Marie Rutkoski Quotes

He shifted. She kept her back to him as she felt him move closer. The warmth of him slowly fitted along her spine. It was like sinking into a bath. His words brushed the back of her neck: "Just to keep you warm," he said, a question in his tone.
"You say that we're friends."
"Yes."
"Have we done this before?"
Another pause. "No."
Her shaking quieted to a shiver. She found that she'd moved even closer to him, had sealed herself against him. His heart beat fast against her back. He held her, and the weight of his arm made her feel more solid, more real, less ready to shatter into mirrorlike pieces. She calmed, relaxing into his warmth.
She still didn't sleep. Neither did he. She could feel his wakefulness. She thought, fleetingly, that it was like him not to fall asleep before she did. She didn't know how she could believe this to be true. It was hard to reconcile with the one memory she had of him: his face in the market, across a distance. An enemy's mouth, enemy's eyes.
But he was here, he had saved her, and he'd asked nothing of her except to remember, and had stopped asking even for that. She knew his scent. Knew that she liked it. His hand reached to touch the pulse in her neck. He kept his fingers there, slightly too firm to be gentle, as if he doubted she was alive.
Had they really never shared a bed? No. She would remember that. Wouldn't she?

Arin would trade his heart for a snarled knot of thread if it meant he would never have to see Kestrel again.

General Trajan's hand closed around the watch.
What a silly gift to give a man who led nighttime assaults where stealth could mean the difference between life and death. "Give it to me," Kestrel said. "I will find a nice convenient rock to drop it on."
The general smiled a little. "When the emperor gives you a gift, it's best to wear it.

Kestrel, this isn't you."
She pressed back against the chill glass. "I don't know what you mean."
"This voice you've been using, that bright one...do you think I don't recognize it? It's the sound of you laying a trap. Of you hiding behind your own words. And I know that the way you've been talking is not you. Say what you want about me, about what happened between us, about the shape of the sun and the color of the grass and any other truths in this world you want to deny. Deny everything until the gods strike you down. But you can't say that I don't know you." He was now close enough that the air between them was alive against Kestrel's skin. "I... have thought about you." His voice dropped. "I have thought about how I have never known you to be dishonest with me.

It looked like she held a basketful of woven gold.
Arin leap down the stairs. He strode up to his cousin and seized her arm.
"Arin!"
"What did you do?"
Sarsine jerked away. "What she wanted. Pull yourself together."
But Arin only saw Kestrel as she had been last night before the ball. How her hair had been a spill of low light over his palms. He had threaded desire into those braids, had wanted her to sense it even as he dreaded that she would. He had met her eyes in the mirror, and didn't know, couldn't tell her feelings. He only knew the fire of his own.
"It's just hair," Sarsine said. "It will grow back."
"Yes," said Arin, "but no everything does.

In the morning, when Roshar saw their faces he rolled his eyes. "I want my tent back," he said. Kestrel laughed. *

When she saw the opportunity to flee, she would take it. She would bring the hounds of the empire howling down on this city.

She reminded herself bitterly that this was what curiosity had bought her: fifty keystones for a singer who refused to sing, a friend who wasn't her friend, some one who was hers and yet would never be hers.

Her blood felt laced with black powder. How could she have forgotten what it was like to burn on a fuse before him?

Why are you delivering my dress?"
"I saw Lirah with it. I asked if I could bring it to you."
"And she let you, of course."
He lifted his brows at her tone. "She was busy. I thought she would be glad for one less thing to do."
"That was kind of you then," Kestrel said, though she heard her voice indicate otherwise and was annoyed with herself.
Slowly, he said, "What do you mean?"
"I mean nothing."
"You asked me to be honest with you. Do you think I have been?"
She remembered his harsh words during the storm. "Yes."
"Can I not ask the same thing of you?"
The answer was no, no slave could ask anything of her. The answer was no, if he wanted her secret thoughts he could try to win them at Bite and Sting. But Kestrel swallowed a sudden flare of nervousness and admitted to herself that she valued his honesty--and her own, when she was around him. There was nothing wrong with speaking the truth. "I think that you are not fair to Lirah."
His brows drew together. "I don't understand."
"It's not fair for you to encourage Lirah when your heart is elsewhere."
He inhaled sharply. Kestrel thought that he might tell her it was no business of hers, for it was not, but then she saw that he wasn't offended, only taken aback. He pulled up a chair in that possessive, natural way of his and sank into it, dropping the dress onto his knees. He studied her. She willed herself not to look away.
"I hadn't thought of Lirah like that.

He's going to pack it with wet, sterile gauze instead," Verex explained. "It will heal slowly, from the inside out." The prince's voice was strong and sure. He was turning the grim words of the physician into something hopeful. "Really, that's the best way to avoid infection, because the wound can be cleaned out daily."
The physician gave him a sidelong look. "I'm not sure I need the commentary." But Kestrel did, and Verex knew that she did.

Before - for years - she had let her mind close seamlessly, like an egg, around this wrong and other wrongs.

It was the horror of someone who'd been dealt a winning hand, had bet her life on the game, and then proceeded (deliberately?) to lose.

Logically speaking," he said lightly, "the idea that you hired someone to attack me doesn't make much sense. I'm not sure what your motive would be."
"I could have wanted to put an end to the rumors."
"That would be a shame. I like the rumors.

Her fierce creature of a mind: sleek and sharp-clawed and utterly unwilling to be caught.

She focused on that nothingness, imagined it as ink spilling over everything she could possibly think or feel.

