The Winner's Crime

by Marie Rutkoski

  “I don’t think that the emperor will be satisfied with a mere minister of agriculture.”

  “I don’t care for the emperor’s satisfaction.”

  “Sending me, alone, will either insult the emperor or reveal to him that I’m more important than I seem.” Tensen rubbed his grizzled jaw, considering Arin. “You need to go. It’s a part you must play. You’re a good actor.”

  Arin shook his head.

  Tensen’s eyes darkened. “I was there that day.”

  The day last summer when Kestrel had bought him.

  Arin could feel again the sweat crawling down his back as he waited in the holding pen below in the auction pit. The structure was roofed, which meant that Arin couldn’t see the crowd of Valorians ranged above at ground level, only Cheat in the center of the pit.

  Arin smelled the stink of his skin, felt the grit beneath his bare feet. He was sore. As he listened to Cheat’s voice rise and fall in the bantering singsong of an expert auctioneer, he pressed tentative fingers to his bruised cheek. His face was like a rotten fruit.

  Cheat had been furious with him that morning. “Two days,” he’d growled. “I rent you out for only two days and you come back looking like this. What’s so hard about laying a road and keeping your mouth shut?”

  Waiting in the holding pen, not really listening to the drone of the auction, Arin didn’t want to think about the beating and everything that had led up to it.

  In truth, the bruises changed nothing. Arin couldn’t fool himself that Cheat would ever be able to sell him into a Valorian household. Valorians cared about their house slaves’ appearance, and Arin didn’t fit the part even when his face wasn’t half-masked in various shades of purple. He looked like a laborer. He was one. Laborers were not brought into the house, and houses were where Cheat needed to plant slaves devoted to the rebellion.

  Arin tipped his head back against the rough wood of the pen’s wall. He fought his frustration.

  There came a long silence in the pit. The lull meant that Cheat had closed the sale while Arin wasn’t paying attention and had stepped into the auction house for a break.

  Then: a locust-like whir from the crowd. Cheat was returning to the pit, stepping close to the block on which another slave was about to stand.

  To his audience, Cheat said, “I have something very special for you.”

  Each slave in the holding pen straightened. The afternoon torpor was gone. Even the old man, whose name Arin would later learn was Tensen, became sharply alert.

  Cheat had spoken in code. “Something very special” conveyed a secret meaning to the slaves: the chance to be sold in a way to contribute to the rebellion. To spy. Steal. Maybe murder. Cheat had many plans.

  It was the very in what Cheat had said that made Arin sick with himself, because that word signaled the most important sale of all, the one they’d been waiting for: the opportunity for a rebel to be placed in General Trajan’s household.

  Who was there, above in the crowd of Valorians?

  The general himself?

  And Arin, stupid Arin, had squandered his chance at revenge. Cheat would never choose him for the sale.

  Yet when the auctioneer turned to face the holding pen, his eyes looked straight into Arin’s. Cheat’s fingers twitched twice. The signal.

  Arin had been chosen.

  “That day,” Arin told Tensen as they sat in the winter light of his father’s study, “was different. Everything was different.”

  “Was it? You were ready to do anything for your people then. Aren’t you now?”

  “It’s a ball, Tensen.”

  “It’s an opportunity. At the very least, we could use it to find out how much the emperor plans to take of the hearthnut harvest.”

  The harvest would be soon. Their people needed it badly for food and trade. Arin pressed his fingertips against his brow. A headache was building behind his eyes. “What is there to know? Whatever he will take will be too much.”

  For a moment, Tensen said nothing. Then, grimly: “I’ve heard nothing from Thrynne for weeks.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t been able to get out of the palace and into the city to reach our contact.”

  “Maybe. But we have precious few sources in the imperial palace as it is. This is a dicey time. The empire’s elite are pouring out gold to prepare themselves for the most lavish winter season in Valorian history, what with the engagement. And the colonists who once lived in Herran grow increasingly resentful. They didn’t like returning their stolen homes to us. They’re a minority, and the military is solidly with the emperor, so he can ignore them. But all signs point to the court being a volatile place, and we can never forget that we are at the emperor’s mercy. Who knows what he’ll choose to do next? Or how it will affect us? This”—Tensen nodded at the invitation—“would be a good means to look into Thrynne’s silence. Arin, are you listening? We can’t afford to lose such a well-placed spy.”

  Just as Arin had been well-placed. Expertly placed. He hadn’t been sure, that day in the market, how Cheat had known that Arin was the perfect slave to pitch. Cheat had a knack for spotting weakness. An eye for desire. Somehow he had peered into the heart of the bidder and had known how to work her.

  Arin hadn’t seen her at first. The sun had blinded him when he stepped into the pit. There was a roar of laughter. He couldn’t see the mass of Valorians above. Yet he heard them. He didn’t mind the prickling shame spidering up his skin. He told himself that he didn’t. He didn’t mind what they said or what he heard.

  Then his vision cleared. He blinked the sun away. He saw the girl. She raised one hand to bid.

  The sight of her was an assault. He couldn’t quite see her face—he did not want to see her face, not when everything else about her made him want to shut his eyes. She looked very Valorian. Golden tones. Burnished, almost, like a weapon raised into the light. He had trouble believing she was a living thing.

  And she was clean. A purity of skin and form. It made him feel filthy. It distracted him for a moment from noticing that the girl was small. Slight.

  Absurd. It was absurd to think that someone like that could have any power over him. Yet she would, if she won the auction.

  He wanted her to. The thought swept Arin with a merciless, ugly joy. He’d never seen her before, but he guessed who she was: Lady Kestrel, General Trajan’s daughter.

