The Winner's Crime (25 page)

erous. I understand why the emperor preferred Lady Kes-

trel’s plan. It was she who suggested that the general poison

the horses. The eastern savages won’t be able to live with-

out them, she said. We all knew that would do the trick.

And didn’t it just?”

Laughter.

“To Lady Kestrel.” The senator raised his cup.

“To Lady Kestrel!”

Kestrel had stood to leave the table and fi nd Arin when she

heard the cheer.

Had she been recognized?

No one was looking at the maid in the corner. Still,

Kestrel grew even more anxious.

She couldn’t see Arin. He was lost in the swarm of peo-

ple by the bar.

Or had he left the tavern entirely? Had she off ended

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him that much?

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Kestrel was reassuring herself that Arin wouldn’t leave

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their game unfi nished, when he emerged from the crowd

empty- handed.

He dragged his chair back from the table.

“Arin . . . what I said earlier, about the wound—”

MARIE RUTK

“I don’t want to talk about that.” He sat, and reposi-

tioned his tiles.

“But I need to tell you. Arin, your face—”

“I don’t care about my face!”

Kestrel shut her mouth. Arin refused to look up at her.

With a nauseating dread that she didn’t yet understand,

she sank into her chair. “Why were those senators drinking

to me?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you know why?”

Arin met her gaze with an unfl inching stare. “Play.”

“You’ve no glass after all.” She poured wine into her

own. She spilled a few drops. She wiped them away with

her thumb, rubbing hard at the glass, and off ered it to him.

He ignored her.

So Kestrel played, and watched Arin toss down tiles

and claim others. She felt the pulse of his fury. It was worse

than when he’d left the table. It had grown fi erce, practi-

cally solid. It was the kind of anger that comes close to

trembling. The game slipped from Kestrel’s control.

In the end, she welcomed the loss. She would tell Arin

the truth. She swore to herself that she would. Everything

could be explained. She was afraid of it, afraid of the anger

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in him now, and of what he would do with the truth. But

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she would give it to him. She could no longer bear not to.

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Arin said, “Did you tell the general to poison the horses

of the eastern plainspeople?”

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“What?”

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“Did you?”

“Yes,” she said haltingly, “but—”

“Do you realize what you’ve done? Hundreds of people —

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innocent
people— died in the exodus to the queen’s city.”

“I know. It was a horrible thing—”

“Horrible? Children starved while their mothers wept.

There are no words for that.”

Guilt swelled in her throat. “I can explain.”

“How do you explain murder?”

“How do
you
?” she said with a fl ash of her own anger.

“People died because of you, too, Arin. You have killed.

Your hands aren’t clean. The Firstwinter Rebellion—”

“This is not the same.”

He seemed to choke on his words, and Kestrel was ap-

palled at how everything she said went so wrong. “I meant

that you had your reasons.”

“I can’t even speak of my reasons. I can’t believe that

you’d bring them up, that you would
compare
. . .” His

voice shook, then dropped low. “Kestrel. The empire’s only

reason is dominion. And you have
helped
.”

“I had no choice. My father would’ve—”

“Thought you weak? Disowned you for not being his

warrior girl, ready with the perfect plan of attack? Your fa-

ther.” Arin’s mouth curled. “I know you want his approval.

I know that you’d marry the prince to get it. But your fa-

ther’s hands run with blood. He is a monster. What kind

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of person feeds a monster? What kind of person
loves
one?”

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“Arin, you’re not listening. You’re not thinking clearly.”

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“You’re right. I haven’t been thinking clearly, not for a

long time. But I understand now.” Arin pushed his tiles away.

His winning hand scattered out of line. “You have changed,

Kestrel. I don’t know who you are anymore. And I don’t

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want to.”

Later, when Kestrel remembered this moment, she said

the right things. In her imagination, he understood.

But that was not what happened.

Arin’s anger curdled into disgust. He was sick with it.

She could tell. She could tell from the swift way he stood,

as if escaping contamination. She saw it in the set of his

shoulders when he turned his back, even as she called to

him. Arin walked away. He let the tavern door slam be-

hind him.

It was silent in the palace gallery. Bones must be silent like

this, Kestrel thought, when they lay deep in the earth.

She stood in front of Tensen’s painting longer than she

actually looked at it. Finally, she set a moth on its frame.

She told herself the kind of lie that knows itself for what it

is. Kestrel decided that it was better that Arin think this

way of her.

Yes. It had all been for the best.

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21

“AND WHAT,” SAID THE EMPEROR, “IS SO URGENT

that you must return to Herran now?”

“My duty to you, Your Imperial Majesty,” said Arin.

“He speaks so handsomely,” the emperor said to the

court, and the senators and lords and ladies hid their smirks

in a way that showed them all the more. There was no lon-

ger anything handsome about the governor of Herran.

Risha didn’t smile. From across the room, Arin caught

the easterner’s gaze: somber and steady.

“I’m not sure what to think about this request for my

permission for you to leave,” the emperor said. “Governor,

have you been . . . treated
badly
here?”