I can't - Kestrel, you must understand that I would never claim you. Calling you a prize - my prize - it was only words. But it worked. Cheat won't harm you, I swear that he won't, but you must ... hide yourself a little. Help a little. Just tell us how much time we have before the battle. Give him a reason to decide you're not better off dead. Swallow your pride."
"Maybe it's not as easy for me as it is for you."
He wheeled on her. "It's not easy for me," "You know that it's not. What do you think I have had to swallow these past ten years? What do you think I have had to do to survive?"
"Truly," she said, "I haven't the faintest interest. You may tell your sad story to someone else."
He flinched as if slapped. His voice came low: "You can make people feel so small.

Kestrel felt a slow, slight throb, a shimmer in the blood. She knew it well.
Her worst trait. Her best trait.
The desire to come out on top, to set her opponent under her thumb.
A streak of pride. Her mind ringed with hungry rows of foxlike teeth.

Your question."
"Never mind."
"I'll tell you."
He shook his head. "Not necessary."
"It is you. It's true, I haven't wanted it to be you who tells me things I can't recall. Not you." She saw his flinch, and the effort to hide it. Tears sprang to her eyes. "Who are you, that you get to know so much about me that even I don't know? Why do you get to tell me who I am? How did you get so much power? I have none. It's not fair. You are unfair." Her voice broke. "I am unfair."
His expression changed. "Kestrel."
She held her breath until her lungs ached. She couldn't speak. Here was the truth, it peeled itself open: she was the reason she was in that prison. She had made some fatal, unknown mistake. Arin looked like a good culprit, but he wasn't the right one.
She was. It had been her fault, hers alone.
He reached across the table. His warm hand dwarfed hers. She saw it through her swimming vision. Those black-rimmed nails.
Blacksmith.
A sudden understanding held her still. She became aware of the weight of the dagger at her hip. Her sight cleared. She looked at Arin. He looked young. And too careful, and worried, and uncertain, and…something new was emerging, she saw it. It changed the quality of his expression the way light changes everything. A small sort of hope.
"Maybe," he said, "we could try being honest with each other."
She wondered what was in her expression that hope would grow in his. She wondered what he saw. "A

"Never mind."
"I'll" title="Marie Rutkoski Quotes: Your question."
"Never mind."
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She sat at her dressing table, eyeing her reflection warily. Her hair was loose, spilling over her shoulders, a few shades darker than the dress. She gathered a handful and began to braid.
"I hear you're going to the ball tonight."
Kestrel glanced in the mirror to see Arin standing behind her. Then she focused on her own shadowed eyes. "You're not allowed in here," Kestrel said. She didn't look again at him, but sensed him waiting. She realized that she was waiting, too--waiting for the will to send him away.
She sighed and continued to braid.
He said, "It's not a good idea for you to attend the ball."
"I hardly think you're in a position to advise me on what I should or shouldn't do." She glanced back at his reflection. His face frayed her already sheer nerves. The braid slipped from her fingers and unraveled. "What?" she snapped. "Does this amuse you?"
The corner of his mouth lifted, and Arin looked like himself, like the person she had grown to know since summer's end. "'Amuse' isn't the right word."
Heavy locks fell forward to curtain her face. "Lirah usually does my hair," she muttered. She heard Arin inhale as if to speak, but he didn't.
Then, quietly, he said, "I could do it."
"What?"
"I could braid your hair."
"You?"
"Yes."
Kestrel's pulse bit at her throat. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything he had crossed the room and swept her hair into his hands. His fingers began to move.

He saw her. She knew that he saw her. But his eyes refused to see her. It was as if she were transparent. Like ice, or glass, or something equally breakable.

When Kestrel opened her eyes, she was lying in her bed. Someone had built a fire, which sent ripples of orange light over the ceiling. An oil lamp burned on the night table, casting her father's face into extremes of shadow and bone. He had drawn a chair close and perhaps had been sleeping in it, but his eyes were alert.
"Your knee needs to be tapped," he said.
She looked at it. Someone--her father?--had cut away the right legging at her thigh, and below the sheared black cloth her knee was swollen to twice its normal size. It felt tight and hot.
"I don't know what that means," Kestrel said, "but it doesn't sound very nice."
"Irex dislocated your kneecap. It slipped back into place, but the blow must have torn your muscle. Your knee's filling with blood. That's what's causing you so much pain: the swelling." He hesitated. "I have some experience with this kind of wound, on the battlefield. I can drain it. You'll feel better. But I would have to use a knife."
Kestrel remembered him cutting her mother's arm, blood weaving through his fingers as he tried to close the wound. He looked at her now, and she thought that he was seeing the same thing, or seeing Kestrel remember it, and that they were mirroring each other's nightmare.
His gaze fell to his scarred hands. "I've sent for a doctor. You can wait until she comes, if you prefer." His voice was flat, yet there was a small, sad note that probably only she would have heard. "I wouldn't suggest this

I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn't matter how well you sing when you're nine years old, you know. Not when you're a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…" He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. "Well, I know I'm rusty."
"No," Kestrel said. "You're not. Your voice is beautiful."
The silence after that was soft.

