The Winner's Crime (76 page)

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some similar favor.”

“Look into it.”

“I will, but what would you have me do with what I

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learn? Sending a message to you in the eastern queen’s city

is impossible.”

“There’s the temple island,” Arin said. Dacrans wor-

shipped one god, and since all were free to worship her,

foreigners were allowed to dock at a holy island off the

country’s southern coast. It was a great center of trade.

“You can send a message there.”

“Even so, we’d risk the message falling into unfriendly

hands. Messenger hawks can be captured, codes broken—”

“First someone would have to realize he’s looking at a

code.” Arin produced the sack of spooled threads. “Do you

remember Favor- Keeping?”

The hours lengthened. The time for the midday meal

came and went, and Arin and Tensen ignored their gnaw-

ing hunger as they sorted out the threaded code, how each

color would represent a person, as did the Favor- Keeper’s

ball of strings throughout the years of slavery. Arin tied a

diff erent number of knots for each letter of the Herrani al-

phabet. He braided meaning into the way one color would

cross another, and in the end he held something that looked

like a piece of trim that could be sewn on the cuff of a

sleeve and worn openly. A new fashion. To most eyes, it

would look like nothing more than decoration.

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Black was the emperor. Yellow, the prince. Tensen

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chose green for himself. “Here.” Arin had handed him the

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spool of gray. “For your Moth.” He added, “For Risha.”

Tensen smiled.

It wasn’t until they had assigned a color for almost every

key courtier that Tensen said slowly in a way Arin would

MARIE RUTK

remember, “Don’t you want a thread for Lady Kestrel?”

“No. I don’t.”

From Kestrel’s windows that day, she saw banners on the

barbican rise and blow toward the sea with a wind that

must have been warm. A fi ne rain— not snow— blurred the

view. Firstspring would come sooner than Kestrel wanted.

Then Firstsummer, and the wedding.

Alone, she shook dead masker moths from their enve-

lope of paper onto a mosaic marble table. She’d given half

of her moths to Tensen in the market, in case he wanted to

leave one for her on the painting in the gallery.

Kestrel watched moths change to match the mosaic.

Then she pushed one with a delicate fi nger and watched it

change again.

She felt a surge of anger at the moths for hiding so well.

She resisted an urge to crush them.

Couldn’t she try to explain herself to Arin? Last night,

Kestrel had been ready to tell him everything. She still

could.

Uncertain, Kestrel swept the moths back into their

packet.

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Deliah came. Kestrel had forgotten that she was sup-

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posed to be fi tted for a day dress. The Herrani woman

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pinned around her. Kestrel watched the window mist with

rain.

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Deliah paused in her pinning. “I think you should

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know that Arin left today. He sailed when the wind rose.”

Kestrel’s gaze fl inched away. She looked again toward

the window as if she would be able to see the harbor, and

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beyond that, the waves, and on the waves, a ship. But all

Kestrel saw were the battlements of the palace. The rain

had stopped. It had lifted its gray veil. The sky was clean

now, and brutally clear.

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22

YOUNG COURTIERS WERE MAKING KITES FOR

the city’s war orphans. Waxed black parchment was glued

to stick frames and painted with the golden eyes and feath-

ers of birds of prey. Kestrel and Verex would bring them to

the orphanage on Firstspring.

In the large solarium, which had been added to the pal-

ace after the Herrani invasion as if the emperor had seized

the whole history of Herrani architecture along with its

country, Kestrel made a paper chain for a kite’s tail. At other

tables, courtiers talked quietly. Kestrel sat alone. Her fi ngers

moved quickly, but she felt as if someone else was making

them move, and that she was no more than that cloth doll

she’d seen carried through the crowd of the Butcher’s Row.

Kestrel thought of visiting the children. She thought of

telling them how their parents had brought honor to the

empire. She thought of a ship sailing far away from her.

Her fi ngers stopped. Her throat closed. Kestrel sum-

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moned a new set of paints. She began to cover her kites

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with swirls of green and blue and pink.

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Kestrel heard a rustle of silk as a woman claimed a

nearby chair.

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“Very pretty,” Maris commented. “But not military

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colors.”

Kestrel dipped her brush in a jar of water, rang it nois-

ily around, and then set it in a pot of violet. “They’re chil-

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dren, not soldiers.”

“Why, you’re right, of course. This is much more cheer-

ful! Here, let me help.”

Kestrel eyed her briefl y, but Maris contented herself

with painting in silence. After making her second kite look

like a gaudy butterfl y, Maris said, “Your friend has a deli-

cious brother. Tell me all about him. Is he taken?”

Kestrel lifted her brush. Paint dribbled down her sleeve.

“What?”

“Lord Ronan. Very lucky, isn’t it, that the conquering

of Herran gave us so many more titled young men? All that

new territory, so nicely portioned out by the emperor ten

years ago, with lovely titles to go with it. Too bad the land

is gone. But a lord is a lord forever. And he is
such
a lord!

Just the other day, I saw Ronan fi ght in the city, and—”

“You didn’t. You can’t have.”

Maris’s eyes fl ashed. “He’s not yours to keep or give.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“We can’t all be empresses. I must marry. I am nearly

twenty.” Maris’s voice dropped. “I don’t want to go to war.”

