Arin was gone again. He left Kestrel a note that announced his departure but gave no reason for it nor an indication of how long he’d be away. She assumed it had something to do with the war, and that he hesitated to explain anything in writing, which begged the question of why he hadn’t spoken with her, which in turn reminded her of how she’d flinched from his touch.
She understood the note. But she didn’t like it.
She asked Roshar where Arin was and why.
“Nosy, nosy,” said the prince. His tone was arch. Friendly enough. Still, it drew a clear hard line that warned she’d waste her time pressing for more information.
They were playing Borderlands in the parlor. The windows were open and a storm was brewing, but the rain hadn’t come yet. Dark clouds knotted on the horizon. The wind that stirred the curtains smelled raw. Roshar shifted, and shifted again, eyeing the game pieces.
Arin hadn’t taken Javelin. No horses were missing from the stables. She’d counted them.
Roshar glanced at the darkening sky.
“Is he at sea?” Kestrel asked.
“Dear one, what do you care?”
“You’re nervous.”
“I’m nervous about you. You’re going to beat me.”
“I thought you were at war. You should have better things to do than stay here and play Borderlands with me.”
He lifted one brow, but merely said, “Your move.”
She made it. It had been a pleasure to discover that she remembered how to play. How was not a problem for her. She knew how to do things. Play a game, play the piano, ride a horse, speak a language. If there was anything she no longer knew how to do, she wasn’t conscious of it.
The issue was what. Her memory was a gaming set where she could see the board and knew the rules of the game yet didn’t recognize all the pieces.
She said, “Who commands the Dacran-Herrani alliance?”
“Need you even ask? Do I not exude an air of irrefutable authority?”
“What’s Arin’s role?”
“That,” he told her, “is a good question.”
The wind billowed a curtain. She moved her engineer, keeping her eyes on the board. “I’m surprised your people support the alliance.”
He shrugged, muttering something short and irritable in his language.
“Dying for someone else’s people is not usually how war works,” Kestrel said. “What exactly does your queen want from Herran?”
“That deadly little invention of Arin’s, for one.”
“You have that already. He’s given you the plans.”
“The empire must be kept at bay. If they take this peninsula, it’s only a matter of time before they take the east.”
“Is your sister intelligent?”
He gave her an impatient look. She saw his answer. “Then she must want something more,” Kestrel said. “Does Arin know what she wants?”
Roshar’s green-rimmed eyes narrowed. “Arin knows a good deal when he sees one. We’re the best thing that could have happened to him.”
“Yes, clearly. You are great benefactors. If you care so much for his well-being, why have you sent him to sea in the middle of a storm?”
“Arin sent himself.”
She fell silent. Roshar made his move. “Tell me, little ghost: do you enjoy my company?”
She was surprised. “Yes.”
“I enjoy yours, too. I can see why you like me. I’m intelligent, charming—not to mention handsome.”
“And skilled at preening. Let’s not forget that.”
“Lies, all lies.” He met her eyes across the gaming board. “The reason you enjoy my company is because I look like how you feel.”
“That’s not it,” she said, though when she looked again at his damaged face she realized that what he’d said was true. Yet it was only partly true, and she didn’t know how to put the other parts into words.
“Arin is my friend,” Roshar told her. “I trust him with my life, and he trusts me with his. That’s rare. I won’t have it questioned by someone who, for all I can tell, has no love for him.” He knocked over his general: the gesture of surrender. The marble game piece rolled. “Go away, little ghost. Go haunt someone else.” But he was the one who left.
Rain tapped the panes. She went to draw the windows shut, then paused, seeing how the trees bent, lashed by wind blowing in from the sea. It smelled like a cut-open oyster.
Dear one, what do you care?
A small serpent of worry lifted its hooded head inside her.
* * *
Rain drove into Arin’s eyes. The deck heaved. It wasn’t a green storm, but just as bad. They’d seen the signs. They’d been warned against sailing by the Herrani captain who’d taken Arin east last winter.
“We must,” Arin had told Roshar. “The general holds Ithrya. He’ll use it to supply a strike at the mainland and can sustain that attack only if he’s able to supply his forces. He’s stockpiling Ithrya. We must break his supply lines with the Valorian capital. I’ll sail to the Empty Islands between our western shores and Valoria.”
“You’re no sailor.”
Arin spoke as if he hadn’t heard. “A Herrani ship, with Herrani crew.”
“I’ll send Xash.”
Arin shook his head. “My people have recovered. They want to fight. As it is, your soldiers wonder when we’re going to pull our own weight.”
So Arin’s ship had set sail.
Now it quaked under each hit from a monstrous wave. The sea swelled into purple hills and valleys. The sails had been stowed lest they be shredded by the wind. The captain had set a drogue in the water to slow the ship and stabilize it, but its prow punctured wave after wave. The deck was slick. Arin struggled to keep his footing. He slid, hit the railing, and gripped it. Vomited.
“God of madness.” The captain seized Arin’s upper arm and hauled him upright. The captain was three times Arin’s age and growled with that lilt that Herrani sailors had had before the war. “Get below, boy. What good’re you on deck? You know nothing of the sea.” Then the captain’s attention darted away, and he was gone.
The captain was right. Arin was headed toward the bolt-hole, his face stinging with salt and rain, eyes burning, when it struck him that he was too seasick to be afraid. This made him remember his conversation with Kestrel as they’d ridden her horse, and how, if he’d had to touch her, he should have known better than to touch her where they had hurt her, even if he had wanted to say, without words, that he understood how they had hurt her.
His boots skidded. The world was a dizzy, wet blur. The ship shuddered and leaned on its side. Again, Arin tumbled against the railing. This time, he went over. He plunged into the seething water below.