The Winner's Crime (49 page)

her face fi rmly. She struggled. She tried to break free. The

captain caged her in.

The emperor spoke again. “That kind of love tends to

tarnish after the execution of one’s child. So I can’t repay

Trajan’s loyalty with your blood, or turn you over to my

captain and his messy art of questioning. Something else

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you would have learned— had you chosen to learn from

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me— is that your father has my loyalty, too. I will protect

him as he has protected me. This means that you’re going

CRIME

north.”

’S

To the tundra. The work camp. She dragged in air.

“Did you think I had no clue?” said the emperor softly.

“I’ve had the Herrani minister followed for some time now.

THE WINNER

He was seen meeting with a Valorian maid. I asked myself

whether that maid could have been you. Whether it was

really possible that you might betray your country so easily,

especially when it had been practically
given
to you. But

people are capable of anything.”

Kestrel’s words were strangled beneath the captain’s

hand. She wasn’t even sure what she was trying to say.

“Maybe you think that I can’t make you vanish,” the

emperor continued, “that the court will ask too many ques-

tions. This is the tale I’ll tell. The prince and his bride were

so consumed by love that they married in secret and slipped

away to the southern isles. After some time— a month?

two?— news will come that you’ve sickened. A rare disease

that even my physician can’t cure. As far as the empire is

concerned, you’ll be dead. You’ll be mourned.

“You might forget, in the tundra’s mines. I hear that

people do, down in the dark. I hope that your father does.

I hope that he forgets you, and your shame.”

Kestrel bit the captain’s hand. He didn’t even fl inch,

but the blood in her mouth made her lose herself. She

twisted. The sounds she made under the captain’s hand

were like an animal’s.

7

“Let her go,” said her father.

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She ran to him. She skidded in the blood and fell

SKI

O

against his chest, clinging, weeping. “Please don’t do this,”

she sobbed, though he already had.

He didn’t touch her. “I wanted to trust you,” he whis-

pered. “I tried. But I couldn’t lie to myself hard enough.”

MARIE RUTK

She made fi stfuls of his jacket. She pressed her face

against his chest. Her shoulders jerked and heaved. “I

didn’t—”

“Mean to? How do you not mean treason?”

“Please,” she begged. It seemed to be the only word she

could say.

“I left your suite. I found the minister. I searched him.

I read the letter. I killed him. And even then, I doubted.

Even then, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that this

would be you.”

“Papa, please.” She choked on her tears. “I love you.”

Slowly, carefully, he unhooked her hands from his

jacket. The captain, sensing his moment, moved toward

them.

The general’s voice came low, so that his words were

only for him and his daughter. “Kestrel,” he said, “you have

broken my heart.”

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48

DAWN BURNED ON THE WATER.

Arin had been lucky. He’d slipped from the palace im-

mediately after parting from Tensen. The elegant fortress

had seemed absentminded, its energies turned inward, fo-

cused on something else.

Arin shrugged that thought away. Now, standing on

the ship’s deck, his face to the raw dawn, it seemed silly.

No one had noticed him. No one had cared. He’d

made it to the harbor. The wind had been high and fair

and seaward. His ship had cast off .

It was as he sailed from the bay that something fi nally

changed. He’d seen, in the moonlight, Valorian double-

masters, the kind heavy with cannon, gun decks on two

levels. They rode in his wake. It wasn’t that Arin had gone

unnoticed— just that he had been noticed too late. There

had been a delay. Some slowness to realize. Arin had the

image of Valorians scrambling to catch up— and catch

him. But his ship plowed the waves. His captain had been

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a master sailor in the height of Herran’s naval prowess. The

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wind favored them. It skipped them over the sea. It threw a

SKI

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scarf of dark cloud over the moon. By daybreak, the Valo-

rian ships were gone.

It was a brief respite. The Valorians knew where he’d

go. The empire was coming, and so was war, but Arin fo-

MARIE RUTK

cused on listening to the wind gust the sails. He watched

the sun lift dripping over the horizon. He let the sea air

cram his lungs, and he felt free.

Arin unwrapped a small cloth bundle. Kestrel’s dagger

gleamed. Now that it didn’t hurt him to look at it, he could

see its beauty better. The sun set its ruby on fi re and showed

its pink heart. The chased gold became a liquid swirl. Arin

weighed the weapon in his hand. Really, it weighed barely

anything at all.

Yes, it was beautiful. But beauty seemed a feeble reason

to keep something he didn’t want.

Arin dropped the dagger in the sea.

He sailed home.

The wagon stopped. The horses needed to be watered.

The sun was up now. It came in through the wagon’s

small, barred window. It showed Kestrel her shackled wrists,

limp in the lap of the same pretty blue gown she had been

wearing last night. Though the wagon had stopped, Kestrel

still felt jolted, sore. Her eyes were swollen. The sunlight

hurt.

But something brought her to her feet. A voice in an-

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other language as familiar to her as her own. Someone out-

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side had spoken in Herrani.

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Kestrel went to the window. She

couldn’t see the

guards. She couldn’t see anything at fi rst; the light was too

CRIME

bright. But then she saw the peaks of empty mountains.

