The Winner's Crime (53 page)

she was a prisoner being led to her cell. Kestrel’s heartbeat

tricked her; it fumbled at the thought of being caught at

MARIE RUTK

some crime, of being locked up in the dark.

They passed a cell. Fingers curled like white worms

through the bars of the cell’s small window. A voice rasped

something in a language Kestrel didn’t recognize. It had a

lisping quality she couldn’t place until she realized that this

must be the sound of someone who had no teeth. She shrank

back.

“Keep away from the bars,” said the captain. “This

way,” he added, as if there were any way but down.

When the staircase fi nally ran out of steps, it threw

Kestrel off balance to stand on unstaggered ground. The

corridor smelled like wet rock and sewage.

The captain opened a cell and ushered Kestrel inside. For

a moment she hesitated, instantly and wildly sure that he

meant to trap her here. Her hand went to the dagger at

her hip.

The captain chuckled. The sound triggered a metal-

lic rattle in the corner of the cell, and the captain lifted

his lamp to illuminate a sitting man who strained at

chains embedded in the wall. His bare heels scrubbed the

uneven fl oor as he tried to push back, away from the cap-

tain.

“Don’t worry,” the captain said to Kestrel. “He’s harm-

-1—

24

less. Here.” He passed her the lamp, then dragged on a

0—

+1—

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 24

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 24

9/25/14 2:52 PM

9/25/14 2:52 PM

loose end of chain to draw the prisoner tight against the

wall. The man shuddered and wept. He began to pray to

CRIME

all hundred of the Herrani gods.

’S

She didn’t recognize him. A relief. Then came a clammy

shame. What did it matter if she knew him or not? The

prisoner was going to suff er. She could see his suff ering

THE WINNER

written in the captain’s lamplit eyes.

Kestrel would not stay. She could not watch. She turned

toward the door.

“That’s against the emperor’s rules,” the captain told

her. “He said that you have to be here for the whole of it.

He said that if you became uncooperative, I should cut off

this man’s fi ngers instead of his skin.”

The prisoner’s prayer halted. Shakily, it started up

again.

Kestrel felt like that thin, keening voice. Like the sound

of a gear cranked tight and then let go. “I don’t belong

here,” she said.

“You’re my future empress,” said the captain. “You do.

Or did you think that ruling meant only dresses and

dances?” He checked that the chain was taut. The man hung

from his bonds. “The lamp, my lady.” The captain beckoned

her closer.

The prisoner lifted his head. Lamplight fl ared on his

eyes, and even though Kestrel knew that this broken man

wasn’t Arin— the prisoner was too old, his features too

delicate— her heart seized. They were ordinary eyes for a

Herrani. But gray and clear, just like Arin’s. And it sud-

denly seemed that Arin was the one stumbling over the

25

—-1

—0

—+1

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 25

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 25

9/25/14 2:52 PM

9/25/14 2:52 PM

name of the god of mercy, that
he
was begging her for

SKI

O

something she had no idea how to give.

“The
lamp
,” the captain said again. “Are you going to

be diffi

cult so soon, Lady Kestrel?”

She came forward. She saw, then, the outline of a

MARIE RUTK

bucket near the prisoner, fi lled to the brim with feces and

urine, and that the man’s right hand was a padded mitten

of gauze.

The captain stripped it off . The prisoner choked on his

prayer.

The skin on three fi ngers was missing.

Kestrel caught a glimpse of pink muscle and creamy,

glistening bands of tendon. Her stomach heaved. The cap-

tain pulled a small table from a dark corner of the cell and

fl attened the man’s hand across it, palm up.

“What is your name?” the captain asked him. When

there was no answer, the Valorian drew his dagger and cut

into the prisoner’s fourth fi nger. Blood fountained up.

“Stop,” Kestrel begged. “Stop this.”

The prisoner thrashed, but was pinioned by the wrist.

The captain raised his dagger again.

Kestrel caught his arm. Her fi ngers dug in, and the

captain’s face seemed to open— almost greedily, with a

shine that said that he had awaited her failure. That’s

what this was. Kestrel had been failing the emperor’s test

even without knowing its criteria. Every hesitation was a

black mark against her. Each ounce of her pity was being

tallied by the captain, hoarded to be tipped out later be-

-1—

26

fore the emperor, spilled before him to say,
Look what a

0—

+1—

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 26

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 26

9/25/14 2:52 PM

9/25/14 2:52 PM

pathetic girl she is. How weak of will. She has no stomach

to rule.

CRIME

She didn’t. Not if this was what ruling an empire

’S

meant.

She wasn’t sure what she would have done next if the

prisoner hadn’t gone still. He was staring at Kestrel. His

THE WINNER

eyes were wide, streaming. Stunned. He recognized her. She

didn’t know him. The urgency of his expression, however,

was that of someone who has found a familiar key to a box

he is desperate to unlock.

“My name is Thrynne,” he whispered to her in Her-

rani. “Tell him that I—”

The captain shook off Kestrel’s slackened grip and

rounded on the prisoner. “You’ll tell me yourself.” The captain

spoke Herrani with heavily accented fl uency. “It’s good

that you’re ready to talk. Now, Thrynne. What were you

saying? Tell me
what
?”

The prisoner’s mouth worked soundlessly. Blood welled

across the table. The captain’s blade gleamed.

Kestrel was calm now. It was the way the prisoner was

looking at her— as if she were a stroke of good fortune. She

couldn’t betray that, even if she didn’t understand it. She

would make herself capable. She would handle what ever

his expression was asking her to handle.

“I don’t remember,” Thrynne said.

“Tell me or I’ll strip you bare.”