Arin smiled with the cut side of his face. “Not at all.”

The courtiers whispered delightedly. It was as good as a

play. The disfi gured face. The emperor’s slippery mockery.

The pretense that nothing was wrong.

“What if we enjoy having you at court?” said the em-

peror.

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Arin stepped more fully into the light. He saw, as if

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outside himself, the way he stood before the emperor in

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this echoing state room. Arin hadn’t slept since he’d left

Kestrel in the city the night before, but he felt extremely

lucid. He knew how the morning sun caught the dust

motes around him. It cast a harsh glare on his slashed face.

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It picked out the frayed threads of his clothes. And it

paused, lingering, over the dagger strapped to his hip, and

the way Arin’s hand was curled around the hilt and covered

its seal. The blade was unsheathed. It had two cutting

edges. The crossguard was short, meant to protect a much

smaller hand than Arin’s, and was hooked in the Valorian

style. Everything about the dagger was Valorian.

The courtiers buzzed.

His face.

Who did it?

That blade
.

Whose is it?

That’s a lady’s dagger. How did he get it?

Stole it, maybe.

Or . . . could it have been a gift?

Arin almost heard the whispered words.

“Your welcome has been so much more than I could ex-

pect,” Arin said. The emperor smiled a little. His eyes didn’t

leave Arin’s hand on the dagger’s hilt. Arin was glad. He

thought that the emperor was quite pleased with his son’s

engagement to the military’s favorite daughter. The mar-

riage would make General Trajan part of the imperial fam-

ily . . . and would renew the soldiers’ loyalty to the emperor.

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But there were those rumors. Even the minting of an

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engagement coin hadn’t laid them to rest. It was the fi rst

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time that Arin thought of the rumors about him and Kes-

trel coldly. He thought about them as something he could

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use. Yes, Arin bargained that if he lifted his hand to reveal

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the hilt and seal of Kestrel’s dagger, it would be recognized.

Courtiers would gasp.

Arin could make rumor look real.

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A Valorian always wore her dagger, except in the bath

or bed. Whether the courtiers judged it a theft or gift, they

would think very hard about how close Arin must have

been to Kestrel in order to take her blade.

“As much as I would dearly love to stay,” Arin said, “if

I’m to govern your territory in a way that will please you,

I must return to it.”

“A serious young man, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Arin shifted his grip on the hilt— not so much as

to reveal the seal, but to show that he would.

The emperor didn’t like that. Neither would Kestrel if

she were here, or Tensen, who had gone to his beloved gal-

lery at dawn and was probably there still. The minister

wouldn’t like anything at all about what Arin was doing.

Blackmail the emperor? In front of the court?

Arin wasn’t supposed to be in possession of that dagger.

He was supposed to be dead, or mutilated beyond recogni-

tion. Or both. It felt good to remind the emperor of his

mistake. It felt good to threaten him with having to ex-

plain to the court why the dagger of his son’s bride was

strapped to another man’s hip.

“Am I free to go?” Arin asked.

“My dear governor, what a question! We’ll miss you, of

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course, but we would not hold you here.”

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Arin thought that he was going to leave the state room

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without any mention made of the prickling, red- and- black

wound that crawled down his face. But the emperor said

sweetly, “Those are very neat seams,” and then Arin was

dismissed.

MARIE RUTK

“Fair tides to you,” called a voice behind him in the empty

hallway outside the state room.

Arin turned and saw Risha. Her words had a warm but

stilted quality that suggested that her farewell was an east-

ern one, translated into Valorian.

“I’m glad to see you go,” Risha said. “You don’t belong

here. People who don’t belong pay for it.”

Arin instinctively touched his cut cheek and winced.

Then he grit his teeth. His face wasn’t his face anymore,

but so what? Maybe it suited him. Maybe Arin had been

too soft, too trusting, too baby- skinned, too much like

that boy he’d been before the war, the one who had made

him turn back to fi nd Kestrel standing by the moonlit

canal.

Arin was glad that boy was gone. He was glad to be

someone new.

“I don’t know how you bear it,” he told Risha in Valo-

rian. The words came slow and heavy. He hated the feel of

that language on his tongue.

Risha frowned. “Bear what? Living in the imperial

court?” She shook her head. “My place is here.”

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It was dangerous to mention Tensen, or the information

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Arin’s spymaster had suggested Risha might give them. They

were alone for now, but the state room doors could open at

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any time. Quickly, in his own language, Arin said, “Thank

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you.”

A look of confusion crossed Risha’s face. “I don’t speak

Herrani,” she reminded him in Valorian.

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Arin might have said more, but then the state room

doors
did
open. The court began to fi le out and look at

them. He turned away. He left with his unsaid words burn-

ing inside him.
Thank you,
he wanted to say again, with

wonder at the thought that Risha would risk herself for a

people not her own.

How diff erent she was, Arin thought as he walked

away. His mouth was tight and tasted metallic, as if he’d