The Winner's Crime (50 page)

temerity to take a meta phor from Shakespeare and reshape it

to suit my fancy for a par tic u lar line in the scene by the canal

(hint: it’s from
Much Ado about Nothing
).

Thank you to all the librarians, booksellers, and bloggers

who have championed
The Winner’s Curse
. It’s been a real plea-

sure to get to know you in person and online. Your enthusiasm

is so infectious— and appreciated.

Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group! I’m one lucky

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woman. I’m very grateful to everyone who has supported me

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and this series. My amazing editor, Janine O’Malley. My in-

trepid publicist, Gina Gagliano. My designer of heart- stopping

covers, Beth Clark. And a whole marvelous cohort of people:

Nicole Banholzer, Simon Boughton, Anna Booth, Molly

Brouillette, Jennifer Edwards, Jean Feiwel, Jennifer Gonzalez,

Liz Fithian, Katie Halata, Angus Killick, Kathryn Little,

Karen Ninnis, Joy Peskin, Karla Reganold, Angie Chen, Cait-

lin Sweeney, Claire B. Taylor, Mary Van Akin, Allison Verost,

Maric Von Bargen, Ksenia Winnicki, and Jon Yaged.

Charlotte Sheedy, my agent, is a dream, and I thank her

and Mackenzie Brady and Joan Rosen.

Sometimes people ask me what the secret is to writing

books, and my very serious reply is “good child care.” Thanks

to my babysitters, parents, and in-

laws: Monica Ciucurel,

Anne Heltzl, Shaida Khan, Georgi MacCarthy, Sharon Singh,

Marilyn and Robert Rutkoski, and Jean- Claude and Christiane

Philippon.

My older son, Eliot (now fi ve and a half), has an idea about

why I sit in front of the computer instead of taking him to the

Natural History Museum. My younger son, Téo (two years

old), has only the sense of some great injustice and betrayal.

Boys, I always miss you when I’m not with you, and I love you

both best.

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dney

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First published in Gr

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Bloomsbur

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Copyright © Marie Rutk

Copyright © Marie R

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The mor

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All rights reserv

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ISBN 978 1 4088 5869 1

For Kristin Cashore

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’S

INNER

W

THE

CRIME

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1

MA22RIY BOS

AL

SHE CUT HERSELF OPENING THE ENVELOPE.

Kestrel had been eager, she’d been a fool, tearing into

the letter simply because it had been addressed in Herrani

script. The letter opener slipped. Seeds of blood hit the

paper and bloomed bright.

It wasn’t, of course, from him. The letter was from

Herran’s new minister of agriculture. He wrote to introduce

himself, and to say he looked forward to when they would

meet.
I believe you and I have much in common and much to

discuss,
he wrote.

Kestrel wasn’t sure what he meant by that. She didn’t

know him, or even of him. Although she supposed she

would have to meet with the minister at some point— she

was, after all, the imperial ambassador to the now in de pen-

dent territory of Herran— Kestrel didn’t anticipate spending

time with the minister of
agriculture.
She had nothing to

say on crop rotation or fertilizer.

Kestrel caught the haughty tone of her thoughts. She

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felt the way it thinned her mouth. She realized that she was

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furious at this letter.

At herself. At the way her heart had leaped to see her

name scrawled in the Herrani alphabet on the envelope.

She had hoped so hard that it was from Arin.

MARIE RUTK

But she’d had no contact with him for nearly a month,

not since she’d off ered him his country’s freedom. And the

envelope hadn’t even been addressed in his hand. She knew

his writing. She knew the fi ngers that would hold the pen.

Blunt- cut nails, silver scars from old burns, the calloused

scrape of his palm, all very at odds with his elegant cursive.

Kestrel should have known right away that the letter wasn’t

from him.

But still: the quick slice of paper. Still: the disappoint-

ment.