Although Arin wasn't touching her, he was touching no living part of her, it felt as if a fine net had been cast over Kestrel, one that hazed her vision and shimmered against her skin.
"There," he said.
Kestrel watched her reflection lift a hand to her head. She couldn't think of what to say. Arin had drawn back, hands in his pockets. But his eyes held hers in the mirror, and his face had softened, like when she had played the piano for him. She said, "How…?"
He smiled. "How did a blacksmith pick up such an unexpected skill?"
"Well, yes."
"My older sister used to make me do this when I was little."
Kestrel almost asked where Arin's sister was now, then imagined the worst. She saw Arin watch her imagine it, and saw from his expression that the worst was true. Yet his smile didn't fade. "I hated it, of course," he said. "The way she ordered me around. The way I let her. But now…it's a nice memory."
She rose and faced Arin. The chair stood between them, and she wasn't sure whether she was grateful for that barrier or not.
"Kestrel, if you must go to the ball, take me with you."
"I don't understand you," she said, frustrated. "I don't understand what you say, how you change, how you act one way and then come here and act another."
"I don't always understand myself either. But I know I want to go with you tonight."
Kestrel let the words echo in her mind. There had been a supple strength to his voice. An unconscious melody. Kes

Arin, you're not listening. You're not thinking clearly."
"You're right. I haven't been thinking clearly, not for a long time. But I understand now." Arin pushed his tiles away. His winning hand scattered out of line. "You have changed, Kestrel. I don't know who you are anymore. And I don't want to.

She saw, yet again, that her friend's compliments were just bits of art and artifice. They were paper swans, cunningly folded so that they could float on the air for a few moments. Nothing more.

Cheat propped his elbows on his knees and gazed up at Kestrel. He scrutinized her: the long, loosely clasped hands, the folds of her dress. Kestrel's clothes had mysteriously appeared in the suite's wardrobe, probably while she had slept, and she was glad. The dueling ensemble had served well enough, but wearing a dress fit for society made Kestrel feel ready for different kinds of battle.
"Where is Arin?" Cheat said.
"In the mountains."
"Doing what?"
"I don't know. I imagine that, since the Valorian reinforcements will come through the mountain pass, he is analyzing its values and drawbacks as a battleground."
Cheat gave her a gleeful smirk. "Does it bother you, being a traitor?"
"I don't see how I am."
"You just confirmed that the reinforcements will come through the pass. Thank you."
"It's hardly worth thanking me," she said. "Almost every useful ship in the empire has been sent east, which means there is no other way into the city. Anyone with brains could figure that out, which is why Arin is in the mountains, and you are here."
A flush began to build under Cheat's skin. He said, "My feet are dusty."
Kestrel had no idea how to respond to that.
"Wash them," he said.
"What?"
He took off his boots, stretched out his legs, and leaned back against the bench.
Kestrel, who had been quite still, became stone.
"It's Herrani custom for the lady of the house to wash the feet of special guests," said Cheat.<

Isn't that what stories do, make fake things real, and real things fake?

She returned the sketch to Arin. Then she left as silently as she had come, closing the door behind her.
"Arin." Roshar's voice was menacing. "That door was locked."
"I gave her the keys."
Roshar exploded.

I am sure you're very pleased to have a pair of foxes," Kestrel told Irex now, "but you'll have to do better."
"I set down my tile," Irex said coldly. "I cannot take it back."
"I'll let you take it back. Just this once."
"You want me to take it back."
"Ah. So you agree that I know what tile you mean to play."
Benix shifted his weight on Lady Faris's delicate chair. It creaked. "Flip the damn tile, Irex. And you, Kestrel: Quit toying with him."
"I'm merely offering friendly advice."
Benix snorted.
Kestrel watched Irex watch her, his anger mounting as he couldn't decide whether Kestrel's words were a lie, the well-meant truth, or a truth she hoped he would judge a lie. He flipped the tile: a fox.
"Too bad," said Kestrel, and turned over one of hers, adding a third bee to her other two matching tiles. She swept the four gold coins of the ante to her side of the table. "See, Irex? I had only your best interests at heart."
Benix blew out a gusty sigh. He settled back in his protesting chair, shrugged, and seemed the perfect picture of amused resignation. He kept his head bowed while he mixed the Bite and Sting tiles, but Kestrel saw him shoot Irex a wary glance. Benix, too, had seen the rage that turned Irex's face into stone.
Irex shoved back from the table. He stalked over the flagstone terrace to the grass, which bloomed with the highest members of Valorian society.
"That wasn't necessary," Benix told Kestrel.
"It

Nothing in dreams can hurt you.

Once there was a girl who was too sure of herself. Not everyone would call her beautiful, but they admitted that she had a certain grace that intimidated more often than it charmed. She was not, society agreed, someone you wanted to cross. She keeps her heart in a porcelain box, people whispered, and they were right.

I suppose I'm no good to you dead."
"I would never let that happen."
"What a touching concern for Valorian life. As if you hadn't let your leader kill that woman. As if you're not responsible for the death of my friends."
They stopped before the door to Kestrel's suite. Arin faced her. "I will let every single Valorian in this city die if it means that you don't.

What could you say about someone who walked daily into his grief and lived at the bottom of its hole and didn't even want to come out?

Fairy tales are rife with transformation - from beast to handsome prince, from dirty scullery maid to well-dressed princess. It is perhaps no coincidence that nature in the Cinderella stories facilitates transformation, for nature itself is a changeable thing, from season to season, from a sunny day to rain, from an egg to a flying bird in a matter of weeks.
(Source: "The Nature of Cinderella".)

The guard hit Kestrel across the face. "I said, what did you give him?"
You had a warrior's heart, even then.
Kestrel spat blood. "Nothing," she told the guard. She thought of her father, she thought of Arin. She told her final lie. "I gave him nothing.

After ten years of slavery, Arin knew obedience in its many forms. The fear of pain, the gritty promise to oneself of vengeance. Hopelessness. A grinding monotony broken just often enough by the strap or fist.

You can't see both sides of one coin at once, can you, child? The god of money always keeps a secret.
The god of money was also the god of spies.

Arin wished Roshar wouldn't do this, wouldn't slip on false arrogance as if it were mourning garb worn in the service of a joke.

