Kestrel couldn’t see the hull ladder along the stern or the Herrani in the other launches on the water below. They were vague, night-colored shadows. But she noticed a ripple of movement up the hull. Herrani were scaling the ladder.
It wasn’t too late for her to cry warning to the sailors on board.
She could choose not to betray them. She didn’t understand how her father could do this again and again: make decisions that fed lives into the jaws of a higher purpose.
Yet would it be worth it, if Kestrel secured an escape route to alert the capital?
That, she supposed, might depend on how many Valorians died on Wensan’s ship.
Kestrel’s cool calculation appalled her. This was part of what had made her resist the military: the fact that she could make decisions like this, that she did have a mind for strategy, that people could so easily become pieces in a game she was determined to win.
The launch swayed higher.
Kestrel pressed her lips shut.
Arin glanced at the black cloth that had covered her hair, then at her. He must have considered gagging Kestrel with it, now that she had completed her role in the plan. That’s what she would have done in his place. But he didn’t, which made her feel worse than if he had. It was pure hypocrisy for him not to live up to a ruthlessness she now knew him to be capable of.
As was she.
The launch drew level with the main deck. Kestrel had just enough time to register the shock on the sailors’ faces before the Herrani in the launch leaped onto the deck, weapons raised. The small boat rocked wildly, empty save for Kestrel.
Arin ducked the slice of a sailor’s knife, beat it away with his own, and punched the man’s throat. The sailor staggered back. Arin hooked the legs out from under him at the same moment he delivered another blow. The sailor was down.
It was like that all over the deck. Herrani hammered at Valorians, many of whom had had no time to draw weapons. As the sailors dealt with the sudden threat they had brought aboard, they didn’t see the second one: more Herrani climbing onto the deck from the hull ladder. As Kestrel had planned, this second wave attacked the Valorians from the back. Trapped, the sailors quickly surrendered. Even though more sailors were pouring up from the decks below, they did so through narrow hatches, like mice emerging from tunnels. The Herrani attacked them one by one.
Blood stained the planks. Many of the fallen sailors didn’t move. From the swaying launch, Kestrel could hear the man Arin had attacked first. He was clutching his throat. The noises he made were horrible, something between gasping and choking. And there was Arin, shouldering through the fray and landing blows that might not kill, but would still hurt and bruise and bleed.
Kestrel had seen this in him on the day that she had bought him. A brutality. She had let herself forget it because his mind had been so finely tuned. Because his touch had been gentle. Yet this was what he had become.
This was what he was.
And what of her, orchestrating the fall of a Valorian ship into enemy hands? Kestrel couldn’t quite believe it. She couldn’t believe it had been so relatively easy. Valorians were never ambushed. They never surrendered. They were brave, they were fierce, they would rather die than be taken.
Her launch swayed to a stop. She stood and faced the water far below. Earlier that night, when she had threatened to kill herself, she had said it without considering whether she could. Making the threat had been the right move. So she had made it.
Then Cheat had set his boot on Kestrel’s fingers.
There was no music after death.
She had chosen to live.
Now she stood in the launch, knowing that if she hit the water’s surface from this height, something was likely to break and she would sink quickly without the use of her bound hands.
What would Kestrel’s father choose for her? An honorable death, or life as Arin’s prize? She closed her eyes, imagining the general’s face if he had seen her surrender to Cheat, if he could see her now.
Could she really find a way to sail to the capital? Was it worth it to stay alive to see Jess, if only to watch her friend die?
Kestrel listened to the slap of waves against the ship, the cries of struggle and death. She remembered how her heart, so tight, like a scroll, had opened when Arin kissed her. It had unfurled.
If her heart were truly a scroll, she could burn it. It would become a tunnel of flame, a handful of ash. The secrets she had written inside herself would be gone. No one would know.
Her father would choose the water for Kestrel if he knew.
Yet she couldn’t. In the end, it wasn’t cunning that kept her from jumping, or determination. It was a glassy fear.
She didn’t want to die. Arin was right. She played a game until its end.
Suddenly, Kestrel heard his voice. She opened her eyes. He was shouting. He was shouting her name. He was barreling past people, driving a path between the mainmast and the railing alongside the launch. Kestrel saw the horror in him mirror what she had felt when facing the water.