Page 59 of The Winner's Kiss
He was all ease now, on the pier at his sister’s side. Kestrel watched him offer pleasantries she couldn’t hear and wouldn’t understand if she did. She’d never learned the eastern language.
Her father had wanted her to learn. She remembered this. She didn’t like the queasy feeling remembering gave her.
He had pressured her. She had refused.
It’s dangerous not to know the language of your enemy, he’d said. When you go to war—
I won’t go to war.
The words throbbed in her brain.
Kestrel felt Arin’s absence. She wondered what he would make of this woman on the pier. But then Kestrel reminded herself that Arin knew the queen already, must know her well, quite well, if he’d been able to persuade her to take his side in war.
The queen (her name was Inishanaway, Kestrel heard someone in the crowd murmur) listened as her brother spoke. Her face was so still that it was easy to see its magnetic quality. A deep sort of mouth, ears so small that they looked like ornamentation, the nose softly shaped. Yes, beautiful, Kestrel decided, yet she didn’t understand why that thought dug hard into some vulnerable place.
Kestrel wanted her horse. She wished she hadn’t tethered Javelin in the marketplace and continued to the harbor on foot. She wanted to ride away. Now.
Foolish. If she felt dingy and small, it was her own fault for comparing herself where no comparisons could be made. She’d seen a mirror.
As she tried to understand it—this compulsion to compare—she began to realize slowly that the queen’s features were familiar. It wasn’t because they resembled Roshar’s, though they did.
A little sister. Kestrel had known her at court. Risha, the eastern princess, the youngest child of the three, beloved of the Valorian crown prince . . . who had been engaged to Kestrel.
Kestrel felt dizzy under the lemon-yellow sun. A sour taste in her mouth. Her father had been pleased, she remembered. He had hoped for Kestrel to marry Prince Verex, had hoped for it even when they were babies. His daughter: an empress.
She told herself that now she understood her fascination with the queen. It had been the familiarity, which Kestrel had needed to place. Or maybe it had been discomfort, to be powerless and behold someone with great power.
Maybe. But she still couldn’t explain the rotten ooze in her heart.
Kestrel saw Roshar’s gaze touch upon her, and dwell. He said something only the queen could hear. The woman’s eyes went to Kestrel.
Roshar murmured in his sister’s ear, his smile as light as a little knife.
There was an obvious reason for the way the queen looked at her: Kestrel was Valorian. She was to be questioned, doubted. Picked apart. Kestrel felt the dissecting gaze. She had a sudden image of herself as her namesake: a small hunting hawk, feathers plucked, wings lifted, spread back, pinioned.
Kestrel crossed her arms over her chest. The sun was hot. She was thirsty, throat dry. She stared right back at the woman and understood that the way the queen looked at her wasn’t because Kestrel was Valorian, or her father’s daughter. It was because of a secret Kestrel didn’t know, and wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Ah, Kestrel. I hoped to find you here.”
She looked up from currying her horse and glanced over Roshar’s shoulder, but no one lingered behind him. They were alone in the stables. She blew a wisp of hair out of her eyes and kept at her task.
“I have a favor to beg,” he said.
“No need to speak so prettily, princeling.”
“My sister . . .”
Kestrel felt it again: a sore wariness. Something was coming. Something sure to hurt.
“. . . I had thought she’d reside in the palace of the former governor. However, it seems to not quite meet her standards.”
“It’s grander than anything else in the city.”
“She likes this home.”
Kestrel stopped brushing Javelin’s coat. “What does that have to do with me?”
Roshar coughed, clearly uncomfortable. “Your suite.”
