Page 98 of The Winner's Crime
But he remembered Roshar’s empty hands.
He remembered a crossbow.
And although he knew that a crossbow was no good (how could he aim it and keep the tiger at bay? Gods, was it even still loaded?), he risked a glance. He looked away from the tiger’s teeth. He looked into the reeds. He saw a snapped crossbow quarrel, its leaden tip sticking out of the mud.
An arm’s length away.
“Roshar,” he choked out.
Arin heard the reeds rattle. He couldn’t see Roshar move, but the prince did, and that was enough.
The tiger’s attention lifted from Arin.
Arin reached out, yanked the quarrel from the mud, and drove it into the tiger’s eye.
He felt the tiger roar. He dug in deeper. Hot liquid spilled between his fingers. He pushed the quarrel in.
The body heaved onto him. Claws slackened.
Somehow that was when fear set in. The tiger was dead, but Arin was struggling against it, half drowning in the mud as he beat against the striped fur and stared, horrified, into one amber eye, and one ruined and leaking.
Then Roshar was there, and they worked together until Arin slid out from under the body.
He lay gasping in the mud. Roshar sat heavily beside him. The prince’s forearm was shredded, held gingerly at an angle. Blood ran from the elbow.
Arin closed his eyes. He saw the tiger’s eyes. He opened his. He saw a labyrinth of reeds, the slick of mud beneath his cheek.
Roshar inhaled. For one bizarre moment, Arin thought that the sound he heard next had come from the prince.
A scratchy cry. A mewl.
No. Arin knew what that was. He screwed his eyes shut. He wouldn’t look.
“A cub,” Roshar said.
And then Arin had to see. A little tiger clambered through the bent reeds. Its forelegs sank into mud. It looked at its slumped mother and cried piteously.
Arin was stricken. He tasted mud in his mouth.
He saw, in his memory, a boy. Begging and weeping. Pulling at his mother’s dead hand. Tugging her long, bloody black hair. Arin’s hands had been small then. But they’d had a terrible strength. They’d clung hard. Then his mother’s murderer had dragged him away.
Arin breathed through the memory. He choked on air as if it were knotted rope. He wiped mud from his face. Spat it out.
“Now, what to do with you,” said Roshar, looking at the cub. It floundered in the mud. It sank in past its haunches.
“Leave it alone.”
Roshar ignored Arin. He slogged through the boggy reeds until he reached the cub. With his good arm, Roshar lifted the tiger free.
* * *
“Brother, you are mad,” said the queen.
“He loves me,” Roshar protested. The cub was sleeping, huddled against Roshar’s leg.
“And when it has grown, and is large enough to eat a man?”
“Then I’ll make Arin take care of him.”