She thought of the hawk, which must have winged its way to her father by now. SHe imagined it slewing aruond trees, dropping down. Talons closing around his upraised fist. Her father unrolling the coded message. The trap she'd set for him.

Walk into it , she willed.

You have a mind for strategy , he'd said once.

Come see, then.

See what I can do to you. See what you have done to me.

So you give me nothing."
"When have I ever given you anything?"
Softly, Arin said, "You gave me much, once.

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You're good at this," said Ronan.
"What?"
He leaned to touch the baby's head. "Being a mother."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Ronan looked awkward. Then he said glibly, "Nothing, if you don't like it." He glanced at Benix, Faris, and the others, but they were discussing thumbscrews and nooses. "It didn't mean anything. I take it back."
Kestrel set the baby on the grass next to Faris. "You cannot take it back."
"Just this once," he said, echoing her earlier words during the game.
She stood and walked away.
He followed. "Come, Kestrel. I spoke only the truth."
They had entered the shade of thickly grown laran trees, whose leaves were a bloody color. They would soon fall.
"It's not that I wouldn't want to have a child someday," Kestrel told Ronan.
Visibly relieved, he said, "Good. The empire needs new life."
It did. She knew this. As the Valorian empire stretched across the continent, it faced the problem of keeping what it had won. The solutions were military prowess and boosting the Valorian population, so the emperor prohibited any activities that unnecessarily endangered Valorian lives--like dueling and the bull-jumping games that used to mark coming-of-age ceremonies. Marriage became mandatory by the age of twenty for anyone who was not a soldier.
"It's just--" Kestrel tried again: "Ronan, I feel trapped. Between what my father wants and--"
He held up his hands in flat-palmed defense. "I am not trying

Kestrel felt Arin's tension, the way he looked at the prince. Arin's worry was plain, his hands still at his sides yet slightly open, as if his friend might shatter and Arin needed to be ready to catch the pieces.

She thought that Arin had almost said that he wished there was no war, or that they could lose themselves in each without losing everything.

Later, I wished that I had called to her, that I had said I missed her as soon as she turned to walk away. I wished she had seen how I brought my hand to my cheek. Her touch shivered down my back.

She didn't want him to speak, she was suddenly not even sure he *meant* to speak. It occurred to her, strangely, that he might sing.
"Don't." Her command was sharp.
He didn't

Thoughts, too, have their seasons, and she
couldn't stop what worked its way up
through the underground of her mind. And
what were her thoughts? What did she gather
in secret, in guilt? What did she hold, and
lift to the light to see better, and what did she
drop as quickly as she could, as if it were hot
to the touch?

She felt suddenly light and sheer, as if this moment were encased in golden glass

Then we'll pretend we're their Valorian sailors who have been on shore," he said, "and ask for our launches to be winched up to the deck from the water."
"Pretend to be Valorian? That will be believable."
"It will be dark. They won't see our faces, and we have the names of sailors on shore."
"And your accent?"
Arin didn't answer.
"I suppose you hope that the wind will blow your accent away," Kestrel said.

Flute music, she thought with frustration, and would not look at Arin.
Her opening notes were awkward. She paused, then gave the melody over to her right hand and began inventing with her left, pulling dark, rich phrases out of her mind. Kestrel felt the counterpoint knit itself into being. Forgetting the difficulty of what she was doing, she simply played.
It was a gentle, haunting music. When it ended, Kestrel was sorry. Her eyes sought Ari across the room.
She didn't know if he had watched her play. He wasn't looking at her now. His gaze was unfocused, directed toward the garden without really seeming to see it. The lines of his face had softened. He looked different, Kestrel realized. She couldn't say why, but he looked different to her now.
Then he glanced at her, and she was startled enough to let one hand fall onto the keys with a very unmusical sound.
Arin smiled. It was a true smile, which let her know that all the others he had given her were not. "Thank you," he said.
Kestrel felt herself blush. She focused on the keys and played something, anything. A simple pattern to distract herself from the fact that she wasn't someone who easily blushed, particularly for no clear reason.
But she found that her fingers were sketching an outline of a tenor's range. "Do you truly not sing?"
"No."
She considered the timbre of his voice and let her hands drift lower. "Really?"
"No, Kestrel."
Her hands slid from the keys. "Too

Sarsine grabbed his wrists and tugged the hands from his eyes. He looked at her, but didn't see her. He saw Kestrel's wasted face. He saw himself as a child, the night of the invasion, soldiers in his home, how he had done nothing.
Later, he'd told Sarsine when the messenger had come to see him.
No, I won't, he'd promised Roshar when the prince had listed reasons not to rescue the nameless spy from the tundra's prison.
"I was wrong," Arin said. "I should have - "
"Your should haves are gone. They belong to the god of the lost. What I want to know is what you are going to do now.

I love you. Is that reason enough?"
Maybe. Maybe it would have been. But as the music drained from the air, Kestrel saw Arin on the fringes of the crowd. He watched her, his expression oddly desperate. As if he, too, were losing something, or it was already lost.
She saw him and didn't understand how she had ever missed his beauty. How it didn't always strike her as it did now, like a blow.
"No," Kestrel whispered.
"What?" Ronan's voice cut into the quiet.
"I'm sorry."
Ronan swiveled to find the target of Kestrel's gaze. He swore.
Kestrel walked away, pushing past slaves bearing trays laden with glasses of pale gold wine. The lights and people blurred in her stinging eyes. She walked through the doors, down a hall, out of the palace, and into the cold night, knowing without seeing or hearing or touching him that Arin was at her side.

