The Winner's Crime (5 page)

hundred for each year. The god of stars rules this year, so

you must mind your feet and gaze. This god loves acci-

dents. Beauty, too. Sometimes when the god is vexed or

simply bored, she decides that the most beautiful thing is

disaster.”

Kestrel should have found this silly. Valorians had no

gods. There was no afterlife, or any of the other Herrani

superstitions. If the Valorians worshipped anything, it

was glory. Kestrel’s father laughed at the idea of fate. He

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was the imperial general; if he had believed in fate, he

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said, he would have sat in his tent and waited for the

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country of Herran to be handed to him in a pretty crys-

tal cup. Instead he’d seized it. His victories, he said, were

his own.

But as a child, Kestrel had been charmed by the idea

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of gods. They made for good stories. She had asked Enai

to teach her the names of the hundred and what they

ruled. One eve ning at dinner, when her father cracked a

fragile dish under his knife, she’d said jokingly, “Careful,

Father. This is the year of stars.” He had gone still. Kestrel

became frightened. Maybe the gods were real after all.

This moment was a disaster. She saw disaster in her father’s

furious eyes. She saw it on Enai’s arm the next day, in the

form of a bruise: a purple, broad bracelet made by a large

hand.

Kestrel stopped asking about the gods. She forgot them.

Probably there was a god of money. Perhaps this was the

year. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t understand what the phrase

had meant to Thrynne.

Tell him,
Thrynne had said.
He needs to know
. The

captain had assumed that Thrynne had meant himself.

Maybe that was it. But Kestrel recalled the prisoner’s gray

eyes and how he’d appeared to know her. Of course, he

was a servant in the palace. Servants knew who she was

without her knowing all their names or faces. But he was

Herrani.

Say that he was new to the palace. Say that he recog-

nized her from her life in Herran, when everything had

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been a series of dinners and dances and teas, when her

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greatest worry was how to navigate her father’s desire for

her to join the military, and his hatred of her music.

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Or maybe Thrynne recognized her from when every-

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thing had changed. After the Firstwinter Rebellion. When

the Herrani had seized the capital and Arin had claimed

her for his own.

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He needs to know,
Thrynne had said.

Slowly, as if moving tiny parts of a dangerous machine,

Kestrel substituted one word with a name.

Arin needs to know
.

But know what?

Kestrel had questions of her own for Thrynne. She would

seek a way to help him, and to understand what he had

said— but this meant seeing Thrynne alone . . . and
that

required the permission of the emperor.

“I’m ashamed of myself,” she told the emperor the next

morning. They were in his private trea sury. His note ac-

cepting her request to see him, and naming this room for

the meeting, seemed to have been made with good grace.

But he was silent now, inspecting a drawer pulled out of

a wall honeycombed from fl oor to ceiling with them. He was

intent on the drawer’s contents, which Kestrel couldn’t see.

“I behaved badly in the prison,” Kestrel said. “The tor-

ture—”

“Interrogation,” he said to the drawer.

“It reminded me of the Firstwinter Rebellion. Of . . .

what I experienced.”

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“What you experienced.” The emperor looked up from

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the drawer.

“Yes.”

“We have never fully discussed what you experienced,

Kestrel. I should think that what ever it was, it would make

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you encourage the captain in his proceedings instead of

jeopardizing his line of inquiry. Or do we have a diff erent

understanding of what you suff ered at the hands of the

Herrani rebels? Do I need to reevaluate the story of the

general’s daughter, who escaped captivity and sailed through

a storm to alert me to the rebellion?”

“No.”

“Do you think that an empire can survive without a

few dirty methods? Do you think that an empress will

keep herself clean of them?”

“No.”

He slid the drawer shut. Its click was as loud as a bang.

“Then what have we left to address but my disappoint-

ment? My grievous disappointment? I had thought better

of you.”

“Let me redeem myself. Please. I speak Herrani very

well, and my presence made the prisoner ready to talk. If

I
were to question him—”

“He’s dead.”

“What?”

“Dead, and what ever information he had with him.”

“How?”

The emperor waved an irritated hand. “Infection.

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Fever. A waste bucket.”

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“I don’t understand.”

“The prison is designed to prevent suicide. But this

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man— Thrynne—was clever. Committed. Desperate. Any

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number of qualities that might make someone decide to in-

fect open wounds by plunging them into a waste bucket.”

Kestrel’s nausea threatened to return. And guilt: a bad

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taste at the back of her throat.

The emperor sighed. He settled into a chair and ges-

tured for Kestrel to sit in the one across from him. She

sank into it. “You know his kind, Kestrel. Do you think

that someone like him would resort to such mea sures to

protect a Valorian senator who had paid him to learn which

ways he should vote?”

“No,” she said. Any other answer would seem false.

“Who do you think hired him?”

“The east, perhaps. They must have spies among us.”

“Oh, they do.” The emperor held her gaze in a way that

didn’t wait for an answer, but to see if she would voice what

he already believed.

