The Winner's Crime (37 page)

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34

KESTREL STAYED CLOSE TO HER FATHER. HE

could walk well enough but tired easily, so she challenged

him to Borderlands games played in his suite, though most

of the court spent whole days out of doors in the blue

weather, opening parasols against the sun. There had never

been such a spring, the courtiers exclaimed. The Firstsum-

mer wedding was sure to be glorious.

When Kestrel played Borderlands with her father in his

suite, they usually moved their pieces in silence. But one

day, not long after she had seen Jess, her father shifted his

infantry forward in reckless fashion.

“Why are you exposing your soldiers?” Kestrel asked.

His brows lifted. “Are you criticizing my line of play?”

“You should use your cannon.”

He had the beginnings of a smile. “Have I foiled some

strategy of yours?”

“I could decimate your front lines. I could do it right

now.”

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“Well, if you must.”

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Kestrel was growing angry. She made no move.

SKI

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Her father said, “Are we arguing?”

“No.”

“What are we arguing about?”

Kestrel thought of Ronan, fi ghting in the east. She

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thought about how she’d crushed the necklace Jess had

given her because it had been expendable. It was the kind

of choice her father had raised her to be able to make. She

thought about how when they were little girls, she and Jess

had walked hand in hand, Jess’s palm fresh against hers.

Kestrel thought about Arin, in Herran’s city, and what he

must think of her now. And fi nally, Kestrel thought about

herself as if she were two people, and one self stood behind

the screen in the music room, watching her other self, and

judging.

“You are sacrifi cing them,” she told her father.

“It’s just a game.”

Kestrel said nothing.

“You worry about my methods,” said the general. “You

think I don’t know how to go to war.”

“You’re wasting lives.”

“I protect my soldiers as best as I can. And I
do
use can-

non. The Valorian army is well- gunned. We have signifi cant

stores of black powder. Our arsenal outstrips anything an

enemy can off er. I rarely even need cannon.”

She imagined Ronan at the very front of an army. “So

you let our people fi ght hand to hand instead.”

“That’s what we do. It’s who we are. If we can’t take

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what we want with our own hands, we don’t deserve to win

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it.”

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Kestrel leaned away from the gaming table. She sat

back in her chair.

CRIME

He said, “Would you rather I line up my cannon barrel

’S

to barrel and raze the eastern forces?”

No, of course not. That wasn’t what she’d meant.

“You accuse me of wasting lives. I could, Kestrel. I

THE WINNER

could waste them in the thousands, the tens of thousands.

I don’t. I try to minimize enemy casualties.”

“Only so that you can enslave people afterward.”

His mouth thinned. “I think we should fi nish our

game.”

He won.

Verex stopped her in the hallway. “I’ve been looking for

you.”

“Maybe you bribed the wrong lady-

in-

waiting. You

should choose one who keeps a closer eye on my where-

abouts.”

He laughed. “Or maybe
you
should bribe one of my

valets, so that we’d be even. Then again”— he shrugged

good- naturedly—“my whereabouts aren’t very interesting.”

He tugged her hand. “Come. I have something to show

you. Give you, actually.”

“A gift?”

“A wedding present.”

The word
wedding
stopped her heart. “It’s too early for

that.”

“It’s never too early for presents.”

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“I don’t have anything for you.”

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“Oh, just come. You’ll like it, I promise.”

SKI

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It was a good- size puppy. A black, squirming creature

with folded ears and a tail that had been docked for hunt-

ing. It was chewing the leg of one of the ornate chairs in

Verex’s sitting room. It had left a yellow puddle on the

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wooden fl oor.

“The runt,” Verex said proudly. “She survived.”

Kestrel bent low, her organza skirts rustling. She of-

fered a hand to the animal, who snuffl

ed it, then pushed

beneath so that Kestrel could properly scratch behind her

ears. Her stubby tail beat back and forth. Delightedly, the

puppy nipped Kestrel’s wrist.

Kestrel felt suddenly quiet and warm, as if she had just

come inside from a long walk on a day chillier than anyone

had predicted.

She straightened. She went to Verex and kissed his cheek.

“Oh,” he said, and awkwardly patted her shoulder.

“Well.” He smiled.

They played with the puppy, whom Kestrel didn’t yet

want to name. They tossed velvet cushions for the dog to

catch. She savaged them. Feathers fl urried over the fl oor.

This moment was simple, smooth, like a pebble lifted

from a riverbed. Kestrel could have asked Verex about the

screen in the music room. She could have talked about that

Borderlands game with her father, or how her oldest friend

was no longer her friend. But Kestrel didn’t want to. Noth-

ing should spoil this moment. She played tug- of- war with

the dog until the animal dropped her cushion, which no

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puppy collapsed in a black heap and fell asleep.

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Kestrel wondered what Jess would name her, then

shoved that thought from her mind.

CRIME

But . . .

