The Winner's Crime (8 page)

She stayed where she was. The glass fogged.

‘
No’ doesn’t exist, Kestrel. Only ‘yes.’

The view had clouded over.

She left the window. There was nothing to see anyway.

The days wore on.

There was a per for mance for the court. A Herrani

singer. His voice was acceptable. But higher than Arin’s.

Thinner. Kestrel became angry at the way this unknown

man’s voice scraped the bottom of his register. This music

was inferior, thready stuff . It had none of Arin’s strength,

his lithe resilience.

Kestrel hoarded the memory of Arin’s song. It was

honey in the hive of her heart. As the per for mance contin-

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ued, Kestrel began to worry that the music she was hearing

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now was going to replace what she remembered of Arin’s

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voice. He would never sing for her again. What if she could

no longer even remember how he had sung for her once?

She curled her fi ngers under the edge of her chair and

gripped hard.

MARIE RUTK

Finally the peformance came to an end. The audience

met the singer’s silence with a dull silence of their own. No

one clapped— not because everyone else had been able to

judge the music’s quality and found it wanting, but because

they saw no point in applauding a slave, even after remem-

bering that he no longer was one. And Kestrel, who had

never forgotten what this man was and was not, certainly

had no intention of applauding either.

Her music, too, was a problem. The piano brought little

comfort— and what comfort it gave turned out to be false.

Kestrel began to craft something that she thought was an

impromptu, as diffi

cult as she could make it. Then the

notes nudged aside, twined together, and left spaces that

she couldn’t fi ll.

This was no impromptu. Impromptus were for soloists.

This was a duet.

No, not quite a duet . . . only half of one.

Kestrel brought the lid down on the keys.

She invented a solitaire version of Bite and Sting. She

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played against a ghost. She played against herself. The

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boneyard— the stock of tiles left on the table after players

drew their hands— dwindled until all the pieces were face-

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up like a fi nal truth that she should have been able to

’S

decode. The tiger bared its teeth. The spider wove its web.

Mouse, stonefi sh, viper, wasp . . . the black engravings on

the ivory tiles became suddenly sharp in defi nition, then

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blurred before her eyes.

Kestrel mixed the tiles and tried again.

She invited Jess to the ball. Her letter practically begged

Jess to come. Jess’s reply arrived: she would be there, of

course she would. She promised to stay with Kestrel for at

least a week. Kestrel felt a terrible relief.

It didn’t last.

She took tea in the palace salons with the daughters and

sons of high- ranking military offi

cers. She ate canapés on

fashionable white bread that tasted awful because its color

came from powdered chalk. Kestrel pretended to herself

that the dry, tight quality of her throat had everything to

do with the bread and nothing with the increasing disap-

pointment of each day that did not bring Arin.

On the last morning before the ball, when the weather

watchers in the palace predicted that a storm building above

the mountains would close the pass to Herran with snow

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before the day was out, Kestrel stood on a block while the

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dressmaker pinned a panel of silver- threaded lace to her

ball gown.

It was the fi nal touch. Kestrel stared down at the lay-

ered fabric. The color of its satin base was uncertain. Some-

MARIE RUTK

times it resembled pearl scraped from the inside of shells.

Then light from the window would dim and the dress be-

came dark, full of shadows.

Kestrel was tired of the long hours on the dressmaker’s

block, tired to think of all the eyes that would watch her

enter the ballroom, of all the gossip that swirled through the

palace about details so minute as her choice of dress. Bets

had been laid, she’d heard. Entire fortunes might be won

or lost based on what she wore.

She lifted her gaze from the dress to watch the snow-

heavy clouds build in the sky. She watched as if the

window were her last exit, each cloud a stone laid to wall

it off .

The dressmaker was Herrani. She’d been freed with

the rest of her people when the emperor had issued his edict

almost two months ago. Why Deliah stayed in the capital

instead of returning to Herran, Kestrel didn’t know. She

didn’t ask, and Deliah rarely spoke. She didn’t say anything

that day, either— not at fi rst. She pinned in silent precision.

But her gray eyes glanced up once to peer at Kestrel.

Kestrel saw a certain curiosity in the way they lingered.

A waiting, a wondering.

“Deliah, what is it?”

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“You haven’t heard?”

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“Heard what?”

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Deliah fussed with the hem. “The Herrani representa-

tive has arrived.”

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“What?”

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“He arrived this morning on

horse

back. He came

through the pass in the nick of time.”

“Take this dress off .”

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“But I’m not fi nished, my lady.”

“Off .”

“Just a few more—”

Kestrel tugged the fabric from her shoulders. She ig-

nored Delia’s small cry, the pricks of pins, the thin chime

of them scattering onto the stone fl oor. Kestrel stepped out

of the dress, pulled on her day clothes, and rushed out the

door.

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7

HE WAS WAITING IN THE RECEPTION HALL, A

lone fi gure lost in the vast, vaulted chamber. The Herrani

representative was an el der ly man whose thin frame leaned

heavily on his walking stick.

