The Winner's Crime (81 page)

plain his possession of the Valorian dagger.

“It’s a reminder,” he said.

“Of ?”

“What I despise.”

The queen considered this. Her face was leaner than

Risha’s, but much like her younger sister’s. It was easy,

looking at the queen, to feel again his admiration for Risha,

the way it had grown from the fi rst moment Tensen had

revealed her to be his Moth. Arin said to the queen, “I

know that your country has suff ered. I know that my own

is too small to stand alone against the empire. If I had a

choice, the empire or the east, I’d choose you. Let Herran

be your ally.”

She cocked her head. “What exactly would we do with

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you?”

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“Let us fi ght for you.”

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“In exchange for our protection of your little penin-

sula, no doubt. As you have pointed out, Herran
is
small.

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Your soldiers would hardly swell our ranks. Do you
want

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your people to be our cannon fodder? Even if you did, how

would that work? We do not even speak the same lan-

guage.”

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“We’ll learn yours.”

The queen raised a skeptical brow.

“I’ll prove it to you,” Arin said.

“I would like to see you try.”

“Good,”
Arin said, using the one Dacran word he knew,

the one that the skull- faced man had said to him on the

pier.

The queen’s surprise was clear. But she didn’t smile,

and what she said next made Arin wonder if he hadn’t just

somehow deeply off ended her.

“Let us turn,” she said, “to the subject of your punish-

ment.”

For bearing an enemy’s weapon, Arin was forbidden to

carry any at all.

For entering Dacran territory, Arin was not allowed to

leave it.

For his crimes against Roshar, the queen’s brother, the

injured party was given permission to exact his choice of

punishment.

“I’ll have you killed later,” Roshar told Arin after bring-

ing him to the room where he would stay. “I need time to

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decide the very best method.”

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Arin looked at him. The mutilations made it hard to

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see any resemblance to Risha or the queen. Roshar must

have caught the quality of Arin’s gaze. The way it exam-

ined. Roshar sneered. “Or maybe I’ll fi nd a punishment

better than death.”

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Arin glanced away.

Roshar began unpacking Arin’s things— with the ex-

ception of the dagger— from the satchel onto a table. Food,

water, clothes. “What’s this?” Roshar held up the packet

that contained spools of thread.

“Sewing kit.”

Roshar tossed it on the table. Then he stared down at

all of Arin’s things as if they could add up to the answer to

a hard question. “You’ve come a long way.”

“Yes.”

“All the way from the imperial capital.” Quietly, Ro-

shar said, “Is my little sister well?”

“Yes. She—”

“I don’t want to talk about her. I just wanted to know

how she is.”

“Did you discuss her with the queen when we fi rst en-

tered that room?”

Roshar looked at Arin as if he were insane. “Of course

not.”

“Then what took so long to tell the queen?”

“Your crimes. In loving detail.”

“No,” Arin said, “it sounded like a story.”

Roshar prodded a fl ask of water. “Clearly you didn’t

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know
anything
about our country, if you bothered to bring

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this
.”

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“Why won’t you tell me what you said?”

Roshar kept poking at the fl ask, making it rock against

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the table. Slowly, he said, “Maybe I did tell a story. Maybe

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it was about two slaves in a faraway land, and how one

helped the other.”

“But I didn’t.” Arin remembered it again. He tasted the

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dirt in his mouth, felt the gravel under his cheek. He heard

the cries. He felt his shame.

“You saved me,” Roshar said.

Arin was confused. At fi rst he thought this was sarcasm.

But there had been something open in Roshar’s voice, like

yearning. Was Roshar reinventing what had really hap-

pened? Maybe he was imagining a version of the world

where the Valorian’s knife had never cut his face. A fi ction.

A story with a happy ending.

“I’m sorry,” Arin said carefully. “I tried. But I couldn’t

do anything.”

“You did. You saved the thing in me that decided I

would run away again.”

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29

“I WANT YOU TO DO SOMETHING FOR ME,”

Kestrel’s father said.

Firstspring had come and gone. Kestrel had missed

most of the celebrations to be with her father in his rooms,

as she was every day. The only event she’d attended was the

one at the orphanage, where the children had looked dubi-

ously at the bright kites she off ered. “They’re not the right

color,” a little girl had said. “I want a black one.” After-

ward, Verex had gone through the leftovers. “May I keep

this?” He lifted a pink and green kite. “It’s my favorite,” he

said. Kestrel had smiled.

Now she looked warily at her father as he lay in his bed.

She waited to see what he would ask.

“I want you to go to the battling clubs in the city,” he

said, “and recruit people to the military.”

Kestrel edged her chair away from the bed. The wooden

squeak was loud. She toyed with a bit of embroidery on her

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sleeve and imagined that her disappointment was a thread

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that could be tied into knots and stitched down tight.

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During all the hours she had sat by her father, this was the

fi rst time he’d asked her for anything. What had she hoped

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he would ask?

