The Winner's Crime

by Marie Rutkoski

  And then they would come for her.

  Kestrel’s throat closed when she thought of faking joy at her engagement. Yet she would have to do it. She would have to dance all night long and into the gray hours of morning, until the last reveler had left the ballroom and her shoes were worn out and her heart was in shreds.

  Kestrel stood. The emperor wasn’t watching her, at least not for now. His eyes were on his son. She threaded through the crowd, telling each person who stopped her that she had promised a dance to someone else. The ballroom was thick with people. Faces clustered around her like children’s puppets on sticks.

  Somehow she dodged them, and slipped down a hallway where the air was cooler. No one lingered here. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. This area was used only in fine weather when the balconies lining the hallway were open to the palace gardens below. Each balcony was now curtained off from the hallway, and Kestrel knew that the glass shutters attached to each balustrade had been drawn and fastened for the winter. Despite every attempt to ward off the cold, it seeped beneath the velvet curtains. It lapped over Kestrel’s slippered feet.

  With a quick glance behind to make certain that no one was near and no one saw her, she dove through a curtain and pulled it shut behind her.

  The balcony was a box, its glass walls like black ice: sheer slices of the night outside. Light from the hallway lined the seam of the curtain and glowed at its hem, but Kestrel could barely see her own hands.

  She touched a glass pane. These windows would be open on the night of her wedding. The trees below would be in bloom, the air fragrant with cere blossoms.

  She would choke on it. Kestrel knew she would hate the scent of cere flowers all her life, as she ruled the empire, as she bore her husband’s children. As she aged and the ghosts of her choices haunted her.

  There was a sudden sound. The slide of wooden curtain rings on the rod. Light brightened behind Kestrel.

  Someone was coming through the velvet.

  He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel’s balcony—close, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against the frame. He held the sweep of it high, at the level of his gray eyes, which were silver in the shadows.

  He was here. He had come.

  Arin.

  8

  Kestrel had forgotten. She had thought that she remembered only too well the lines of his face. The restless quality to how he would stand still. The way he looked fully into her eyes as if each glance was an irrevocable choice.

  Her blood felt laced with black powder. How could she have forgotten what it was like to burn on a fuse before him? He looked at her, and she knew that she had remembered nothing at all.

  “I can’t be seen with you,” she said.

  Arin’s eyes flashed. He raked the curtain shut behind him. The closed-off balcony became deeply dark.

  “Better?” he said.

  Kestrel backed away until the heel of her shoe met the balustrade and her bare shoulder blades touched the glass. The air had changed. It was warm now. And scented, strangely, with brine.

  “The sea,” she managed to say. “You came by sea.”

  “It seemed wiser than riding my horse to death through the mountains.”

  “My horse.”

  “If you want Javelin, come home and claim him.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe you sailed here.”

  “Technically, the ship’s captain did, cursing me the entire time. Except when I got sick. Then he just laughed.”

  “I thought you weren’t coming.”

  “I changed my mind.” Arin came to lean against the balustrade beside her.

  It was too much. He was too close. “I’ll thank you to keep your distance.”

  “Ah, the empress speaks. Well, I must obey.” Yet he didn’t move except to turn his head toward her. Light from the curtain’s seam cut a thin line down his cheek in a bright scar. “I saw you. With the prince. He seems bitter medicine to swallow, even for the sweets of the empire.”

  “You know nothing of him.”

  “I know you helped him cheat. Yes, I watched you. I saw you play at Borderlands. Others might not have noticed, but I know you.” His voice grew rough. “Gods, how can you respect someone like that? You’ll make a fool of him.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  “I won’t.”

  Arin went quiet. “Maybe you won’t mean to.” He edged away, and that line of light no longer touched him. His form was pure shadow. But her sight had adjusted, and she saw him tip his head back against the window. “Kestrel…”

  An emotion clamped down on her heart. It squeezed her into a terrible silence. But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that wasn’t how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she’d heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer.

  Something was tugging inside her. It yanked at her soul. Tell him, that part of her said. He needs to know.

  Yet those words had a quality of horror to them. Her mind was sluggish to understand why, so caught it was in the temptation to tell Arin that her engagement had been the bargain for Herran’s freedom.

  “I don’t want to talk about your fiancé.” Arin pushed away from the balustrade and stood tall enough to cast a shadow over her if there had been any light. “I seek information.”

  “Gossip, Arin?” she said lightly, and toyed with her necklace in the dark until its fretful clicking made her let go.

  “I’m looking for a Herrani servant. He’s missing.”

  The memory of Thrynne welled up. Tell him. He needs to know. Those had been the tortured man’s words. “Who is he to you?” Kestrel asked.

  “A friend.”

  “You could ask the palace steward.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  She couldn’t believe it. The mere fact of Arin’s asking was so reckless. No matter that his trust didn’t extend quite so far as to admit the truth of the situation: that Thrynne had been a spy sent to gather information on the emperor, and must be assumed caught. It was nevertheless clear that Arin was the sort of person who would dash safety to pieces. No one with any sense of self-preservation would inquire after the whereabouts of his spy from the emperor’s future daughter-in-law, who had already betrayed Arin once.

