The Winner's Crime (63 page)

Kestrel said nothing.

He sipped his chocolate. “Have you ever witnessed your

father in battle? You should. I’d like to see
you
fi ght under

a black fl ag, just once. I’d like to see you truly at war.”

Kestrel couldn’t quite return the emperor’s stare. She

lifted her eyes and noticed the prince and Risha leave their

gaming table. They disappeared into the hedge maze. Kes-

trel understood now why Verex seemed so happy. She won-

dered if the whole court knew about him and the princess.

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She suspected it must.

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“Oh,” the emperor drawled, “the Herrani wish to speak

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with you, Kestrel. They’ve made a formal request.”

His words seemed to linger in the air longer than pos-

sible. Kestrel had the odd impression of the emperor play-

ing a piano, and striking a dissonant chord that caught the

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fascination of everyone listening.

“Hardly surprising,” she said coolly. “The Herrani are

bound to want to speak with me from time to time. I was

named their emissary.”

“Yes, we should correct that. You’re too busy for such a

dull job. They’ll be notifi ed that you have given up the

position. There’s no need for you to meet with either of the

Herrani representatives again.”

When Kestrel returned to her suite, the bed was empty and

made. Jess’s trunk was gone.

But Jess had promised. Her visit was supposed to last

longer than this. They’d barely seen each other, and for

Jess to
leave
, to leave now, so soon . . .

Kestrel tugged on a silken bellpull. When her ladies- in-

waiting arrived in her sitting room, she asked, “Where’s my

letter?”

The maids looked quizzical.

“From my friend,” Kestrel said. “For me. It’s not like

her to leave. Not without saying something.”

There was a silence. Then one of the maids off ered,

“The lady had her trunk sent to her townhome in the city.”

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“But
why
?”

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A silence made clear that no one knew why. Kestrel

pressed her lips shut.

CRIME

“It’s late,” a maid said. “Shouldn’t you change into a

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new dress for the afternoon? What will you wear?”

Kestrel waved a hand in a gesture very much like one

she’d often seen the emperor make. She hadn’t meant to do

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that. It upset her. “I don’t care,” she said curtly. “You choose.”

Her ladies- in- waiting bustled into action, putting away

her furs and parading gowns. While the maids tutted over

some fabrics and fi ngered others approvingly, Kestrel won-

dered what Jess would have chosen. She shoved that thought

away.

But this was like discarding a Bite and Sting tile only to

draw a series of worse ones. Because there was Arin, in the

velvet balcony of her mind, and there was the Winter Gar-

den, cold with his absence, and there were the pink and red

berries and her awful advice to the emperor.

Kestrel knew what would happen after the eastern

horses died.

She imagined the yellow- green waves of grass. The

ticking zizz of grasshoppers. Horse carcasses rotting in the

sun.

The plainspeople would starve. Their children would

grow hollow. They would cry for horse milk. The plains-

people would move south on foot to their queen’s city in

the delta. Many would fall in their tracks. Some would not

get up.

This would happen. It would happen because of Kes-

7

trel. She had done this.

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But

wasn’t this better? Hadn’t the alternative been

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worse?

The alternative almost didn’t matter. It didn’t keep

Kestrel from feeling a sick horror at what she’d done.

One of the maids shrieked.

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The maid had opened another wardrobe. Masker

moths were fl ying out. They beat against the lamps and

spun up in panicked, gray spirals. Their dusty wings began

to wink orange and rose as they blended into the tap-

estries.

“They’ve ruined the clothes!” A maid slapped moths

out of the air. One hit the carpet and lay still. Its wings

went red, tipped with white to match the carpet’s design ex-

actly. Masker moths had the property of camoufl age even

in death.

Kestrel stooped and picked it up. The furred, lifeless

legs clung to her. The red wings changed to match her skin.

The maids hunted the moths ferociously. Masker moths

were a common house hold pest in the capital, and this

wasn’t the fi rst time they’d eaten into a wardrobe of expen-

sive clothes. Judging by the number of moths, the larvae

must have been fattening themselves on Kestrel’s silks for

at least a week. The maids killed every last moth, crushing

them against the walls. Masker moths left behind smears

of no discernible color. Damaged wings lost their camou-

fl age.

“Go, all of you,” Kestrel told her maids. “Fetch servants

to clean out the wardrobe.”

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None of the ladies- in- waiting thought to question why

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they
all
must go. No one asked why Kestrel couldn’t simply

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summon servants with the pull of a bell. They glared with

satisfaction at the carnage of dusty wings, and left.

CRIME

When she was alone, Kestrel opened the wardrobe

’S

wider and found a pelisse crawling with moth maggots.

Using her dagger, she cut a swath of fabric where the larvae

squirmed most thickly. She brought it to her dressing table,

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which was stacked with bottles of perfumes and oils and

jars of cream. She took a pot of bath salts and dumped its en-

tire contents out a window, then dropped the cloth and its

larvae into the pot and stoppered it, but loosely, so that air

would fl ow. To be sure, she hatched a cross into the cork’s

center with her dagger’s point. Kestrel set the pot at the back

of her dressing table and arranged the bottles to hide it.

