The Winner's Crime

by Marie Rutkoski

  Slaves had never liked that question. She’d seen teeth clenched at its asking. If an emotion could have a sound, Kestrel thought that the one produced by that question might sound like the glass petals had, ground beneath the heavy vase.

  But Tensen only smiled. “I was an actor.”

  “I suppose that’s good experience for a spymaster.”

  Tensen wasn’t at all put out by having that title pinned on him. He seemed positively delighted by this conversation. “I hope I’m not so obvious to everyone.”

  “‘Hope’ is the operative word here, since your governor gave all signs that he wouldn’t be here tonight, and if he sent someone to the capital in his stead it must have been a person of political value to him, someone he trusts, someone intelligent and observant. You’ve taken some pains to appear weaker than you are, but you’re no old man ready to doze off.”

  “Well, I am old. That much is true.”

  Kestrel made an impatient noise. “Are you even really the minister of agriculture?”

  “I like to think that I’m able to play many roles.”

  “And you are very optimistic indeed if you believe that the emperor won’t notice, especially when he knows full well that Herran has spies in the palace.”

  Tensen lost his smile. “What do you know, my lady?”

  “That this conversation will end now unless you make me a promise.”

  He raised his brows.

  “Promise that Arin will never learn that you and I spoke,” she said. “I can offer information. You can give it to your governor. But it can’t be linked to me.”

  Tensen considered her. He passed a gnarled hand over the carved back of a chair and pursed his lips as if there was something wanting in the chair’s design. “I know that your presence in Arin’s house after the Firstwinter Rebellion was … complicated.”

  “I didn’t want to be there.”

  “Maybe not at first.”

  Slowly, Kestrel said, “I never could have stayed.”

  “My lady, it’s not for me to know what you wanted or what you could or could not do. But your condition surprises me. If you’re sympathetic enough toward my governor—or his cause—to share something with me, why can’t Arin know? I swore by the god of loyalty to serve him. You would make me break my oath.”

  “Do you know how I escaped from your city’s harbor?”

  “No.”

  “Arin let me go,” she said, “even though letting me go was the same thing as inviting the Valorian army to break down his city’s walls. So promise me, because it is in your interest that Arin can’t know. You can’t trust that he’ll always choose the safety of his country—or even of himself.”

  Tensen was silent.

  “Do you see?” Kestrel pressed. “Do you see that the very reason you stopped me from entering the ballroom is why you can’t tell Arin that your information comes from me? Let’s not pretend that you don’t know how I came to look like I did, and why I can’t look that way when I return to the ballroom.” Kestrel’s gaze dropped to her hands. She wished she had something to do with them. She imagined that she held one of those roses on the mantel. She could almost feel the bloom’s texture, its curled velvet as sinkingly soft as the balcony’s curtain.

  “Arin and I are impossible,” she said quietly. “Dangerous. It’s best that we keep our distance from each other.”

  “Yes,” said Tensen. “I see.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Would you trust me to keep that promise?”

  “I trust my ability to ruin you if you don’t.”

  He laughed. It wasn’t quite a disbelieving laugh, only the kind that the aged sometimes have for the young. “Then speak, my lady. You have my word.”

  Kestrel told him about Thrynne and what the tortured man had said.

  The minister pressed a palm to his mouth, thumb rumpling the wrinkles near one eye. As he heard more, his hand shifted into a fist, still covering his mouth. He had the look of someone trying not to be sick.

  His hand fell away. “You think that Thrynne had something important to tell Arin. What did Thrynne overhear during the emperor’s meeting with the Senate leader?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You could find out.”

  But Kestrel was already walking toward the door. “No.”

  Tensen spread his hands. “Where’s the harm?”

  She shook her head at the obvious absurdity of such a question.

  “Are you afraid of the risk of finding out more?” said Tensen. “I hear that you love a gamble.”

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “Yet you’ve played it well so far. You’re playing it now.”