’S

She heard the Herrani voice again: a man, talking to the

horses. She heard the swing of an empty metal bucket.

Footsteps in grainy dirt.

THE WINNER

“Please,” she called softly in his language. The footsteps

stopped. Her shackles rattled as she fumbled to get a fi nger

and thumb up her left sleeve. She pinched the moth she

had hidden there and pulled it free. She put her hand

through the bars. “Take this.”

Slowly, the footsteps neared. She still couldn’t see him,

but imagined him standing just below her hand. Kestrel

stretched. Her wrist strained, and her hand began to go

numb. She off ered the moth held in her fi ngertips.

Had he taken it? Had it fallen? It was gone.

“Give it to your governor,” Kestrel whispered. “Tell

Arin—”

There was a cry, a heavy thump. Valorian curses, boots

scuffi

ng dirt. “What did she give you?” said one of the Val-

orian guards.

“Nothing,” said the Herrani.

The door to the wagon fl ung open. Kestrel shrank into

a corner. The guard was a large shadow against the ach-

ingly white light. He advanced. “What did you give him?”

Outside, the rough sounds continued. Protests. An un-

ceremonious search. But what, after all, would the guard

outside see? A battered moth. Nothing precious. Nothing

important. Just an ordinary thing, blending into everything

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The guard grabbed her shoulders. Her shackled hands

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went up. She hid behind them.

All over, people were waking up to an ordinary day, as

ordinary as a moth. Kestrel grieved for an ordinary day.

She squeezed her eyes shut at the thought of how it would

MARIE RUTK

be, her perfect ordinary morning. A horse ride with Arin.

A race.

I’m going to miss you when I wake up,
she’d told him as

she’d dreamed on the palace lawn.

Don’t wake up.

On that perfect, ordinary morning, she would pour tea

for her father. He would stay, and he would never leave to

be anywhere else.

Someone was shaking her. Kestrel remembered that it

was the guard.

She remembered that it was her eigh teenth birthday.

She laughed, chokingly, to imagine the emperor explaining

her absence to everyone gathered for her recital. She thought

she was laughing, but then that sound tore along its edges.

It clawed at her throat. Her face was wet. Tears stung her

lips.

Her birthday.
I remember the day you were born,
her fa-

ther had said.
I could hold you with one hand.

The guard hit Kestrel across the face. “I said, what did

you give him?”

You had a warrior’s heart, even then.

Kestrel spat blood. “Nothing,” she told the guard. She

2

thought of her father, she thought of Arin. She told her

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fi nal lie. “I gave him nothing.”

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Author’s Note

This book was exhausting to write and took a while for me to

fi nish (having a baby in the middle of it might have had some-

thing to do with it). So fi rst, an enormous thank you to those

who read drafts of
The Winner’s Crime
or portions of it: Ann

Aguirre, Marianna Baer, Kristin Cashore, Donna Freitas,

Daphne Grab, Mordicai Knode, Anne Heltzl, Sarah Mesle,

Jill Santopolo, Eliot Schrefer, and Robin Wasserman. You al-

ways had the right words to keep me going and to make this a

better book.

Such is also true for people who talked with me about

knotty plot problems or thorny emotional questions, or world-

building ones. Thanks to everyone at Kindling Words, for ex-

cellent talks, advice, and comments that helped me piece

together
The Winner’s Crime
at a stage when I knew where I

was going but not what I was doing. I especially thank Franny

Billingsley, Judy Blundell, Sarah Beth Durst, Deborah Heilig-

man, Rebecca Stead, and Nancy Werlin. In Pa ri sian cafés,

Coe Booth and Aviva Cashmira Kakar helped me shape

Tensen into the sneaky character he became. Also in Paris, at

the Broken Arm café, Pamela Druckerman and I mulled over

Arin, the bookkeeper, and the queen. Leigh Bardugo and I

had an awesome conversation about guns, and Mordicai

Knode contributed on separate occasions. He also told me

about Quipu Code after reading an early scene about Favor-

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Keeping. Lunch with Sarah MacLean resulted in a plot point

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that I’m thrilled about but can’t share (Book 3 spoiler, sorry!),

Kristin Cashore brainstormed with me on so many points that

it’s hard to list them all. Robin Wasserman is probably the

person you can thank (or blame) for this being a trilogy to

begin with. Barry Lyga, aka my torture expert extraordinaire

(He asked to be called that. Or something like that), suggested

I go after Thrynne’s fi ngers in the prison scene, and Kristin

Raven, a doctor, gave very useful (and gory) information about

how those fi ngers would look. She also confi rmed my instinct

that the general’s abdominal could be “packed.” Miriam Jacob-

son, a scholar and pianist, gave me (as she put it)
“ le mot juste”

for a piece that Kestrel plays: an impromptu. Mordicai and

Jenny Knode were consulted about ideas for the map. High

praise to Keith Thompson for his artistry in representing this

world. My husband, Thomas Philippon, is always my most

crucial adviser when it comes to sorting out ideas, and he’s

especially great about anything to do with the military or horses.

My goal for this trilogy has been to read one ancient Greek

or Roman text while writing each book. This time it was

Herodotus’s
The Histories
, which gave me some ideas about

how to represent the East. I should also admit that I had the