Page 74 of The Winner's Kiss
Near dusk the rain stopped, but it had been falling so long that Arin seemed to still see it dribbling across his vision.
The diminished army set up camp for the night, swearing at the mud, the mood miserable. Arin’s tent had stayed mostly dry in its tarp. A change of clothes, too, buried at the bottom of a saddlebag. Every thing else was damp. He unbuckled his leather armor, which shed water and smelled like a soggy cow. Shrugged off his tunic. Had nothing to hang it with. He draped it to dry on a low-hanging branch of a nearby tree, then sighed when a breeze showered droplets down from high leaves.
Every one wanted a fire, but the wood in the forest along the road was wet. Nothing would burn. Arin resigned himself to the damp. He pitched his tent, peeled a broad strip of thick bark off a tree (the unexposed side was dry), and sat on it rather than the mud outside his tent while he used his one dry shirt to wipe rain off anything metal so that it wouldn’t rust: his sword, dagger, shield, armor buckles, the horse tack.
It felt nothing like summer. Arin was chilled, the skin along his back unpleasantly tight. A lock of wet hair flopped down along his cheek. He shuddered, brushed it away, and kept polishing with the shirt, rubbing at the bit and buckles on the bridle and girth. He warmed a little from the activity.
“Well, well, look at you.” Roshar stood in front of him, hands on his hips, armor unbuckled but still on. “So industrious. Cold, too, I bet.”
Arin ignored him.
“While you’re at it,” Roshar said, “want to dry my things, too?”
Arin paused, looked up, and made a gesture he’d learned in the east.
Roshar laughed. He squished his way toward his tent. Arin heard him call for one of his underlings. Then Arin stopped paying attention.
After a while, though, a prickle crept up his neck. At first Arin thought it was the cold. But he wasn’t finished with his task, and so didn’t pull the mostly dry shirt over his head, which was what he longed to do. He kept at what he was doing.
Slowly, he became aware of a surprised quiet stealing over the camp. The sodden thuds of a lone horse’s hooves, approaching. Then someone—a Dacran—said, “Stay where you are!” Arin heard the crank of a crossbow.
He looked up just as the rider stopped.
There—high up on her stallion, hair plastered to her head, expression bleak—was Kestrel.
Chapter 20
He went to her, yanking his clammy tunic off the tree as he passed, shrugging into it.
Her hands clenched the reins, body stiff. She’d been riding for a long time. She had a stunned look that reminded him badly of the tundra. Every thing about her was rigid and wrong.
He took her by the waist and lifted her down. Vivid with confusion and worry, he said, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t keep my promise to you.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“I gave you my word. A Valorian honors her word.” She swayed slightly.
He flipped open Javelin’s saddlebag. No food. No clothes. Not a match, not a bit of tinder. Not even a canteen. Just a burned-out lamp. “Kestrel, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He got her to his tent, ignoring the curious stares, and was grateful—without quite knowing why—that Roshar was nowhere to be seen. Arin grabbed his dry shirt from where he’d let it fall to the ground and dug his clean trousers out of a saddlebag. His canteen. Some hardtack, gone sticky with the damp. “Here.” He pressed it all into her hands. “Change. Eat. I’ll be outside.”
She nodded. He was shakily relieved to get a response that seemed, small as it was, normal. Then she dis appeared into his tent and he became anxious again.
Moments passed. There was a rustle from inside the tent. It subsided. He asked if she was all right. No answer. Finally, he was too concerned not to come inside.
She was sitting, staring into her lap, holding the unopened canteen. She’d changed into his shirt, then appeared to have reached the limit of what she could do. She still wore her wet trousers, the riding boots, her dagger. The hardtack lay to the side, untouched.
He knelt and took her freezing hands. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”
She opened her mouth but choked on the words. She looked brittle. He began to feel the way she looked. He tried a different question. “How did you know where we’d be?”
“I guessed.”
Arin stared.