Kestrel set aside the letter. She pulled the silk sash from

her waist, threading it out from under the dagger that she,

like all Valorians, wore strapped to her hip. She wound the

sash around her bleeding hand. She was ruining the sash’s

ivory silk. Her blood spotted it. But a ruined sash didn’t

matter, not to her. Kestrel was engaged to Prince Verex, heir

to the Valorian empire. The proof of it was marked daily

on her brow in an oiled, glittering line. She had sashes upon

sashes, dresses upon dresses, a river of jewels. She was the

future empress.

Yet when she stood from her carved ebony chair, she

was unsteady. She looked around her study, one of many

rooms in her suite, and was unsettled by the stone walls, the

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corners set insistently into perfect right angles, the way two

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narrow hallways cut into the room. It should have made

sense to Kestrel, who knew that the imperial palace was

CRIME

also a fortress. Tight hallways were a way to bottleneck an

’S

invading force. Yet it looked unfriendly and alien. It was so

diff erent from her home.

Kestrel reminded herself that her home in Herran had

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never really been hers. She may have been raised in that

colony, but she was Valorian. She was where she was sup-

posed to be. Where she had chosen to be.

The cut had stopped bleeding.

Kestrel left the letter and went to change her day dress

for dinner. This was her life: rich fabric and watered silk

trim. A dinner with the emperor . . . and the prince.

Yes, this was her life.

She must get used to it.

The emperor was alone. He smiled when she entered his

stone- walled dining room. His gray hair was cropped in

the same military style as her father’s, his eyes dark and

keen. He didn’t stand from the long table to greet her.

“Your Imperial Majesty.” She bowed her head.

“Daughter.” His voice echoed in the vaulted chamber.

It rang against the empty plates and glasses. “Sit.”

She moved to do so.

“No,” he said. “Here, at my right hand.”

“That’s the prince’s place.”

“The prince, it seems, is not here.”

She sat. Slaves served the fi rst course. They poured white

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wine. She could have asked why he had summoned her to

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dinner, and where the prince might be, but Kestrel had

seen how the emperor loved to shape silence into a tool that

pried open the anxieties of others. She let the silence grow

until it was of her making as well as his, and only when the

MARIE RUTK

third course arrived did she speak. “I hear the campaign

against the east goes well.”

“So your father writes from the front. I must reward

him for an excellently waged war. Or perhaps, Lady Kes-

trel, it’s you I should reward.”

She drank from her cup. “His success is none of my

doing.”

“No?
You
urged me to put an end to the Herrani rebel-

lion by giving that territory self- governance under my law.

You
argued that this would free up troops and money to

fuel my eastern war, and lo”— he fl ourished a hand—“it

did. What clever advice from one so young.”

His words made her ner vous. If he knew the real reason

she had argued for Herrani in de pen dence, she would pay

for it. Kestrel tried the painstakingly prepared food. There

were boats made from a meat terrine, their sails clear gela-

tin. She ate slowly.

“Don’t you like it?” said the emperor.

“I’m not very hungry.”

He rang a golden bell. “Dessert,” he told the serving

boy who instantly appeared. “We’ll skip ahead to dessert.

I know how young ladies enjoy sweet things.” But when the

boy returned bearing two small plates made from porce-

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the emperor said, “None for me,” and one plate was set

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before Kestrel along with a strangely light and translucent

fork.

CRIME

She calmed herself. The emperor didn’t know the truth

’S

about the day she had pushed for an end to the Herrani

rebellion. No one did. Not even Arin knew that she had

bought his freedom with a few strategic words . . . and the

THE WINNER

promise to wed the crown prince.

If Arin knew, he would fi ght it. He’d ruin himself.

If the emperor knew
why
she had done it, he would

ruin her.

Kestrel looked at the pile of pink whipped cream on

her plate, and at the clear fork, as if they composed the

whole of her world. She must speak cautiously. “What need

have I of a reward, when you have given me your only son?”

“And such a prize he is. Yet we’ve no date set for the wed-

ding. When shall it be? You’ve been quiet on the subject.”