The Winner's Crime

by Marie Rutkoski

  * * *

  Her music, too, was a problem. The piano brought little comfort—and what comfort it gave turned out to be false. Kestrel began to craft something that she thought was an impromptu, as difficult as she could make it. Then the notes nudged aside, twined together, and left spaces that she couldn’t fill.

  This was no impromptu. Impromptus were for soloists. This was a duet.

  No, not quite a duet … only half of one.

  Kestrel brought the lid down on the keys.

  * * *

  She invented a solitaire version of Bite and Sting. She played against a ghost. She played against herself. The boneyard—the stock of tiles left on the table after players drew their hands—dwindled until all the pieces were faceup like a final truth that she should have been able to decode. The tiger bared its teeth. The spider wove its web. Mouse, stonefish, viper, wasp … the black engravings on the ivory tiles became suddenly sharp in definition, then blurred before her eyes.

  Kestrel mixed the tiles and tried again.

  * * *

  She invited Jess to the ball. Her letter practically begged Jess to come. Jess’s reply arrived: she would be there, of course she would. She promised to stay with Kestrel for at least a week. Kestrel felt a terrible relief.

  It didn’t last.

  * * *

  She took tea in the palace salons with the daughters and sons of high-ranking military officers. She ate canapés on fashionable white bread that tasted awful because its color came from powdered chalk. Kestrel pretended to herself that the dry, tight quality of her throat had everything to do with the bread and nothing with the increasing disappointment of each day that did not bring Arin.

  * * *

  On the last morning before the ball, when the weather watchers in the palace predicted that a storm building above the mountains would close the pass to Herran with snow before the day was out, Kestrel stood on a block while the dressmaker pinned a panel of silver-threaded lace to her ball gown.

  It was the final touch. Kestrel stared down at the layered fabric. The color of its satin base was uncertain. Sometimes it resembled pearl scraped from the inside of shells. Then light from the window would dim and the dress became dark, full of shadows.

  Kestrel was tired of the long hours on the dressmaker’s block, tired to think of all the eyes that would watch her enter the ballroom, of all the gossip that swirled through the palace about details so minute as her choice of dress. Bets had been laid, she’d heard. Entire fortunes might be won or lost based on what she wore.

  She lifted her gaze from the dress to watch the snow-heavy clouds build in the sky. She watched as if the window were her last exit, each cloud a stone laid to wall it off.

  The dressmaker was Herrani. She’d been freed with the rest of her people when the emperor had issued his edict almost two months ago. Why Deliah stayed in the capital instead of returning to Herran, Kestrel didn’t know. She didn’t ask, and Deliah rarely spoke. She didn’t say anything that day, either—not at first. She pinned in silent precision. But her gray eyes glanced up once to peer at Kestrel.

  Kestrel saw a certain curiosity in the way they lingered. A waiting, a wondering.

  “Deliah, what is it?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  Deliah fussed with the hem. “The Herrani representative has arrived.”

  “What?”

  “He arrived this morning on horseback. He came through the pass in the nick of time.”

  “Take this dress off.”

  “But I’m not finished, my lady.”

  “Off.”

  “Just a few more—”

  Kestrel tugged the fabric from her shoulders. She ignored Deliah’s small cry, the pricks of pins, the thin chime of them scattering onto the stone floor. Kestrel stepped out of the dress, pulled on her day clothes, and rushed out the door.

  7

  He was waiting in the reception hall, a lone figure lost in the vast, vaulted chamber. The Herrani representative was an elderly man whose thin frame leaned heavily on his walking stick.

  Kestrel faltered. She approached more slowly. She couldn’t help looking over his shoulder for Arin.

  He wasn’t there.

  “I thought the barbarian days of the Valorian empire were over,” the man said dryly.

  “What?” said Kestrel.

  “You’re barefoot.”

