The Winner's Crime (20 page)

meet for frosted kisses in the Winter Garden’s hedge maze.

Some courtiers swore they would crawl into bed early with

CRIME

hot bricks at their feet.

’S

Kestrel had plans of her own. That night, she wiped

her forehead clean of its engagement mark and tied a scarf

over her hair. She pulled on the rough, blue-and-white work

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dress and searched for a pair of comfortable shoes.

When she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror she

hesitated. Her features looked somehow smaller. She was

too pale.

You disobeyed me,
she heard the emperor say.

“No” doesn’t exist anymore, only “yes,”
said her father and

the captain of the guard in one voice.

But:

You are better than this,
Arin said, and then she heard

her own voice, calling out the highest bid to buy him. She

heard the calm, cultured tones she had used to persuade

the emperor to poison the eastern horses. Guilt swelled

inside her.

Kestrel left her suite. She kept her head down and her

pace brisk.

No one saw Lady Kestrel. Aristocrats in the halls didn’t

even glance at her. Servants did, but saw someone familiar

yet unrecognizable, which wasn’t strange in a palace staff ed

with hundreds of servants and slaves.

She was only a maid. If her step was a little too proud,

it went unnoticed. If she occasionally looked lost in the

servants’ quarters, it was shrugged off as the problem of a

new girl.

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The maid tightened her scarf. She found her way out

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one of the back kitchen yards. She stepped past palace

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guards, who ignored her. Though women not in the mili-

tary weren’t supposed to walk alone, few people cared if a

maid broke the rules. She was beneath notice.

Kestrel walked into the frozen city.

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“At last,” Tensen said. “A night with nothing to do.” He

turned an appraising eye toward Arin, who lay on a divan

near the sitting room fi re. “You look better. Almost fi t for

society.”

“I doubt that.”

“Well, you’re no longer feverish, are you? And the swell-

ing in your face has gone down. You don’t look quite so

puff y. One more night of rest, Arin, and then it’s back into

the fray. You can’t avoid the court forever. Besides, the re-

actions could be telling.”

“Yes, stifl ed gasps and open disgust will be very infor-

mative.”

“You’ll cause a stir. Stirs are good. They churn up all

kinds of gossip and conjecture . . . and the occasional truth.”

“I’m surprised you need
me
. I thought you had the per-

fect access to information. Where’s your Moth, Tensen?”

The minister said nothing.

Arin stood and went to the fi re. He was weak from the

fever, his movements disjointed. The heart of the fi re was

as red as the ruby set in the hilt of the dagger Arin kept in

his boot. “Still no word about who arranged for the am-

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bush?”

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Tensen shrugged. “The emperor isn’t happy. I can

think of a good reason why. You’re alive, and your assailant

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isn’t.”

’S

“There’s no proof that the emperor’s behind it.”

“The palace guard’s insignia on that dead man isn’t

good enough proof for you?”

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“If it was the emperor, why does he do nothing? Say

nothing?”

“I think,” Tensen said, “that he wouldn’t want to ac-

knowledge a failure.” His green eyes narrowed. “What makes

you believe that the emperor
wasn’t
behind it? Do you have

other enemies I don’t know about?”

“No. It was him.”

“So you’re just being diffi

cult.”

“One of my enduring qualities.”

Tensen rose from his chair. “I’m going to visit the art

gallery.”

“You go there a lot.”

“I played an art connoisseur once, in the Herrani the-

ater festival fi fteen years ago. Old habits die hard.”

“Then you must enjoy looking at all of the emperor’s

pretty things.”

Tensen paused with his hand on the doorknob. He

glanced back at Arin. “You might not believe me, but cer-

tain people will respect you more for how you look now.

The emperor is going to regret making his mark on you. Be

ready for tomorrow, Arin. It’s time you left this suite. You’re

well enough, and there’s no excuse to avoid the world.”

7

Arin mulled over Tensen’s words long after the minister

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left. He thought about his fevered dreams, which he

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couldn’t quite remember, though they had fi lled him with

a nameless urgency. A restlessness.

In Arin’s boot there was a sheath, in his sheath was

Kestrel’s dagger, and in the dagger’s groove was his dried

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blood.

In the capital city was a tavern, in the tavern was a

bookkeeper, and in the bookkeeper’s hands was a book of

bets.

Arin pulled on his winter coat, made sure he had every-

thing he needed, and set out for the city.

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17

THE COLD WAS EXHILARATING. IT PINCHED

Kestrel’s cheeks and chased her down sloping streets. She

wanted to laugh. The palace was at her back, high on its

hill, and she was here, winding through the city’s wealthy

quarter with its haughty town

houses and blazing oil

lamps. The cobblestone streets were marbled sheets of ice.

Carriages moved slowly, but Kestrel didn’t. She skidded

through this quarter. She wanted no part of it.

She wanted the tight, dirty streets of the Narrows, the

fi shy smell of the wharf. And she would have it.

I wanted to feel free,
Arin had told her once in Herran.

She breathed in the cold, and it felt free, so she felt free,

and it felt alive, so she felt alive.

