The Winner's Crime (64 page)

hoarse. “Was it . . . the kiss? In my kitchen. Was
that
the

unforgivable thing?”

“Arin.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Arin.”

“I’m sorry, Kestrel. I’m sorry. Tell me what I can say.”

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It wasn’t the misery that gave her pause. It was his voice.

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It was what lay beneath his voice: that underground river

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of song that was always there, that he tried to dam and

block and bury. It had been his secret. When she had

bought him, she’d felt the strain of this secret even then.

Arin was a singer. Yet he had disowned it, he hid it. His

MARIE RUTK

secret had seemed so vital, so fi ercely kept, that Kestrel had

never forced its fact to the surface, and hadn’t thought to

question whether Arin hid anything else.

He was waiting for her to speak. A library clock chimed.

The sound woke her from her memory. A new thought

made her skin prickle with fear.

Even if Arin didn’t know her secrets, he sensed them. It

was as if he could hear them rustling in her dark heart.

Kestrel had decided she would never tell him. Yet a mere

moment ago she’d spoken too openly, like someone who

hoped he would guess exactly what her secrets were.

She met his anxious eyes. She thought of the nails in

the table and the force it had taken to drive them in. She

thought about temptation, and the smart thing, and how

in the seventeen years before she’d met Arin, she’d always

known which to choose. “I forgive you.” Kestrel made her

tone off handedly kind, even bored. “There, do you feel

better? My choice to marry the prince isn’t about blaming

you. It’s not about you at all. I simply want something

else.”

He stared.

“Really, Arin. I have the chance to rule half the known

world one day. That isn’t too diffi

cult to understand.”

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He turned to look out the window. The light was stron-

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ger now. It bleached his face.

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“Since we are being so honest,” she said, “I’d like for

you to tell me why you’re here instead of Tensen. Did he

CRIME

send you?”

’S

“He never read your note,” Arin said to the window. “I

saw your seal. I opened the letter.”

“I suppose I should scold you for it.” She lifted one

THE WINNER

shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Though I might as well tell

you as him.”

Arin looked at her then. “Tell me what?”

“That I am no longer the imperial ambassador to Her-

ran.”

“But you agreed. It was part of the treaty the emperor

signed. That I signed. It’s
law
.”

“The law is written by the sword. The emperor holds

the sword, not you, and if he says that I am not to be bur-

dened by a tiresome post, who are we to disagree? Come,

let’s not quarrel. The tea is nice, isn’t it? A little too steeped,

though. I might not fi nish my cup.”

Arin’s expression was turning dangerous. “So we’re to

talk about
tea
?”

“Would you prefer chocolate?”

“And when I see you next, shall I compliment your daz-

zling shoes and doeskin gloves? Because what else will you

have to discuss? Doesn’t the life of an empress- to- be bore

you?” Arin had switched to speaking in his own language,

but she’d never heard him sound like this before. His voice

was mincing and sharp. It was a mockery of the way court-

iers talked. “Maybe we can discuss the latest crimes of your

beloved empire over tea. I can admire the cunning little

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shapes of hardened sugar and pass you a tiny sweet swan on

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a spoon. You can set it to swim in your cup while you pre-

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tend that the massacres in the east aren’t happening. And

maybe I will note how the people of the southern isles are

still slaves, and the tribes of the northern tundra were wiped

out long ago. You will say that the southern slaves have it

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better under the empire than when they were free. Look at

all that clean water piped down from the mountains through

the imperial aqueducts, you’ll say. Isn’t that lovely? As for the

northern tribes, there were never very many of them any-

way.”

His voice tightened. The mockery was gone. “And I

might tell you that Herran is thinned to the point of star-

vation. We are poor, Kestrel. We eat through a meager sup-

ply of grain and wait for the hearthnut harvest, and for

news of how much your emperor will seize of it. What if I

ask if you know how much? You’ll probably say that you

remember how your Herrani nurse used to bake hearthnut

bread for you. Maybe you’ve even been to the southern tip

of Herran’s peninsula where the hearthnut trees grow, and

remember how the sun there is hot year- round. You’ll say

all this in a cozy tone as if we share something, when what

we share is what your people steal from mine.

“I will say
tell me
. Tell me how much we’ll have to live

by after the emperor’s tithe. You’ll say you don’t know. You

have no intention of knowing.”

Kestrel had risen from her seat.

“Then I will be silent,” Arin said, “and you will stir

your tea. You will drink and I will drink. There. Is that

-1—

how it will be?”

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Kestrel was light- headed. “Go away,” she whispered,

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though she was the one standing. Arin didn’t move from

the table. He stared up at her, jawline tight, and she didn’t

CRIME

understand how it could still be there in his face: that hard

’S

expectation, that angry faith.
Don’t fail me,
his eyes said.

Don’t fail yourself.

She quit the table.

THE WINNER

“You’re better than this,” he called after her. A librarian

stepped from the stacks to shush him. Kestrel walked away.

He said, “How can the inconsequence of your life not

shame you?”

