If so, what then? Kestrel would alert her father. She’d find a way. Then the full force of the empire’s military would fall on the peninsula, when Arin doubted that the Herrani could deal even with the battalion that would come through the pass in less than two days.
If he let Kestrel go, it was the same as murdering his people.
Arin nudged a rock with his boot and wanted to kick it.
He didn’t. He walked.
Thoughts chipped at his sanity, proposing solutions only to reveal problems, taunting him with the certainty that he would lose everything he sought to keep.
Until he found it.
Arin found the herb threading up through a patch of dirt. It was a pitiful amount, and withered, but he tore it from the ground with a fierce hope.
He lifted his eyes from his dirty hands to see that he had again come into view of the mountain pass. An idea robbed his breath.
The idea was as small as the leaves in Arin’s hand. But it grew, put down roots, and Arin began to see how the Valorian reinforcements might be beaten.
He saw how he might win.
32
When Kestrel awoke in the bed, she didn’t want to think about how she had gotten there.
Then the day was swallowed whole. Cold crept into the house, the dusk seemed to weigh on Kestrel’s shoulders, and her mind filled with Arin, and Jess.
She heard a key turn in a lock. Kestrel sprang to her feet, realizing only then that she had been sitting and staring at nothing. She wound through the rooms of the suite until she was before the last door, and it opened.
Sarsine. “Where is Arin?” she said.
Better to reveal nothing. “I don’t know.”
“That’s a problem.”
Silence.
“It’s a problem for you,” Sarsine clarified, “because Cheat’s here, demanding to see Arin, and since my feckless cousin is nowhere to be found, Cheat wants to speak with you instead.”
Kestrel’s pulse slowed, the way it used to when Rax was readying some kind of swift assault, or when her father asked a question and she didn’t know the answer. “Tell him no.”
Sarsine laughed.
“This is your family home,” Kestrel said. “He is your guest. Who is he to command you?”
Sarsine shook her head, though the rueful set of her mouth said that she didn’t blame Kestrel for trying. When she spoke, her words weren’t meant as a threat, but Kestrel heard the echo of one—whatever Cheat had originally said. “If you don’t come with me to see him, he will come here to see you.”
Kestrel glanced at the walls, thinking of the suite’s pattern of rooms, how they turned inward like a snail shell, giving the impression that one was secreted away from the world, tucked into an intimate, lovely space.
Or trapped.
“I’ll go,” she said.
Sarsine brought her to the atrium, where Cheat sat on a marble bench before the fountain. Torchlight cast itself around the room, and the fountain’s water tumbled with red and orange streaks.
“I want to speak with her alone,” Cheat told Sarsine.
She said, “Arin—”
“—is not the leader of the Herrani. I am.”
“We’ll see how long that lasts,” said Kestrel, then bit her lip. He saw her do it, and they both knew what it meant.
A mistake.
“It’s fine,” Kestrel told Sarsine. “Go ahead. Go.”
Sarsine gave her a dubious look, then left.
Cheat propped his elbows on his knees and gazed up at Kestrel. He scrutinized her: the long, loosely clasped hands, the folds of her dress. Kestrel’s clothes had mysteriously appeared in the suite’s wardrobe, probably while she had slept, and she was glad. The dueling ensemble had served well enough, but wearing a dress fit for society made Kestrel feel ready for different kinds of battle.
“Where is Arin?” Cheat said.
“In the mountains.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know. I imagine that, since the Valorian reinforcements will come through the mountain pass, he is analyzing its values and drawbacks as a battleground.”
Cheat gave her a gleeful smirk. “Does it bother you, being a traitor?”
“I don’t see how I am.”
“You just confirmed that the reinforcements will come through the pass. Thank you.”
“It’s hardly worth thanking me,” she said. “Almost every useful ship in the empire has been sent east, which means there is no other way into the city. Anyone with brains could figure that out, which is why Arin is in the mountains, and you are here.”
A flush began to build under Cheat’s skin. He said, “My feet are dusty.”
Kestrel had no idea how to respond to that.
“Wash them,” he said.