The Winner's Crime (13 page)

whether she wanted to see Arin here in the Winter Garden

or not. And that was a fool’s question. It was pure, punish-

ing foolishness, the mere consideration of either possibility,

when she had already decided that neither should matter.

So it did not matter that her short nails had found a

split in the bark. It did not matter that she was ner vous as

she peeled away a strip of bark in one long curl. Or that she

was unhappy, unrolling the strip like a scroll with a blank

message she couldn’t read.

Then she looked at the bark and thought of Thrynne’s

stripped skin. She dropped the bark. It fl uttered to the

ground. Kestrel lifted her eyes and saw the emperor again.

She emerged from the poison trees. Her footfalls were

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quiet on the path. The fi rst group of courtiers, clustered

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around a brazier, didn’t notice her arrival.

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Lady Maris, the Senate leader’s daughter, was murmur-

ing something that unleashed fl urries of breathless giggling

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from her friends.

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“—they all looked like that, I’d free them, too,” Maris

was saying. “Or make him
my
slave.”

Kestrel deliberately stepped on a fallen twig. It snapped.

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Maris glanced up. Her friends went pale and their

laughter died, but Maris’s eyes were defi ant. “Chocolate,

Lady Kestrel?” she off ered. “It’s hot.”

“Yes, thank you.” Kestrel joined the ladies. They made

room, edging away.

Maris lifted the chocolate pot from its stand over the

brazier and poured for Kestrel, who accepted the tiny cup

and sipped. It wasn’t until the chocolate scalded her tongue

that Kestrel knew the exact degree of her anger. It sim-

mered: dark and bitter and somehow even sweet. Kestrel

smiled. “Lady Maris, your father is looking very well. He’s

so tan. Has your family been somewhere sunny?”

“Oh, don’t talk to me about it!” Maris gave a little dra-

matic mew. “It is too, too horrible!”

The other ladies relaxed, relieved that Kestrel seemed

to have no interest in being vengeful. And why should she?

their expressions seemed to say. It had been a bit of harm-

less gossip. In fact, Lady Kestrel ought to be pleased to hear

compliments about the Herrani governor. It couldn’t have

been so bad being his captive, now could it? The ladies saw

quite another side to that Jadis coin.

Kestrel watched them think this through, and shrug

their furred shoulders, and drink their chocolate.

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“Can you believe that my father sailed to the southern

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isles without me?” Maris said. “A luxury trip to blue skies

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while his only child languishes here in winter. Though you

can be sure that if
I
had gone, I would never have let the sun

darken my skin. It makes one look so coarse! Like a dock-

worker! Really, what was my father thinking?”

MARIE RUTK

Kestrel shouldn’t have asked Maris about the Senate

leader. She should steer clear of everything to do with him.

She had sworn not to embroil herself any further in Her-

ran’s aff airs.

And yet, she had gotten angry. She was angry still.

And yet, the Senate leader was tan.

And yet, this was unusual.

Her mind kept returning to this detail, like a thumb

rubbing a fl aw in a bolt of silk, or that papery bark of the

poison berry trees.

But so what if the Senate leader was tan? A trip to the

southern isles explained it. She told herself once more to

leave the matter alone.

Yet she didn’t.

“The southern isles have many delights,” Kestrel said.

“Surely your father brought you gifts?”

“No,” said Maris. “The wretch. Oh, I love him, I do,

but couldn’t he have spared one little thought for me? One

little present?”

“He brought you nothing? But the southern isles have

linen, perfume, sugar, silver- tipped tea . . .”

“Stop! Don’t remind me! I can’t bear it!”

“Poor thing,” one of her friends said soothingly. “But

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just think, Maris. Now your many suitors have more choice

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in gifts to please you.”

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“They do, don’t they? And they
should
please me.”

“Is that what fashionable young men do in the capital?”

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Kestrel asked. “Give gifts?”

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“Oh, yes . . . though they often ask for something in

return.”

“A kiss!” cried a lady.

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“Or an answer to a riddle,” said another. “Riddles are

very pop u lar. And the answer is always love.” Which made

sense, given that the court was full of young people who

had chosen to marry rather than serve in the military. By

the time they turned twenty, every Valorian had to fi ght for

the empire or begin giving it babies.
Future soldiers
, her

father would say.
The empire must grow,
he’d add, and Kes-

trel would wonder if this was the working of every general’s

mind, or only her father’s: to see something as soft as a baby

and imagine it grown hard enough to kill. And then Kestrel

would shrink from the thought of becoming like her father,

and he would know that he had said the wrong thing, and

then they would both say nothing.

“No, I’ve heard other riddles,” said a girl, drawing Kes-

trel back to the conversation. “Ones with diff erent answers:

a mirror, a candle, an egg . . .”

“I like riddles,” said Kestrel. “Tell me one.”

“There is a riddle that I simply cannot fi gure out,” said

the lady sitting next to Maris. “It is:
I leap without feet to

land, my cloth head is fi lled with sand. I have no wings, yet

try to fl y . . . what am I?
”

Kestrel helped herself to some cream. She wasn’t angry

anymore. The truth was that she, like her father, knew

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how good it felt to cut with certain weapons. She took a

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whitened sip of chocolate, the cream cool and pillowy

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against her lips. “Maris knows the answer to that riddle,”

she said.

