The Winner's Crime (82 page)

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Kestrel reclaimed the list. She shoved it inside her skirt

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pocket.

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In the last club, a fi ght was on.

The small arena was packed and loud, the air heavy.

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Kestrel was a latecomer and had to stand at the back of

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the crowd. Peering over someone’s shoulder, she caught a

glimpse of the fi ghters, both men, both with blond hair

tied back. The one whose back was to her was slender but

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quick.

It was a fi stfi ght. Kestrel couldn’t see any weapons ei-

ther in the combatants’ hands or strapped to their bodies,

so this wasn’t a duel fought over honor, but for plea sure.

The larger man crashed a fi st into the face of the thin-

ner one. He cried out. The crowd surged forward.

Kestrel did, too. She knew that cry. She would swear

that she recognized that voice. But the gap that had given

her a view of the fi ghters had closed. She could see nothing

now, and people were shouting, and she couldn’t even tell

if they were shouting someone’s name.

She did. She called out a name. The noise swallowed it.

Kestrel elbowed her way forward. She pushed her way

to the front. The slender man was coming up from the

ground. He delivered a series of uppercuts to his opponent’s

gut, yanked on an ear, and punched his face.

The big fi ghter went down. He wasn’t getting up.

The crowd began shouting again, and this time they

clearly
were
shouting a name. It was the same one on Kes-

trel’s lips, the one that she said again as the winner turned

around, wiped blood from his mouth, and saw her.

Ronan.

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30

AFTER THE CROWD CLEARED, KESTREL TOLD

the club own er to fi nd her a private room. Ronan was a

member, and could have arranged this himself. Instead, he

watched and listened to Kestrel’s instructions with some-

thing like amusement, or the air of someone pleasantly sur-

prised by the appearance of an old friend. But his smile was

bitter.

He ordered a carafe of cold wine. Once he and Kestrel

were alone, he drank half of it down at once.

“A private audience with the future empress,” Ronan

said, unwinding bloodied linen strips from his knuckles.

“I’m honored.” He settled his long frame in a chair and

looked up at her. He had a split lip. His blond hair was

loose and sweaty, his fi nely drawn face purpled with

bruises. He ran a fi nger along the rim of his glass until it

hummed.

When Kestrel was little, Jess’s older brother had ignored

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her. Then one eve ning, when Kestrel was perhaps fi fteen,

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she and her father had been invited to a society dinner at

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his

house. Over the third course, she asked a senator

whether he’d marry all of his mistresses if he could have

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more than one wife.

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Kestrel hadn’t meant to upset the senator. She’d just

been curious. She wasn’t aware that his wife, also at the

dinner, hadn’t known about the mistresses.

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Kestrel was sent from the table to sit alone in Jess’s

suite.

Ronan smuggled her dessert. They ate white powdered

cakes together, sugar dust all over their faces, and she

laughed as Ronan imitated the senator’s reaction, puffi

ng

out his cheeks and holding his breath until his face turned

red.

After that, Ronan noticed her.

Kestrel missed her friend. She missed him right now as

he sat before her, everything about him playful and careless

except for his eyes, which cared very much, and were cold.

He drank his cup dry. “What do you want, Kestrel?”

“Did you tell Jess?”

Ronan arched one brow. “Did I tell Jess.” He twirled

his glass by its stem. “Let’s see. Did I tell Jess that those

rumors were true, that all autumn long you had a lover—”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s right. It began in summer, when you bought

him. Did I tell Jess
that
? Did I tell her that you’d rather

buy someone to bring to your bed than love her brother?

Maybe we wondered out loud what was so repulsive about

marriage to me that you chose a slave instead.

“Maybe I told Jess, ‘I know, I know. You loved her, too.

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But on Firstwinter night she wasn’t there when you drank

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the poisoned wine. She wasn’t there when you gagged and

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choked and I dragged you behind a curtain to hide while

slaves stabbed our friends. Kestrel wasn’t there when I held

my dying sister. Because Kestrel left the ball with
him
.’ ”

Ronan set the wineglass down on a table with infi nitely

MARIE RUTK

delicate precision. “No, I didn’t tell Jess that. One broken

heart in the family is enough.”

Kestrel tasted the memory of those sugared cakes.

Their lost sweetness made it impossible to speak.

“Troubled, Kestrel?”

Though she knew he didn’t really want to hear her an-

swer, she couldn’t help telling him. “Jess won’t answer my

letters. When I pay her a call, servants say she’s out. She’s

not. She’s in her rooms, waiting for me to leave. I thought

that maybe . . .”

“I had been telling her some hard truths.” Ronan laced

his fi ngers and then spread them wide, shrugging. “Have

you considered that what ever has come between you two is

your
doing?”

I saw him,
Jess had said when Kestrel had slipped into

bed beside her the night of her engagement ball. What ex-

actly had Jess seen?

“What’s this?” Ronan quickly leaned forward to tug on

a corner of the folded paper peeking out of her skirt pocket.

He pulled the recruitment list free.

“Nothing.” She reached for it.