  Kestrel set her hand on the cane blocking the door. “This kind of conversation won’t happen again. I am not one of your people. I have my own country and code … and no reason to become your spy.”

  “Then why tell me anything at all?”

  Kestrel shrugged. “Valorians see little point in the sacred, but we honor the last request of the dying. I’ve told you what I know for Thrynne’s sake.”

  “Only for him?”

  Kestrel handed Tensen his cane. “Good night, Minister. Enjoy the remainder of the ball.”

  * * *

  Verex found Kestrel in a corner of the ballroom pouring a glass of iced lemon water with floating sprigs of mint. “Where have you been? And why are you serving yourself? Here.” He took the cut-crystal dipper from her and poured.

  But Kestrel wasn’t really watching him. Her mind was a curtained balcony. It was filled with the memory of warm movement. Of almost coming undone. Coming close, pushing away, letting go …

  Verex set the cold cup in her hand. The lemon-mint water tasted alien: piercingly sweet and clear.

  He took his time pouring a cup for himself. His movements were tense. He seemed constantly on the point of saying something.

  “Thank you,” he finally murmured.

  “For what?” Kestrel’s heart was made of treason. Didn’t Verex sense that? Couldn’t he tell? Why would he ever thank her?

  “For the Borderlands game. You helped me win.”

  She’d forgotten about that. “Oh. It was nothing.”

  “I’m sure to you it was,” he said bitterly. His eyes roamed the ballroom, then settled on the emperor. Verex drank. “I couldn’t find you earlier. I looked everywhere.”

  Kestrel’s cup was cold and sweating in her hand. She ran a quick thumb through the condensation. She was aware that some courtiers lingered nearby, as close as politeness would allow. They were drawing closer.

  “Did a senator corner you?” Verex asked. “They’ll do that. They’ll try to worm their way into your good graces for a chance to influence my father. Well, Kestrel? Where were you? And what…” He frowned, peering closely at her. “Your mark has faded.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I have a headache.” As the courtiers watched, she rubbed at her forehead, smudging the mark. She hoped the gesture seemed casual, absentminded, as if she had been doing it all evening.

  * * *

  Arin rambled around the palace suite he was to share with Tensen. It was not small or large, neither luxurious nor spare. Arin had thought that the palace steward would assign the Herrani contingent an insulting set of rooms, but this suite seemed chosen to send the message that the Herrani didn’t matter one way or the other.

  He shrugged off his shirt. It was early in the evening, not yet midnight. The ball was still whirling on its giddy axis. Tensen hadn’t returned.

  Arin could smell Kestrel’s perfume on him. It exhaled faintly from his shirt, mingled with the scent of the sea. Folding the fabric—or not really folding it, more smoothing it out over the back of a dressing room chair, as if the cloth were a living thing that needed soothing—Arin found a hole in the seam where the shoulder met the body. He worked a finger through the rip and swore.

  Well, it was an old shirt. He had worn his finest clothes. He’d torn them out of the tr
unk upon his arrival in the palace and flung them on, fumbling with the cuffs, knowing he was late for the ball. Maybe the hole had happened then, in his haste.

  It would have happened sooner or later. All of his best garments were ten years old. They had been his father’s.

  They fit Arin badly. Even after alterations, it seemed that there wasn’t enough room anywhere. His father had been an elegant man, his proportions artistic. If he stood here now next to Arin, a stranger would never guess they were related.

  Arin pressed a hand to his face. He felt the bones that made him look so different. There was the prickle of a beard.

  How ridiculous he must have looked next to those polished courtiers, with his ill-fitting clothes and unshaven face.

  How rough, how thuggish.

  How wrong.

  Arin flicked open a straight razor, filled the washbasin, and lathered soap. He tried to shave without looking too closely at his face in the washbasin mirror.

  A nick pinkened the lather with blood.

  He kept at it, more attentive this time, until he had finished, wiped off the lather, and poured water over his bowed head. He looked up again, dripping. His face was clear.