“I?” said Maris. “Not at all. I cannot guess it.”

“Can you not? The answer is a fool.”

MARIE RUTK

Maris’s smile wilted. There was a silence broken only

by the delicate clink of Kestrel setting her cup on the tray.

She gathered her white furs about her and swept away.

She noticed the eastern princess making a move at Bor-

derlands. Her rider hopped over Verex’s pieces to kill an en-

gineer. Verex laughed. The sound surprised Kestrel. He

sounded so happy. Kestrel would have gone to their table, to

fi nd out once and for all just what kind of player the prin-

cess was, and why Verex had laughed as he had. But the

emperor caught Kestrel’s eye. He beckoned her toward him.

“We have a problem,” the emperor told Kestrel as she

approached. “Come help us.” The senators surrounding

him were high- ranking, all with seats in the Quorum. Kes-

trel joined them, grateful that the Senate leader had his

back to his daughter’s coterie.

“Problem?” said Kestrel to the emperor. “Don’t tell me

you’ve run out of chocolate already.”

“A more serious matter,” he said. “The barbarian plains.”

Kestrel glanced at the eastern princess, but Risha was

engaged in her game with Verex, and the emperor’s voice

had been pitched not to carry. Risha possessed a grace

perfectly proportioned to her beauty. Her black hair was

braided like a Valorian’s. She wore rings when a true east-

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erner would have kept her fi ngers bare, and the contrast of

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gold against Risha’s richly dark skin was striking. She was

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about Kestrel’s age. Maybe Risha didn’t remember much of

her life in the east before her kidnapping. Maybe she had

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grown accustomed to the capital and thought of it as her

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home. Kestrel couldn’t say what the girl would have thought

about the emperor referring to her country as a problem,

and to her people as barbarians. Uncomfortably, Kestrel

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remembered that she’d called them barbarians before,

too, just because that’s what people she knew did. Kestrel

wouldn’t do that now. This seemed at once a meaningful

diff erence and yet also worth very little.

“Your father writes that the plainspeople prove tricky,”

the emperor said. “The eastern tribes at our borders are

skilled at stealth attacks. They vanish when the general

musters his army against them.”

“Burn the plains,” said a senator, a woman who had

served under Kestrel’s father. “They’re dry this time of

year.”

“It’s good land,” said the emperor. “I’d like to turn it

into farms. A fi re would spoil my prize.”

And kill the plainspeople, Kestrel thought, though this

was a factor no one raised. The plains were vast, and north

enough in Dacra that it didn’t rain much there this time of

year. Valorian soliders would set the fi re while the plains-

people slept. They would wake, and they would fl ee to

the river, if they could make it. But a fi re would rage fast

and fi erce through the dry grasses, and by the time the

plainspeople woke it would likely be too late. They’d be

burned alive.

There was some debate about whether a fi re might en-

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danger Valorian troops. But if not, it would be a signifi cant

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victory, argued the Senate leader. The plains lay north of

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the delta where the eastern queen ruled. If Valoria captured

the plains, it would squeeze the savages into the southeast-

ern corner of the continent. “And then it’s only a matter of

time,” said the emperor, “before Valoria rules the entire con-

MARIE RUTK

tinent.”

“Then burn the grasses,” said the senator who had been

in the military. “Fire is good for the earth anyway. Eventu-

ally.”

Kestrel watched Risha knock over one of Verex’s pieces,

an unimportant one. Risha shivered in her furs. It was

never cold in the east. Did this knowledge live in Risha’s

memory, or had it been given to her as it had been to Kes-

trel, as a piece of someone else’s information? The princess

was young when she’d been captured, as young as Kestrel

when her family had moved from the capital to the newly

conquered territory of Herran. Maybe Risha didn’t remem-

ber her home at all.

Kestrel saw Herran, and her garden there, and seeds

beneath her childhood fi ngers as her nurse pressed them

into the soft earth.

She saw a plain of fi re. Flames waving and snapping,

horses running wild, tents burned to their frames, then

crackling down. Parents would snatch up their children.

The air would choke hot and black.

“Kestrel?” said the emperor. “What do you think? Your

father wrote that you’ve advised him well on the east before.”

She blinked. The sky was white over the Winter Gar-

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den. The trees dripped their deadly berries. “Poison the

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horses.”

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The emperor smiled. “Intriguing. Tell me more.”

“The plainspeople rely on horses,” Kestrel said. “For

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their milk, their hides, their meat, to ride for hunting . . .

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Kill the horses, and the tribes won’t be able to live without

them. They’ll trek south to take refuge in the delta. The

plains will be yours. You’ll mow the grasses and send it to

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feed our own horses. You can plant the earth as soon as you

like.”

“And how do you propose to poison the horses?”

“Water supply,” suggested the military senator.

That might poison people as well. Kestrel shook her

head. “The river is wide and rapid. Any poison would be

diluted. Instead, have my father send scouts to determine

where the horses graze. Spray those grasses with the poison.”

The emperor leaned back in his seat. His cup of choco-

late steamed, veiling his face as he tipped his chin and