He jerked the page away and unfolded it. “Ohhh. I

know what
this
is. Look, you even got Caris to sign up.

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Now, where’s a pen?”

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“No. Ronan, don’t.”

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Holding the list of recruits high above Kestrel’s reach

as if they were children, Ronan rummaged one- handed

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around the room.

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“Stop.” Kestrel yanked on his arm. She tried to snake

her way into his path. He ducked, and twisted, and laughed.

He opened a secretaire and found a jug of wine where

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papers should be. “Nice, very nice, but not exactly what I

was looking for . . .” He pulled out drawers. He crowed

when he found ink and a pen.

Ronan, sent to war. Ronan, bleeding into the dirt.

She was near tears. “Please,” she said, “don’t sign that

paper.”

He inked the pen and held the list down on the secre-

taire with both hands as if it might fl y away.

“I beg you,” Kestrel said.

Ronan smiled, and signed.

Kestrel’s escort was waiting patiently by the club door. The

maid said nothing as they stepped into the carriage and

Kestrel gave the order to return to the palace. But the girl

watched as Kestrel unwrapped the balled sheet of paper

and let it fall to her lap.

With a shuddering jolt, the carriage pulled forward. It

trundled up the mountain.

“It’s dirty,” the maid said. She was looking at the list.

It was splotched with ink. Kestrel had knocked the bot-

tle over when she fi nally snatched the list back from Ronan.

The page had rusty smears right by his name; Ronan’s

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knuckles must have been still bleeding. And although the

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maid wouldn’t have been able to tell, not after the way the

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page had been crushed, the paper was a little warped, the

way paper gets when exposed to water, or sweat— or tears.

Kestrel gently folded the page. Destroying it would

change nothing. It wasn’t the signature that was impor-

MARIE RUTK

tant, but the act of signing. The recruits would still report

to the city barracks. They’d given their word, witnessed by

Kestrel. A Valorian honored his word.

“What is that?” said the maid.

“A guest list.” Kestrel imagined a long, empty table set

with bare white plates.
She
had set them.

Suddenly, Kestrel leaned forward and rapped at the

glass that separated her from the carriage driver. She had

changed her mind, she said.

Kestrel gave the driver a new destination.

“I didn’t realize you were interested in water engineering,”

said Elinor as a southern isle slave served them a rare liquor

that tasted like burnt caramel. It was very expensive.

Kestrel sipped from her cut-crystal glass. Elinor’s town-

home was modest. The walls were painted instead of pa-

pered. A long crack ran through the lacy white plaster

molding in the ceiling.

But the water engineer had expensive liquor. There

were pale, sweet, imported berries heaped in a bowl on the

low table near the divan where she and Kestrel sat. Of

course, Elinor
would
set out her fi nest food and drink for a

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visitor of Kestrel’s rank. But the liquor and berries seemed

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too much for someone of her means, judging by the state of

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her house. Tensen had told Kestrel about the bets placed

on her wedding dress. She thought that the berries, liquor,

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and even the crystal glasses could have been acquired on

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credit by someone expecting a large windfall in a matter of

months. The Firstsummer wedding was, after all, not so

far away.

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Kestrel forced a smile. “The emperor thinks I should

be interested in anything that concerns the empire. And

my father valued your skills during war.”

The engineer’s plain face went pink with pride.

“Didn’t you serve with the general in the east?” Kestrel

said.

“Years ago.” Elinor’s face lost its plea sure. When she

caught Kestrel’s questioning look, she said, “The east is a

savage land. Engineers might technically be members of

the military, my lady, but I wasn’t ready. The Dacrans are

devious fi ghters. I was supposed to build bridges and dams,

not fi ght, but the reeds by the rivers were high. They were

infested with tigers. They hid barbarians with poisoned

crossbow quarrels. Your father kept me safe. He kept me

alive.”

If the emperor had rewarded the engineer, could it have

been for a favor she had done in the east? Maybe it had

nothing to do with Herran.

The southern isle slave refi lled the engineer’s cup.

Kestrel watched her. She was a young girl, younger than

Kestrel. The southern islands— the Cayn Saratu, as their

people had once called them— had been one of the fi rst

territories Valoria had conquered. Kestrel’s father had been

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a lieutenant then. This girl was young enough to have been

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born into slavery. She’d never known another life. She

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might not have ever known her mother tongue— or even

her mother.

Suddenly Kestrel no longer cared whether the emper-

or’s secret was about Herran, or the east, or some other ter-

MARIE RUTK

ritory. She wanted the empire to be that long table that

haunted her mind. She wanted to fl ip it over and send all

those empty plates crashing to the fl oor.

The slave stirred uneasily. Kestrel realized that she was

staring at the girl, who said, “More, my lady?”

“No, thank you.”

The engineer said to Kestrel, “I suppose you don’t re-

member me. You were a little girl when I saw you last. It

was just after the colonization of Herran.”

Kestrel looked at Elinor again, at the solid, intelligent

way of her. Kestrel had a faint memory of kneeling by the

fountain in her Herran villa and tipping red dye fi lched

from the slaves’ workroom into the fountain. She’d been