Kestrel was in her father’s rooms.

She groped her way back to the stairs, retreating. She’d lost her lamp. She stumbled past a small ballroom. A dining hall. The parlor. She gripped the knob of a door: the library.

She remembered him better in the library than in his suite, to which she’d rarely been invited. He didn’t brook intrusion. The library was achingly familiar, even with the books missing. There was no sign of violence here. Still, it felt as if violence had been done, as if the books had been gouged out of their inset shelves. There used to be a translucent red paperweight that had sat on a squat marble-topped table. The paperweight had been made from blown glass. She recalled the whorls beneath her fingertips. He’d used it to hold down maps. She didn’t know where it was now.

She sat on the floor where a chair had been. As the pearled dawn touched her wet eyes, searing the room orange and pink and yellow, Kestrel knew that she’d come to this house for only one true reason: to find her father.

Her memory limped up to her. It crawled into her lap. Kestrel didn’t remember every thing, but she remembered enough.

Chapter 19

Arin arrived early at the brook in the gray hour before dawn. Sat on the grass. Had thoughts that kept forcing each other from his head.

Nervous. He pressed his palms hard against the earth. He was too nervous.

She didn’t come.

He watched the water glint with the rising sun. The brook gently coursed along its path. Birds sang out. An irrielle called, notes flat and sweet. It repeated itself. There was no answer. It continued, the sound casting a spell. The bird sounded caught in its own enchantment.

He waited as long as he could. Eventually, a quiet part of him admitted that he had doubted all along. He’d never really expected she would come. It had been doubt, hadn’t it, that had kept him from sleeping after she’d left his rooms? Not the difficult plea sure of her presence there, or how her absence felt. Not the anticipation of war, nor the possibility that she might lay claim to him.

Be honest, now.

He held himself to honesty. Held hard. Conceded. Yes, the plea sure and difficulty and absence and anticipation had all conspired to keep him from sleep last night. Still, doubt—fizzy, sour—had also been part of it.

And now some heavy emotion. Round. About the size of the hollow of his palm. An emotion he seemed to have kept in an invisible pocket, and now took out to see fully.

Just a small sorrow, he told himself. Small, because expected. What else could he have expected?

He plucked a few blades of grass, rubbed them between fingers and thumb, and inhaled the young scent. Then—he knew it was odd, he wanted the oddity of it to distract him, or to give him one last thing to do before he left, because maybe she would arrive in that final moment, if he waited but one more moment—he put a blade of grass in his mouth and chewed. It tasted soapy. Clean.

She wasn’t coming. She prob ably had never had any intention of coming.

He went to ready his horse.

Arin drew up short several paces from the stables. Soldiers—perhaps a hundred strong, on horse and on foot—gathered on the hill. The morning was loud with the huff and stamp of horses, the rough irritation of people who got in each other’s way, the click and tap of metal and leather, the slap of a saddle dropped on a horse’s back. None of this surprised Arin. What surprised him was the sight of Roshar, standing with two saddled horses, smiling at him.

Roshar approached, the horses walking behind. “You’re late. Sleep in, did you?”

Arin said nothing.

“Here you are.” Roshar passed the reins. “You ride this one sometimes, I’ve noticed. He’s good. Not as good as mine, but he’ll do. I thought you’d want to leave that big war horse behind. Hers, isn’t it?”

“Javelin stays.”

“Of course,” Roshar said easily. “Well. Wasn’t this thoughtful?” He swept his hand at Arin’s saddled horse.

“Yes . . . though a little unlike you.”

“Never say so. I am the soul of thoughtfulness.”

Arin found himself smiling faintly back. He mounted the horse.

Every one ordered themselves behind him and the prince. They would make their way down to the city, gathering soldiers as they went. Eventually they’d reach the harbor, where eastern soldiers who’d come on ships waited for them. Then the march south.

But first they passed along the path to the house. A few people lined the path, having learned or guessed of the soldiers’ leaving.

Kestrel wasn’t there. Sarsine was, and the queen. Inisha lifted one sardonic brow at him, and said, “Careful.”