  She glanced down, and only then realized that her feet were freezing, that she’d forgotten even the existence of shoes when she’d left her dressing chamber and hurtled through the palace for all to see, for the Valorian guards flanking the reception hall to see right now.

  “Who are you?” Kestrel demanded.

  “Tensen, the Herrani minister of agriculture.”

  “And the governor? Where is he?”

  “Not coming.”

  “Not…” Kestrel pressed a palm to her forehead. “The emperor issued a summons. To a state function. And Arin declines?” Her anger was folding onto itself in as many layers as her ball gown—anger at Arin, at the way he was committing political suicide.

  Anger at herself. At her own bare feet and how they were proof—pure, naked, cold proof—of her hope, her very need to see someone that she was supposed to forget.

  Arin had not come.

  “I get that disappointed look all the time,” Tensen said in a cheerful tone. “No one is ever excited to meet the minister of agriculture.”

  She finally focused on his face. His green eyes were small but clever, his wrinkled skin darker than hers. “You wrote me a letter.” Her voice sounded strained. “You said that we had much to discuss.”

  “Oh, yes.” Tensen waved a negligent hand. The lamplight traced the plain gold ring he wore. “We should talk about the hearthnut harvest. Later.” His eyes slid slowly to glance at the Valorian soldiers lining the hall, then met Kestrel’s gaze again and held it. “I could use your insight on a few matters concerning Herran. But I’m an old man, my lady, and very saddle sore. A little rest in the privacy of my rooms is in order, I think. Perhaps you could show me where they are?”

  Kestrel didn’t miss his message. She wasn’t blind to the way he had indicated that their conversation could be overheard, nor was she deaf to his coded invitation that they could speak more freely in his guest suite. But she struggled against the pain in her throat, and said only, “Your ride here was hard?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the snow. It’s falling already?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “The mountain pass will close.”

  “Yes,” Tensen said gently, and he saw too much. Kestrel could tell that he heard that horrible note in her voice, and that he recognized it as the sound of someone fighting tears. “As expected,” he added.

  But she hadn’t expected this: this stupid hope, this punishing one, for who would long to see someone who was already lost? What good would it have done?

  None.

  Apparently Arin knew this, too. He knew it better than she, or his hope would have been equal to hers, and would have driven him here.

  Kestrel drew herself up straight. “You can find your rooms by yourself, Minister Tensen. I have more important matters to attend to.”

  She strode from the hall. The veined marble floor was icy beneath her feet: a frozen lake with fractures she did not care to see.

  She walked, she did not care.

  She did not.

  * * *

  Jess adjusted Kestrel’s ball gown, stepped back, cocked her head, and peered. “You’re anxious,” Jess said, “aren’t you? Your face looks pinched.”

  “I didn’t sleep well last night.” This was true. Kestrel had asked Jess to come early from her house in the city, and spend the night before the ball in Kestrel’s palace rooms. Kestrel and Jess had shared a bed, like they sometimes did when they were little girls in Herran, and talked until the lamp had burned all its oil. “You snored,” Kestrel said.

&nb
sp; “I did not.”

  “You did. You snored so loudly that the people in my dreams complained.”

  Jess laughed, and Kestrel was glad for her silly little lie. Laughter softened Jess’s face, filled the hollows of her cheeks. It drew attention away from the dark rings beneath her brown eyes. Jess never looked well. Not anymore, not since she had been poisoned on the night of the Herrani rebellion.

  “I have something for you.” Jess opened her trunk and lifted out a velvet bundle. “An engagement present.” Jess unwrapped the bundle. “I made this for you.” The velvet held a necklace of flowers strung on a black ribbon, the petals large, blown open, fashioned from sanded shards of amber glass and thin curls of horn. The colors were muted, but the flowers’ size and spread made them almost feral.

  Jess tied the ribbon around Kestrel’s neck. The flowers clicked against one another, sliding low to rest against the dress’s bodice.

  “It’s beautiful,” Kestrel said.

