They sat in the receiving room of Arin’s childhood suite. He didn’t like being there. He looked at his childhood instruments, still hung on the wall. He remembered Kestrel touching them, her fingers plucking a string. He saw the birthmark on her right hand, in the middle of the soft web between forefinger and thumb. It had been like a little black star.

Arin should take those instruments down. He should get rid of them.

“It happened about a month ago,” the messenger said.

Arin’s attention snapped back to him.

“Someone gave me something.” The man knotted his hands together. “She told me to give it to you, but I don’t have it anymore.”

“What was it?”

“A masker moth.”

“What?” Arin’s voice was sharp.

“One of those Valorian moths. The kind that change color. A prisoner gave it to me.”

Arin’s heart picked up speed. “Who gave it to you?”

“A Herrani woman.”

“That’s not possible.” Tensen had told Arin that the Moth, his valued spy in the capital, was Risha. No one could mistake Risha for a Herrani. Like all easterners, her skin was brown, a much darker shade than even Arin’s, which was tanned from years in the sun.

“I know what I saw,” the messenger said.

“Tell me every thing.”

“I take care of horses along the road that runs north of the Valorian capital. A prison wagon stopped. They go by sometimes. I was watering the horses while the guards were stretching their legs. The woman called to me. She was reaching through the bars, and asked me to give you the moth, but the guards saw. That’s why I don’t have the moth anymore. It got crushed. The guards were rough with me. Her, too.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see. Anyway, they drove off.”

“That’s it?”

The man shifted uncomfortably at Arin’s tone. “Should I not have come?”

“No, yes.” Arin briefly squeezed his eyes shut. His pulse was going too fast. “You were right to come.”

“I’m sorry I lost the moth.”

“I don’t care about that. Just . . . she spoke to you in Herrani?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

The messenger gave him an odd look. “I can recognize my own language. She was mother-taught, like you and me.”

I don’t speak Herrani, he remembered Risha saying. She’d also never said that she was the spy. Arin had taken Tensen’s word for it. “You said you couldn’t see. What couldn’t you see?”

“I couldn’t see into the wagon. Its walls were solid. The doors, too. I saw her at the window.”

“Describe her.”

“I can’t.”

Arin tried very hard to speak evenly. “What do you mean, you can’t? You saw her. You said so.”

“Well, yes, but”—the man was clearly frustrated, too—“I saw only her hand.”

“What color was her skin? Like mine? Yours?”

“More or less. Less, I guess. Kind of pale. The color of a house slave’s.”

Not Dacran. “ There must be something else you can tell me.” It felt increasingly difficult for Arin to sit still. “What happened to the prisoner?”

The man rubbed his weathered neck, avoiding Arin’s gaze. “The guards hit me. My head was ringing. I couldn’t hear what they did inside the wagon. I don’t know what they said. But her voice sounded horrible.”

“And then?”

“The wagon drove north, toward the tundra.”

Dangerously, Roshar said, “You believed my little sister was spying for Herran and you didn’t see fit to mention it?”

“I’m mentioning it now.”

“Arin, sometimes I really don’t like you.”

“It wasn’t my secret to share. Tensen said that his in formant insisted on keeping her identity anonymous. I pressed him, he gave me a name. I admired her. Every one in this city would be dead if she hadn’t told Tensen about the poison in the aqueducts. If she wanted to be anonymous, I had to honor that.”

“You had to honor saving your own skin, you mean. The queen and I might have felt a little differently about you if we’d known you were using our sister for information she could have been killed for obtaining.”

“It wasn’t your sister.”

“That’s not the point!”

“I know, but what would you have done in my place?”