But Sarsine. She looked different than he’d ever seen, like she knew he wasn’t sure he’d come back this time. He thought that his promise to his god might be absolute. She was weeping. She held out flowers, tiny ones that grew at the base of trees, in their shadows. The kind you had to get on your hands and knees to see properly. They had been his favorites, long ago.

He took them. From his height on the horse, he leaned to brush away her tears. “Don’t,” he said, which only made her eyes swim again.

“I love you,” she said. He said that he loved her, too.

The horse moved forward. His hand fell away. The distance grew between them.

Don’t you worry, murmured a voice within him. I take care of my own. Yet the god of death sounded ominous.

I heard you, the god added. Last night. A promise to stay? To miss it all? Arin, you made me a promise. Glory. In my name. Or do I misremember?

Arin said nothing.

Ah, Arin. You’re lucky that I like you.

Why do you? Arin asked, but the god just smirked silently inside him.

The ships stayed in the bay. The queen would defend the city. Arin tried to dismiss the thought that she could easily claim it for her own. He had no choice but to trust her.

A few thousand marched south. They could only travel as fast as foot soldiers walked and supply wagons trundled. The roads were good. They were Valorian, made after the invasion by slave labor. They were paved for war.

“You haven’t asked me about Arin,” Roshar said as he rode alongside him.

“What?”

“The tiger. Not the surly human. I thought it was best to leave him behind to keep my sister company. Since you won’t.”

Arin shot him a look.

“Did I say I wanted you to be my sister’s pet? Did I not merely imply it in order to get under that ridiculously thin skin of yours? I prefer to have you here.”

“Why?”

“It would have been a mistake to stay. Don’t tell me you didn’t consider it. She—”

“You mean Kestrel.”

“I mean both of them. I’ll say nothing of your little ghost. You’d chuck me off my horse and then I’d have to kill you for insubordination, which would set the tone nicely for the army’s underlings but would be messy and inconvenient.”

“Make your point.”

Roshar turned serious. “Watch your back, especially around my sister.”

Arin’s gaze flicked over him. He didn’t think Inisha would appreciate that warning. “Are you disloyal to her?”

Roshar’s smile said that he found it charming that Arin would ask such a direct question and expect a direct answer. “Never.”

The sound of the army—the creak of wagons, the hooves, boots, bits of conversation in two different languages—hammered the thoughts from Arin’s head. But he still carried that emotion with him, the one he’d found by the brook. It knocked against his breastbone: a small, heavy stone.

Yellow thorn bushes bloomed by the side of the road. Once, he saw a fox and her kits tumble out of a bush and scramble across the road in front of him. He’d stayed his horse, feeling foolish—then relieved to see them dodge several sets of hooves and make it safely to the other side.

“The Valorian general might try again to land at Lerralen’s beach,” Roshar said.

“It’d be costly.”

“True, but it’s still the best location for a large invasion. He’s got the numbers to do it. If reports are right, our force is the smaller one. Still, we are better looking, which is a significant advantage.”

“I think that it’s not just about winning for him.” Arin remembered Kestrel at the gaming table. “He likes to win with style. Make you feel the fool for ever thinking you could compete. He could push all his troops up onto that beach and bleed them out, and still win, and come up north to take the city. Brute force victory. A nasty one, though, with heavy losses. And a little too straightforward. He prefers a trick. He already played one with the cliffs. Unless he’s got another trick up his sleeve for the beach, I wouldn’t focus our forces there.”

“If we have none in position at Lerralen, he’ll walk right onto the peninsula with no resistance.”

“Send a division.”

“Two-thirds?”

“Plus most of the supplies, and infantry. Stationed there. The rest of the army keeps moving south—light, fast, mainly cavalry. Small cannon. And guns.”

“Where would you put your people?”

“Where you want them.”