Even though this duel has broken no rules, it's not ben clean," she said. "You began a brawl. Society will murmur its disapproval even before Ronan and Jess destroy your reputation."
"Society will disapprove of me?" Irex sneered. "Your reputation is not so lily white. Slave-lover."
Kestrel wobbled on her feet. It took her a moment to speak, and when she did, she wasn't sure that what she said was true. "Whatever people say about me, my father will be your enemy."
Irex's face was still sharp with hate, but he said, "Very well. You can live." His voice became hesitant. "Did you tell the general about Faris?"
Kestrel thought of her letter to her father. It had been simple. I have challenged Lord Irex to a duel, it had said. It will take place on his grounds today, two hours before sunset. Please come. "No. That would have defeated my purpose."
Irex gave Kestrel a look, one that she had seen before on the faces of her opponents in Bite and Sting. "Purpose?" he said warily.
Kestrel felt triumph surge through her, stronger even than the pain in her knee. "I want my father to believe that I've legitimately won this duel. You are about to lose. You'll throw the match, and give me a clear victory." She smiled. "I want first blood, Irex. My father is watching. Make this look good.

That wasn't necessary," Benix told Kestrel.
"It was," she said. "He's tiresome. I don't mind taking his money, but I cannot take his company."
"You couldn't spare a thought for me before chasing him away? Maybe I would like a chance to win his gold."
"Lord Irex can spare it," Ronan added.
"Well, I don't like poor losers," said Kestrel. "That's why I play with you two."
Benix groaned.
"She's a fiend," Ronan agreed cheerfully.
"Then why do you play with her?"
"I enjoy losing to Kestrel. I will give anything she will take."
"While I live in hope to one day win," Benix said, and gave Kestrel's hand a friendly pat.
"Yes, yes," Kestrel said. "You are both fine flatterers. Now ante up."
"We lack a fourth player," Benix pointed out. Bite and Sting was played in pairs or fours.
Despite herself, Kestrel looked at Arin standing not too far away, considering the garden or the house beyond it. From his position he would have had a view of Irex's tiles, and Ronan's. He would not, however, have been able to see hers. She wondered what he had made of the game--if he had bothered to follow it.
Perhaps feeling her gaze on him, Arin glanced her way. His eyes were calm, uninterested. She could read nothing in them.
"I suppose our game is over then," she told the two lords in a bright voice. "Shall we join the others?"
Ronan poured the gold into her purse and slipped its velvet strap over her wrist, unnecessarily fiddling

The rain began the next morning and showed no signs of letting up. Mud sucked at Arin's boots as he helped Kestrel ready her horse. The rain intensified, dropping down like little stones.
Arin squinted up at it. "Terrible day to ride." He hated to see her go.
She wiped water from her face, glancing over at Risha, whose head was tipped back under the rain, eyes closed. "Not for everyone," Kestrel said, "and the rain will make it less likely a Valorian scout will notice that a small band is riding from camp."
True. The middle distance was a gray fog. Arin raked dripping hair off his brow. He tried to be all right. His nerves sparked the way a blade does against the grinder.
Kestrel touched his cheek. "The rain is good for us."
"Come here."
She tasted like the rain: cool and fresh and sweet. Her mouth warmed as he kissed her. He felt the way her clothes stuck to her skin. He forgot himself.
She murmured, "I have something for you."
"You needn't give me anything."
"It's not a gift. It's for you to keep safe until I return." She placed a speckled yellow feather on his palm.
The rain fell in a veil behind her.

She didn't like the way he was right. How she listened. She wondered if there was any difference between how she listened to him and how Arin listened to his god.

I know you regret the purchase, but there are worse places for him to be."
Kestrel realized that she no longer did regret the purchase and frowned. What kind of person had she become, to feel that way?
"I gave him house privileges," she said, knowing that her tone was defensive. "He also often serves as my escort into the city."
Enai swallowed some syrup and made a face. "Yes, I heard from the others. Does society talk about it?"
"About what?"
"About Smith. Does society talk about him appearing as your escort?"
"Not to my knowledge. There was some gossip about the price I paid for him, but everyone's forgotten that."
"That may be, but I would think he'd still draw attention."
Kestrel searched the woman's face. "Enai, what are you trying to say? Why would people talk about him?"
Enai studied the very plain syrup pot. Finally, she said, "Because of how he looks."
"Oh." Kestrel was relieved. "Once he's dressed in house attire he doesn't appear so rough. He holds himself well." This thought seemed ready to give rise to other thoughts, but she shook her head. "No, I don't think he would give anyone cause to complain about his appearance."
Enai said, "I'm sure you're right."
Kestrel had the sense that the woman's words were less an agreement than a decision to let some unspoken matter drop.

He lifted her up onto the table so that her face was level with his, and as they kissed it seemed that words were hiding in the air around them, that they were invisible creatures that feathered against her and Arin, then nudged, and buzzed, and tugged.
Speak, they said.
Speak, the kiss answered.

As he spoke, it occurred to her that maybe he, too, felt like two people, that maybe everybody does, and that it's not a question of whether one's damaged, but of how easily or not that damage is seen.

Your promises are worth nothing.

Tell me, little ghost: do you enjoy my company?"
She was surprised. "Yes."
"I enjoy yours, too. I can see why you like me. I'm intelligent, charming - not to mention handsome."
"And skilled at preening. Let's not forget that.

