*
Arin and Roshar rowed up the river. Soft dawn hardened into bright day. The castle was at their backs, then gone. Reeds on the banks tapped a light tattoo against each other, and swarms of enormous dragonflies rippled like flags alongside the canoe.
Roshar steered. When they’d set off from the city, Arin had noted the crossbow slung across Roshar’s back, and a set of throwing knives at his hips. Arin had asked if Roshar expected resistance from the plainspeople who had made camp upstream. Roshar had blithely said, “Oh, this is for river beasties,” and looked coy. Then, though Arin hadn’t pressed him, Roshar added, “If you must know, I’m going to hunt a nice poisonous snake and make you eat it. You do like to ruin a surprise.”
The canoe slowed. Roshar had paused, so Arin lifted his oar, too, and glanced behind him. Roshar was looking into the reeds. His mutilated nose made his profile jarringly flat.
The current started to push them downstream. They took up their oars again.
There was something about the day—the tempo of the reeds, the dipping of the oars, the dragonflies’ brrr, and even Roshar’s stunted profile—that opened something inside Arin. If he had had to put what he felt into words, he would have perhaps said that it was a kinship with the moment.
He began to sing. For himself, for the day, for the way it made him feel. It had been a while. It felt good to push that music up and into the world, to feel how the initial heft of it lightened on his tongue. The song floated out of him.
He wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t thinking about her. But then he thought about how he wasn’t thinking about her. The song became lead. He shut his mouth.
There was a silence.
Finally, behind him, Roshar spoke. “Don’t let my sister hear you do that, or she won’t let me kill you.”
Arin didn’t look back. Then he said, “When I was leaving the capital, I saw Risha.”
The canoe angled its direction. Roshar had stopped rowing again. “Does everyone there call her that, or just you?” When Arin glanced questioningly over his shoulder at the prince, Roshar said, “Her name is Rishanaway. That’s what strangers should call her. Risha is her little name.”
Arin wasn’t sure if this was what Risha had asked to be called by the court, or what they had decided to call her. He remembered what she’d said to him on his last day there. Reluctantly, but firmly, because he thought Roshar should know, Arin said, “She told me that her place was in the palace.”
Arin saw regret on Roshar’s face, and loss … but also relief. Arin didn’t understand it. As he found himself questioning whether the queen and her brother wanted their stolen sister returned, he realized that some furtive part of him had been wondering whether that would have been enough to secure the alliance his country needed. If he had brought Risha with him to Dacra, would that have been the queen’s “something more”? How would Risha have been most valuable to Herran—as Tensen’s Moth, or as a bargaining chip with the Dacran queen?
Arin checked himself. These were questions Kestrel would ask. Kestrel knew exactly how to calculate what someone was worth. His lips curled in sudden disgust.
“Pleasant thoughts for both of us, I see,” said Roshar. “Oars in the water now, little Herrani, or we’ll never make the camp before nightfall.”
*
The day had gone orange. It hadn’t rained once.
“Nearly there,” Roshar said.
“Why do the plainspeople have to move camp?”
“They don’t have to, but this particular tribe has camped upstream of an agricultural village with crops. The villagers have complained that the water flowing downstream to them is contaminated. My sister wants these refugees to move into the city with the rest.”
A fist squeezed Arin’s heart. He remembered the woman with the cloth baby. He thought about being forced from his home, and how it would be to build a new home, and to be forced from that one, too. “So they suffer yet again.”
“Arin, do you think I want to ask them to move? My sister always gets me to do her dirty work.” Roshar sighed. “I suppose my face must be good for something.” When he caught the startled quality of Arin’s silence, Roshar said, “Yes, poor prince, maimed by the empire. Don’t you want to do what he asks of you, ye people of the plains? Look at him. Look at his face. He has lost something, too.” Roshar swore under his breath.
Arin looked back, even though he knew that Roshar wouldn’t want him to see his expression then. It was in moments like these, when the emotion in Roshar’s eyes matched his mutilations, that the prince looked most damaged.
Roshar spoke again, clearly this time. “Dacra will take the plains back. General Trajan is in the imperial capital now. It’s the right time. We’ll take back what they stole.”
“No. Don’t.”
“What?”
“Burn the plains.”
“What? Never.”
“Curse the empire,” said Arin. “Curse them. Burn that godsforsaken army out of your land. If they want it so badly, let them burn for it.”
“But we can take the plains back. I know we can.”
“And when the general returns to the front? What do you think he’ll do? He will set you on fire. You’re lucky he didn’t do that to begin with.” Something twinged inside Arin. Something that had to do with Kestrel. And he was so sickeningly furious with himself, for the way his mind kept reaching for her, at the way his body remembered her, even now, even here, half a world away, that he ground whatever thought he had been about to think into dust.
“Arin.” Roshar was still horrified. “That’s our land.”
“Sometimes you think you want something,” Arin told him, “when what you need is to let it go.”
*
The sky was dusky pink when Roshar announced that they’d reached their destination. Arin didn’t see an encampment, only a rust-colored screen of reeds. Beyond it, Roshar said, were grassy fields and the refugees.
They paddled to shore and slid into the mucky shallows to drag the boat into the mud and reeds. Roshar loaded his crossbow. He caught Arin’s glance. “Just a precaution.”
“I thought you were joking about the snake.”
Mournfully, Roshar said, “And I thought you believed every little word I said.” He pushed ahead through the reeds.
Arin wasn’t sure what worried Roshar—he hoped not snakes; a crossbow wasn’t a practical weapon against them—but he, too, was worried now. Roshar, a good distance in front of him, looked small in the reeds. Arin moved to catch up. Mud sucked at his heels. “The queen shouldn’t have sent you alone.”
Roshar turned. “I’m not alone,” he said simply. “You’re here.”
Arin was about to ask for a weapon. He was closing the gap between them.
There was a ripple in the reeds. A prowling wave.
The beast surged from the reeds and spread its claws.