Page 60 of The Winner's Kiss
“Oh.”
“It’s the only set of rooms suitable.”
“I see.”
“Would you mind?”
With a flash of feeling, she said, “This is Arin’s home.”
Roshar muttered in his language.
“What did you say?”
He met her eyes. “I said, ‘Yes, precisely.’ ”
Javelin knocked his nose against her shoulder. Her fingers tightened around the curry brush. There was no precisely. There were only undercurrents of meaning to this situation that pushed Kestrel into a place she couldn’t name. She forced herself to shrug. “I’ll move my things.” The thought of that day on the horse path rose unbidden in her mind: the fork in the road. The general’s villa. She almost saw the house in her mind. Her house. Then came the fountaining fear, and Kestrel knew she couldn’t go there, she never would, not even if there was no place for her here. “I’ll speak with Sarsine.”
“Yes.” Roshar was relieved. “Thank you.” He moved to leave.
“Did Arin tell you to ask me this?”
Roshar turned, surprised. “Of course not.”
Questions rose within her. She was too proud to ask them.
“Arin,” Roshar added, “is likely to kill me when he returns. But I never have any peace when my sister doesn’t get her way. Death might be preferable. Be a good friend and make my next few days pleasant ones, for they’ll be my last.”
“Then he’ll be here soon.”
“My sister has summoned him.”
Kestrel stared at Javelin’s brown coat. She rubbed a dark dapple on his shoulder.
“Arin turned pirate for a while, but all for the best of causes,” Roshar said. “Now that the queen has assumed command of the city, I won’t linger. Neither will he. We’ll both head south. After his royal audience, of course.”
Her eyes pricked. She brushed a thumb against her fingers and looked at the dust from the ride through the city, then glanced up and found Roshar studying her, his expression sympathetic but also searching, and when she understood what it was he sought she became determined that he not find it. Her eyes cleared. She took the house keys from the pocket of her riding trousers and unhooked the key to the suite in the east wing. She offered it to Roshar. As she dropped it in his palm she knew perfectly well what had hurt her at the sight of the queen.
She did not give him the key to the rooftop garden.
“You’ll share my rooms,” Sarsine decided.
“All right.”
“We can’t offend her.”
“I know.”
Sarsine looked at her closely. “Arin would offend her. He wouldn’t agree to this if he were here.”
Kestrel wasn’t so sure. She thought that Roshar knew a secret about the queen and Arin that Sarsine didn’t. She said, “It doesn’t matter to me.”
But it did.
Four days later, Kestrel was in the kitchen gardens on the grounds. She weeded. She liked it. She enjoyed knowing what belonged and what didn’t. There’d been a few mistakes at first, particularly with cooking herbs, but she knew what she was doing now. There was a plea sure in snapping pea pods from their stems and dropping them into her basket. She liked the bitter, ashy scent of the stunted plants that bore striped erasti, a fruit that grew only on this peninsula and only in this month. It was used in savory dishes. Kestrel picked them carefully. The cook, who’d been amusedly gentle with Kestrel’s gardening and her mistakes, had sucked in his breath when she’d first brought in a basket of erasti. They’d been unripe. “You must wait.” His tone was as close to chastisement as it ever got. “Leave them on the vine until they look like they’ll explode if you touch them.”
Her skin had burned on the first day of gardening, then peeled. She tanned. At first, she’d used a little knife to scrape out the dirt beneath her nails. Now she didn’t bother.
Today the wind was high. The earth was soft. She didn’t hear Arin approach.
