He had forgotten what she was looking at until she spoke. “The ordnance is wrong.”

“What?” Roshar was just barely keeping his composure.

“It’s round. You’re planning on shooting a ball like a cannon does. But this is not a cannon. Cannons aren’t intended to be especially accurate. They’re designed to do the most amount of destruction in a generalized space. This thing—a gun, you said?”

Only now did Arin wonder when she’d entered the room, and how much she’d heard. He didn’t think she understood the eastern language, but he and Roshar had been speaking in Herrani for some time now.

“This seems designed for specific harm to a person or that person’s parts,” Kestrel said. “In that sense, it’s like a bow and arrow. An arrowhead is not round. It’s tipped. That makes the arrow fly true. It drives into the flesh. If you want greater accuracy, that little cannonball should not be a ball. It should be conical, perhaps. Tipped.”

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.

Kestrel was on the grounds at the edge of the orchard when he found her. The eastern prince kept his distance, but he was unmistakably there to speak with her. Ripe ilea hung heavily from the trees. Some of the purple fruit had fallen to the grass. Wasps climbed over it. They didn’t bother her, but the sun made her tired.

“What do you want?” she said when he approached.

“I’d like to know how much you know.” Roshar saw her expression. What he saw changed his. A little more gently, he said, “It’s a matter of safety.”

“Mine, or yours?”

“I care about as much for my safety as I think you do for yours.”

“His, then.”

“This is war. The safety of many people is at stake.”

“If you play war safely, you’ll lose,” she said, then was uneasy. Those words hadn’t felt like hers. They belonged to someone else, a person who knew war well and enjoyed discussing it with her.

She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about that. It made her dizzy, pricked by invisible pins. She focused on the prince: his mutilations, his finely drawn black eyes. “How do you speak my language so well?”

Roshar raised his brows.

“I mean, his.” She knew that Herrani wasn’t her first language. Still, it often felt that way.

“I was enslaved by your people. Then I was sold into this country.”

She looked again at the missing nose. The slitted, reptilian nostrils. “Did they do that to you?”

He smiled with his teeth.

Testing the truth of it as she spoke, Kestrel said, “I knew that they did that to runaways. I don’t remember seeing it happen.”

“You might not have. You were a lady. Part of privilege is not having to look at ugly things.”

“You’re not ugly.”

“What a sweet little liar you are.”

“Except when you smile. You make yourself look like a grinning skull. You do it on purpose.”

“Not so sweet, then.”

“Not a liar.”

“But you were a liar. A very good one, if what I hear is true. Who’s to say you’re not lying about your lost memory?”

She gave him a look of such plain hatred that he drew back. The wasps buzzed.

“I have a confession,” he said. “Sometimes I offend on purpose. It’s like my smile.”

“That’s not an apology.”

“Princes don’t apologize.”

In a swift move, she had her dagger in her hand at his throat. He jerked his head back with a hiss.

“Apologize,” she said.

“I’m not sure giving you that dagger was wise. You’re not exactly stable.”

She pressed the dagger. He stepped back. She stepped forward. “Every one says I’ve done these marvelous things. Traitor to my country for the greater good. I was so noble.” Her mouth became a sneer. “Poor girl. Poor Kestrel with her worthless weak body, her empty mind. Why would I lie now?”

“To torment him.”

Startled, she lowered the blade.

Roshar said, “You torment him.”

“Is that why you’re here? To protect your friend from me?”

This time, Roshar’s smile was a mere twist of the mouth.

“I don’t want anything from him,” she said.