  Jess adjusted the necklace. “I understand why you’re nervous.”

  The crackle of flowers went silent. Kestrel became aware that she was holding her breath.

  “I shouldn’t say this.” Jess’s eyes met Kestrel’s. They were hard, unblinking. “I hate that you’re marrying into the emperor’s family. I hate that you’re going to walk straight from this room to your engagement ball. With the prince. You should be my sister. You should be Ronan’s wife.”

  Kestrel hadn’t seen Ronan since the night of the Firstwinter Rebellion. She’d written letters, then burned them. She’d sent an invitation to the court. It was ignored. He was in the city now, Jess had said. He’d fallen in with a wild crowd. Then Jess had gone tight-lipped and wouldn’t say any more—and Kestrel, who had loved Ronan as much as she could, and missed him, didn’t dare ask.

  Slowly, Kestrel said to Jess, “I’ve told you before. The emperor made the offer of marriage to his son. I couldn’t refuse.”

  “Could you not? Everyone knows the story of how you brought the wrath of the imperial army to Herran. You could have asked the emperor for anything.”

  Kestrel was silent.

  “It’s because you do not want to refuse,” Jess said. “You never do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “It’s a political marriage. For the good of the empire.”

  “What makes you think that you are the best thing for it?”

  Kestrel had never seen such resentment in Jess’s eyes. Quietly Kestrel said, “Ronan wants nothing to do with me now anyway.”

  “True.” Jess seemed to regret her hard words, then to regret her regret. Her voice stayed stony. “I am glad that he won’t be here tonight. How could the emperor invite Herrani to the ball?”

  “Just one. One Herrani.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “They’re not slaves anymore, Jess. They’re independent members of the empire.”

  “So we reward murder with freedom? Those rebels killed Valorians. They killed our friends. I hate the emperor for his edict.”

  Dangerous words. “Jess—”

  “He doesn’t know. He didn’t see the slaves’ savagery. I did. You did. That so-called governor kept you as some kind of toy—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  Jess scowled at the floor. Her voice came low: “You never do.”

  * * *

  Kestrel stood next to Verex outside the closed ballroom doors, listening to the swell of the emperor’s voice. Kestrel couldn’t distinguish the words, but heard the sure rhythm. The emperor was a skilled public speaker.

  Verex’s head was lowered, hands stuffed in his pockets. He was dressed in formal military style: all black, with gold piping that echoed the glittering horizontal line drawn above Kestrel’s brows. His belted, jeweled dagger matched hers. The emperor had finally given Kestrel the dagger he’d promised, and it was indeed fine—set with diamonds and exquisitely sharp. It was too heavy. It dragged at her hip.

  She wished the emperor would stop talking. Her stomach dipped and rose with the sound of his voice. Her nails curled into her palms.

  Verex scuffed his boot.

  She ignored him. She touched a glass petal on her necklace. It felt frail.

  The emperor’s voice stopped. The doors flung open.

  It was like a hallucination: the crowd in a splash of colors, the heat, the applause, the fanfare.

  Then the crash of sound faded, because the emperor was speaking again, and then he must have stopped speaking, because Kestrel heard the breathless silence that came just before Verex kissed her.

  His lips were dry. Polite.

  She had known it was coming, it was all planned, and she had done her best to be as far away from herself as possible when it happened. But her mind couldn’t stay asleep forever. It told her to stay put, don’t shrivel away, this is not so bad, the kiss is a thing, an empty thing, a scrap of blank paper. Yet Kestrel was awake, and she knew the taste of her own lies.

  “I’m sorry,” Verex said quietly when he pulled away. And then they were dancing before everybody.

  The kiss had numbed her. Verex’s words didn’t register at first. When they did, they seemed like her own words, like she’d been saying them to her old self, the one who had given up Arin. I’m sorry, she told herself. Forgive me, she’d said. Kestrel had thought she’d known what her choices had cost her, but when the prince had kissed her she sharply understood that she was going to pay for this for the rest of her life.

