hauled him toward the cover of the trees.

They
were both silent now, playing in concentration. The emperor reached for a second shiny tile.

The stained-glass windows glowed, and something eased open inside Kestrel. As color seeped into the room, she felt an unexpected wish.

She wished her father were here.

You, who seek your own father's death.

But she didn't, she found that she couldn't, no matter how he had hurt her. She wished that he could see her play, and win. That he could see what she saw now.

A window is just a window. Colored glass: mere glass. But in the sun it becomes more. She would show him, and say, love should do
this
.

And you too, she would tell him, because she could no longer deny that it remained true, in spite of every thing.

I love you, too.

After Roshar and Verex had vanished into the trees, Arin stopped thinking. He rarely did, in battle. It was easier to give himself over. The pressure inside was a good one. His body obeyed it.

The staves had ruined the Valorians' strategy. It was impossible to flank Arin's army, which became a solid column that thrust up the road. The edges of Arin's vanguard began to work forward, fighting to reach the unprotected, muddy sides of the road on which the Valorians stood. With a little luck, Arin would flank
them
.

When his sword cut an enemy open, Arin thought that
he
would have chosen no other god to rule him, that none of the hundred could please him so well.

A gift,
he thought.

This is nothing,
death said.
Did I not make you a promise? Have you not kept faith with me, in hopes of this very moment? See, see what I have for you.

Arin looked.

Just a few paces away, unhorsed, helmet gone, stood General Trajan.

This was taking too long.

It was full dawn. The stained windows were wild now, lurid with color. Kestrel had reached the end of her line of play. She held a worthy hand, yet dreaded exposing her tiles to the emperor.

It didn't matter what tiles she held. All that mattered was that the game was over, and that the emperor appeared relaxed, lids half-lowered in anticipation, his dark eyes liquid.

“Show me,” he said.

Arin spurred his horse forward. The general saw him and stood tall. Arin's mind went blank, he heard nothing, not even death, and he should have been listening, because at the last possible moment, the general fell to one knee and drove his sword deep into the chest of Arin's horse.

As
slowly as possible, Kestrel turned her last tile.

Four spiders.

The emperor didn't smile. She almost wished that he had. He closed his eyes once, and when he opened them their expression was even worse than his smile.

He displayed his winning hand.

Four tigers.

Arin was thrown from his shrieking horse. His head rang against the road.

And rang, and rang.

Perspiration glimmered on the emperor's upper lip. He touched it, glanced at his fingers strangely, then returned his attention to Kestrel.

She scraped her chair back.

He swept her dagger from the table and had it up to her throat in one swift movement. He pricked the skin; a tiny trickle of blood.

She'd been stupid, her plan had been stupid, a fool's gamble, yet her mind kept scrabbling for an idea, something else, anything else that could reverse her mistake or make happen what should have already happened.

“Don't take defeat too badly,” he said. “If it's any consolation, I had no intention of ever fulfilling my agreement, even if you'd won. But the plea sure of the game was great. Now. Sit.”

Her legs gave out beneath her.

“Let's discuss what you owe.”

Arin felt the hum of metal in the air.

He rocked his body out of its path, heard the general's sword strike the road.

Arin shoved himself to his feet.

The emperor lowered back into his seat. Kestrel stared at his winning hand, light-headed with fear.

“Does the sight of this trouble you?” Her dagger still in one hand, the emperor turned his tiles facedown. Then he paused, frowning at their backs. He touched one of the two shiny ones, then flipped Kestrel's hand over, studying her tiles' backs. He found, in the boneyard, the two remaining marked tiles. “What is this?”

She made an involuntary sound.

He batted the air as if at an invisible insect. Colored light beamed into the room. The four tiles shone clearly.