Seeing that his last words made her pale with fury, he grinned and left.

“You want me with the guns, too,” Kestrel told Arin.

“Roshar’s not wrong.”

“He’s choosing according to his own best interests.”

His brow furrowed. “Positioning you with the guns gains him little, personally.”

“What about your position against the general’s forward ranks?”

“Sometimes Roshar plays the selfish prince so that no one expects anything better of him. It’s not who he is. He’s choosing well. For me, he’s chosen what I would have chosen for myself. I want the front lines.”

Kestrel remembered Arin’s words now as she waited in the trees with the gunners, who’d been placed under her command. She remembered how she’d wanted to explain to him that it had rattled her to try to slip into her father’s mind, to know that the general’s mind and her own felt upsettingly similar. She’d wanted to put her fear inside a white box and give it to Arin.

You, too, she would tell him. I fear for you. I fear for me if I lost you.

War is no place for fear, said the memory of her father’s voice.

“Take care,” she’d told Arin.

He’d smiled.

And now he was below, out of sight, beyond the curve of the empty road.

The sun poured down. The gunners had loaded their weapons. Kestrel watched the road, dagger ready.

Cicadas. The flit of birdwings.

Maybe her father had recognized that the coded letter was false.

Maybe he wouldn’t take the bait.

A breath of wind. Hours passed, slow as the sweat traveling down Kestrel’s back.

Her limbs ached from being in the same position. She felt a strange energy slip over her and the gunners, an elastic tension that went tight at the smallest sound, then slackened in the heat, the waiting.

Dream, wait, startle, wait, dream.

The gunners, like her, crouched among ferns and saplings. Guns angled down. Small eastern crossbows were at the ready. A sirrin tree dripped orange sap, its spindly branches low and sticky.

Kestrel watched the road.

The rapid toc toc toc of a bird’s beak against bark. The brush of leaves. Then—faintly, stronger . . . the rhythm of thousands of boots on the paved road.

Chapter 28

Arin heard the valorians marching toward him. The sound made his chest harden with anticipation.

The Valorians neared. Still hidden behind the bend in the road, Arin turned to catch the eyes of his soldiers, no more than fifty of them, men and women, Herrani and Dacran both. All of them on foot, for stealth and to appear more vulnerable to the Valorian front lines. Some of the Herrani soldiers had lined their eyes in orange and red like Dacran warriors.

The sound of the Valorian army became deafening. Boots and hooves and wagon wheels. Heavy armor. Metal on metal.

His gaze on his soldiers, theirs on him. Arin lifted his hand: wait.

He edged around a tree to look down the road.

The Valorian cavalry. Enormous war horses. Officers in black and gold.

Close.

And one Valorian in particular, leading them, looking no different than he had eleven years ago. Large and armored, his insignia painted across the chest. A woven baldric over his chest, knotted at the shoulder. Helmet simple, made to show his face. That face.

Good, to have a little distance, to not quite see the general’s light brown eyes—too much like his daughter’s.

Better, to have this man move his horse nearer to Arin. Almost within his reach.

Do you want him? Arin’s god whispered.

Do you want to crush him between your hands?

Arin glanced back at his company. “Ready,” he whispered, then whispered it again in Dacran. His sword was drawn. His blood was hot.

Sweet child.

Mine own.

Go.

Kestrel saw the clash from above. Through a spyglass, she watched Valorian war horses rear. Not the general’s. He became motionless: a metal statue. His face was far away, his features a blur. Her stomach clenched.

And Arin?

Trees obscured her view. She couldn’t find him. She couldn’t see anything below the horses’ shoulders.

Infantry against cavalry.

Kestrel, you fool.

She realized that she must have believed in Arin’s god. Some unexamined part of her must resolutely trust the god of death’s protection. Only that could explain why she had set Arin against the Valorian vanguard—and her father—with any hope of survival.

Dread worked its way up her throat.

In the initial crush, Arin lost sight of the general. An officer’s horse nearly trampled Arin, who dodged the reared front hooves. He caught a blow from the Valorian’s sword; its edge lodged harmlessly in the shoulder of Arin’s hardened leather armor. As the man tugged it free, Arin snatched the reins from the man’s hand and dragged the horse’s head down, heard it scream. The Valorian struggled to keep his seat. Arin buried the point of his sword into the man’s side above his hip, just below the low border of the metal cuirass. Arin pushed.