  The crowd heard her bid. And at once it seemed that Arin was worth something after all.

  Arin forgot that he was sitting at his father’s desk, two seasons later. He forgot that Tensen was waiting for him to say something. Arin was there again in the pit. He remembered staring up at the girl, feeling a hatred as hard as it was pure.

  A diamond.

  3

  Kestrel decided to dress extravagantly for her meeting with the captain of the imperial guard. She chose a snow-and-gold brocade dress whose long hem trailed. As always, she strapped her dagger on with care, but this morning she tightened the buckles more than she needed to. She undid and redid them several times.

  The captain called for her in her suite as she was finishing her morning cup of spiced milk. He declined to sit while she drank. When he blinked at her dress and hid a brief smirk, Kestrel knew that she wouldn’t like wherever they were going. When he didn’t suggest that she change into something that wouldn’t be so easily sullied, she knew that she didn’t like him.

  “Ready?” said the captain.

  She sipped from her cup, eyeing him. He was a hulking man, face scarred across the lip. His jaw had been broken; it jutted left. The captain had an unexpectedly fine, straight-nosed profile, but she had caught only a glimpse of it when he’d glanced around the sitting room to make certain they were alone. He was someone who preferred to stare face-on. Then his features were all marred.

  She wondered what he would do if he knew that she hadn’t been an entirely unwilling captive in Arin’s house after the Herrani rebellion.

  She set the empty cup down on a small table
. “Where are we going?”

  His smirk was back. “To pay someone a visit.”

  “Who?”

  “The emperor said not to tell.”

  Kestrel lifted her chin and gazed up at the captain. “What about hints? Did the emperor order you not to give hints, even little tiny ones?”

  “Well…”

  “What about confirming guesses? For example”—she tapped an arpeggio along the edge of the ebony table—“I guess that we are going to the prison.”

  “Not exactly a tough guess, my lady.”

  “Shall I try something more challenging? Your hands are clean, but your boots are dirty. Slightly spattered. The spots are shiny; recently dried. Blood?”

  He was entertained now. He enjoyed this game.

  “You’ve been up even earlier than I this morning, I see,” Kestrel said. “And you’ve been busy. How incongruous, though, to see blood on your boots and to smell something so nice lingering about you … a subtle scent. Vetiver. Expensive. A dose of ambergris. The slight sting of pepper. Oh, captain. Have you been … borrowing the emperor’s perfumed oils?”

  He no longer looked amused.

  “I’d think that such a good guess deserves a hint, Captain.”

  He sighed. “I’m taking you to see a Herrani prisoner.”

  The milk curdled in Kestrel’s stomach. “Man or woman?”

  “Man.”

  “Why is it important that I see him?”

  The captain shrugged. “The emperor didn’t say.”

  “But who?”

  The captain shifted his heavy feet.

  “I don’t like surprises,” Kestrel said, “any more than the emperor gladly shares his oils.”

  “He’s nobody. We’re not even sure of his name.”

  Not Arin. That was all Kestrel could think. It couldn’t be him—Herran’s governor was not nobody. Imprisoning him could trigger a new conflict.

  Yet the prison held somebody.

  The sweet taste of milk had soured in her mouth, but Kestrel smiled as she stood. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The capital prison was outside the palace walls, situated a little lower on the mountain, on the other side of the city, in a natural sinkhole that was expanded and fortified and spiraled with seemingly endless descending staircases. It was small—the prison of the eastern empire was rumored to be as large as an underground city—but its size suited the Valorian emperor well. Most criminals were shipped to a labor camp in the mines of the frozen north. Those that were left behind were the very worst, and soon executed.

  Oil lamps were lit, and the captain led Kestrel down the first black, airless stairwell. The trailing fabric of her dress hissed behind her. It was hard not to imagine that she was a prisoner being led to her cell. Kestrel’s heartbeat tricked her; it fumbled at the thought of being caught at 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 finally 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 metallic 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 floor as he tried to push back, away from the captain.

  “Don’t worry,” the captain said to Kestrel. “He’s harmless. Here.” He passed her the lamp, then dragged on a loose end of chain to draw the prisoner tight against the wall. The man shuddered and wept. He began to pray to all hundred of the Herrani gods.

  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 suffer. She could see his suffering 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 fingers 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 flared 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 suddenly seemed that Arin was the one stumbling over the name of the god of mercy, that he was begging her for something she had no idea how to give.

  “The lamp,” the captain said again. “Are you going to be difficult so soon, Lady Kestrel?”

  She came forward. She saw, then, the outline of a bucket near the prisoner, filled 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 fingers was missing.

  Kestrel caught a glimpse of pink muscle and creamy, glistening bands of tendon. Her stomach heaved. The captain pulled a small table from a dark corner of the cell and flattened 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 finger. 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 fingers 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 before the emperor, spilled before him to say, Look what a pathetic girl she is. How weak of will. She has no stomach to rule.

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

  She wasn’t sure what she would have done next if the prisoner hadn’t gone still. He was staring at Kestrel. His 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 Herrani. “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 fluency. “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 whatever his expression was asking he
r 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 interrogation. You’re here to listen. Thrynne, I asked you a 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 hoarsely, “he needs to know.”

  The captain peeled off a piece of skin and flicked 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, without even looking, and 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 floor. I clean. I’m a servant.”

  “You’re a slave,” the captain corrected, though the emperor had issued a decree that emancipated the Herrani. “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I am.”

  Kestrel had quietly drawn her dagger. If the captain kept his back to her, she might be able to do something. It didn’t matter that her combat skills were pitiful. She could stop him.

  Maybe.

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