The Winner's Crime (77 page)

He caught her startled look. “Not when you know him like

I do. He’d have this hound’s neck snapped even if its dam

nursed it after all. He doesn’t like weaklings. But he loves

to discover a weakness. And now your governor is gone.”

She kept her blurred eyes on the puppy. “That’s not

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what I meant. That’s not what I wanted to say.”

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“But it’s the truth. You love him. That’s your weakness.

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One way or another, it’s why you agreed to marry me.”

Kestrel smoothed a thumb over the soft fl ip of one tiny

ear. She looked at the puppy, blind and asleep even while

sucking at the milk.

MARIE RUTK

Verex said, “No one likes to be used.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to use you.”

“Honestly, I
expect
to be used. This is the court. I never

thought . . . well, I’m my father’s son, aren’t I? Of course

my marriage would be arranged. Of course I woudn’t get

to choose. I know that I’ve been angry. I know that I
am
,

and that it eats at me, but . . . I would have understood,

Kestrel, about the engagement. I understand you now. You

could have told me
why
.”

“Do you think that
why
really matters?”

“Don’t you?”

“Verex, I’ve done something horrible.” The puppy’s ribs

rose and fell as Kestrel told Verex about her plan to poison

the horses of the eastern plains, and why she’d suggested it.

He was silent. One hand twitched in the straw. Kestrel

thought he meant to take the puppy away from her, but he

didn’t.

She said, “I’ve heard that you don’t agree with the war

in the east.”

“My father says I’m soft. He’s right.”

“You must blame me all the more.”

“For being hard?” He brushed his fair hair out of his

eyes so that he could see her better. “Is that what you think

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you are?”

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“If I hadn’t suggested poison, maybe the plains wouldn’t

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have been burned after all. Maybe our army would have

done nothing.”

CRIME

He gave a cynical laugh.

’S

She said, “If I’d never talked with your father, at least

what ever
did
happen wouldn’t have been my fault.”

“I’m not sure that not knowing is the same thing as in-

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nocence.” He leaned back into the rustling, smelly straw. “I

think that you did the best that you could. Risha will think

so, too, when I tell her.”

“No. Don’t tell her. Please.”

“I tell her everything,” he said simply.

Kestrel’s gaze fell again to the puppy. She wondered

what it would be like to be able to tell someone everything.

She stroked the soft creature. “Will it live?”

“I hope so.”

A quick, hot liquid streamed through Kestrel’s fi ngers.

She yelped. The puppy’s urine trickled down her sleeve.

Verex widened his already large eyes. “
That
was lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“That’s not all puppies do, you know. It could have

been worse.”

Kestrel smiled. “That’s true,” she said. “You’re right.”

Her smile grew, and became a laugh.

Her maids were horrifi ed. They ran a bath and practically

stripped the clothes from her. But Kestrel nursed that fl oat-

ing feeling of forgiveness Verex had given her. It buoyed

her in the warm bath.

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She asked to be alone.

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The bath cooled. Her hair, water- dark, lay fl at and sleek

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over her breasts like armor.

Arin had changed her. It was time to admit that.

Kestrel stood in the bath. The water sheeted from her.

She wrapped herself, oddly and unreasonably shy with her

MARIE RUTK

own nakedness.

What kind of change had Arin wrought?

She thought back to last summer, and how it had felt as

if he were thumbing her eyes wide open to see her world.

She thought about the puppy, velvety blind, and her wish

never to have heard any plan for the eastern plains, so that

she wouldn’t bear any responsibility for what had been

done.

Kestrel thought that she needed to open her eyes wider.

She looked.

There was the plush robe around her, for the prince’s

bride must have comfort. She saw stained glass set in the

bathing room windows, for a Valorian must have beauty.

Gold rings glimmered wetly on Kestrel’s wrinkled fi ngers.

The general’s wars had won luxury for his daughter.

And there were the rules. They hung invisible in the

humid air. But who had decided them? Who had decided

that a Valorian honors her word? Who had convinced her

father that the empire must continue to eat other countries

whole, and that slaves were Valoria’s due right of conquest?

Her father held his honor so fi rmly, like a solid thing,

something that couldn’t twist free. It occurred to Kestrel

that she had wondered before what her father’s honor was

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4

like, and Arin’s, but she didn’t know the shape of her

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own.

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There was dishonor, she decided, in accepting someone

else’s idea of honor without question.

CRIME

Kestrel bent to touch the faucet and pipe of the bath.

’S

There was running water in Herrani houses, for fountains,

mostly, but the imperial palace was veined with an inge-

nious system of pipes that pumped in warm water from

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thermal sources in the mountain, heated it further with a

furnace, and swept it up to the highest fl oors. This system

had been invented by the chief water engineer, the one who

had designed the canals.

On the day after Arin had left, Tensen had asked Kes-

trel to investigate something. “The chief water engineer

has done the emperor a favor,” he’d said. “Could you fi nd

out what it was?”