  But self-preservation had never been Arin’s strong suit.

  What would he do with the truth of Kestrel’s engagement?

  Where is my honor in all this? he’d asked her once. She didn’t know what honor was to him. She thought that it wasn’t the same as her father’s: monumental, marble-cut. No, Arin’s honor was alive. She sensed the way it moved. She couldn’t see its face—maybe it had many faces—but she believed that Arin’s honor was the kind that would hold its breath and bite its lip until it bled.

  If she told Arin the truth, he’d wreck the peace she’d bought. It almost didn’t matter whether he loved her. Arin wouldn’t let someone imprison herself so that he could go free. He’d find a way to end her engagement … and she would let him.

  She’d felt it before, she felt it now: the pull to fall in with him, to fall into him, to lose her sense of self.

  There would be scandal, and then there’d be war.

  Kestrel must keep her secret. She was going to have to lie with her whole self. She could be cold. She could be distant. Even with him.

  As for Thrynne … she had a plan.

  “Very well,” Kestrel said. “Tell me your friend’s name. I’ll share what I know in honor of the protection you gave me after the Firstwinter Rebellion. A Valorian remembers her debts.”

  Arin stayed very still. “I hadn’t realized I had done anything that begged repayment. What I did, I did for you.”

  “Precisely. So ask. I will answer. We will be even.”

  “Even? If you insist on seeing things that
way, you and I will never clear our debts.”

  “Do you want your information or not?”

  “What I want…” He muttered the words. Then his voice steadied and came clear. “My friend’s name is Thrynne. He cleans. Floors, mostly.” Arin described the man’s features.

  Kestrel pretended to think. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t recall seeing someone like him.”

  “Maybe if you took more time to consider—”

  “Doubtful. There are hundreds of servants and slaves in the palace. How am I to know each one?”

  “So you give me nothing.”

  “When have I ever given you anything?”

  Softly, Arin said, “You gave me much, once.”

  “Well,” said Kestrel, “as cozy as this little chat has been, I’d like to get back to my party.” She stepped toward the curtain.

  His movement was swift. He blocked her path, hands coming down on either side of her to brace against the balustrade. He didn’t touch her, but was close enough now that she could see the dark shape of his mouth and the angry glimmer of his eyes. He said, “That’s not all I came for.”

  She could smell the sea on his skin, stronger now: salty and sharp.

  “Kestrel, this isn’t you.”

  She pressed back against the chill glass. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “This voice you’ve been using, that bright one … do you think I don’t recognize it? It’s the sound of you laying a trap. Of you hiding behind your own words. And I know that the way you’ve been talking is not you. Say what you want about me, about what happened between us, about the shape of the sun and the color of the grass and any other truths in this world you want to deny. Deny everything until the gods strike you down. But you can’t say that I don’t know you.” He was now close enough that the air between them was alive against Kestrel’s skin. “I … have thought about you.” His voice dropped. “I have thought about how I have never known you to be dishonest with me.”

  Kestrel’s laugh was robbed of breath. It was short, incredulous.

  “Let me rephrase that,” Arin said. “You may have tricked me. But you were true to yourself. Sometimes even to me. You have never been false.”

  “Are you forgetting that I sent my father’s army to crush yours?”

  “I knew you would. You knew that I knew. Where is the lie? I’ve never felt that there was a lie on your lips. Please, Kestrel. Please. Don’t lie.”

  She gripped the cold stone of the balustrade’s railing.

  He said, “Do you know anything about Thrynne?”

  “No. Now let me pass.”

  “I’m not done. Kestrel … do you really want to marry the prince?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to talk about him.”

  “Want and need aren’t the same.” His mouth hovered near hers. “Tell me. Is this engagement really your choice? Because I don’t believe it. Not unless I hear you say so.”

  The glass against her back was a blaze of cold. She shivered. He was so close. All she had to do was uncurl her fingers from the balustrade and lean forward into him. It felt inevitable, like an overfull cup ready to spill.

  The rasp of his unshaved cheek brushed hers. “Do you?” he said. “Do you want him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Prove it,” Arin murmured into her ear. The heat of him settled against her. His palm squeaked against the glass by her head.

  “Arin.” She could barely speak. “Let me pass.”

  His lips caught at the base of her neck, slid upward. “Prove that you want him,” he said into her hair. His kiss traveled across her cheek. It brushed her forehead, then rested right on the golden line that marked her engagement.

  “I do,” she said, but her voice sounded like she was drowning.

  His kiss was there, waiting near her lips. “Liar,” he breathed.

  Her hand came between them, and pushed. She was shaken, startled by the way she had shoved him. She felt suddenly, cruelly starved—and angry at herself for this hunger of her own making. “I said, let me go. Or will you hold me here against my will?”

  He recoiled. His boots scraped back. She couldn’t see his expression, only the way he snatched his arms to his sides and stood stiff. He covered his face as if it weren’t already hidden by the dark. He muttered something into his palms, then they fell away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He tore open the curtain, and was gone.

