The Winner's Crime (73 page)

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had seized him in the alleyway was gone . . . or had gone

away enough. She couldn’t see it anymore on his torn

face.

His dear face, dear to her, dearer still. How could she

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love his face more for its damage? What kind of person saw

someone’s suff ering and felt her heart crack open even

wider, even more sweetly than before?

There was something wrong with her. It was wrong to

want to touch a scar and call it beautiful.

Arin wasn’t looking at her anymore. He’d been dis-

tracted.

Kestrel followed his gaze to see a black- eyed redhead at

a nearby table giving Arin a cool look. His expression didn’t

change, but something inside him did. Kestrel felt it. It

twisted her heart.

When Arin’s attention returned to Kestrel, she exam-

ined the splintery surface of the table. “I’m going to get a

Bite and Sting set,” he said. “And wine. Should I get wine?”

The answer to that was a clear no. Kestrel needed all

her wits about her for a game she shouldn’t—
couldn’t
—

lose. But she felt suddenly miserable, and realized that

she’d been ner vous ever since Arin had found her by the

river. She said yes.

He hesitated, like he might counsel her against that

choice. Then he left the table.

The crowd swallowed him. Kestrel couldn’t see where

he had gone.

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Arin didn’t like to leave her for long. She was going to at-

tract attention. It was her nature. But when he returned

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with wine and a game set, she was alone and quiet: an al-

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most eerie silence in the tavern’s storm.

He saw her before she did him. He saw that she was

unhappy. He realized that this was what had arrested him

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by the canal when he’d thought she was a nameless maid:

the sense that this stranger had lost something as precious

to her as what he had lost was to him.

In his mind, Arin lost to Kestrel at Bite and Sting, and

let all of his questions slip away.

In his mind, he said,
Tell me what you want.

And she said,
Leave this city.

She said,
Take me with you.

Kestrel lifted her gaze. As he met her eyes— an ex-

tremely light brown, the lightest shade before brown be-

comes gold— Arin knew that he was a fool. A thousand

times a fool.

He must stop. They were painful, these waking dreams.

Why did he allow himself to think them? They skewed

everything. Arin was ashamed now, remembering how

he’d pretended— even if for a moment— that Kestrel was

the Moth. He shoved that lovely little lie from his head. He

refused to think of it again. Thoughts like this made him

feel split in two, just as his face was: one side fi ne and the

other sore and throbbing.

He sat, and set the game, wine bottle, and glass on the

table. He poured.

“Only one glass?” she said.

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He handed it to her. “I’ve no head for wine. How is it?”

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“Terrible.” But she drank deeply.

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Arin upacked the set. Kestrel picked up one of the tiles,

which was made of rough wood, and turned it over in her

fi ngers. Her thumb rubbed at some grime. He watched her

drink again.

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Arin thought of the ruined dress Deliah had described.

Tensen had dismissed it with an impatient wave of the hand,

a gesture that told Arin it was ridiculous to imagine any-

thing dire. Vomit on the sleeve of a dress? Well, don’t court-

iers like wine? Arin had seen scores of Valorians drunk until

sick. As for the dirt on the dress and split seams . . . anybody

can trip. The Winter Garden had no mud, true, but Arin

hadn’t seen all of the palace grounds. There were places he

wasn’t allowed to go. Kestrel could have tripped anywhere.

Neither tripping nor drunkenness seemed like Kestrel.

But he watched her drain the glass.

I could have changed,
she’d said by the river.

Arin took the game piece from Kestrel. He mixed the

tiles with unnecessary force. They drew their hands.

Arin’s was pitiful. The only thing that saved this game

from being a lost cause was a pair of mice, and mice held

almost the lowest value. The rest of his hand was an assort-

ment of Sting tiles— which Kestrel delighted in playing,

and played well. He, less so.

And Kestrel had a high hand. He knew it. She had no

tells— not exactly. It was more that she had a concentrated

lack
of tells. She changed without giving any clear sign that

she had changed. She gathered intensity.

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“Kestrel.”

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She discarded a tile and drew another. She didn’t look

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at him. He’d noticed— of course he had— how she avoided

looking at him now. And no wonder. Arin’s face stung.

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The stitches itched. He was tempted to rip them out. “Look

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at me,” he said. She did, and Arin suddenly wished she

hadn’t. He cleared his throat. He said, “I won’t try any-

more to convince you not to marry him.”

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She slowly added the new tile to her hand. She stared at

it, and said nothing.

“I don’t understand your choice,” Arin said. “Or maybe

I do. It doesn’t matter. You want it. That’s clear. You’ve al-

ways done exactly what you wanted.”

“Have I.” Her voice was fl at and dull.

He plunged ahead. “I was wondering . . .” Arin had an

idea. He’d had it for some time now. He didn’t like it. The

words lay bitter on his tongue, but he had thought about it,

and thought about it, and if he said nothing . . .

Arin made himself study his tiles again. He tried to think

which Sting tile would profi t Kestrel least. He discarded a

bee. The instant he set the tile down, he regretted it.