“I meant that you must have seen someone else in the

city.” Kestrel tried to speak evenly, but she already didn’t

believe her own words. “Ronan isn’t in the capital. He went

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with Jess and their parents to the south.”

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“I assure you, he didn’t.”

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“They went away,” Kestrel’s lips had gone numb. “For

Jess’s health.”

Maris’s expression changed. Kestrel saw it shift from

confusion to a curious understanding before it settled, fi -

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nally, into a kindness that made Kestrel’s stomach clench.

“Lady Kestrel,” said Maris, “you are mistaken. I have won-

dered why their family avoids the court, but Jess and Ronan

attend many functions in the city. I have seen them several

times. They’ve been in the capital ever since your engage-

ment ball.”

Kestrel went to Jess’s townhome in the city. Jess’s footman

took her card, embossed with her personal seal, and ac-

cepted her into the receiving room, which was lined with

polished, crossed spears. There was no trace of dust. The

house showed no signs of having been closed up for a fam-

ily journey south.

“The lady is not at home,” the footman said.

“But the family’s in residence?” Kestrel pressed. “Is Jess

usually
here?”

The footman shifted, and was silent.

“Is her brother home?” Kestrel asked.

When the footman still said nothing, Kestrel said, “Do

you know who I am?”

The footman confessed that Ronan kept odd hours.

“He’s often not here. And his sister—”

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“If she’s not here, then I’ll wait in the parlor until she

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returns,” Kestrel said, though this proposal risked seeing

Ronan.

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The footman fi dgeted. “I wouldn’t recommend that,

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my lady. I believe that both brother and sister will be out

for a great deal of time.”

“I’ll wait.”

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And she did. She was determined to sleep on the parlor

divan if she must.

The fi re throbbed low. Her tea grew cold.

She remembered Jess frowning in her sleep. She re-

membered crushing the glass petal of Jess’s necklace against

the marble mantel.

Was Jess’s silence— her absence, her lies— because of

that broken gift? Maybe that was Kestrel’s off ense. But she

had told Jess, and Jess had forgiven her. Hadn’t she?

Or . . .

What had Ronan told Jess? Kestrel had thought his

pride would keep him from ever telling his sister about his

marriage proposal to Kestrel on Firstwinter night— and

his rejection, and whom Kestrel had preferred over him.

Dread ate at her. When the clock struck the third hour,

she shifted against a cushion. It released a trace of Jess’s

perfume. A white fl ower from Herran. It bloomed behind

Kestrel’s eyes.

The scent was fresh.

The parlor had a view of the road. Kestrel could see her

own carriage, and her escort waiting inside it.

Kestrel fought the realization. She didn’t want to under-

stand. But she did . . . she envisioned so clearly how Jess

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had been sitting on this very sofa when Kestrel’s carriage

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had pulled up. Jess had left word with a footman. Then

she’d retreated to another part of the house. She was wait-

ing there. She was waiting for Kestrel to leave.

The perfume watered Kestrel’s eyes.

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“I’ll return another day,” she told the footman on her

way out, but when she stepped into the carriage, Kestrel

glanced up over her shoulder and caught a fl utter of fabric

in a high window of the town house. A curtain had been

drawn aside. Someone was watching her.

The instant Kestrel looked at it, the curtain fell.

As Kestrel walked through the barbican, she overheard pal-

ace guards laughing.

“Where’s he disappeared to these days?” one of them

said.

“The kennels,” answered another. “He’s been playing

with puppies in the muck. The perfect place for our illus-

trious prince, if you ask me.”

Kestrel stopped. She returned, and approached the

guards. They weren’t afraid, which meant they thought she

shared their contempt.

She looked at the guard who had spoken last. Kestrel

slapped his face. In the shocked silence that followed, Kes-

trel clenched her stinging hand and walked away.

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Verex was holed up in one of the kennel’s pens, sitting on a

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nest of fi lthy straw and nursing a puppy with a rag sopped

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in milk. The puppy was peacefully fl oppy in Verex’s hands,

its skin wrinkled and loose, eyes closed.

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When Verex saw Kestrel, he almost looked like an ani-

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mal himself, cornered and wary. “Don’t say it,” he told her.

“Say what?”

“What ever you’re going to say.”

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She leaned over the barrier of the wooden pen. “Will

you show me how to do that?”

The hand holding the rag lifted in surprise. Milk

dripped onto the puppy.

Kestrel entered the pen, sat next to Verex on the straw,

and held out a cupped hand.

“No.” He brought her left palm up to meet her right and

form a bowl. “Like this.” He eased the little animal into her

hands. It was a yielding warmth, soft and boneless. Its whole

body moved with its breath. Kestrel wondered if she’d been

like this, as a baby in her father’s arms, and if he had been

quieted and comforted to hold her as she held this creature.

“It’s a runt,” Verex said. “Its mother won’t nurse it.” He

showed her how to nudge the milk rag into the puppy’s

mouth.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

The prince fi ddled with a bit of straw. “Oh, I fi gured it

out. It’s not hard to guess what my father holds over you.”