How will we seize Wensan's ship?" a Herrani asked.
"We'll climb its hull ladder."
Kestrel laughed. "You'll be picked off one at a time by Wensan's crew as soon as they realize what's happening."
The room went still. Spines stiffened. Arin, who had been facing the Herrani, turned to stare at Kestrel. The look he gave her prickled the air between them like static.
"Then we'll pretend we're their Valorian sailors who have been on shore," he said, "and ask for our launches to be winched up to the deck from the water."
"Pretend to be Valorian? That will be believable."
"It will be dark. They won't see our faces, and we have the names of sailors on shore."
"And your accent?"
Arin didn't answer.
"I suppose you hope that the wind will blow your accent away," Kestrel said. "But maybe the sailors will still ask you for the code of the call. Maybe your little plan will be dead in the water, just like all of you."
There was silence.
"The code of the call," she repeated. "The password that any sane crew uses and shares with no one but themselves, in order to prevent people from attacking them as you so very foolishly hope to do."
"Kestrel, what are you doing?"
"Giving you some advice."
He made an impatient noise. "You want me to burn the ships."
"Do I? Is that what I want?"
"We'll be weaker against the empire without them."
She shrugged. "Even with them, you won't stand a chance.

Arin, who had set hooks into her heart and drawn her to him so that she wouldn't see anything but his eyes.
Arin was her enemy

Gorgeous?" Ronan tried again. "Transcendent? Kestrel, the right adjective hasn't been invented to describe you.

Kestrel though that Arin was someone who had fallen far.
She couldn't ask if that was true. She remembered his angry response when she had asked why he had been trained as a blacksmith, and that question had seemed innocent enough. Yet it had hurt him.
She did not want to hurt him.
"How did you learn to play Bite and Sting?" she asked. "It's Valorian."
He looked relieved. "There was a time when Herrani enjoyed sailing to your country. We liked your people. And we have always admired the arts. Our sailors brought back Bite and Sting sets a long time ago."
"Bite and Sting is a game, not an art."
He folded his arms across his chest, amused. "If you say so."
"I'm surprised to hear that Herrani liked anything about Valorians. I thought you considered us stupid savages."
"Wild creatures," he muttered.
Kestrel was sure she had misheard him. "What?"
"Nothing. Yes, you were completely uncultured. You ate with your hands. Your idea of entertainment was seeing who could kill the other first. But"--his eyes met hers, then glanced away--"you were known for other things, too."
"What things? What do you mean?"
He shook his head. He made that strange gesture again, lifting his fingers to flick the air by his temple. Then he folded his hands, unfolded them, and began to mix the tiles. "You have asked too many questions. If you want more, you will have to win them.

Absurd. It was absurd to think that someone like that could have any power over him. Yet she would, if she won the auction.
He wanted her to. The thought swept Arin with a merciless, ugly joy. He'd never seen her before, but he guessed who she was: Lady Kestrel, General Trajan's daughter.
The crowd heard her bid. And at once it seemed that Arin was worth something after all.

Your knee needs to be tapped," he said.
She looked at it. Someone--her father?--had cut away the right legging at her thigh, and below the sheared black cloth her knee was swollen to twice its normal size. It felt tight and hot.
"I don't know what that means," Kestrel said, "but it doesn't sound very nice.

There can be second chances. But maybe it's also true that things can never be the same, and that you have to decide whether the second chance lives up to the first.

Because of meat."
"It's for his tiger," said the cook.
Arin palmed his face, eyes squeezed shut. "Your tiger."
"He's very particular," said Roshar.
"You can't bring the tiger to the banquet.

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I don't mind being a moth. I would probably start eating silk if it meant that I could fly.

She knew that he would stop her. Perhaps he would be cunning about it. Maybe he would go to the steward behind her back, tell him of the theft and challenge, and ask to be brought before the judge and Irex. If that plan didn't suit Arin, he would find another.
He was going to be a problem.
"You're right," she told him.
Arin blinked, then narrowed his eyes.
"In fact," she continued, "if you had let me explain, I would have told you that I had already decided to call off the duel."
"You have."
She showed him the two letters. The one addressed to her father was on top. She let the mere edge of the other letter show. "One is for my father, telling him what has happened. The other is for Irex, making my apologies and inviting him to collect his five hundred gold pieces whenever he likes."
Arin still looked skeptical.
"He'll also collect you, of course. Knowing him, he'll have you whipped until you're unconscious and even after that. I'm sure that when you wake up, you'll be very glad that I decided to do exactly as you wanted."
Arin snorted.
"If you doubt me, you're welcome to walk with me to the barracks to watch as I give my father's letter to a soldier, with orders for its swift delivery."
"I think I will." He opened the library door.
They left the house and crossed the hard ground. Kestrel shivered. She hadn't stopped to fetch a cloak. She couldn't risk that Arin would change his mind.
When they entered the barra

Sometimes, Arin almost understood what Kestrel had done. Even now, as he felt the drift of the boat and didn't fight its pull, Arin remembered the yearning in Kestrel's face whatever she'd mentioned her father. Like a homesickness. Arin had wanted to shake it out of her. Especially during those early months when she had owned him. He had wanted to force her to see her father for what he was. He had wanted her to acknowledge what she was, how she was wrong, how she shouldn't long for her father's love. It was soacked in blood. Didn't she see that? How could she not?

Once, he'd hated her for it. Then it had somehow touched him. He knew it himself. He, too, wanted what he shouldn't. He, too, felt the heart chooses its own home and refuses reason. Not here, he'd tried to say. Not this. Not mine. Never. But he had felt the same sickness.

In retrospect, Kestrel's role in the taking of the eastern plains was predictable. Sometimes he damned her for currying favor with the emperor, or blamed her playing war like a game just because she could. Yet he thought he knew the truth of her reasons. She'd done it for her father. It almost made sense. At least, it did when he was near sleep and his mind was quiet, and it was harder to help what entered. Right before sleep, he came close to understanding. But he was awake now.