  Sometimes Arin could see the boy he had been before the war. When he did, he usually felt a tenderness for that child as if he were wholly other than Arin, not part of himself at all. That boy didn’t blame Arin, exactly, for existing when he did not, but when Arin caught a glimpse of the child, usually lingering about the eyes, Arin always looked away. He would feel a small sharpness, like the nick of the razor.

  Arin’s face was wet, his hair black with water. He shivered, suddenly aware of the winter. He searched for something to wear, and pulled on a nightshirt and robe.

  Arin felt again his nervousness as he’d stood outside the balcony curtain. The curtain had swung after Kestrel had closed it behind her, and he’d gingerly touched its sway. He remembered that hunted expression she had thrown over her shoulder before disappearing behind the velvet.

  And then there, in the dark, with her … it made Arin’s throat tighten as if he were thirsty. Prove it, he’d told her, words thick with desire, full of a traitorous kind of confidence, one that came and then abandoned him and then returned and left in such rapid tides that he couldn’t keep his footing. Prove that you want him. Kestrel had pushed him away.

  He could have sworn that he had sensed in her the same wish that was in him. It had been on her skin like a scent. Hadn’t it? But then Arin remembered how she’d escaped his house in Herran. He saw her again on the harbor: her hand on a weapon, that flash in her eyes. It had wrecked him. He had done this, he had made this, had lied to her, tricked her, killed her people, killed whatever it was that had made Kestrel open up to him on Firstwinter night … before she knew his treachery.

  Of course she had chosen someone else.

  There was a knock at the dressing room door.

  “Arin?” Tensen called. “Can I come in?”

  No, Arin wanted to say, and had he still been in front of the mirror and seen his face he would have said it, because his reflection would have shown something vulnerable and uncertain, and he would have despised it. He wouldn’t have let anyone see him then.

  Tensen knocked again.

  Arin’s wet hair was cold. A chilly rivulet crept down his neck. Arin dried himself off, rubbing a towel at his short hair as he kept his back to the mirror. He went to open the door.

  Tensen scrutinized Arin, which made the younger man’s jaw go tight. But Tensen gave him an easy smile, pulled up the dressing room chair, and sat gustily down. “That,” he said, “was exhausting. And profitable.”

  “What have you learned?” Arin asked.

  Tensen told him about Thrynne.

  “Gods,” Arin said.

  “No, Arin. I won’t have that look on your face. Thrynne knew what he risked when he came to the capital. He did it for Herran.”

  “I asked him to.”

  “We all make our choices. What would you choose: Herran’s sake, or yours?”

  Arin’s answer was quick. “Herran’s.”

  Tensen said nothing for a moment, only gazed up at him with the pensiveness of someone considering a question not so easily answered. Arin didn’t like that expression, he bristled at it, but before he could speak, Tensen said, “What would you have me choose?”

  “I can’t tell you what to choose for yourself.”

  “No, what would you have me choose for you? Say that you were in Thrynne’s position—imprisoned, worse—and my intervention could help you but hurt our country. What should I do?”

  “Leave me there.”

  “Yes,” Tensen said slowly. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  Arin threaded fingers through his damp hair and tugged until his scalp hurt. “Are you sure of this news?”

  “My source is good.”

  “Who?”

  Tensen waved a hand. “No one important.”

  “But who?”

  “I promised not to tell. Don’t make an old man break his promises.”

  Arin frowned, but said only, “This isn’t the year of money. And what did Thrynne overhear the emperor and Senate leader say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll find out.”

  “Caution, Arin. I myself might have a way.”

  “Oh?”

  Tensen smiled. “A new recruit.” He refused to say anything more. He found a comfortable position in his chair and changed the subject in a way that spun Arin’s head. “Well, I think they make a charming couple.”

  “What?”

  “The prince and Lady Kestrel.”

  Arin had known whom Tensen had meant.