“He worked for Herran,” Kestrel said slowly.

“Of course. Tell me, is their leader an inspiring sort of

man? I’ve never met him. But you were his prisoner. Would

you say that this new governor has . . . charisma? The sort

of pull and power that lure people to take extreme risks on

his behalf ?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“I have something to show you.” He pointed at the

drawer he had closed. “Bring what lies inside.”

It was a gold coin stamped with the emperor’s pro fi le.

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“I had this series minted in celebration of your engage-

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ment,” he said. “Turn the coin over.”

Kestrel did. What she saw left her frightened. It was a

symbol of crossed knitting needles.

“Do you know what that is?”

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Kestrel hesitated to speak. “It’s the sign of Jadis.”

“Yes. The perfect story, I think, to represent you.”

Jadis had been a warrior girl from ancient Valorian leg-

end. A lieutenant. Her army had been defeated, and she

was taken prisoner by an enemy warlord who added her to

his harem. He liked all his women, but developed a par tic-

u lar taste for the Valorian girl. He was not, however, stu-

pid. He summoned her to his bed naked, so that she had

no chance to hide a weapon. And he had her bound as

well, at least at fi rst. He didn’t trust her hands.

But Jadis was sweet and easy, and as time passed and the

warlord’s camp traveled, he noticed that she had become

friends with the other women in his harem. They taught her

how to knit. Sometimes, when not at battle, he saw her out-

side the women’s tent, knitting something shapeless. It

amused him to know that the reputation of Valorian feroc-

ity was nothing more than myth. How domestic was his lit-

tle warrior!

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s for you,” Jadis said. “You’ll like it, you’ll see.”

The woolly thing grew over the months. It became a

private joke between them. He would ask if it was meant to

be a sock, a tunic, a cloak. Her answer was always the same:

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“You’ll like it, you’ll see.”

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One night, in the warlord’s tent, long after he’d stopped

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ordering her hands to be bound, he gazed upon her. “Do

you know which battle comes tomorrow?”

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“Yes,” Jadis said. The warlord planned to strike at the

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heart of Valoria. He would likely succeed.

“You must hate me for it.”

“No.”

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The word brought tears to his eyes. He wanted to weep

against her skin. He did not believe her.

“My love,” she said, “I have almost fi nished your pres-

ent. Let me knit it here beside you. It will bring you luck in

battle.”

That made him laugh, for he couldn’t possibly imagine

how she expected him to wear that ugly, lumpy mass of

wool. He was cheered as he remembered how dedicated she

was to her hapless knitting. So what if she had no skill for

it? It was proof of her devotion to him.

He went to the tent’s opening and called for her knit-

ting basket.

He set it beside the bed and enjoyed her again. After-

ward, she knitted beside him. The warlord was made sleepy

by the needles’ quiet chatter. “Aren’t you fi nished yet?” he

teased.

“Yes. Just now I’ve fi nished.”

“But what
is
it?”

“Don’t you see? Don’t you like it? Look closely, my love.”

He did, and Jadis stabbed her needles into his throat.

The coin lay heavy on Kestrel’s palm. All the breath

had gone out of her.

The emperor said, “We were talking earlier about your

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captivity under Arin.”

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“It wasn’t like this.” She tightened her fi ngers around

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the coin. “I’m no Jadis.”

“No? The governor, I hear, is an attractive man.”

“I didn’t think so.” She hadn’t, not at fi rst. How miser-

able that she hadn’t seen Arin for what he was, how worse

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when she did understand it, and how perfectly awful now,

when he was lost to her and the emperor was asking for her

secrets. “He was never my lover. Never.”

That much was true. The sound of her voice must have

convinced the emperor, or the way she clutched the coin.

His response came gently: “I believe you. But what if I

didn’t? Would it matter if the slave had shared your bed?

Oh, Kestrel. Don’t look at me with such shock. Do you

think that I’m a prude? I’ve heard the rumors. Everyone

has.” He stood, and came near to tap the fi st she had closed

around the coin. “That’s why you need Jadis. This is a gift.

If the capital thinks you favored the governor of Herran,

let them think that it was for a purpose.

“You made a choice when you stood before me and

pleaded for Herrani in de pen dence. You chose my son. You

chose my cause.” He shrugged. “I’m a pragmatist. I had no

desire to mire myself in a battle with Herran when the east

beckons. Your solution— Herran’s new status as an in de-

pen dent territory of the empire— has been po liti cally costly

in some ways . . . but valuable in others. And militarily nec-

essary. An added benefi t? The military loves me now that

its general’s daughter will marry my son.

“I think we understand each other, don’t we? I get a

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daughter intelligent enough to manage the empire one day,

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and in the meanwhile I can count on the goodwill of her

father’s soldiers. You get a crown and absolution from any

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past . . . indiscretions.”

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Kestrel lowered her hand, fi st loose, but not loose enough

to let the coin slip.

“Your dagger, please, Kestrel.” He held out his palm.

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“What?”

“Give me your dagger.” When she still didn’t move, he