The Winner's Crime

by Marie Rutkoski

  But when he dropped his boots to the capital’s rocky wharf, he became nothing but careful.

  He didn’t wash the sea from him. He was too recognizable; the scar especially was a problem. His dirty hair hung just long enough to curtain his brow, but the scar cut clear from his left eye into his cheek. Arin kept his head down as he headed through the Narrows. He hoped he looked disreputable enough that no one would take him for the governor of an imperial territory.

  He prowled the city. He didn’t rest. The morning ripened into noon. Then it grew late.

  Finally, Arin glimpsed a Herrani man about his size dressed in the blue livery of the imperial palace. The basket strapped to the servant’s back weighed low on his shoulders—heavy, probably filled with foodstuffs for the imperial kitchens. Arin dogged him. He crossed skinny streets. His stride quickened, but he wouldn’t let himself do anything so noticeable as to run.

  It was at the edge of the canal, where the opened locks let the full spring waters gush loud, that Arin caught up with him. Arin hailed him, quietly. He called to him by the gods. He invoked their names in a way that made ignoring him a mortal sin. And then, for good measure, he spoke plainly. “Please,” he said. “Help me.”

  * * *

  In the palace kitchens, dressed in the servant’s clothes, Arin asked for help again. Yet again, it was a risk. He could be reported. The moment his presence became known in the palace, what he wanted would quickly become impossible: namely, the opportunity to speak with Kestrel alone.

  “The music room,” suggested a maid. “Her recital’s tomorrow. She’s there practicing more often than not.”

  “What do you want with her?” A footman’s mouth curled in contempt.

  Arin almost gave a violent answer. He was anxious, he wasn’t being smart, and for years now there’d been something hard and glittery—and stupid—in him that liked making enemies. He felt like making one right now. But he checked himself. Arin gave the footman a sweet smile. The kitchens became uncomfortably silent.

  The cook decided matters. “It’s none of our business.” To Arin she said, “You want to get from here to there without being noticed, do you? Well, then. Someone had better fetch Lady Maris’s maid.”

  The Herrani maid arrived soon, a cosmetics kit in hand. She unscrewed a small pot with thick, tinted cream. She mixed it darker. As Arin sat at the scored and pitted worktable, the maid dabbed the cream on his scar.

  * * *

  Kestrel closed the music room door. The piano waited. Before that day in the slave market—before Arin—this had been enough for her: that row of keys like a straight border between one world and the next.

  Kestrel’s fingers trickled out a few high notes, then stopped. She glanced at the screen. She hadn’t heard her father’s watch chime. Then again, it wasn’t the hour.

  She set the sheet music on its rack. She shuffled the pages. She studied the first few lines of the sonata the emperor had chosen, and made herself slowly read the notes she had already memorized.

  A breeze from an open window stroked Kestrel’s shoulder. The air was soft, velvety, lushly scented with flowering trees. She remembered playing for Arin. It had just been the one time, though it felt like many more.

  The breath of wind stirred the sheet music, then gusted the pages to the floor. Kestrel went to collect them. When she straightened, she glanced involuntarily at the door in a flash of unreasonable certainty that Arin was there.

  But of course he wasn’t. A needle of ice pierced her heart. What a foolish thing to have thought: him, here. Her breath caught at the pain of it.

  Kestrel made herself sit again at the piano. She pushed that icy needle in deeper. It grew frosted crystals. Kestrel imagined the ice spreading until it lacquered her in a clear, cold shell. Kestrel lifted her hands from her lap and played the emperor’s sonata.

  * * *

  The cook insisted that servants should accompany Arin. The maid’s cream had softened the appearance of his scar, but it would fool no one who looked closely. “Walk the halls with a few of us,” said the cook. A curious courtier could be distracted. The servants could flank Arin so that his features were obscured.

  He refused.

  “At least partway,” urged a Herrani.

  “No,” Arin said. “Think of what the emperor would do if he discovered that you were helping me walk through his palace unnoticed.”