  “Their kiss was sweet,” said the spymaster. “One would assume their marriage was just a political alliance—I certainly did, until I saw them kiss.”

  Arin stared.

  “You must have missed it,” Tensen said. “It was at the beginning of the ball. But of course you were late.”

  “Yes,” Arin said finally. “I was.”

  10

  Kestrel crept into bed at dawn, footsore from dancing. She hung her unbuckled dagger on its hook on the bedpost. She shivered, more from fatigue than cold, as she got beneath the blankets next to Jess. The other girl lay sleeping, curled on her side.

  “Jess,” Kestrel whispered. “I broke your necklace.”

  Jess gropingly stretched out her hand and caught Kestrel’s. “I’ll make you another one,” she murmured. Eyes still shut, she frowned. “I saw him at the ball.”

  “Who?” But Kestrel knew who, and Jess slipped back into sleep.

  * * *

  An elite group of courtiers and visiting dignitaries were invited to join Kestrel for hot chocolate in the Winter Garden the morning following the ball. White and gray furs muffled the ladies, while the men favored sable, except for the occasional rakish youth who sported the rusty striped fur of an eastern tiger. Braziers burned throughout the garden’s open patio, which was bounded at the southern end by an evergreen hedge maze.

  Kestrel had arrived late, and alone. Despite the meager rest, she’d woken up a few hours after dawn because her body knew that she needed to. Jess still slept. Kestrel dawdled in her preparations, changing her dress twice, hoping that Jess might stir. But she didn’t, and Kestrel was reluctant to wake her. Finally, she left the suite.

  Although the footmen in the Winter Garden should have announced Kestrel’s presence upon her arrival, she bribed them not to. She pulled her white furs more closely about her face and walked alone through a pathway of trees with sprays of pink and red berries. They were poisonous—yet beautiful, sprinkled like bright musical notation against the black bars of branches. Through the trees, Kestrel watched the party and listened.

  Many complained about their dancing blisters. “I’ll plunge my bare feet right into the snow, to numb them!” cried a colonial lady from the southern isles.

  “Oh no,” smiled a naughty youn
g man. “Let me warm them instead.”

  The entire scene looked pretty and fun … and fake. Who knew if that flirty young man even liked the lady—or if he liked ladies at all. Kestrel wasn’t the only person at court who planned to marry someone she didn’t want.

  Kestrel could see the emperor seated in the patio’s center next to the largest brazier, surrounded by senators. At the far end of the patio, near the hedge maze, Verex hunched over a Borderlands table. His back was to Kestrel. The eastern princess sat across from him, her expression gentle as she executed a merciless move.

  The Herrani hadn’t been invited to this exclusive event. Kestrel needn’t worry about meeting Arin’s gaze … or not meeting his gaze.

  Then again, he might come anyway. It would be like him to turn up uninvited.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Kestrel found that she had come close to a tree. Her hands were on its bark. It was silver; smooth and papery in places, rough in others. She had been running fingers over the bark’s striations and knots the way she’d seen blind people come to understand an object. When she thought of this, she realized that she was trying to understand whether she wanted to see Arin here in the Winter Garden or not. And that was a fool’s question. It was pure, punishing foolishness, the mere consideration of either possibility, when she had already decided that neither should matter.

  So it did not matter that her short nails had found a split in the bark. It did not matter that she was nervous as she peeled away a strip of bark in one long curl. Or that she was unhappy, unrolling the strip like a scroll with a blank message she couldn’t read.

  Then she looked at the bark and thought of Thrynne’s stripped skin. She dropped the bark. It fluttered to the ground. Kestrel lifted her eyes and saw the emperor again.

  She emerged from the poison trees. Her footfalls were quiet on the path. The first group of courtiers, clustered around a brazier, didn’t notice her arrival.

  Lady Maris, the Senate leader’s daughter, was murmuring something that unleashed flurries of breathless giggling from her friends.

  “—they all looked like that, I’d free them, too,” Maris was saying. “Or make him my slave.”