The physician gave him a sidelong look. “I’m not sure I need the commentary.” But Kestrel did, and Verex knew that she did.

When it was finished and the gore was cleaned away, the wound hidden below swaths of gauze, Kestrel’s father looked both larger and smaller than he ever had to her. His face had always seemed to be cut from stone. It was softer now. The sun lines that fanned from his closed eyes were as white as thin scars. His light brown hair held no trace of gray. He had been young when she was born. He wasn’t old now. Yet he looked ancient.

The physician left. He would return, he said. Verex brought a chair so that Kestrel could sit by her father’s bedside. Then he became awkward again. His stooped shoulders hunched a little more as he asked whether she needed him to stay with her.

She shook her head. “But … thank you. Thank you for helping me.”

He smiled. There was a touch of surprise in his smile. Kestrel thought that he was probably not used to being thanked.

Then she was alone with her father. His breath was slow and even. His hand lay palm up on the bed beside him, fingers slightly curled.

Kestrel couldn’t remember when she had last held his hand. Had she been a child then? Surely she had held his hand before.

She hesitated, then she let her palm rest upon his. With her other hand, Kestrel made his loose fingers hold hers close.

* * *

He woke during the night. The lamp had been turned down low. His eyes opened just slightly, and gleamed in the feeble light. He opened them wider. He saw Kestrel, and didn’t smile, not exactly, yet the set of his mouth changed. His hand tightened around hers.

“Father.” Kestrel would have said more, but he closed his eyes briefly in the way of someone who wants to say no without speaking, yet hasn’t the strength to shake his head. Softly, he said, “Sometimes I forget that you aren’t a soldier.”

He was thinking about when he’d entered the palace yard, and the way she had greeted him. Kestrel said flatly, “You believe I don’t know how to behave around you.”

For a moment, he was silent. “Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t know.” There was another silence, long enough for Kestrel to think that that was all he would say, but he spoke again. “Look how you’ve grown. I remember the day you were born. I could hold you with one hand. You were the world’s best thing. The most precious.”

Aren’t I now, to you? she wanted to say. Instead, she whispered, “Tell me how I was.”

“You had a warrior’s heart, even then.”

“I was just a baby.”

“No, you did. Your cry was so fierce. You held my finger so tightly.”

“All babies cry. All babies hold on tight.”

He let go of her hand to lift his, and brush his knuckles across her cheek. “Not like you.”

* * *

He had fallen asleep again. When the physician came at dawn to clean the wound, the pain woke him.

“More?” The physician nodded at the empty cup that had held the medicine. The general gave him a dark look.

When the physician had left again, her father rubbed his eyes. His face was slack with pain. “How long did I sleep?”

“About four hours after the healer first cleaned your wound. After you woke in the night, another three.”

He frowned. “I woke in the middle of the night?”

“Yes,” said Kestrel, confused, but already feeling wary, already tensing as if some blow was about to fall.

“Did I … say something I shouldn’t have?”

Kestrel realized that he didn’t remember waking, or the conversation. She could no longer tell if he had meant what he had said to her then. Even if he had meant it, had he meant to say it?

He had, after all, been drugged.

An emotion leaked away. It came from a small cut that Kestrel couldn’t close.

“No,” she told her father. “You didn’t.”

27

Arin woke with the movement of being heaved up onto something hard. His head thumped, and the world was a weird, jigsawed thing of sky and stone and water. Then his vision cleared, and Arin realized that he was lying on a stone pier. The skull-faced man was stepping out of the narrow boat anchored to the pier. He muttered something.

“What did you say?” Arin croaked.

The man hunkered down and gently slapped Arin’s cheek twice. “That I need a wheelbarrow.”

Wherever Arin was going, he wanted to be on his feet. “There’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Foreigners are illegal in Dacra. You broke our laws by entering the country. You’ll have to pay the price.”

“Just let me tell you why—”

“Oh, reasons. Everyone has reasons. I don’t care to know yours.” The easterner stared down at Arin, and although it wasn’t the man’s eyes that had been mutilated, it was hard to hold his gaze. Arin remembered seeing him for those few bare minutes in Herran. How the runaway eastern slave was being dragged past the road Arin was forced to pave. A Valorian dagger had flashed. Arin had cursed his masters. He had been beaten down. The man’s face was whole, and then it wasn’t.

“You ran away again,” Arin said. “You got free.”

The man straightened. He stared down at Arin from a height. “Do you think you did something for me that day?”

“No.”

“Good. Because I think that you liked your chains, little Herrani. Otherwise, you would have fought with everything you had. You would look like me.” He bent to grasp the ropes wound around Arin’s chest, and Arin realized that he meant to drag him.