  The Herrani gave Arin two keys and let him go alone.

  * * *

  When Arin mounted the steps up to the other world of the palace, the one with fresh air, he made sure to walk close alongside the walls, the left side of his face turned to them. A bucket of hot, soapy water swung from his hand. The steam curled damply over his wrist. He walked as quickly as he could.

  Arin remembered little-used hallways, and had the advice of the servants, who knew which areas of the palace attracted the least attention at this hour. He followed their instructions. His pulse stuttered when he stumbled upon a couple of courtiers emerging, disheveled and giggling, from an alcove cloaked by a tapestry. But they were glad to ignore him.

  The heavy keys in his pocket knocked hard against his thigh. He might not find Kestrel, or find her alone. It was astounding: the risk of what he was doing. Yet he picked up his pace. He dismissed that sinuous voice whispering inside him, calling him a fool.

  But the treaty. Kestrel had offered it to him outside his city’s gate. The treaty had saved him. Why had it taken Arin so long to wonder whether it had been she who had saved him?

  Fool, the voice said again.

  Arin reached the imperial wing. He took a key from his pocket and let himself in.

  * * *

  Somewhere in the midst of the sonata, Kestrel’s hands paused. She hadn’t been reading the sheet music, so when her memory failed her and she lost her place in the progression of phrases, she lost it completely. This was unlike her. The music throbbed away.

  Her old self would have been annoyed, but the frozen needle in her heart gave the orders now, and it said that she should simply make a note of the mistake and move on. She found a pen and did just that, underscoring the forgotten passage. She set the pen on the rack that held the sheet music and prepared to play again.

  Then it came: her father’s silvery chime.

  The corner of her mouth lifted.

  All at once, she knew what she wanted to play for him. The general wouldn’t recognize one half of a duet, and if he did, he couldn’t guess whose voice was meant to sing with what she played. Kestrel thought again about how much she wanted to tell her father, and how little she could say.

  But she could say this music. He would hear it, and even if he didn’t understand what he heard, she would feel what it would be like to tell him.

  * * *

  Arin heard the music long before he reached the room. It came down the hall in an overwhelming tide. It called him like a question his throat ached to answer. He could feel the parts where he was meant to sing. The song tried to batter its way outside him.

  He thought he might have dropped the bucket. He didn’t know where it was. He was standing before the music room door. It seemed to have materialized in front of him. He set a palm to it. The door felt alive. The music pulsed in its grain.

  Arin used the second key to open the door. The room was empty save for her. Kestrel saw him, and the music stopped.

  43

  For a heartbeat, Kestrel thought that she’d imagined him. Then she realized that he was real. It shattered her. The icy shell around her shivered into a thousand stinging pieces.

  He shut the door. He kept his palm flat against it, his fingers fanned wide. He looked at her.

  Later, Kestrel understood what the shock had cost her. She’d been too slow. It wasn’t until he met her eyes that she dropped deep into the knowledge that they were both in danger.

  It took every ounce of will not to glance at the screen that hid her father. Her father, who would hear anything that they said, who could see Kes
trel now. She saw herself as he must see her. She’d risen to her feet. She must be deathly pale. One hand gripped the music rack. She was staring toward the door, which was just out of her father’s line of sight.

  Kestrel raised her hand. Stop, she begged Arin. Stay. Don’t move.

  But the gesture set something in him on fire. His palm slid from the door. And she saw the determination in his face, the wild suspicion, the way it was already shaped into a question. With sudden horror, she realized what he was going to ask.

  He strode toward her.

  “No,” she told him. “Get out.”

  It was too late. He was already at the piano. Her father could see.

  “You will not shut me out,” Arin said.

  Kestrel sank back down onto the piano bench. Her stomach lurched: this was a disaster. She had imagined, again and again, Arin looking at her in this way, saying what he’d just said. Suspecting what he must suspect. She had even—tentatively, feeling like a trespasser—prayed to his gods for the chance to see him again. But not like this. Not with her father watching.

  Her options dwindled.