Kestrel faltered. She approached more slowly. She

couldn’t help looking over his shoulder for Arin.

He wasn’t there.

“I thought the barbarian days of the Valorian empire

were over,” the man said dryly.

“What?” said Kestrel.

“You’re barefoot.”

She glanced down, and only then realized that her feet

were freezing, that she’d forgotten even the existence of

shoes when she’d left her dressing chamber and hurtled

through the palace for all to see, for the Valorian guards

fl anking the reception hall to see right now.

“Who are you?” Kestrel demanded.

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“Tensen, the Herrani minister of agriculture.”

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“And the governor? Where is he?”

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“Not coming.”

“Not . . .” Kestrel pressed a palm to her forehead. “The

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emperor issued a
summons
. To a state function. And Arin

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declines
?” Her anger was folding onto itself in as many lay-

ers as her ball gown— anger at Arin, at the way he was com-

mitting po liti cal suicide.

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Anger at herself. At her own bare feet and how they

were proof— pure, naked, cold proof— of her hope, her very

need to see someone that she was supposed to forget.

Arin had not come.

“I get that disappointed look all the time,” Tensen said

in a cheerful tone. “No one is ever excited to meet the min-

ister of agriculture.”

She fi nally focused on his face. His green eyes were

small but clever, his wrinkled skin darker than hers. “You

wrote me a letter.” Her voice sounded strained. “You said

that we had much to discuss.”

“Oh, yes.” Tensen waved a negligent hand. The lamp-

light traced the plain gold ring he wore. “We should talk

about the hearthnut harvest. Later.” His eyes slid slowly to

glance at the Valorian soldiers lining the hall, then met Kes-

trel’s gaze again and held it. “I could use your insight on a

few matters concerning Herran. But I’m an old man, my

lady, and very saddle sore. A little rest in the privacy of my

rooms is in order, I think. Perhaps you could show me where

they are?”

Kestrel didn’t miss his message. She wasn’t blind to the

way he had indicated that their conversation could be over-

heard, nor was she deaf to his coded invitation that they

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could speak more freely in his guest suite. But she struggled

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against the pain in her throat, and said only, “Your ride

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here was hard?”

“Yes.”

“And the snow. It’s falling already?”

“Yes, my lady.”

MARIE RUTK

“The mountain pass will close.”

“Yes,” Tensen said gently, and he saw too much. Kestrel

could tell that he heard that horrible note in her voice, and

that he recognized it as the sound of someone fi ghting

tears. “As expected,” he added.

But she hadn’t expected this: this stupid hope, this

punishing one, for who would long to see someone who was

already lost? What good would it have done?

None.

Apparently Arin knew this, too. He knew it better than

she, or his hope would have been equal to hers, and would

have driven him here.

Kestrel drew herself up straight. “You can fi nd your

rooms by yourself, Minister Tensen. I have more important

matters to attend to.”

She strode from the hall. The veined marble fl oor was

icy beneath her feet: a frozen lake with fractures she did not

care to see.

She walked, she did not care.

She did not.

Jess adjusted Kestrel’s ball gown, stepped back, cocked her

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head, and peered. “You’re anxious,” Jess said, “aren’t you?

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Your face looks pinched.”

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“I didn’t sleep well last night.” This was true. Kestrel

had asked Jess to come early from her house in the city, and

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spend the night before the ball in Kestrel’s palace rooms.

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Kestrel and Jess had shared a bed, like they sometimes did

when they were little girls in Herran, and talked until the

lamp had burned all its oil. “You snored,” Kestrel said.

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“I did
not
.”

“You did. You snored so loudly that the people in my

dreams complained.”

Jess laughed, and Kestrel was glad for her silly little lie.

Laughter softened Jess’s face, fi lled the hollows of her cheeks.

It drew attention away from the dark rings beneath her

brown eyes. Jess never looked well. Not anymore, not since

she had been poisoned on the night of the Herrani rebel-

lion.

“I have something for you.” Jess opened her trunk and

lifted out a velvet bundle. “An engagement present.” Jess

unwrapped the bundle. “I made this for you.” The velvet

held a necklace of fl owers strung on a black ribbon, the

petals large, blown open, fashioned from sanded shards of

amber glass and thin curls of horn. The colors were muted,

but the fl owers’ size and spread made them almost feral.

Jess tied the ribbon around Kestrel’s neck. The fl owers

clicked against one another, sliding low to rest against the

dress’s bodice.

“It’s beautiful,” Kestrel said.

Jess adjusted the necklace. “I understand why you’re

ner vous.”

The crackle of fl owers went silent. Kestrel became

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aware that she was holding her breath.

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“I shouldn’t say this.” Jess’s eyes met Kestrel’s. They

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were hard, unblinking. “I hate that you’re marrying into

the emperor’s family. I hate that you’re going to walk

straight from this room to your engagement ball. With the

prince
. You should be my sister. You should be Ronan’s

MARIE RUTK

wife.”

Kestrel hadn’t seen Ronan since the night of the First-