Kestrel wondered what would happen if she never went

back to the palace.

She hugged her arms to her chest. She had entered a

darker quarter of the city. Streetlamps were few. Soon there

were none. Kestrel took any street that went down, for that

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was the way to the sea. The streets became a network of

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alleys: the Narrows.

She sidestepped a cat that streaked into the shadows.

The cold was loud here. It rang off the jam- packed build-

ings. It shattered with noise tumbling from the fl ung- open

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door of a tavern. Kestrel saw its sign, which showed a bro-

ken arm, and watched as a man with the looks of a Valo-

rian aristocrat stumbled outside the tavern and was sick in

the street. He lifted his head, wiped his mouth, and blear-

ily stared at Kestrel without really seeing her.

Then he squinted. His gaze was fuzzy, but gaining

focus. “Do I know you?” he said.

Kestrel hurried away.

“You don’t look so good,” the bookkeeper said. She had

her hands stuff ed in her trouser pockets and her boots up

on the table. She studied Arin over the steel- toed tops of

them.

It was early for the Broken Arm to be this lively. But a

ship had come in, and its sailors were already drunk. In a

corner, Valorian soldiers argued over a game of Bite and

Sting.

The bookkeeper, however, was calm— tipped back se-

renely in her chair, surveying the scene, smoking, waiting.

People came to her.

“Want to place a bet?” she asked Arin. About his age or

a bit older, the bookkeeper was only part Valorian. Her

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loose hair was a color that turned up sometimes in Valorians,

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who called it “warrior red,” but her fl at black eyes and light

brown skin hinted at a northern heritage.

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Arin smiled. The smile tugged painfully at his stitches.

’S

“What I want,” he said, “is a word.”

“Just that? You strike me as the type to want more than

what’s good for him. That mark on your face is fresh.”

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“I want to see the bets.”

She exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I was right. You
are
a mad

one. No one sees the bets . . . unless they ask very nicely.”

“I can be nice.”

She nodded at the empty chair beside her.

Arin sat. “I can share information.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got no call to trust it.”

“I could work for you.”

“What I need you can’t give. I’m a one- woman busi-

ness. I’ve got thugs, sure, to remind people when they need

to pay up. You’d fi t that part. But— no off ense— that’s not

worth what you’re asking.”

Arin hesitated, then reached into his pocket. He opened

his hand. On his palm lay an emerald earring, its stone the

size of a bird’s egg. It had been his mother’s.

“Would this do?” he said.

Kestrel’s delight in the cold wore off around the time she

reached the wharf. She’d worn as many layers as would fi t

under the work dress, but she shivered as she neared the

harbormaster’s house. Rocks and oyster shells crunched be-

1

neath her boots.

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The house’s entrance faced the sea and its torchlit

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promenade. Kestrel kept to the building’s back and the

shadows gathered there. She heard sailors joke as they

entered the house to leave their names with the harbor-

master, who recorded them in his ledger. He noted ev-

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erything that entered and left the harbor— sailors, come

ashore for leave in the city, and ships that docked. He

wrote down the ships’ point of origin and the goods they

carried.

In his ledger should be written what Kestrel needed to

know about the Senate leader’s ship. He’d brought back no

luxuries from his voyage to the southern isles for his daugh-

ter. Perhaps he had felt stingy, or angry with Maris . . . or

his ship had brought back no such luxuries at all— which

was strange indeed, since usually the sole purpose of a trip

to the isles was for their goods.

What if the Senate leader
hadn’t
been to the isles? He

could have traveled elsewhere, to another place where the

sun shone hot even in winter, hot enough to tan his skin.

What if he’d gone to the very southern tip of the Herran

peninsula, where hearthnut trees grew? She remembered

Arin’s anxiety over the harvest, and how much the emperor

would seize of it. Maybe the Senate leader had been secretly

estimating how much the crop would be worth.

Kestrel waited until the sailors left the house and took

the curve of the promenade that led up into the city. Then

she reached for a rock encrusted with tiny shells, weighed it

in her hand, and broke a back window of the harbormas-

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ter’s house.

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A thump came from inside the house: a chair, tilted

back, had been dropped down on all four legs.

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The sound of heavy boots. A sea- weathered door whin-

’S

ing on its hinges. Feet on rocks, crunching closer.

Kestrel could be sure his dagger was drawn. Hers was,

too. She’d chosen the plainest scabbard she owned and had

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wrapped the dagger’s jeweled pommel with a scarf, but she

still seemed to see the diamonds’ sharp eyes through the cloth.

The harbormaster rounded the back corner of the

house. He was large— a former soldier, like all harbormas-

ters. He held a sword, not a dagger. He didn’t see her yet.

If Kestrel played this wrong, she was likely to lose. A

fi ght with this man could mean death . . . or arrest. She

would be brought before the emperor.

She would be asked to explain.

The freezing sea was in Kestrel’s blood. Her veins ran

with it.

She grabbed another rock and pitched it into the shad-

ows. It hit farther up the beach.