And she believed Arin. She believed everything he had ever said to her.
She believed his silence on the other side of the wall, which said that he would stay there as long as she needed.
When Kestrel went inside, she carried his song with her.
It was a candle that lit her way and kept watch while she slept.
Arin woke. His throat still felt full of music.
Then he remembered that he had killed his friend and that the Herrani had no leader. He searched himself for regret. He found none. Only the cold echo of his own harrowed rage.
He rose and splashed water on his face, ran it through his hair. The face in the mirror didn’t seem to be his, exactly.
Arin dressed with care and went to see what the world looked like.
In the hallways beyond his suite, he caught guarded glances from people, some who had been Irex’s servants, some who had worked in this house during his parents’ time. They had picked up where their lives had left off. When Arin, uncomfortable, had said that they didn’t need to fill their old roles, they had told him that they’d rather clean and cook than fight. Payment could come later.
Other Herrani lived in Arin’s house, fighters who were rapidly becoming soldiers. They, too, watched Arin pass, but said nothing about the body he had carried through the house yesterday and buried on the grounds.
The lack of questions made him edgy.
He passed the open library door, then stopped, returned. He pushed the door wider to see Kestrel more fully.
A fire burned in the grate. The room was warm, and Kestrel was browsing the shelves as if this were her home, which Arin wanted it to be. Her back to him, she slid a book from its row, a finger on top of its spine.
She seemed to sense his presence. She slid the book back and turned. The graze on her cheek had scabbed over. Her blackened eye had sealed shut. The other eye studied him, almond-shaped, amber, perfect. The sight of her rattled Arin even more than he had expected.
“Don’t tell people why you killed Cheat,” she said. “It won’t win you any favors.”
“I don’t care what they think of me. They need to know what happened.”
“It’s not your story to tell.”
A charred log shifted on the fire. Its crackle and sift was loud. “You’re right,” Arin said slowly, “but I can’t lie about this.”
“Then say nothing.”
“I’ll be questioned. I’ll be held accountable by our new leader, though I’m not sure who will take Cheat’s place—”
“You. Obviously.”
He shook his head.
Kestrel lifted one shoulder in a shrug. She turned back to the books.
“Kestrel, I didn’t come in here to talk politics.”
Her hand trembled slightly, then swept along the titles to hide it.
Arin didn’t know how much last night had changed things between them, or in what way. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Cheat should never have been a threat to you. You shouldn’t even be in this house. You’re in this position because I put you there. Here. Forgive me, please.”
Her fingers paused: thin, strong, and still.
Arin dared to reach for her hand, and Kestrel did not pull away.
37
She had been right. The Herrani quickly took Arin as their leader, either because they had always admired him or because they had liked Cheat’s flair for savagery and assumed that if Arin had killed him he must have been the better monster.
He was certainly the better strategist. Whole swaths of the peninsula began to fall under Herrani control as squadrons were sent to capture farmlands. Food and water were stockpiled, enough for a year of siege—or so Kestrel overheard from guards at the entrances of the house.
“How can you possibly hope to succeed against a siege?” Kestrel asked Arin during one of the rare times he was home and not leading an assault in the countryside. They sat at the dining room table, where Kestrel wasn’t allowed a knife for the meal.
At night, Kestrel treasured the memory of Arin’s song. But by day, she could not ignore basic facts. The missing knife. How any easy way out of Arin’s home was guarded, even ground-floor windows. Guards eyed her warily as she passed. Kestrel possessed two keys that did little more than prove that she remained under a privileged form of house arrest.
Was she to earn her freedom one key at a time?
And when her father returned with the imperial army—as he inevitably would—what then? Kestrel tried to imagine turning traitor and counseling the Herrani through the coming war. She couldn’t. It didn’t matter that Arin’s cause was just, or that Kestrel now allowed herself to see that. She couldn’t fight her own father.
“We can withstand a siege for some time,” Arin said. “The city walls are strong. They’re Valorian-built.”