She didn't want to be empty, didn't want to vanish. She wanted to be whole.
She said, "I want to remember you."
An emotion flared in his face. He braced her hips, tugged her closer. His lids were heavy, eyes dark. His mouth was a wet gleam. She didn't recognize his expression. It was new. She leaned in and drank the newness of him.
Their kiss turned savage. She made it so. She felt his teeth, reveled in the sure knowledge that it had never been like this between them. Yet at the same time, she felt each kiss they'd shared before, felt them live inside this one. His mouth left hers, rasping down her neck. He buried his face in her skin.
She sought his mouth and found that he tasted different now. She was tasting the taste of her skin on his mouth. Coppery. She dipped her tongue into it again.
"Kestrel."
She didn't answer him.
"This is a bad idea."
"No," she said. "It isn't."
He pulled away, closed his eyes, and dropped his head to press his brow against her belly. She felt rich with the words he muttered against her nightdress. His mouth burned through the cloth.
His chair scraped back. He no longer touched her. "Not like this."
"Yes. Exactly like this." She tried to find the words to express how this helped, how he somehow mapped the country of herself, showed the ridges, the rise and valley of her very being.
"Kestrel, I think that you're…using me a little."
She stopped, unpleasantly startled. It occurred to he

You haven't asked me about Arin," Roshar said as he rode alongside him.
"What?"
"The tiger. Not the surly human.

He said, "How can the inconsequence of your life not shame you?"
He said, "How do you not feel empty?"
I do, she thought as she pushed through the library doors and let them thud behind her. I do.

Her words came in a sudden rush. "You're hard to look away from. I can't look away from you. I don't know how anyone could.

The general's daughter? We'd be fools not to. You talk about her as if she's made of spun glass. Know what I see? Steel.

I hear you're going to the ball tonight."
Kestrel glanced in the mirror to see Arin standing behind her. Then she focused on her own shadowed eyes. "You're not allowed in here," Kestrel said. She didn't look again at him, but sensed him waiting. She realized that she was waiting, too--waiting for the will to send him away.
She sighed and continued to braid.
He said, "It's not a good idea for you to attend the ball."
"I hardly think you're in a position to advise me on what I should or shouldn't do." She glanced back at his reflection. His face frayed her already sheer nerves. The braid slipped from her fingers and unraveled. "What?" she snapped. "Does this amuse you?"
The corner of his mouth lifted, and Arin looked like himself, like the person she had grown to know since summer's end. "'Amuse' isn't the right word.

I remembered a numeric code. He could have been using counters to help him write in it."
"Or," said Roshar, "your father will read the note, see one code when he expects another, and will send someone to the station, where there's a dead body."
"If so," Arin said, "then we're no worse off than we were before."
"Oh yes, we are. The general will know the letter's a ploy, and will do the opposite of what we want. He'll ignore the main road. He'll take back roads through the forests where our guns would be of dubious use and we wouldn't have the advantage of height. You know this."
Arin shut his mouth, glancing uneasily at Kestrel. Yes. He had known this, as had she. She felt worse for his effort to make her mistake seem smaller. He knew its true size.
Roshar leaned back in his creaking chair. His eyes slid from Arin to Kestrel, black as lacquer, the green lines around them fresh. "Can you tell me anything more cheerful than all this?

A window is just a window. Colored glass: mere glass. But in the sun it becomes more. She would show him, and say, love should do this.

If you won't be my friend, you'll regret being my enemy.

The truth can deceive as well as a lie.

She said, "Why can't you see that people care for you?"
She said, "I care for you."
"I know that you care. But…" He searched her face. "Anyone would, for a friend."
"You're more than a friend."
"On the battlefield, you stayed--"
"Of course I did."
"You have a strong sense of honor. You always have. I think you think you owe me something."
"I stayed because I love you."
He flinched and looked away. "You don't mean that."
"Yes, I do."
The night outside seemed to swell against the tent. The lamp smelled like a hot stone. His face slowly opened. He touched her hand as it pressed against his heart. His caress was light, secret, almost unsure of her knuckles, the thin tendons as strong as bone. She felt him become sure.
There was no sound when he kissed her. None when she unthreaded the ties of his shirt and found his skin.
He grasped her dagger belt, flexed his fingers once around the leather, then simply held on. He whispered something into her mouth that was almost a word. It lost its shape, became something else.
He let go. She heard the brush of linen as he drew the shirt over his head, his fingertips grazing the tent's sloped ceiling as if for balance. His ribs were bound with gauze, his body marked by scars. Old ones, badly healed and raised. Others, pink and fresh. His shoulders bore pale gouges; they looked like sets of claws, almost deliberate, like tattoos. Curious, she touched them.
He bit his lip.

Music made her feel as if she were holding a lamp that cast a halo of light around her,

But honesty requires courage. As she cornered the thief in his lair, she found that she wasn't so sure of herself. She was sure of only one thing. It made her fall back a little. She lifted her chin.
Her heart had an unsteady rhythm they both could hear when she told the thief that he might keep what he had stolen.

Kestrel took Arin's battered hand in hers, the rough heat of it, the fingernails still ringed with carbon from the smith's coal fire. His skin was raw-looking: scrubbed clean and scrubbed often. But the black grime was too ingrained.
She twined her fingers with his. Kestrel and Arin walked together through the passageway and the ghost of its old door, which her people had smashed through ten years before.