  She shuffled her sheet music, then stopped when she saw that her hands were unsteady. “Don’t be so dramatic, Arin. I’m busy. Go away, won’t you? You’ve interrupted my practice.” She reached for her pen. We’re being observed, she planned to scrawl on the sheet music. I’ll explain everything later.

  Arin grabbed the pen from her hand and threw it across the room. It clattered on the stone floor. “Stop it. Stop pretending that I don’t matter.”

  She stared at the pen. She couldn’t fetch it now. Her father was no fool; he might guess what she wanted to do with it. Even her attempt a moment ago had been a risk.

  And then Arin asked his question. “What did you do for that treaty?” he demanded.

  She wanted to drop her face into her hands. She wanted to laugh—or weep, she wasn’t sure. Something was churning inside her that felt frighteningly like panic. She would have moved to leave if she didn’t think that Arin might physically stop her—and that, if nothing else, would bring her father into the room.

  She tried to speak coolly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told Arin. “I’m sure I haven’t done anything for any treaty. I’ve had a wedding to plan. I’ll have plenty of time for politics when I’m empress.”

  “You know exactly which treaty I mean. You placed it in my hand. And I swear that it has the traces of you all over it.”

  “Arin—”

  “It gave me my country’s freedom. It saved my life.” His face was pale, his gray eyes urgent. He towered over her as she remained sitting. The piano bench felt like a raft at sea. “What did you do to make the emperor sign it?” Arin’s anxious voice rang loud. It didn’t matter that he had spoken in Herrani. Her father knew Herrani. Kestrel knitted her hands. She thought of how her father had told the deserter to kill himself rather than live with his shame. Would he do that to her if she answered Arin truthfully? What would the general do to him?

  “Arin, please. I did nothing for that treaty. I don’t have time for your delusions.”

  “But you have time to meet with Tensen. Don’t you?”

  Innocently, she said, “Who?”

  His mouth went hard.

  Don’t say it, Kestrel told him. Please, please. She didn’t know if Tensen had somehow told Arin, or if Arin had guessed, but if he said the word Moth out loud … she remembered her father brushing the moth from Tensen’s painting to the floor. The general’s eyes had questioned the sight of a masker moth—infamous eater of fabrics, denizen of wardrobes—in such an odd place. It wouldn’t take much for her father to guess what that moth was doing there, and why.

  Especially if Arin asked her if she was Tensen’s Moth.

  Don’t. She wanted to shake him. Don’t.

  Frustration rippled across Arin’s face. She saw him war with himself.

  Yes, Kestrel told him. That’s right. You can’t tell the emperor’s future daughter the code name of your spy, or admit the part Tensen plays for you at court. No, don’t say it. What if you’re wrong? You’d risk people’s lives. Arin, you can’t.

  With forced calm, Arin said, “If I’ve been deluded, it’s because you have been pretending. You’re pretending even now. You are not so cold. You tried to help the plainspeople. When we were together in the city tavern—”

  Kestrel felt a sinking sickness.

  “—I blamed you for the exodus. But poisoning the horses was better than setting fire to the plains. Isn’t that why you chose it? Your father—”

  “I love my father.”

  Arin drew slightly back. “I know.”

  “If I’d given him anything less than the best military advice I could, I would have put him in danger.” She only now realized this, and was appalled anew at herself. “The east burned the plains we took.”

  “Yes.” It seemed like Arin would say more, but he didn’t.

  “If my father had been there then … many Valorians died in the fire.” She thought of Ronan. Her throat closed. She couldn’t say his name. “If I did what you think I did, those deaths would be my fault.”

  “They deserved it,” he said flatly. “All those soldiers cared about was feeding the empire’s appetite. The empire eats everything. Everyone in Herran is weak. We’ve been taxed too much. There’s been too little food. Now people are so weak they don’t even want to eat what’s left.”

  Kestrel glanced up. “That doesn’t sound like starvation.”

  “You know nothing about starvation.”

  That silenced her.

