The Winner's Crime (80 page)

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his eyes. His face was slack with pain. “How long did I

sleep?”

CRIME

“About four hours after the healer fi rst cleaned your

’S

wound. After you woke in the night, another three.”

He frowned. “I woke in the middle of the night?”

“Yes,” said Kestrel, confused, but already feeling wary,

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already tensing as if some blow was about to fall.

“Did I . . . say something I shouldn’t have?”

Kestrel realized that he didn’t remember waking, or the

conversation. She could no longer tell if he had meant what

he had said to her then. Even if he had meant it, had he

meant to say it?

He had, after all, been drugged.

An emotion leaked away. It came from a small cut that

Kestrel couldn’t close.

“No,” she told her father. “You didn’t.”

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27

ARIN WOKE WITH THE MOVEMENT OF BEING

heaved up onto something hard. His head thumped, and

the world was a weird, jigsawed thing of sky and stone and

water. Then his vision cleared, and Arin realized that he

was lying on a stone pier. The skull- faced man was step-

ping out of the narrow boat anchored to the pier. He mut-

tered something.

“What did you say?” Arin croaked.

The man hunkered down and gently slapped Arin’s

cheek twice. “That I need a wheelbarrow.”

Wherever Arin was going, he wanted to be on his feet.

“There’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Foreigners are illegal in Dacra. You broke our laws by

entering the country. You’ll have to pay the price.”

“Just let me tell you
why
—”

“Oh, reasons. Everyone has reasons. I don’t care to

know yours.” The easterner stared down at Arin, and al-

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though it wasn’t the man’s eyes that had been mutilated, it

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was hard to hold his gaze. Arin remembered seeing him for

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those few bare minutes in Herran. How the runaway east-

ern slave was being dragged past the road Arin was forced

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to pave. A Valorian dagger had fl ashed. Arin had cursed his

’S

masters. He had been beaten down. The man’s face was

whole, and then it wasn’t.

“You ran away again,” Arin said. “You got free.”

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The man straightened. He stared down at Arin from a

height. “Do you think you did something for me that day?”

“No.”

“Good. Because I think that you liked your chains,

little Herrani. Otherwise, you would have fought with ev-

erything you had. You would look like me.” He bent to

grasp the ropes wound around Arin’s chest, and Arin real-

ized that he meant to drag him.

“Let me walk.”

“All right.” The easy response surprised Arin until the

man pulled Kestrel’s dagger from the satchel slung over his

shoulder, cut the ropes binding Arin’s ankles, and watched

him with a smile.

It was then that Arin realized that he couldn’t quite feel

his feet. Standing up was going to be hard. Walking no

longer seemed like a great idea.

Arin’s wrists were bound in front of him. Rope coiled

around his upper body at the biceps. He decided to take

that as a healthy amount of respect for the way he’d at-

tacked the prison guard.

The easterner was still smirking.

Arin inchwormed to his knees. He struggled to his feet.

He nearly fell back down.

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The soles of his feet stung with a thousand little

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knives. He wobbled. Arin saw, again, Kestrel’s blade in the

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easterner’s hand. He was suddenly furious at her, as if
she

had drugged him, tied him, and watched him try to walk

when he couldn’t.

He clenched his teeth until it hurt. He took a step.

MARIE RUTK

The Dacran said something in his language.

“What?” said Arin. He took another wavering step. He

bent his arms at the elbows, lifting his bound wrists. It

helped him balance. He fl exed his fi ngers. The feeling in

them was fi ne. He could open and close his hands. “What

did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me what you said.”

“You want to know? Learn my language for yourself.”

The man was unsettled, apparently by what ever he’d said

as Arin tried to walk. He looked down and opened the

satchel to place Kestrel’s dagger inside.

Arin knew an opportunity when he saw it.

He shouldered his weight into the man, toppling them

both down. The dagger hit stone. The man was shoving

Arin off him, but Arin jerked a knee up into the Dacran’s

stomach and rolled to claim the dagger.

Later, Arin would realize how lucky he’d been. But for

now he thought nothing at all. The dagger was in his

hands, he was fl ipping it by its hilt. That exquisitely sharp

edge sliced through the ropes at his wrists.

The Dacran gasped on the ground, clutching his gut.

Arin loomed over him and couldn’t quite remember when

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or how he’d gotten to his feet. When had he yanked the

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ropes that had bound his chest up over his head? Ropes lay

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in a heap on the pier. Arin stared at them. He stared at the

man, who stared back.

CRIME

No, not really.

’S

The Dacran wasn’t really looking at Arin. His gaze was

going over Arin’s shoulder.

Arin turned. For the fi rst time, he truly saw where he

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was: on a large island in the middle of the river. The pier

was grand, edged with low, scalloped walls of translucent

stone. A path traveled from it up onto the island, to a castle

with steeply pitched roofs and walls that gleamed like glass.

But the pier didn’t matter, or the path, or the castle.