“Captain,” said Kestrel. “He’s confused. Give him a

moment—”

“
You
are confused if you think to interfere with my

27

—-1

—0

—+1

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 27

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 27

9/25/14 2:52 PM

9/25/14 2:52 PM

interrogation. You’re here to listen. Thrynne, I asked you a

SKI

O

question. Stop looking at her. She isn’t important. I am.”

Thrynne’s gaze jumped between them. He made a

guttural sound, urgent and rough, with the slight whine of

tamped- down pain. He focused on Kestrel. “Please,” he said

MARIE RUTK

hoarsely, “he needs to know.”

The captain peeled off a piece of skin and fl icked it into

the bucket.

Thrynne screamed. The scream broken by sucked

breaths, it rang through Kestrel’s head.

She reached for the captain. She tried to snag the hand

that held his blade. He shoved her back easily, and without

even looking, she fell.

“Don’t refuse
me
, Thrynne,” said the captain. “ ‘No’

doesn’t exist anymore. Only ‘yes.’ Do you understand?”

The scream was bitten off . “Yes.”

Kestrel got to her feet. “Captain—”

“Quiet. You’re only making this worse.” To Thrynne

he said, “What were you doing eavesdropping outside the

doors of a private meeting between the emperor and the

Senate leader?”

“Nothing! Cleaning. I clean.”

“That sounds like a ‘no’ to me.”

“No! I mean, yes, yes, I was sweeping the fl oor. I clean.

I’m a servant.”

“You’re a slave,” the captain corrected, though the em-

peror had issued a decree that emancipated the Herrani.

“Aren’t you?”

-1—

28

“Yes. I am.”

0—

+1—

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 28

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 28

9/25/14 2:52 PM

9/25/14 2:52 PM

Kestrel had quietly drawn her dagger. If the captain

kept his back to her, she might be able to do something. It

CRIME

didn’t matter that her combat skills were pitiful. She could

’S

stop him.

Maybe.

“And why,” the captain said to Thrynne in a gentle

THE WINNER

voice, “why were you listening outside that door?”

The dagger in Kestrel’s hand shook. She smelled the

emperor’s perfumed oil on the captain. She forced herself

close. The breakfast milk swam up her throat.

Thrynne tore his gaze from the captain to glance at

her. “Money,” he said. “This is the year of money.”

“Ah,” said the captain. “Now we come to it. You were

paid to listen, weren’t you?”

“No—”

The captain’s knife came down. Kestrel vomited, her

dagger falling into the shadows. The sound of it hitting stone

was lost in Thrynne’s shriek. She wiped her mouth on her

sleeve; she was not looking, she was pressing hands to her

ears. She barely heard the captain say, “Who?
Who
paid

you?”

But there was no answer. Thrynne had fainted.

Kestrel took to her rooms like someone sick. Infected. She

bathed until she felt boiled. She left her ruined dress where

it lay, balled up on the bathing room fl oor. Then she climbed

into bed, hair loose and damp, and thought.

Or tried to think. She tried to think about what she

29

—-1

—0

—+1

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 29

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 29

9/25/14 2:52 PM

9/25/14 2:52 PM

should do. Then she noticed that the feather blanket, thick

SKI

O

yet light, quivered like a living thing. She was shaking.

She remembered Cheat, the Herrani leader. Arin had

answered to him, followed him. Loved him. Yes, she knew

that Arin had loved him.

MARIE RUTK

Cheat had always threatened Kestrel’s hands. To break

them, cut off fi ngers, crush them with his own. He had

seemed obsessed with them, until he became obsessed with

her in a diff erent way. She felt it again: that cold roll of hor-

ror as she began to understand what he wanted and what

he would do to get it.

He was dead now. Arin had gutted him. Kestrel had

seen it. She’d seen Cheat die, and she reassured herself that

he could not hurt her. Kestrel stared at her hands, whole and

undamaged. They were not peeled and bloody meat. They

were slim, nails kept short for the piano. Skin soft.

Her hands were pretty, she supposed. Spread against

the blanket, they seemed the height of uselessness.

What could she do?

Help the prisoner escape? That would require a strat-

egy hinged upon enlisting the help of others. Kestrel didn’t

have enough leverage over the captain. No one in the capi-

tal owed her favors. She didn’t know the court’s secrets. She

was new to the palace and had no one’s loyalty here, not for

help with such an insane plan.

And if she were caught? What would the emperor do to

her
?

And if she did nothing?

-1—

She couldn’t do nothing. Having done nothing in the

0—

30

prison had already cost too much.

+1—

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 30

135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 30

9/25/14 2:52 PM

9/25/14 2:52 PM

This is the year of money
, Thrynne had said. He had

spoken the words as if they were meant for her. It was an

CRIME

odd phrase. Yet familiar. Perhaps it was as the captain had

’S

assumed: Thrynne was revealing that he had been paid to

gather of information. The emperor had many enemies, not

all of them foreign. A rival in the Senate might have

THE WINNER

employed Thrynne.

But as the feather blanket stilled, transforming into a

peaked fi eld of snow over Kestrel’s tucked- in knees, she re-

membered her Herrani nurse saying, “This is the year of

stars.”

Kestrel had been little. Enai was tending to her skinned

knee. Kestrel hadn’t been a clumsy girl, but she had always

tried too hard, with predictable bruised and bloodied results.

“Be careful,” Enai had said, wrapping the gauze. “This is

the year of stars.”

It had seemed such a curious thing to say. Kestrel had

asked for an explanation. “You Valorians mark the years

by numbers,” Enai had said, “but we mark them by our

gods. We cycle through the pantheon, one god of the

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