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Perhaps to be brought a glass of water. Or to be told

what had happened to the dagger he’d given her. He

couldn’t have missed its replacement. The emperor’s gaudy

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blade was right there in full view, strapped to Kestrel’s

waist.

It seemed impossible to tell her father certain things

unless he asked for them.

But some words came easy, because they were angry

and had been said many times before. “I want nothing to

do with the military.”

“Kestrel.”

“Look at what it’s done to you.”

“I will heal.”

“And the next time? You are going to keep fi ghting

until the day you’re killed, and I have to set an empty plate

at the table for my father’s ghost.”

“We don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Then you’ll leave me with nothing at all.”

“We need more soldiers,” he said. “The army is stretched

too thin.”

“Then stop trying to take new territory.”

“That isn’t what the emperor wants.”

“What do
you
want?”

“That,” he told her, “is a foolish question.”

Was it because he had known her all her life that he

knew exactly which words would hurt most? But no, it

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couldn’t be time that gave someone that power. Arin had

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it, too.
I don’t know you anymore,
he’d said.
And I don’t

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want to.

If she went to the battling clubs and signed more sol-

diers into the army, did that mean that their deaths would

be her fault? Would the blood of the people they killed be

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on her hands? And the grief and anger of those who were

left behind— was that her doing, too? She remembered

how the war orphans had wanted black kites.

“Recruit them yourself,” she told her father.

He was silent as she strode to the door. It was that si-

lence that ultimately stopped her. Though Kestrel’s back

was to him, she still saw him as he lay wounded on the

bed. Pale and drawn. Tired in a way she’d never seen.

If she recruited more Valorians . . . it might help her

him when he returned to the fi eld. More soldiers could

mean that he’d be kept safe for another year. Maybe two.

Kestrel sighed. Her back still to him, she said, “I don’t

know why you think that
I
could persuade anyone to sign

up.”

“The people love you.”

“They love
you
. I’m just your daughter.”

“You escaped from Herran. You alerted us to the rebel-

lion. And by now everyone must know how I won the eastern

plains.”

“I wish you’d claimed that idea for your own.”

“I would never do that.”

Kestrel turned, set her shoulders back against the door,

and crossed her arms. She thought of Tensen’s latest request

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for information. “Do you know the chief water engineer?”

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“Elinor?” From his bed, the general looked at Kestrel

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with eyes narrowed in pain. This conversation had exhausted

him. His breath was uneven. If he’d been anyone else, he

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would have already asked for medicine. “I know her a little.”

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“From your campaigns in the east?” With the excep-

tion of the plains, the lands there were watery, especially

farther south, though Valorian soldiers had never reached

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the queen’s city in the delta.

“Yes, and in Herran. Why?”

“She has a townhome here. I thought that maybe . . .

after I go to the battling clubs, you’d like for me to pay her

a call. I could ask her to join the regiment when it returns

east. You might need someone to build bridges, or dams—”

“Yes.” If he’d had more energy, the general would have

looked amused. “I do. But she’s the emperor’s now. He

doesn’t like to share. Don’t waste your time visiting her.”

Kestrel paused, then said, “I’m going to the battling

clubs under one condition.”

“Ah.” His head leaned back into the damp pillow. “A

bargain. What must I do now?”

“Drink your medicine.”

The battling clubs

were not-

very-

secret societies. There

were four in the city, and they each served young aristo-

crats with luxurious headquarters designed for private par-

ties, sultry moments in hidden rooms— and, of course,

fi ghting.

Each club came equipped with an impressive variety of

weaponry. There were keyed rooms for combatants who

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wished to be alone, and arenas for matches meant to be seen.

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Everybody knew the few club rules. Clean up your own

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blood. Money up front for gambling. Members only. Even

Lady Kestrel would have had problems at the door if she

hadn’t shown her father’s signet ring.

The clubs unsettled her. It didn’t matter how much

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dark wainscoting lined the walls, or that the furnishings

were backed by southern isle silk. The rooms still smelled

like wine and sweat and blood. It made her think of fi ght-

ing Irex in Herran. His boot cracking against her knee. She

remembered Cheat’s weight fl attening her against the fl oor.

Kestrel’s mouth was chalky.

She asked for water. She was served. Then she went

about her business.

After three clubs, she had collected about twenty

names. It wasn’t much. Several Valorians who signed were

wild- eyed and laughing. Some were fl attered. Others—

especially those closest to twenty years old— were resigned,

because the empire would soon make them choose between

marriage and the military anyway. If a citizen wouldn’t

make babies to boost the imperial population, she would

have to make war.

In one club, two young women signed up together.

They insisted on writing their names on the same line.

This made Kestrel realize that they were a couple. People

who loved that way— or who otherwise didn’t want to marry

against their desires— often joined the military. Kestrel

watched the women sign, and thought of her own mar-

riage, and felt even worse than before.