Roshar’s green-rimmed eyes narrowed. “Arin knows a good deal when he sees one. We’re the best thing that could have happened to him.”

“Yes, clearly. You are great benefactors. If you care so much for his well-being, why have you sent him to sea in the middle of a storm?”

“Arin sent himself.”

She fell silent. Roshar made his move. “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.”

“Lies, all lies.” He met her eyes across the gaming board. “The reason you enjoy my company is because I look like how you feel.”

“That’s not it,” she said, though when she looked again at his damaged face she realized that what he’d said was true. Yet it was only partly true, and she didn’t know how to put the other parts into words.

“Arin is my friend,” Roshar told her. “I trust him with my life, and he trusts me with his. That’s rare. I won’t have it questioned by someone who, for all I can tell, has no love for him.” He knocked over his general: the gesture of surrender. The marble game piece rolled. “Go away, little ghost. Go haunt someone else.” But he was the one who left.

Rain tapped the panes. She went to draw the windows shut, then paused, seeing how the trees bent, lashed by wind blowing in from the sea. It smelled like a cut-open oyster.

Dear one, what do you care?

A small serpent of worry lifted its hooded head inside her.

Rain drove into Arin’s eyes. The deck heaved. It wasn’t a green storm, but just as bad. They’d seen the signs. They’d been warned against sailing by the Herrani captain who’d taken Arin east last winter.

“We must,” Arin had told Roshar. “The general holds Ithrya. He’ll use it to supply a strike at the mainland and can sustain that attack only if he’s able to supply his forces. He’s stockpiling Ithrya. We must break his supply lines with the Valorian capital. I’ll sail to the Empty Islands between our western shores and Valoria.”

“ You’re no sailor.”

Arin spoke as if he hadn’t heard. “A Herrani ship, with Herrani crew.”

“I’ll send Xash.”

Arin shook his head. “My people have recovered. They want to fight. As it is, your soldiers wonder when we’re going to pull our own weight.”

So Arin’s ship had set sail.

Now it quaked under each hit from a monstrous wave. The sea swelled into purple hills and valleys. The sails had been stowed lest they be shredded by the wind. The captain had set a drogue in the water to slow the ship and stabilize it, but its prow punctured wave after wave. The deck was slick. Arin struggled to keep his footing. He slid, hit the railing, and gripped it. Vomited.

“God of madness.” The captain seized Arin’s upper arm and hauled him upright. The captain was three times Arin’s age and growled with that lilt that Herrani sailors had had before the war. “Get below, boy. What good’re you on deck? You know nothing of the sea.” Then the captain’s attention darted away, and he was gone.

The captain was right. Arin was headed toward the bolt-hole, his face stinging with salt and rain, eyes burning, when it struck him that he was too seasick to be afraid. This made him remember his conversation with Kestrel as they’d ridden her horse, and how, if he’d had to touch her, he should have known better than to touch her where they had hurt her, even if he had wanted to say, without words, that he understood how they had hurt her.

His boots skidded. The world was a dizzy, wet blur. The ship shuddered and leaned on its side. Again, Arin tumbled against the railing. This time, he went over. He plunged into the seething water below.

Chapter 15

He punched to the surface. Broke it. Gasped. Was shoved under again by a swell of water. His lungs blazed.

This time, when he came up from the silence into the roaring air, he was smarter. He broke the laces of his boots with a savage yank, kicked the heavy things from his feet. He sucked in his breath, swam straight through the next wave, and struck out for the tempest-tossed ship, which wasn’t far. The water was blood-warm. It tugged at him. Dragged and pushed. His shoulders ached. He swam through another wave. He prayed. He was closer.

A rope? Could someone lower a rope from the deck?

Maybe . . . if anyone had even seen him go over.

He kicked harder. Don’t leave me, he prayed again to his god. Not like this.