Kestrel lifted her hand from the still warm bath pipe

that led to the fl oor and vanished into it. She went to the

window, and stood in the light of its brilliant stain. Her

hands glowed blue and deep pink. She unlatched and

swung open the window. Everything went clear. The air

was raw. Kestrel could scent it on the wind: that thing that

was going to blow her forward in time, to warmth, fl owers

blooming, trees in pollen and then spread green.

Spring.

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23

ON THE SIXTH DAY AT SEA, ARIN STOPPED

being seasick. That night, there

were no clouds. Stars

frosted the sky. The ship was becalmed.

Arin was on deck, turning Kestrel’s dagger in his hands.

In the end, he’d decided to take it with him. It was his

now, by his own blood. Or so he told himself.

He sheathed it. He tipped his head back and gazed at

the wide band of stars that arched over him in a glittery

smear.

Sarsine had seemed so tired when Arin had seen her on

his way from the capital. He’d worried over her wan face

and shadowed eyes.

She’d snorted. “It’s the food.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“There’s too little of it.” She’d sighed then, and said

that all of Herran was tired.

“That will change,” he told her. He explained how to

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save the hearthnut harvest. Sarsine had touched the back

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of his hand in gratitude. Then she’d looked at him hard.

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Her eyes were bright. She said, “Look at what they did to

you.”

CRIME

“It’s nothing.”

’S

But she wept over his changed face, which made him

feel worse about it. Arin let her. He didn’t know what else

to do.

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Later, Sarsine said, “Now tell me what you haven’t told

me.”

So he had told her about Kestrel. Arin recalled it now

as he shifted to look out over the black mirror of the sea.

Sarsine had been quiet. They’d been in the library of his

family home, not the salon. Kestrel’s piano was in the salon.

Though out of sight, the instrument had loomed in his mind:

large, shining. Intrusive. He wanted to rid himself of it.

Sarsine said, “This doesn’t sound like her.”

Arin shot her a cold glance.

“You know her better than I do,” Sarsine admitted.

He shook his head. “I’ve been lying to myself.”

It seemed that he’d been confused for a long time, that

the last clear thing he’d done was to declare that the em-

peror’s treaty was a trick. Arin knew that his army would

have lost that day. The Valorians had already breached the

city walls. But the fi ght would have been vicious. The Her-

rani would have fought to the death. They would have

killed as many as they could. The treaty ended up being a

bloodless victory for the emperor: a way to drain Herran’s

resources without losing another Valorian soldier.

It could be a trick,
Kestrel had said,
but you will choose it.

It had been snowing then. Snow had caught in her eye-

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7

lashes. He used to wonder what would have happened if

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he had reached to brush it away. He used to imagine the

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snowfl akes melting beneath his fi ngertip. It shamed him to

remember this.

Arin hadn’t fallen asleep on the deck of his strangely

still ship, yet, it felt as if he’d been dreaming. As if dreams

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and memories and lies were all the same thing.

He startled at the sound of a fi sh breaking the water.

He had no idea how long he had been standing there. The

stars had moved in the sky.

Chilled, tired, Arin went below.

He left winter behind him. The wind had picked up. It

luff ed the sails. It fi lled their canvas bellies. The Herrani

captain, who had been somewhat of a legend before the

war, was pleased. The ship sped over the waves.

The sun became melted butter. Arin stripped away his

father’s hot, threadbare jacket. He didn’t want to wear it

again.

The sea sheered into green: marvelously clear. Arin saw

whole worlds in the water below. Fish broke away and came

together and rearranged themselves like pieces of a colored

puzzle.

Once, a creature leaped out of the water. Its dorsal fi n

was scalloped and pink. It made a strange, whistling cry,

then dived under again.

Arin’s wound fi nally healed. He tugged out the stitches

himself.

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He was truly in eastern waters now. The wind and sea and

sun made it easier not to think.

CRIME

Though not always. There was a shining hot day when

’S

the sun was high over Arin’s head and he saw what he

thought was the shadow of the ship in the water. Then the

large shadow shifted and slid in a way that made no sense.

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Arin stared, realizing that the shadow was in fact an enor-

mous sea creature swimming far below the ship. He hadn’t

understood what he’d seen.

He heard Tensen’s words again:
You’re seeing what you

want to see
.

Arin thought of Kestrel, and wondered if some wounds

ever heal. His heart thumped in his ears. He was stunned

all over again by his anger.

But what does Tensen want you to see?
whispered a voice

inside him. The very thought was an insult to Tensen, who

had warned Arin from the fi rst about his obsession with

Kestrel.

Arin could now appreciate—

in a gritty, unpleasant

way— that Kestrel had been honest with him. For a long

time, she’d tried to make things clear. She’d sent troops to

attack Arin’s forces after she’d fl ed Herran. She’d told him

of her engagement. She had not once— Arin cringed to

think of it— responded to his advances. And when he’d

asked her about the Valorian attack on the eastern plains,

she hadn’t denied her involvement. The guilt had been

plain on her face.

The noon sun beat down on Arin’s head. He ham-