“Are you going to shoot?”

It was Verex. He had approached without her noticing.

“Not today.” The wind was tricky and her father was here. She didn’t want to miss.

Verex offered her his arm. “Let’s see who wins.”

As they walked together, Kestrel said, “You seem to know a good deal about medicine.”

He shrugged.

“Would you rather be a doctor than an emperor?”

Verex peered down the low slope. He didn’t say anything. Kestrel wasn’t sure if it was because he had been offended by the question or because he didn’t know how to answer it. Then he said, “The Herrani minister of agriculture is looking at you.”

Kestrel glanced to see Tensen sitting in a chair under the trees, folded hands resting on the cane planted into the grass in front of him.

“No, don’t look back,” said Verex. “Be careful, Kestrel.”

Her step faltered. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You know why my father keeps him at court, don’t you?”

Slowly, Kestrel said, “To watch him.”

“What will my father think if he watches that minister watch you?”

Kestrel swallowed a bubbling nervousness. Her hands, though lightly gloved, were very cold. But she strove to sound confident and careless. “People look at me all the time. I can’t help it.”

Verex shook his head and turned to eye the archers.

“I assure you,” she said, “I care nothing for Herran’s minister.”

He gave her a sidelong, reproachful look. “Kestrel, I know what you care about.”

She tried for a teasing tone and change of subject. “Since we’re gossiping about who watches whom, don’t you think it’s time you told me which of my maids is in your pay?”

“What would that change? Don’t you realize by now that all of them are watching you? I bribe one, but who bribes the others?” Verex faced her fully now. “You asked me whether I would have liked to become a physician. Yes. I would have. Once. I even had books on the subject. My father burned them. Kestrel, I know you think that you’ve hidden your heart where no one can see it.” Verex’s dark eyes held hers. “But you need to hide it better.”

An arrow flew high above its target, its feathers whistling.

“Verex, what has my maid told you?”

“Not much … so far.” He must have seen the worry she was trying to hide. His expression softened. “Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

Kestrel mustered a bright, tense smile.

Verex sighed. “Come on,” he said. “I want to see Risha shoot.”

Kestrel let him lead her to the archers. She was glad that she’d made no promise to enter the archery contest. Her fingers would tremble on the bowstring.

Risha notched an arrow. She had a fine, strong line. Kestrel focused on watching the eastern girl. If she watched Risha with the same intensity that Verex did, she might be able to forget, if only for a moment, Verex’s warning.

Risha let the arrow go. It soared lazily and hit the target’s edge. All of her arrows in the target were badly placed. Kestrel would have thought from the way Risha held her bow that she would have been able to do better. Then again, the day was full of sneaky little breezes.

Risha aimed again.

“… born first?” Kestrel heard someone saying. “A baby prince or princess?”

Verex went still beside her. Kestrel spotted the gossiping courtiers. She realized they were looking right at her and Verex. Their words came clear on the wind. It shouldn’t have taken so long for Kestrel to understand what they meant. When she did, her cheeks burned.

Risha let the arrow fly.

It drove deep into the target’s very center.

32

Learning the eastern language made Arin feel like he was remembering something he didn’t know he knew. Dacran was very similar to Herrani. It had some of the same patterns, and though the vocabulary was different, the words didn’t sound completely alien, either. Arin learned quickly.

If the eastern language felt familiar, much in this new country was strange. Dacran cuisine focused far more on color than taste. Clothes were plain but cosmetics were not, and men as well as women used them. Roshar in particular liked to line his eyes with vivid, dramatic flair, as if to show that he knew this drew attention to his mutilations, and he didn’t care.

Arin was allowed to roam the castle and city. “Everyone knows who you are,” Roshar had said with a shrug. “If you wander too far away, the city militia will happily shoot you.”

“What exactly is ‘too far’?”

Roshar told him to figure it out for himself.

The queen, meanwhile, kept her distance.

At first, Arin stayed inside the castle, thinking that the structure was a shell that housed not only the queen, but her internal self. If he knew its hallways and alcoves and chambers, he might be able to guess at what would persuade her to an alliance with Herran.

But the dizzying mix of transparent and opaque walls gave him no clues. He wandered. Sometimes he heard distant music played in other rooms. There was an instrument like the Herrani violin, except with a flatter bridge, and here the strings were tuned more sharply and played with a percussive quality: lots of plucked notes and aggressive bow strokes.

Arin rarely saw the queen. When he did, she ignored him in an icy way that never failed to remind him that he had no weapon. His parents had thought that openly carrying a blade was the height of barbarism. Now, though, Arin felt strange without Kestrel’s dagger at his hip. Its lack made him uncomfortable … and even more uncomfortable about what that discomfort might mean.