Page 113 of The Winner's Kiss
Kestrel tipped her head back. The night glowed. “How do you make a mirror?”
Surprise tinged Arin’s voice. “Do you want a mirror?”
“No. I just wondered how.”
“You silver glass. It’s not something I’ve done.”
She turned in a half circle to look toward the western constellations. Her boots released the scent of bruised grass. “Before, people must have used polished metal.”
“Prob ably.”
“Or bowls of dark water. The sky looks like a mirror, if a mirror was a bowl of black water.”
There was a silence. Kestrel took her eyes off the stars and looked at him. He’d set aside the armor and was turning the awl in his fingers. He flickered orange and red in the light of the low fire. Quietly, he said, “What are you thinking?”
She was hesitant to say.
He came to stand next to her.
“Arin, after the conquest, what was it like for you?”
“I’m not sure you want to know.”
“I want to know every thing about you.”
So he told her.
The stars, too, seemed to listen.
They left the wheatlands. The soil became loose. Fresh water, seldom. On the fifth day out of Errilith, however, they reached a stream and replenished the water barrels stowed in the supply wagons.
Kestrel watched Roshar approach Arin as he curried his horse. “Here.” The prince thrust something at him. “Do us all a favor. You’re filthy.” Roshar looked him over. “I think there’s still dried blood behind your ears.”
It was a cake of soap. Arin appeared faintly startled, as if he lived in a world where soap hadn’t been invented. He broke the round between his hands and offered Kestrel half.
It crumbled a little in her grasp. Its scent was sweetly smoky. She stood there longer than necessary, inhaling the gift of a gift. It occurred to her that if she used it, and Arin used it, her skin would smell like his.
She tucked it carefully in her saddlebag, wrapping spare clothes around it so that it wouldn’t be broken.
“Come with me.” Arin. Eyes illuminated. “I want to show you something.”
Kestrel followed without question, though the army’s midday rest was nearly over. They took their horses.
She kept stealing glances at Arin as they rode toward a grassy hill. He caught her at it. “A secret,” he said, and smiled.
It felt as if his smile became hers. His secret, too. The day itself: the satin sky, a speckled yellow feather that spiraled down on a breeze to catch in Javelin’s mane. She held all this inside her the way a jewel holds light.
They dismounted at the foot of the hill. Kestrel noticed stone steps, overgrown with green, leading up the slope. It occurred to her that the entire hill, rare for this terrain, might have been man-made.
“What is this?” she asked. The stairs, as far as she could tell, led to nothing. The hilltop seemed bare.
Arin plucked the yellow feather from Javelin’s mane and tucked it behind her ear. “A temple. At least, it used to be.”
She touched the feather’s ticklish plume, the slight scratch of the quill. She explored it, trying to ignore her plea sure at his unexpected gesture. “Is that your secret?”
“You wouldn’t ask”—Arin’s grin was mischievous—“if you didn’t guess that it is not. Come see.”
The steps were broken in places and wobbled beneath Kestrel’s feet. When they reached the hilltop, she could see the jumble of marble that had been the temple’s foundation. Perhaps it had been destroyed after the conquest; the Valorians had razed all Herrani temples to their gods. But these ruins looked ancient. The marble was bleached bone white. The carvings, polished smooth by time, were blurred and mostly indecipherable, like a dream after one has woken.