The man wrote his message.
Are you really a boy, like Xash says? the god asked Arin. You've been mine for twenty years. I raised you.
The Valorian signed the scrap of paper.
Cared for you.
The message was rolled, sealed, and pushed into a tiny leather tube.
Watched over you when you thought you were alone.
The captain tied the tube to a hawk's leg. The bird was too large to be a kestrel. It didn't have a kestrel's markings. It cocked its head, turning its glass-bead eyes on Arin.
No, not a boy. A man made in my image ... one who knows he can't afford to be seen as weak.
The hawk launched into the sky.
You're mine, Arin. You know what you must do.
Arin cut the Valorian's throat.

When Roshar saw her ripped, one-legged trousers and Arin at her side as they stood outside the prince's tent, his eyes glinted with mirth and Kestrel felt quite sure that the prince was going to say it was about time Arin tore her clothes off. Then Roshar might comment coyly on Arin's inability to reach a full conclusion (Only one trouser leg? she imagined Roshar saying. How lazy of you, Arin), or on the quaint quality of Arin's modesty (What a little lamb you are). Perhaps he'd offer condolences to Kestrel on the partial death of her trousers. He'd ask whether she'd gotten injured on purpose.

We can withstand a siege for some time," Arin said. "The city walls are strong. They're Valorian-built."
"Which means that we will know how to bring them down."
Arin swirled his glass, watching the water's clear spin. "Care to bet? I have matches. I hear they make very fine stakes." There was the quirk of a smile.

In some ways, getting published in children's literature is a little more open than publishing adult literature. It's less hinged on who you might know.

As he rowed the launch toward Wensan's ship, which was Herrani-made and studded with Valorian cannon, Arin remembered the exhaustion of that work, but also how it had corded his muscles until the ache in his arms became stone. He was grateful to the Valorians for having made him strong. If he was strong enough, he might live through this night. If he lived, he could reclaim the shreds of who he had been, and explain himself to Kestrel in a way she would understand.
She sat silent next to him in the launch. The other Herrani at the oars watched as she lifted her bound hands to tug at the black cloth covering her hair. It was an awkard business. It was also necessary, since a new twist in the plan called for Kestrel to be seen and recognized.
The Herrani watched her struggle. They watched Arin drop an oar in its lock to offer a hand. She flinched hard enough that her shifted weight shook the boat It was only a slight tremor along wood, but they all felt it.
Shame ate into his gut.
Kestrel pulled the cloth from her head. Even though clouds swelled in the sky, swallowing the moon and deepening the dark around them, Kestrel's hair and pale skin seemed to glow. It looked like she was lit from within.
It wasn't something Arin could bear to see. He returned to the oars and rowed.
Arin knew, far better than any of the ten Herrani in the launch, that Kestrel could be devious. That he shouldn't trust her plan any more than he should have fallen for her ploy

She had dreams that shamed her in the morning, dreams where Ronan gave her a white powdered cake, yet spoke in Arin's voice. I made this for you, he said. Do you like it?
The powder was so fine that she inhaled its sweetness, but always woke before she could taste.

She'd wanted to put her fear inside a white box and give it to Arin. You, too, she would tell him. I fear for you. I fear for me if I lost you.

The parasol wasn't a very good cane. Its tip dug into the hard, grassless earth, and the folded frame creaked as Kestrel limped across the grounds. But it brought her where she needed to go.
She found Arin walking through the bare orange grove, horse tack draped over his shoulder. It jangled when he stopped and stared at her. He stood, shoulders stiff. As Kestrel came close she saw that his jaw was clenched, and that there was no trace of what her guards had done to him. No bruises. Nor would there be, not for something that had happened nearly a month ago.
"Did I shame you?" Kestrel said.
Something strange crossed his face. "Shame me," Arin repeated. He looked up into the empty branches as if he expected to see fruit there, as if it weren't almost winter.
"The book. The inscription I read. The duel. The way I tricked you. The order I gave to have you imprisoned. Did I shame you?"
He crossed his arms over his chest. He shook his head, his gaze never wavering from the trees. "No. The god of debts knows what I owe."
"Then what is it?" Kestrel was trying so hard not to ask about the rumors or the woman in the market that she said something worse. "Why won't you look at me?"
"I shouldn't even be speaking with you," he muttered.
It dawned on her why it had never made sense that Rax had been the one to release Arin. "My father," she said. "Arin, you don't have to worry about him. He'll be leaving the morning of the Firstwinter ball. The entir

Why would one ever be so insane as to ditch a perfectly beautiful metaphor? Cut back, of course, prune if you like, so that the best metaphors are clear and sparkling. But I will throw out unread the book that promises me no metaphors inside.

His dark head bowed, became lost in its own shadow.

The house burst into being. It

What makes you believe that the emperor wasn't behind it? Do you have other enemies I don't know about?"
"No. It was him."
"So you're just being difficult."
"One of my enduring qualities.

The city will be ours." Cheat rested a hand on Arin's shoulder and gripped it. "Freedom will be ours."
Those words sliced through the knots tangled within Arin. He slowly nodded. He turned toward the window.
"What're you doing?" Cheat said. "You risked enough coming here, and you'll risk the same returning to the estate. Stay. I can hide you until the assault."
Why won't you look at me? Kestrel had said. The hurt in her voice had hurt him. It hurt him still. It made him remember how his father had given him a blown-glass horse for his eighth nameday. Arin remembered its tapered legs, the arched neck: a thing of starlike clarity. He had fumbled, and it had smashed on the tiles below.
"No," Arin told Cheat. "I'm going back. I need to be there when it happens.

Sudden distrust slicked down Arin's spine.
Roshar raised his hand to quiet the roaring crowd, and Arin was reminded of Cheat relishing his role as an auctioneer. A stone rose in his throat. Kestrel's hand tightened on his, but Arin no longer felt wholly there.