The Winner's Crime (55 page)

she cherished. She pressed her thumb once against the ruby

set into the dagger’s hilt and carved with her seal: the talons

of a bird of prey. She pressed hard enough for it to hurt.

Then she gave her weapon to the emperor.

He placed it in the drawer that had held the coin and

pushed it shut. He regarded Kestrel, his own dagger gleaming

at his hip. He touched the golden line on her brow that

marked her as an engaged woman. “I have your loyalty to

the empire, don’t I?”

“Of course.” She tried to ignore the weightlessness of

her scabbard.

“Good. And what’s past is past, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The emperor seemed satisfi ed. “There will be no hint

of any sympathy you might have toward Herran— or its

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governor. If you have any, rub it out. If you don’t, you won’t

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like the consequences. Do you understand?”

She did. Kestrel saw now that the emperor hadn’t in-

tended her visit to the prison to be a mere test or lesson. It

had been a warning of what came to those who crossed

MARIE RUTK

him.

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4

KESTREL CARRIED THE JADIS COIN WITH HER

everywhere. It was in her pocket on the day she surprised

the prince in her music room.

She was drawn up short by the sight of Prince Verex

sitting at a table set with the pieces of an eastern game. He

glanced at her, then down at the marble pieces. A blush

seeped into his cheeks. He toyed with a miniature can-

non.

“Borderlands is a game meant to be played by two op-

ponents,” Kestrel said. “Are you waiting for me?”

“No.” He dropped the gaming piece and shoved his

hands under his arms. “Why would I be?”

“Well, this is my room.”

Within her fi rst days in the palace, the emperor had

given Kestrel a new piano and had had it installed here in

the imperial wing, saying that this room’s acoustics were

excellent. This wasn’t true. The room echoed too much. It

sounded larger than it really was. Its stone walls were bare,

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the furniture stiff . Shelves were sparsely decorated with

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objects that had nothing to do with music: astrolabes,

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gaming sets, a clay soldier, collapsed telescopes.

“Your room,” Verex repeated. “I suppose everything in

the palace is here for your taking. My father is giving you

the empire. You might as well have my old playroom, too.”

MARIE RUTK

His shrug was tight- shouldered.

Kestrel’s gaze fell again on the clay soldier. She saw its

chipped paint, its place of prestige in the center of a shelf.

The room was a cold, uninviting place for any child. She

recalled that Verex, too, had lost his mother at an early

age.

Kestrel went to sit across from him. “Your father

didn’t
give
me this room”, she said. “He probably hoped

we would share this space and spend more time with each

other.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“But here we are together.”

“You’re not supposed to be here. I paid one of your

ladies- in- waiting. She told me you planned to spend the

afternoon in the library.”

“One of my servants reports to
you
?”

“It seems that the general’s daughter, despite her repu-

tation for being so very clever, thinks she’s immune to all

the petty espionage a court is capable of. Not really that

smart, is she?”

“Certainly smarter than someone who decides to reveal

that he has her maid in his employ. Why don’t you tell me

which maid, Verex, and make your mistake complete?”

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For a moment, she thought he’d overturn the table and

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send the Borderlands pieces fl ying. She realized then what

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he’d been doing as he sat alone in front of the Borderlands

set, a game that was the rage at court. The pieces were or-

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ga nized in a beginner’s pattern. Verex had been practicing.

’S

It seemed that the hurt lines of his expression spoke in

the clearest of words.

“You hate me,” Kestrel said.

THE WINNER

He sagged in his chair. His messy, fair hair fell for-

ward, and he rubbed his eyes like someone woken too early.

“No, I really don’t. I hate
this
.” He waved a hand around

the room. “I hate that you’re using me to get the crown. I

hate that my father thinks it’s a brilliant idea.”

Kestrel touched a piece from the Borderlands game. It

was a scout. “You could tell him that you don’t wish to

marry me.”

“Oh, I have.”

“Maybe neither of us has much choice in the matter.”

She saw his swift curiosity and regretted her words. She

moved the Borderlands scout closer to the general. “I like

this game. It makes me think that the eastern empire ap-

preciates a good story as well as a battle.”

He gave her a look that noted a sharp change in sub-

ject, but said only, “Borderlands is a game, not a book.”

“Borderlands could be
like
a book, if one had constantly

shifting possibilities for diff erent endings, and for the way

characters can veer off course into the unexpected. Bor-

derlands is tricky, too. It tempts a player into thinking she

knows the story of her opponent. Take the story of the in-

experienced player. The beginner who doesn’t see traps

being set.” Verex’s expression had grown softer, so Kestrel

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arranged the Borderlands pieces into an opening gambit

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and moved them into diff erent patterns of play for two op-

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ponents, explaining how a perceived beginner might win a

game by deliberately falling for a trap in order to set one of

his own. When the green general fi nally toppled the red,

Kestrel said, “We could practice together.”

MARIE RUTK

Verex’s large eyes were suddenly too shiny. “By ‘practice,’

you mean ‘teach.’ ”

“Friends play games together all the time without think-

ing of it as practicing or teaching or winning or losing.”

