“Firstsummer was about a month ago,” he heard himself saying.

Javelin huffed and stamped. He curved his neck to whuffle Arin’s chest.

Sarsine started to speak.

“Please leave,” Arin said. “I answered your question. I want to be alone. I need to think,” he added, though he wasn’t even sure what he was thinking.

When she’d gone, Arin threaded fingers through the horse’s mane. Kestrel loved Javelin. She’d left him behind anyway.

Arin remembered seeing her hand in Javelin’s mane, curling into the coarse strands. This made him remember the almost freakish length between her littlest finger and thumb as her hand spanned piano keys. The black star of the birthmark. He saw her again in the imperial palace. Her music room. He’d seen that room only once. About a month ago, right before Firstsummer. Her blue sleeves were fastened at the wrist.

Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.

Do you sing?

Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him.

A band of nausea circled Arin’s throat, just as it had when she had asked him that question, in part for the same reason.

She’d had no trace of an accent. She had spoken in perfect, natural, mother-taught Herrani.

“I told you every thing I know,” said the messenger. Arin had gone to his childhood suite, feeling an anxiety verging on panic at the thought of not finding the man there, of having to track him down, of time lost . . . but the man had opened the outermost door almost immediately after Arin’s pounding knock.

“I didn’t ask you the right questions,” Arin said. “I want to start again. You said that the prisoner reached through the bars of the wagon to give you the moth.”

“Yes.”

“And you couldn’t really see her.”

“That’s right.”

“But you said she was Herrani. Why would you say that if you couldn’t see her?”

“Because she spoke in Herrani.”

“Perfectly.”

“Yes.”

“No accent.”

“No.”

“Describe the hand.”

“I’m not sure . . .”

“Start with the skin. You said it was paler than yours, than mine.”

“Yes, like a house slave’s.”

Which wasn’t very different from a Valorian’s. “Could you see her wrist, her arm?”

“The wrist, yes, now that you mention it. She was in chains. I saw the manacle.”

“Did you see the sleeve of a dress?”

“Maybe. Blue?”

Dread churned inside Arin. “You think or you know?”

“I don’t know. Things happened too fast.”

“Please. This is important.”

“I don’t want to say something I’m not sure is true.”

“All right, all right. Was this her right hand or her left?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you tell me anything about it? Did she wear a seal ring?”

“Not that I saw, but—”

“Yes?”

“She had a birthmark. On the hand, near the thumb. It looked like a little black star.”

“Arin.” Roshar briefly squeezed his eyes shut, then regarded him with the slightly repelled, slightly fascinated look reserved for aberrations of nature, such as animals born with two heads. “This sounds—”

“I don’t care how it sounds.”

“You’ve thought this kind of thing about her before.”

“I should have trusted myself. She lied. I believed her. I shouldn’t have.”

“Arin, she’s dead.”

“Show me the body.”

“I’m worried about you. I’m serious.”

“I don’t need soldiers. I’ll go to the tundra alone.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. But I’m going.”

“You can’t leave in the middle of a war to chase a ghost.”

“I’ll be back.”

“The tundra is Valorian territory. Do you understand what they’ll do to you if you’re caught? You can’t hide who you are. That scar—”

“You don’t need me. You said it yourself.”

“I was joking!”

Arin gave Roshar a copy of the same plans for the miniature cannon he’d given to Sarsine. “I’ve asked my cousin to oversee production on this. The Herrani aren’t well enough to fight, but it doesn’t require much physical strength to make these. And you can assign the construction of different parts of the mechanism to different people. Even the elderly can make the ammunition. If you start now, you’ll have a small arsenal of these weapons by the time I’m back.”