  The light hurt Kestrel’s eyes. She blinked, her lashes wet, her vision too bright, blurry.

  When her pulse had steadied and she could see and breathe and think again, she tentatively stepped into the hallway.

  It was empty. She could hear music now. She hated to hear it. Her whole future was in that airless ballroom. She wondered if this ache inside her would ever go away—and if she might feel even worse when it did.

  She had to return to the ball. Surely she’d already been missed. The emperor would be wondering where she was.

  Kestrel slowly walked down the hall toward the ballroom.

  She had almost reached it when someone came out of its open doors. Tensen took one look at her. His eyes widened, and he shook his head, striding toward her with an urgency that defied his age and made his cane seem purposeless.

  “You can’t go in there,” he said.

  “I must.”

  “No, you must find a mirror. A private one. Because Arin just stormed through the ballroom. His mouth was shiny. Maybe people will think it was from wine and not glittered oil, but they won’t if they see you, too.”

  Kestrel’s fingers flew to her forehead and the engagement mark Arin had kissed moments ago. She touched her hair, its loosened tendrils.

  How did she look?

  Like someone who had had an illicit liaison?

  “That’s right,” Tensen said grimly.

  “Come,” Kestrel said, turning to retrace her steps back down the hall, away from the ball.

  “With you?”

  “You and I need to talk.”

  9

  Kestrel led Tensen to a small, empty salon where lamps and a fire burned. Tensen shut the door behind them.

  “Block it with your cane,” Kestrel said, pointing at a tapestry hook that was about level with the doorknob. “Since you don’t need it anyway.”

  Tensen glanced ruefully at her before setting the curved end of his cane around the doorknob and latching the straight end into the hook. “That won’t hold. Not if someone really wants to get in.”

  She ignored him. She came close to the mirror above the fireplace’s mantel, which held a wide-bottomed vase of hothouse flowers.

  Maybe it was the roses, the way that they covered her neck in the mirror’s reflection, reaching up to her chin. Maybe it was the hurried escape down the hallway.

  Kestrel looked breathlessly in bloom. Color was high in her cheeks. Her lips, though Arin had not in fact touched them, were bitten red. The blacks of her eyes were wide pools. The necklace Jess had given her was broken, the cracked glass petals hanging limply from their ribbon, crushed from the pressure between her and Arin.

  Kestrel’s reflection stared back. She had the air of something that has been opened and cannot be shut again.

  She looked like pure scandal.

  Her hair wasn’t the worst of it. Yes, the upswept arrangement was coming loose, a lock slipping here and there, but her hair was too short for intricate braids, which meant that it often came undone. Kestrel was in the habit of appearing a little disheveled, and pinning her hair back in place herself.

  The real problem was the mark. The golden line on her brow had become a smear.

  “Do you have extra oil and glitter with you?” Tensen said.

  Kestrel gave his reflection in the mirror an exasperated glance. She wasn’t carrying a purse. Where did he think she’d keep such items? The cosmetics were on the dressing table in her suite.

  “I’ll find one of your ladies-in-waiting in the ballroom,” Tensen said. “Or do you have a t
rusted friend? Someone who can fetch what you need and bring it here?”

  Kestrel thought about how long that would take. She thought about how one of her maids reported to Verex. She thought about Jess, and what her friend’s reaction would be if the Herrani minister of agriculture approached her at the ball to request her assistance in making Kestrel look respectable again.

  “No,” Kestrel said. “Bring me a lamp.”

  Tensen’s expression was disapproving. It said that he didn’t see how a lamp could serve, and that time was being wasted. But he did what she asked.

  Kestrel blew out the lamp and set it on the mantel to cool. With her dagger, she cut fabric from the hem of her inner slip, grateful for the dress’s many layers. She took the roses from the heavy ceramic vase, set their dripping stems on the mantel, and tipped the vase’s water onto the silk rag. She used it to scrub her forehead clean. She remembered Arin’s kiss there, and scrubbed harder. She tossed the rag aside. She untied her necklace, found the brightest amber glass petals, and hammered them against the mantel’s surface with the vase’s bottom. She ground the petals into dust. Dipping one finger into the lamp’s oil, Kestrel hissed at the burn, yet didn’t wait for the pain to fade. She drew an oiled, horizontal line above her brows.

  Now for the glitter. She tapped her finger into the glass dust.

  “You’ll cut yourself,” said Tensen, but his disapproval had vanished.

  “I’ll be careful,” she said, patting the dust over the oiled line. She tucked loose tendrils back where they belonged and pinned them more securely in place. The roses returned to their vase, the vase resumed its place in front of the mirror, and Kestrel wiped the remaining glass dust off the mantel with her wet silk rag. She threw the rag and necklace into the fire. “Well?” she asked Tensen, turning to face him.

  “Excellent.”

  She shook her head. “Optimistic.” The mark shimmered, but was barely golden. “Are you always so optimistic?” she asked. “I think you must be, or you wouldn’t have written that letter to me, or hinted that we have information to share.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “You forget that I outrank you. I will inquire. You will answer. Minister Tensen, what were you before the Herran War, ten years ago?”