*
For bearing an enemy’s weapon, Arin was forbidden to carry any at all.
For entering Dacran territory, Arin was not allowed to leave it.
For his crimes against Roshar, the queen’s brother, the injured party was given permission to exact his choice of punishment.
“I’ll have you killed later,” Roshar told Arin after bringing him to the room where he would stay. “I need time to decide the very best method.”
Arin looked at him. The mutilations made it hard to see any resemblance to Risha or the queen. Roshar must have caught the quality of Arin’s gaze. The way it examined. Roshar sneered. “Or maybe I’ll find a punishment better than death.”
Arin glanced away.
Roshar began unpacking Arin’s things—with the exception of the dagger—from the satchel onto a table. Food, water, clothes. “What’s this?” Roshar held up the packet that contained spools of thread.
“Sewing kit.”
Roshar tossed it on the table. Then he stared down at all of Arin’s things as if they could add up to the answer to a hard question. “You’ve come a long way.”
“Yes.”
“All the way from the imperial capital.” Quietly, Roshar said, “Is my little sister well?”
“Yes. She—”
“I don’t want to talk about her. I just wanted to know how she is.”
“Did you discuss her with the queen when we first entered that room?”
Roshar looked at Arin as if he were insane. “Of course not.”
“Then what took so long to tell the queen?”
“Your crimes. In loving detail.”
“No,” Arin said, “it sounded like a story.”
Roshar prodded a flask of water. “Clearly you didn’t know anything about our country, if you bothered to bring this.”
“Why won’t you tell me what you said?”
Roshar kept poking at the flask, making it rock against the table. Slowly, he said, “Maybe I did tell a story. Maybe it was about two slaves in a faraway land, and how one helped the other.”
“But I didn’t.” Arin remembered it again. He tasted the dirt in his mouth, felt the gravel under his cheek. He heard the cries. He felt his shame.
“You saved me,” Roshar said.
Arin was confused. At first he thought this was sarcasm. But there had been something open in Roshar’s voice, like yearning. Was Roshar reinventing what had really happened? Maybe he was imagining a version of the world where the Valorian’s knife had never cut his face. A fiction. A story with a happy ending.
“I’m sorry,” Arin said carefully. “I tried. But I couldn’t do anything.”
“You did. You saved the thing in me that decided I would run away again.”