What mattered were the ranks of white- clad guards who

had trained their small crossbows, wound and notched, at

Arin.

“Good,” said the skull- faced man. He stood, and held

out his hand for Kestrel’s dagger.

Arin hated that he always hated to let it go.

The man took it. “Good.”

Defeated, Arin muttered, “You said that already.”

It began to rain. The Dacran looked at him through

the bright gray of it. “No. It was what I said earlier, when

you got to your feet and walked.”

The castle had looked like glass because it had been made

from that odd, translucent stone. Through the rain, Arin

could see dark shapes of people moving behind its outer

walls. But other fi gures seemed to stand
inside
the stone.

Arin wiped water from his eyes. “Does it always rain so

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much here?”

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“Wait till summer,” said the Dacran. “It gets so hot

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that some of the city canals dry up and we walk in them

like deep roads. Then you’ll wish for rain.”

“I won’t be here in summer.”

The other man said nothing.

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As they passed through the castle gate, Arin tried to

peer into the wall. “Are those . . . statues inside?”

“They are the dead.” When Arin shot him a startled

look, the man said. “Our ancestors. Yes, I know that
some

people from other countries set the people they loved on

fi re or dump them in a hole in a ground. But Dacra is a

civilized nation.”

They entered the castle. Arin was so wet it felt as if the

rain was still drumming down on him. His boots squelched.

Inside the castle, some walls were built from solid white

marble, and others from that glassy rock. It had a dizzying

eff ect. Arin found it hard to judge the space and shape of

things.

“Well?” said the Dacran. “Where do you keep
your

family dead?”

“I don’t know where they are,” Arin said shortly. The

other man went silent, and that made Arin uncomfortable,

resentful. He wondered when he would stop sharing things

he shouldn’t. It was a bad habit.

It had begun with her. He could swear that she was the

start of it all.

“The ground,” Arin said, though he had not in fact

seen what had been done with the bodies of his parents

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and sister. “We bury our dead, as I’m sure you know if you

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lived in my country long enough to learn its language.”

The Dacran didn’t admit to it, or that he might have been

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needling Arin with questions whose answers he knew. This

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made Arin angrier. “You’re no more civilized than I am.”

“You asked to walk. Here you are, walking. You asked

to speak with my queen. You will. You’ve broken our laws

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three times—”

“Three?”

The man ticked them off , starting with his smallest

fi nger. “You entered our country. You bore the weapon of

our enemy. And you struck a member of the royal family.”

Arin stared at him. The man gave a slow smile. “But we

have been polite,” he said.

“Who are you?”

The man led the way down a hall lined with palm- size

paintings.

“Wait.” Arin caught the man’s arm.

The Dacran glanced down at Arin’s hand on him, then

gave a look that made Arin let go. “You are also not sup-

posed to
touch
a member of the royal family. It’s not so

grave an off ense as
striking
me, but still. I don’t know what

my sister is going to do with you. The queen can hardly

sentence you to death more than once.”

“Your sister?”

“That last off ense bears a lesser punishment, though I

don’t think you’ll like that one either.”

Arin had stopped, only vaguely aware that they had en-

tered a high- vaulted chamber. “But if you’re the queen’s

brother, that means you’re Risha’s brother, too.”

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The Dacran stopped as well. “Risha?”

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There was a silent energy in this new room that kept

Arin from saying anything else.

It was wariness. It was the watchful eyes of guards.

It was the hard expression of the young queen, who

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looked at Arin as if she had already pronounced his death.

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28

“DON’T SAY THAT NAME AGAIN,” MUTTERED THE

skull- faced man to Arin.

The queen asked a sharp question. Her brother’s an-

swer was slow, complicated. It was marked by pauses. Each

pause gave life to a new tone of voice.

The rain must have stopped. The peaked ceiling, made

from that sheer stone, glowed with sudden sun. Prismatic

light lit the room. Arin watched the queen’s changing face

as her brother spoke. Her black eyes, lined with elaborate

patterns of color, narrowed. She stopped him.

“This is the part where I translate,” the Dacran told

Arin, “and you hope that I tell the truth.”

The queen said, “You’ve broken three of our laws”—

here, her brother stopped his translation to hold up four

fi ngers—“what keeps you alive is our curiosity. Satisfy it.”

Arin said, “I have a proprosal—”

“No,” the man told him. “Don’t start there. We don’t

even know your name.”

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So Arin gave it, and his rank.

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“
Governor
is a Valorian title,” said the queen. “You are

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Valorian.”

The insult went bone deep.

“You cannot deny it,” said the queen. “We have heard

of you. Arin of the Herrani, who once bit his masters’

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heels, is a tame dog once more. Did you not swear an oath

of loyalty to the emperor?”

“I’m breaking it now.”

“Do you so easily break your oaths?”

“Wouldn’t you, for your people?”

“I’m not translating that,” the skull- faced man told

him. “It’s insulting. You’re a little self- destructive, aren’t

you?”

Impatient, the queen interrupted. She told Arin to ex-