He said, “How do you not feel empty?”

I do,
she thought as she pushed through the library

doors and let them thud behind her.
I do.

Kestrel was shaking when she sat down in front of her

dressing table. Curse Tensen. Curse him for not collecting

his own letters, or for sleeping in late while Arin had riffl

ed

through them. She’d been discreet in what she had written—

this was the imperial court, and the only secrets put down

on paper were
meant
to become gossip— but what if she

hadn’t been?

She’d better reconsider her plan. Tensen couldn’t be

trusted to keep Arin in check. She was a fool even to con-

sider becoming the minister of agriculture’s new spy. What

kind of spymaster allows his letters to be read?

Then again, what kind of would- be spy stamps a letter

with her own seal? What a stupid mistake.

Kestrel looked at the bottles on her dressing table and

—-1

imagined how it would sound if she sent the whole lot of

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them crashing to the stone fl oor. A great, glorious smash.

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But a moment passed, then another, and she calmed, reach-

ing carefully for a pot set back behind the others.

Kestrel seemed to see the pot in her hand as if it were

far away.

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You’re better than this,
Arin had said.

Her fi ngers tightened around the pot. She brought it

close. She smiled a hard smile, one as thin as the glass be-

neath her nails.

The masker moth larvae had cocooned. There were

bulging, pellet- like cases all over the silk.

Kestrel returned the pot to its place. She would wait for

the moths to hatch. It wouldn’t take long. Then she would

make her move.

She pled a minor illness: a cold caught from sitting too

long in the Winter Garden after the ball. Verex didn’t visit,

but sent a kind note along with a vial of medicine.

The emperor sent no word.

Kestrel wrote to Jess: a teasing letter fi lled with merry

turns of phrase that chided Jess for abandoning her in her

hour of need. There were too many parties, too many bor-

ing people. Jess had left her defenseless.

I need my friend,
Kestrel wrote. Then she saw the anxi-

ety in her spiky cursive. Kestrel felt the nibbling fear that

she
had
been abandoned, that she had unknowingly of-

fended Jess.

-1—

I saw him,
Jess had said. She had seen Arin at the ball.

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But then she’d clung to Kestrel’s hand in the dark. Jess

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wouldn’t have done that, surely, had she guessed what Arin

and Kestrel had been doing while the dancers danced?

CRIME

Maybe the sight of Arin had frightened Jess. Kestrel

’S

couldn’t blame her. Jess had witnessed things Kestrel hadn’t

the night of the Firstwinter Rebellion. And Jess knew they

were Arin’s doing.

THE WINNER

Kestrel blacked out her last line of writing.

I miss you, little sister,
she wrote instead.

Jess’s reply was slow in coming. It was short. Jess was

tired, the letter explained, her health worse than thought.

By the time you receive this, we will have left for the south

again,
Jess wrote. The entire family would go. Jess was

sorry.

It was an explanation of sorts. But Kestrel found herself

rereading the letter in her empty receiving room, searching

for signs of love as if it could be captured in a double- dotted

i
, or in the decorative slash through the last word of Jess’s

last sentence. The paper in Kestrel’s hand felt thin.

Uneasy, Kestrel crumbled the letter’s wax seal between

her fi ngers. She tried not to think about how she hadn’t

even been able to see Jess one more time. She tried not to

think about how the empty room felt suddenly emptier.

Kestrel kept to parts of her suite that were unquestionably

private: her bedchamber and dressing room. And one day,

even though she couldn’t have possibly heard the fl utter of

such small wings, Kestrel lifted her head, came quickly to

the dressing table, and cleared a path through the bottles

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to see masker moths hatching in their pot. Some were

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struggling out of cocoons. Others clung to the glass, their

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wings clear, or they clustered upside down on the bottom

of the cork and turned a stippled light brown.

Kestrel lit a candle. When the moths had all hatched

and the candle had burned down, Kestrel poured molten

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wax over the stopper of the moths’ pot. She sealed it thor-

oughly, so that no air would leak into the pot.

It took a day for the moths to die. Afterward, Kestrel

announced to her maids that she felt much better.

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12

THERE WAS A RECEPTION IN THE PALACE

gallery. Everyone was invited to admire the emperor’s col-

lection of stolen art. Kestrel’s father had once told her that

the military had a standing order to spare art during the

sack of a city. “He didn’t like that I razed the Herrani pal-

ace when we invaded.” The general had shrugged. “But it

had been the right military move.”

Her father had never feared the emperor, so Kestrel told

herself that neither should she. This was why, in full view

of a crush of guests milling about the statues and paint-

ings, Kestrel made her way toward Tensen.

A few amused eyebrows were raised—
Can’t seem to

keep away from the Herrani, can she?
Kestrel practically

heard— but the emperor’s back was to her for now, and she

would need only a few moments. She slipped a hand into

her dress pocket.

Tensen stood before a landscape stolen from the south-

ern isles. Arin wasn’t with him. He was late. Perhaps he