He pulled a high Bite tile. This should have encour-

aged him, yet Arin had the sense of fl ying toward the in-

evitable moment when Kestrel won and he asked her what

she wanted.

“I thought . . .”

“Arin?”

She looked concerned. That decided him. Arin took a

deep breath. His stomach changed to iron. His body was

girding itself in a way he knew well. Arin was tightening

the muscles needed before a plunge into deep water. A

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punch to the gut. The lift of the hardest, lowest, highest

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notes he could possibly sing. His stomach knew what he’d

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have to sustain.

“Marry him,” Arin said, “but be mine in secret.”

Her hand lifted from the tiles as if scorched. She sat

back in her chair. She rubbed at her inner elbow. She drank

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the dregs of her wine and was silent. Finally, she said, “I

can’t do that.”

“Why?” Arin was hot with humiliation, hating himself

for having asked. The cut burned in his cheek. “It’s not so

diff erent than what you would have chosen before. When

you kissed me in your carriage on Firstwinter, you thought

to keep me your secret. If you thought of anything. I would

have been one of those special slaves, the ones called for at

night when the rest of the house is sleeping. Well? Isn’t that

how it was?”

“No.” She spoke low. “It wasn’t.”

“Then tell me.” Arin was damning himself with every

word. “Tell me how it was.”

Slowly, Kestrel said, “Things have changed.”

Arin jerked his head to the side, chin up, stitched left

cheek tilted to catch the light. “Because of
this
?”

She replied as if the answer was obvious. “Yes.”

He shoved back from the table. “I think I’ll have that

drink.”

Arin began to walk away, then glanced back over his

shoulder. He made sure his words were an insult. “Don’t

touch the tiles.”

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Kestrel didn’t understand. His anger made no sense. Wasn’t

it clear that Arin’s wound was her fault? And that worse

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could happen?

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He didn’t return.

She thought about what she didn’t understand. She

thought about how Arin’s wound might run deeper than

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the fl esh. She remembered his question and her answer.

She remembered them again.

Slowly, she began to see the misunderstanding. For her,

yes
was the emperor’s message carved into Arin’s face. For

Arin,
yes
was the scar itself, not what it meant. His anger

was for how he looked . . . how he thought he looked to

her now.

A horror sank into her. She couldn’t wait until he re-

turned. She must fi nd him. She must set things straight.

Arin had forced his way up to the bar, where he waited to

ask for a second glass. The Valorian barkeep ignored him.

She served everyone else fi rst. When new Valorians came

up to the bar, she served them, too. She wasn’t going to

glance at Arin unless he made a scene— which he was very

ready to do. In his head, he heard Kestrel say
Yes.

The surface of the bar was sticky and smelled sour.

Arin stared at it and thought of the emerald earring, how it

had shone: enchanted, his. Sarsine had found it hooked

into a thick, patterned carpet that had been rolled up and

shoved into storage in a disused quarter of his house in

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Herran. The emerald had been like one of those tales where

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a god is revealed. Arin had sworn he would never part

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with it.

Yet he had, and he understood now that it hadn’t really

been information he wanted to buy. It had been trust. Arin

could no longer trust himself. Arin had believed the bets in

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the bookkeeper’s hand were important. The emerald had

seemed to promise that if this belief could be proven true,

then Arin could trust his every belief.

Arin’s palms were sticky now, fl attened against the

bar. His temper slowed. He remembered the Kestrel he’d

known in Herran. He didn’t think about who she’d been

lately. And he didn’t make his increasingly frequent mis-

take of reimagining this new Kestrel— so fully Valorian, so

nicely set in the court and capital— as the person he wanted

her to be.

He simply remembered the person she’d been. Arin

asked that Kestrel the same question he’d asked the Kestrel

dressed as a palace maid, and she gave the same answer. But

this time, her
yes
was also a
no
. This time, her answer was a

box with a false bottom, and the meaning of it went deeper

than he had seen.

He had misunderstood her.

Arin began to think he shouldn’t have walked away

from that table. He should go back. He should go back

right now.

And he would have, if he hadn’t been distracted by a

snatch of conversation from a nearby table.

A group of senators were drinking. The Broken Arm

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had a very mixed crowd that night, more than its usual

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share of courtiers. These were talking about the east.

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“. . . an impressive victory,” said one. “Exactly the sort

of thing I’d expect from General Trajan.”

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“He can’t take all the credit,” said another. “The idea

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was his daughter’s.”

“Really?”

“I was there. There was a gathering in the Winter Gar-

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den the morning after the engagement ball. Only the most

important members of the court were invited, of course. A

group of us discussed how best to take the eastern plains.

The emperor even asked
my
advice. If I say so myself, my

idea was very good. Yet let no one believe that I am ungen-

erous. I understand why the emperor preferred Lady Kes-

trel’s plan. It was she who suggested that the general poison

the horses. The eastern savages won’t be able to live with-

out them, she said. We all knew that would do the trick.

And didn’t it just?”