“Friends.”

“I don’t have many.” She had one. She missed Jess ter-

ribly. Jess had gone to the southern isles with her family for

her health. In the past, Jess would have gone to a charming

little house her family owned by the sea on the warm south-

ern tip of Herran, but the Midwinter Edict ordered Valo-

rian colonists to surrender all property in Herran. The

colonists were compensated by the emperor, and Jess’s par-

ents had purchased a new house in the islands. But Kestrel

read the homesickness in Jess’s letters. Kestrel wrote back.

They wrote often, but letters weren’t enough.

Verex nudged the fallen red general with his green one,

listening to the rocking tap of marble on marble. “Maybe we

could be friends, if you could explain why
you
don’t tell my

father that you don’t wish to marry me.”

But Kestrel couldn’t explain.

“You don’t want
me
,” Verex said.

She couldn’t lie.

“You claimed that you don’t have a choice,” he said.

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“What did you mean?”

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“Nothing. Truly, I want to marry you.”

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His anger returned. “Then let’s list the reasons.” He

ticked them off on his fi ngers. “You seek the empire, and a

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husband you can manipulate as easily as these game pieces.”

’S

“No,” she said, but why wouldn’t Verex believe his por-

trait of her: power- hungry, unfeeling? It was what Arin be-

lieved.

THE WINNER

“You want a good laugh. So that at our engagement

ball you can watch me lose at Borderlands while every

single aristocrat and governor of the territories laughs with

you.”

“A ball? All the governors? Are you sure? No one’s told

me about this.”

“My father tells you
everything
.”

“He didn’t. I swear, I knew nothing of a ball.”

“So he plays games with you, too. My father is two-

faced, Kestrel. If you think he adores you, you’d better

think again.”

Kestrel threw up her hands. “You’re impossible. You

can’t blame me for his favor
and
claim that I’m no more than

an amusing toy to him.” She stood and went toward the

door, for she saw that the brief peace between them had dis-

integrated, and her mind was reeling. An engagement ball.

With all the governors. Arin was coming. Arin would be

here.

“I wonder why my father didn’t tell you,” Verex said.

“Could it be so that in catching you off guard, he could

observe exactly what lies between you and the new gover-

nor of Herran?”

Kestrel stopped, turned. “There is
nothing
between us.”

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“I’ve seen the Jadis coin. I’ve heard the rumors. Before

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the rebellion, he was your favorite slave. You fought a duel

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for him.”

She almost reached out to a bookshelf to steady herself.

It felt as if she might fall.

“I know why you’re marrying me, Kestrel. It’s so that

MARIE RUTK

everyone will forget that after the rebellion, no one put
you

in a prison, not like every other Valorian in Herran’s city.

You were special, weren’t you? Because you were
his
. Every-

one knows what you were.”

Her vertigo vanished. She snatched the clay soldier off

the shelf.

She saw instantly from Verex’s expression that she held

something he cherished. She would smash it, she would

smash it against the fl oor. She would break Verex like his

father had broken him.

Like she had broken her own heart. Kestrel felt the

pieces of her heart suddenly, as if love had been an object,

something as frail as a bird’s egg, its shell an impossible

cloudy pink. She saw the shock of its bloody yolk. She felt

the shards of shell pricking her throat and lungs.

Kestrel set the soldier back on the shelf. She made cer-

tain her voice was clear when she spoke her last words be-

fore leaving the room. “If you won’t be my friend, you’ll

regret being my enemy.”

Kestrel retreated to her suite and sent her maids away. She

didn’t trust any of them now. She sat by a tiny window that

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gave a feeble light. When she took the Jadis coin from her

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pocket, it looked dull on her palm.

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This is the year of money,
she remembered. She had in-

deed planned on going to the library earlier today, as her

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maid had informed Verex. She’d hoped to research the

’S

Herrani gods, then thought better of it. The library pos-

sessed a paltry collection of books; it was mostly a glamor-

ous room where courtiers sometimes met for a quiet tea, or

THE WINNER

where a military offi

cer might consult one of the thousands

of maps. The library would have suited Kestrel well if she

had wanted to fi nd a map or to socialize . . . or if she’d

wanted members of the court to see her researching Her-

rani books.

She had turned away from the thick library doors.

Now she huddled in her velvet chair, trying to concen-

trate on the actual words of her conversation with Verex

instead of on their emotional undertow. She fl ipped the

coin, fl ipped it again. Emperor. Jadis. Emperor. Jadis.
He’s

two- faced,
Verex had said of his father. Kestrel thought

about that phrase as she considered each side of the coin.

Two- faced
: the word dangled a hook into the dark well of

her memory. It snagged on something.

The Herrani believed that a god ruled not just one

thing, but a whole domain of associated ideas, actions, ob-

jects. The god of stars was the god of stars, yes, but also of

accidents, beauty, and disasters. The god of souls . . . Kes-

trel’s throat closed as she remembered Arin invoking that