  “Kestrel?”

  “Sorry,” Kestrel repeated as they spun across the ballroom floor. The prince’s feet had no natural talent, but he was grimly capable, the way someone might be if his dancing master came to lessons armed with a switch.

  “I’ve been unforgivable,” Verex said. “Is that why you look so miserable?”

  Kestrel studied the piping on his jacket.

  Verex said, “Maybe there’s one final reason you are determined to marry me.”

  The violinists’ bows sank down across the strings.

  “My father is holding something over you,” Verex said.

  Kestrel glanced up, then away again. Verex drew their clasped hands to his chest. The crowd murmured and sighed.

  He shrugged. “It’s how my father is. But what does he—?”

  “Verex, am I so bad a choice for a wife?”

  He smiled a little. The dance was ending. “Not so bad.”

  “Let’s agree, then, to make the best of things,” Kestrel said.

  Verex bowed, and before Kestrel could decide whether this was his yes or simply meant to mark the dance’s end, he passed her hand to a senator’s. Then there was another dance, and another senator, and she was whirled into the exchequer’s arms.

  After that, faces and titles no longer held much meaning.

  Finally, she stepped deliberately wrong so that someone trod on her toes. She soothed her partner’s horrified apologies, but begged for a rest and made certain she limped a little as she went to sit in the corner of gamers.

  Kestrel chose a gilt chair set apart from the others, but it wouldn’t be long before someone pulled a chair near, and she would have to talk and smile even though the muscles in her cheeks felt as if someone had pinched them.

  She needn’t have worried. All eyes were focused on the crown prince, who sat across a Borderlands table, facing a highly ranked lieutenant of the city guard.

  The game was careening toward a humiliating end for the prince. The lieutenant had already captured many of Verex’s key game pieces, lining up the green figures in a row. Verex’s general was isolated from his troops and flanked by the lieutenant’s. The marble pieces tapped out their paths, knocked each other down.

  Verex’s eyes lifted to meet hers across the room. He set a tentative finger on his green infantry.

  It was just a game. What did it matter if Verex made the wrong move, and lost?

  Yet Kestrel thought of Arin, who hadn’t answered the emperor’s summons, and wondered what he wo
uld lose because of it.

  She thought of the possibility of peace with Verex.

  She held the prince’s gaze and shook her head—the slightest of gestures, a mere tip of her chin.

  He lifted his hand from the infantry and settled it on the cavalry.

  Kestrel used two fingertips to brush invisible lint from her dress, flicking her hand forward, away from her body.

  Verex moved the cavalry two paces forward.

  So it went, the smugness draining from the lieutenant’s face as Verex’s army made significant advances and crucial kills. Verex looked to his father, who had appeared on the edges of the crowd. When the prince’s asking eyes turned again to Kestrel and she saw how hope made them luminous, she couldn’t look away. She offered her silent suggestions. He took them.

  The green general toppled the red one.

  The crowd roared for their prince. The emperor folded his arms and rocked on the balls of his feet, his expression amused, pinned to his son’s.

  But not disapproving.

  Kestrel heard Verex decline to play another game. Now that the spectacle was over, the crowd’s attention would soon turn to her. There was a Borderlands game at another nearby table between a senator’s daughter and Risha, the eastern princess who had been kidnapped as a small child and raised in the imperial palace as a pampered hostage. Kestrel had expected that Risha would be a good Borderlands player, but from everything Kestrel had seen, the princess possessed (or cultivated) a decided mediocrity at the game. There was no excitement to be had at that table. A bit farther over was a match between the Herrani minister—Tensen, she remembered his name—and a very minor Valorian baron who had probably condescended to play with Tensen only for the pleasure of beating him before a crowd. Many were watching, widening mirthful eyes when Tensen forgot how a gaming piece moved, or seemed to doze off between his turns. That farce might hold people’s interest, but not for long.