Roshar’s eyes went exaggeratedly round. “How very accommodating of you.”

“So long as they’re under my command.”

“Why not,” Roshar said graciously, “so long as you are under mine?”

Night. Without commenting on it, Arin and Roshar had pitched their tents near each other. A small fire crackled. A chill had crept into the air; the weather was changing.

Roshar lay on his back, the dip of his neck bolstered by a tied bedroll. He smoked. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Dear gods.”

“It occurs to me that you have no official rank, and that I, as your prince, might give you one.” He said an eastern word Arin didn’t know. “Well? Will it suit?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“Whether that word was some horrific insult you’re pretending is an actual military rank.”

“How mistrustful! Arin, I have taught you every foul curse I know.”

“I’m sure you’ve saved a few, for just such a time.”

Roshar said something about pigs and Arin’s fondness for certain questionable practices.

Arin laughed.

“I wasn’t joking earlier,” Roshar said. “I don’t know how to translate that word. For your rank. It puts you third. After Xash.” The sea captain had requested the queen’s permission to leave his ships under her orders, and that of his second-in-command. He wanted to be part of the land operation. “He has the experience. He fought the general in the mountains four years back. He’s good. Also, he’d kill me if I ranked you above him.”

Arin shifted a log and watched the darting sparks. “Thank you.”

Roshar squinted up at him, dragging on his pipe. Its bowl blistered red. “You don’t seem wholly pleased.” Smoke curled around his face. “What is it? What makes you not glad for third? You don’t like Xash? Neither do I. So what? You can’t have second, and you damned well won’t get first.” He studied Arin more carefully. “No, it’s not thwarted ambition that’s bothering you. Not even wounded pride, which is usually the obvious interpretation where you’re concerned. Not this time, somehow. Arin, you’re not nervous, are you? You’re perfect for this. You want it. Just earlier today you claimed command of the Herrani.”

“I must. I’m responsible for them.”

“And they love you. They think you’re some holy gift from your gods. Very nice work, I must say.”

“I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Even better. Makes it seem more authentic. Convenient, you understand, when sending people to their deaths.”

Arin looked at his stolen Valorian boots and felt the fire’s heat in his cheeks.

“Too late to have qualms about death and dying and killing,” Roshar said. “You’re in it. Some people were born to be in it.”

Arin wondered if that’s why Kestrel hadn’t come: because she could smell death on him.

Roshar said, “You’ll do well.”

“I know.”

Roshar crossed a leg over one bent knee, sat up slightly to knock spent ash out of his pipe by rapping it against a boot, then eased back against his bedroll. “I smell rain.”

“Hmm.”

“The leaves of the trees are cupped for it.”

“You can’t see that in this dark.”

“I see it in my mind.” The smoke from his pipe lingered. He folded his arms across his chest. His body looked close to sleep. “Arin.”

Arin, who was sitting with his forearms propped on bent knees, fingers loose, felt nowhere near sleep. “Yes?”

“How do I look in the dark?”

Startled, Arin glanced at him. The question had had no edges. It wasn’t sleek, either. Its soft, uncertain shape suggested that Roshar truly wanted to know. In the fired red shadows, his limbs looked lax and his mutilated face met Arin’s squarely. The heavy feeling that Arin carried—that specific sadness, nestled just below his collar bone, like a pendant—lessened. He said, “Like my friend.”

Roshar didn’t smile. When he spoke, his voice matched his expression, which was rare for him. Rarer still: his tone. Quiet and true. “You do, too.”

Alone in his tent, Arin must have fallen asleep at some point. He woke expecting Kestrel to be beside him. Her presence seemed clear and real, as real as when she’d stood before him in his rooms. That thin shift. The sear of her hot skin. I want to remember you.

Go back to sleep, he told himself. You can’t hold her to any promise.