  Arin sighed. He rubbed hard at his brow, pushing along the line of the scar, which was poorly disguised by a cosmetic. “Everyone’s thin, tired. Hollow-eyed. It’s gotten worse. They sleep most of the day, Sarsine said. Even she does. If you could see her … she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking.”

  Kestrel’s mind snagged on his last word. Shaking. It made her think—inexplicably—about how she had dyed her villa’s fountain pink when she was a little girl. She remembered telling the water engineer about it, not more than two months ago. She saw again the red dye spreading through the water and fading to pink. An experiment. Kestrel—had she been ten years old then?—had overheard the water engineer talking about a strange word, dilution, with her father at dinner. He thought well of the engineer, who had served with him in the war and designed Herran’s aqueducts. The girl Kestrel decided she should understand how dilution worked.

  But dilution had nothing to do with shaking. The grownup Kestrel frowned, and as she did, she remembered that shaking had been the imperial physician’s word to describe the sign that someone had taken his medication for too long … long enough for it to become deadly.

  Understanding seeped into her. It spread, red drops in still water, and she forgot that her father was listening and watching and judging behind the screen. She forgot even that Arin’s shoulders were hunched in worry and doubt. She saw only the meaning of those six imagined Bite and Sting tiles she had mixed over and over in her mind: the emperor, the water engineer, the physician, a favor, Herran, and Valoria.

  She knew how they all played out. The pattern stared her in the face.

  The emperor had decided the Herrani were more trouble than they were worth. He decided to have them slowly poisoned through the water supply. A neat solution to a troublesome, rebellious people. He had eked as much out of them as he could. Once they were dead he’d claim the land again. He’d show the empire Herran’s ultimate reward for rebellion.

  It was more important than ever that she speak with Arin frankly … and that she not do so here. She looked at the door. She wasn’t entirely sure her father wouldn’t walk through it—maybe even with the palace guard.

  But how could she get Arin to leave? How could she follow him, and not have it be blatantly obvious to her father why? He’d heard the rumors. He had seen her fight a duel on Arin’s behalf in Herran. If all that wasn’t enough, he mus
t have surely heard the intimacy in Arin’s voice. You are not so cold. When we were together in the city tavern …

  Arin dropped his elbows to the piano’s frame and leaned to press his face into his palms. “I shouldn’t have left Sarsine. I shouldn’t have come.”

  Kestrel wanted to touch him. He looked so miserable. Could her father see the longing in her face? It felt like a burning lamp. If she could, she would have touched three fingers to the back of Arin’s hand: the Herrani gesture of thanks and regret. I’m sorry, she’d say. Thank you, she’d say, because somehow he still believed in her and had guessed what she’d tried so hard to hide. I love you, she’d say. She almost heard the words. She almost saw her hand reach out. She craved it.

  Slowly, Kestrel said, “You wanted to talk about the treaty.”

  He lifted his head. His face reflected in the piano lid’s varnish.

  The decision fell on Kestrel like a white sheet. She would lie one last time, for her father. She would be composed. Convincing. Later she would set things right with Arin, and tell him everything.

  She could do this. She must.

  “You think that I somehow arranged it. Isn’t that what you implied? That I swayed the emperor.” Kestrel sank one finger down on a high key, but slowly, so that it made no sound. “Does the emperor seem easily influenced?”

  “No.”

  “Yet I managed it?”

  “Yes.”

  She played a merry trill.

  “Please don’t do that.”

  She stopped. “Arin, why would I persuade the emperor to offer that treaty? We do agree that it was I who told the empire of your rebellion, don’t we? It’s common knowledge. I sent war to your doorstep.”

  “Yes.”

  She said, “We were friends in Herran, weren’t we, for a time?”

  Arin’s reply was hoarse. “Yes.”

  “Was what I did the act of a friend?”

  “No,” he whispered.

  “Yet I did that, and then supposedly arranged this salvific treaty. It doesn’t make much sense, Arin.”

  “It makes sense,” he said, “if you changed your mind.”