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Something had been troubling her. Something about

that day in Jess’s parlor that she should be able to fi gure

out. A mystery that Kestrel thought could have a clear an-

THE WINNER

swer when so much else seemed bewildering, like how she

understood Jess’s anger— and didn’t.

“You know a lot about healing,” she said to Verex.

“Not really.” He sat on the fl oor by the sleeping puppy,

who had huddled on Kestrel’s feet. “I studied it a bit. I told

you: my father didn’t like it. I didn’t get far.”

“But you know some things.”

He shrugged. “I suppose.”

“Is there a brownish medicine one might take with

water?”

“
Diluted
with water?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. The medicine leaves a residue

at the bottom of the glass.”

He pursed his lips. “That could be a few diff erent

things. You should ask the palace physician. He’s devel-

oped many medicines made in concentrated form to be di-

luted later with water. He’s excellent at calculating dilution.

He trained as a water engineer.” When he saw Kestrel’s sur-

prise, Verex said, “Yes, he even served in the military with

the palace water engineer. But that was long ago. He had a

gift as a medic on the battlefi eld and changed professions.”

Verex ran a hand down the back of the puppy, who sighed

heavily. “Don’t you wish it were that easy? To change who

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you are?”

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For a moment, Kestrel didn’t quite hear his question.

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Her mind was sparking with the connection between the

palace physician and its chief water engineer, who had been

bribed for some unknown thing.

She’d promised Tensen she would discover what that

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thing was.

She’d promised herself to live by her own ideas of honor.

She would help Tensen. Because it was right. Because it

mattered.

How can the inconsequence of your life not shame you?

Kestrel’s memory was so full of Arin’s voice that she

didn’t realize that Verex was peering at her. What had he

asked?

If she wished to change herself.

“No,” she lied. Then she decided that what she’d said was

the truth. “No,” she said again, “I don’t.”

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35

“THIS CAME FOR YOU,” THE DACRAN QUEEN

said in her language, handing Arin a parcel. “A Herrani

ship brought it to the temple island.”

He tucked the package under his arm. It couldn’t be

simply a package. It was news. Arin hid his eagerness.

And he hid his surprise. At the queen, delivering some-

thing to him. At her standing in his room, which was only

one room, not a suite. The bed— much higher than Arin

was used to, and narrower— was in a corner, neatly made.

The light was soft and gray. It haloed a geometric star of

small, triangular windows clustered into a radiant pattern.

The queen’s black eyes, lined with streaks of blue paint that

swirled greenly down to her brown cheekbones, seemed to

glow. She was tall; her gaze was almost level with his.

“Open it,” she said.

Arin rubbed a palm against his scarred cheek.

“Do you understand me?” she said. “You seem to.

You’ve learned my language quickly.”

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“So could Herrani soldiers. We could fi ght together.”

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“And yet you cannot obey even a simple command.”

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Arin opened the package. It was a shirt edged with

intricately woven trim in colors he knew well. He shouldn’t

have stared and begun to decode the knots and colors be-

neath the queen’s gaze, but he did. The Moth—

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“That cloth is too heavy for our weather,” said the

queen.

“I’ll send it back.” Arin would cut away the woven trim

and sew on a message of his own for Tensen.

He draped the shirt casually across the back of a chair,

reading in the threads that the imperial water engineer was

living beyond her apparent means, and was unfriendly to

Herran. The Moth believed that the engineer
had
made a

bargain with the emperor. There was no proof, but—

It began to rain. Arin heard water rushing through the

castle pipes. The queen had been silent, watching him. He

forced himself to turn away from the shirt.

Maybe it was because his mind was full of the Moth,

and the way the gray thread that represented her wove

throughout the entire trim. Arin looked at the queen and

saw Risha instead. The queen had those straight brows, the

same shape of the mouth, and the same— he began to sus-

pect it, the idea grew— generosity.

“I am sending my brother outside the city,” she said.

“You will go with him.” She paused, then added, “You are

good for him. He is restless.”

“Was he with your sister when she was captured by the

empire?”

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The queen’s face closed.

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Arin said, “I think he blames himself.”

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“He blames me.”

“I don’t understand.”

CRIME

The queen went to the kaleidoscopic windows and

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watched the rainfall. She pretended his words had meant

something else. “It can’t be easy to learn another language

so quickly. Do you have a gift for it?”

THE WINNER

He wasn’t sure. Even now, he didn’t recognize every

word she used. His mind darted meaning into the blank

moments and made sense of what he didn’t know, crafted

whole sentences from understood parts. It felt like a

game . . .

As this last thought occurred to him, he saw its danger.

He felt the kick in his gut that told his mind to stop, and

he snatched at that half thought about words and meaning

and games. He tried to drag the thought back. It spun

away. It began to think for itself, about Bite and Sting, and

about how he could beat someone without knowing each

tile in play. Yes, he had won, even when playing against

Kestrel made it feel like all the tiles were blind on both