“Yes, your property. Let us not forget that we are also discussing my property.”
“He will be returned to you.”
“So the law says, but in what condition? I am not eager to see him damaged. He holds more value than a book in a language no one has any interest in reading.”
Irex’s dark eyes flicked to look behind Kestrel, then returned to her. They grew sly. “You take a decided interest in your slave’s well-being. I wonder to what lengths you will go to prevent a punishment that is rightfully mine to give.” He rested a hand on her arm. “Perhaps we can settle the matter between us.”
Kestrel heard Arin inhale as he understood Irex’s suggestion. She was angry, suddenly, at the way her mind snagged on the sound of that sharp breath. She was angry at herself, for feeling vulnerable because Arin was vulnerable, and at Irex for his knowing smile. “Yes.” Kestrel decided to twist Irex’s words into something else. “This is between us, and fate.”
Having uttered the formal words of a challenge to a duel, Kestrel stepped back from Irex’s touch, drew her dagger, and held it sideways at the level of her chest like a line drawn between him and her.
“Kestrel,” Irex said. “That isn’t what I had in mind when I said we might solve the matter.”
“I think we’ll enjoy this method more.”
“A challenge.” He tsked. “I’ll let you take it back. Just this once.”
“I cannot take it back.”
At that, Irex drew his dagger and imitated Kestrel’s gesture. They stood still, then sheathed their blades.
“I’ll even let you choose the weapons,” Irex said.
“Needles. Now it is to you to choose the time and place.”
“My grounds. Tomorrow, two hours from sunset. That will give me time to gather the death-price.”
This gave Kestrel pause. But she nodded, and finally turned to Arin.
He looked nauseated. He sagged in the senators’ grip. It seemed they weren’t restraining him, but holding him up.
“You can let go,” Kestrel told the senators, and when they did, she ordered Arin to follow her. As they left the library, Arin said, “Kestrel—”
“Not a word. Don’t speak until we are in the carriage.”
They walked swiftly down the halls—Arin’s halls—and when Kestrel stole sidelong looks at him he still seemed stunned and dizzy. Kestrel had been seasick before, at the beginning of her sailing lessons, and she wondered if this was how Arin felt, surrounded by his home—like when the eyes can pinpoint the horizon but the stomach cannot.
Their silence broke when the carriage door closed them in.
“You are mad.” Arin’s voice was furious, desperate. “It was my book. My doing. You had no right to interfere. Did you think I couldn’t bear the punishment for being caught?”
“Arin.” Fear trembled through her as she finally realized what she had done. She strove to sound calm. “A duel is simply a ritual.”
“It’s not yours to fight.”
“You know you cannot. Irex would never accept, and if you drew a blade on him, every Valorian in the vicinity would cut you down. Irex won’t kill me.”
He gave her a cynical look. “Do you deny that he is the superior fighter?”
“So he will draw first blood. He will be satisfied, and we will both walk away with honor.”
“He said something about a death-price.”
That was the law’s penalty for a duel to the death. The victor paid a high sum to the dead duelist’s family. Kestrel dismissed this. “It will cost Irex more than gold to kill General Trajan’s daughter.”
Arin dropped his face into his hands. He began to swear, to recite every insult against the Valorians the Herrani had invented, to curse them by every god.
“Really, Arin.”
His hands fell away. “You, too. What a stupid thing for you to do. Why did you do that? Why would you do such a stupid thing?”
She thought of his claim that Enai could never have loved her, or if she had, it was a forced love.
“You might not think of me as your friend,” Kestrel told Arin, “but I think of you as mine.”
20
Kestrel slept easily that night. She hadn’t known, before she claimed Arin’s friendship, that this was what she felt. He had fallen silent in the carriage and looked strange, like someone who has drunk wine when he expected water. But he didn’t deny her words, and she knew him well enough to believe that he would if he wished.
A friend. The thought calmed her. It explained many things.
When she closed her eyes, she remembered something her father had often told her as a child, and would say to soldiers the night before a battle: “Nothing in dreams can hurt you.”