She sat back in her dressing chair, thinking about the

creatures feeding on the cloth in the pot. They were fat al-

ready. They’d become moths soon.

And when they did, she had a plan for them.

Kestrel went to her study, and wrote a letter to the Her-

rani minister of agriculture.

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11

KESTREL SET HER CUP ON ITS SAUCER. “I DIDN’T

ask to see
you
,” she said.

“Too bad.” Arin claimed the chair across from her table

in the library in a manner unbearably familiar to her. It

was as if the chair had always been his.

He slouched in his seat, tipped his head back, and

looked at her from beneath lowered lids. The morning

light fi red his profi le. “Worried, Lady Kestrel?” He spoke

in Valorian, his accent roughening his voice. He always pro-

nounced his
r
’s too low in his throat, so that when he spoke

in her tongue everything came across as a soft growl. “Dread-

ing what I’ll say . . . or do?” He smiled a grim little smile.

“No need. I’ll be the perfect gentleman.” He tugged at his

cuff s. It was only then that Kestrel noticed that they came

too short on his arms and showed his wrists.

It pained her to see his self- consciousness, the way it

had suddenly revealed itself. In this light, his gray eyes were

-1—

too clear. His posture had been confi dent. His words had

0—

had an edge. But his eyes were uncertain. Arin fi dgeted

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again with his cuff s as if there was something wrong with

them— with him.
No,
she would have said.
You’re perfect,

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she wanted to say. She imagined it: how she would reach

’S

out to touch Arin’s bare wrist.

That could lead nowhere good.

She was ner vous, she was cold. Her stomach was a

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fl urry of snow.

She dropped her hands to her lap.

“No one’s here anyway,” Arin said, “and the librarians

are in the stacks. You’re safe enough.”

It
was
too early for courtiers to be in the library. Kestrel

had counted on this, and on the fact that if anyone did

turn up and saw her with the Herrani minister of agricul-

ture, such a meeting would excite little interest.

One with Arin, however, was an entirely diff erent story.

It was frustrating: his uncanny ability to unsettle her

plans— and her very sense of self. She said, “Pressing where

you’re not invited seems to be a habit with you.”

“And yours is to put people in their place. But people

aren’t gaming pieces. You can’t arrange them to suit your-

self.”

A librarian coughed.

“Lower your voice,” Kestrel hissed at Arin. “Stop being

so—”

“Incon ve nient?”

“Frankly, yes.”

His smile came: quick, true, surprised by itself. Then

changing, and slow. “I could be worse.”

“I am sure.”

—-1

“I could tell you how.”

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“Arin, how is it for you here, in the capital?”

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He held her gaze. “I would rather talk about what we

were talking about.”

She arranged her fi ngers along the studs that pinned

green leather to the tabletop. She felt each cool, small, hard

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nail. The silence inside her was like those nails. What it

held down was something sheer: a feeling like fragile silk,

billowing up at the sound of his voice.

If she and Arin were to talk about what they had been

talking about, that silk could tear free. It would fl oat up. It

would catch the light, and cast a colored shadow.

What color would it be, Kestrel wondered, the silk of

what she felt?

What would it be like to let it go, let it canopy above

her?

“It wasn’t a false question,” she said quietly. “I think the

capital must be strange for you.”

Arin studied her, thoughtful now. “Is it that way for

you?”

“It shouldn’t be.”

“You were raised in Herran. This isn’t your home.”

“It’s my country.”

Arin’s face closed along lines she knew well. He

shrugged, the movement small and short. He helped him-

self to tea.

Hesitant, Kestrel asked, “Are they good to you here?”

A rising ribbon of steam curled around his face. He

drank from the cup and lowered it, the gesture as fl uid as

-1—

that of any courtier. But his hand was a laborer’s hand, and

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the porcelain cup, painted with fl owers and dipped in gold,

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looked out of place. Arin frowned at the cup. “Sometimes

I think it was easier to be ignored. Here, no one ignores

CRIME

me. Even if they ignore me they
don’t
, not really. The way

’S

they
don’t
look feels like they’re staring. When I was a

slave in Herran, no one ever looked at me. No one looks at

a slave.” Arin set the cup on its saucer with an abrupt
click
.

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“Kestrel, when did I do it? I keep asking myself when I did

the thing that was beyond your understanding. Was there

one thing that made too many for you to forgive me? The

lies—”

“I would have lied, too.”

“The Herrani rebellion. I plotted for months. I plotted

against
you
.”

“I understand why.”

“Your friends, then. Your people. The poison. Benix’s

death. Jess’s sickness. It was my fault. You blame me.”

Kestrel shook her head— not to deny his words, but be-

cause it wasn’t as simple as he’d said. “Sometimes I imagine

that I’m you. I imagine your life. What we did to it. And I

know what
you
did back. So yes, I blame you . . . and I

don’t. If I’d been you, I would have done the same. I might

have done worse.”

“Then what
can’t
you understand?” His voice grew