The Winner's Crime (96 page)

she’d never seen in him before, something unbearably

young. She saw, for a moment, the boy Arin must have

been. Right around the eyes. A softness. A yearning. There,

in the lines of his sensitive mouth. There, to show her how

to strike hardest.

“This isn’t one of your Herrani tales with gods and vil-

lains and heroes and great sacrifi ces,” she said. “I loved those

stories when I was little. I’m sure you did, too. They’re bet-

ter than real life, where a person makes decisions in her best

interests. Reality isn’t very poetic, I know.” She shrugged.

“Neither is the sort of arrogance that encourages someone

to think that so much revolves around him.”

Arin looked away. He stared at the piano, its strung

insides exposed under the propped- open lid.

She walked around him in a slow circle, sizing him

up. “I wonder what you believe could compel me to go to

such epic lengths for your sake. Is it your charm? Your

breeding?”

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9

His eyes cut to her. She paused, letting her gaze trace

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his scar. He tensed. She made her mouth curl. “Not your

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looks, surely.”

His jaw tightened.

Thorns pricked her throat, she ached with self- disgust.

Yet she forced her smile to grow. “I don’t mean to be cruel.

MARIE RUTK

But these ideas of yours are so
unbelievable.
And frankly, a

little desperate. Like a fantasy. Hasn’t it occurred to you

that you’re just seeing what you want to see?”

“No.”

But she’d seen him waver. “You must realize that you’ve

been telling yourself a story. Arin, we’re too old for stories.”

His voice came low. “Are we?”

“
I
am. Stop being a child. It’s time you grew up.”

“Yes.” The word was slow. His tone was unexpectedly

fi lled with something Kestrel recognized as wonder at the

same moment that the recognition cramped her stomach.

She knew that sound. It was the voice of someone for

whom a cloud of confusion has been lifted. It was clarity,

and the strength that returns with it.

“You’re right,” Arin said. When he faced her again she

saw no shadow of that boy. It was as if she’d dreamed him.

“I misunderstood,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

Formally, even clinically, Arin touched three fi ngers to

the back of Kestrel’s hand. Then he left, and closed the

door behind him.

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44

THE DOOR’S THUD ECHOED LOUD. A TOXIC

fear ate at Kestrel. Even as doubt grew, and hinted that her

strategy was the wrong one, or that no strategy could mend

what she’d just done, Kestrel clung to the most important

rule her father had taught her:
Deal with danger before it

deals with you
.

“Father?” Kestrel called. Her voice rose higher. “Fa-

ther?”

There was no answer. Had he been too shocked by

what he had heard . . . suspicious? Was he refusing already

to speak with her?

She rushed to the door and fumbled it open. The hall-

way was empty. Arin had vanished. An overturned bucket

had spilled its foaming water. It was soaking Kestrel’s

shoes. She stood in the puddle for a moment, her feet wet

and cold. Then she felt wildly along the corridor’s carvings

until she found the wooden button in the center of a blown

fl ower. The panel slid aside, and light from the hallway il-

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luminated the hidden room. It was empty.

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What did this mean? Kestrel wondered whether her

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father could have left sometime after his watch had struck

the hour, but before Arin had arrived. Had everything

she’d said to Arin been for nothing?

She pressed fi ngertips to her temples. Her mind teemed

MARIE RUTK

with possibilities, her pulse soared, and she wasn’t thinking

so much as scrambling from one thought to the next.

Kestrel returned to the music room and picked up the

fallen pen. She wrote Arin a letter. She wrote it on the sheet

music, running words right over the notes. The ink fl owed

and smeared as Kestrel told Arin the truth, from the treaty

to her engagement, from the Moth to her love, from the

eastern horses to the poison that was killing his people. She

wrote feelingly, fi ercely, the nib of the pen sometimes punc-

turing the page.

The words came easily. In a bare minute, the letter was

done.

It burned in her skirt pocket like a hot coal. Kestrel went to

her father’s suite— he wasn’t there, his valet didn’t know

where he was— and then fi nally to her own, where two

maids were so perfectly normal that their ordinariness

was dizzying to Kestrel. She made an excuse and ducked

into her dressing room. Alone, she tucked a masker moth

into her sleeve. The buttoned fastening at the wrist kept

the moth safely inside, and she wished fervently that she

had done this earlier. If only she’d had a moth in the music

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room. She could have slipped it to Arin. A sign. She would

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have been subtle— a sleight of hand was all it would have

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taken, an absentminded rub of her wrists, and then the re-

veal.

CRIME

Kestrel had a three- tiered plan of what to do when she

’S

found Arin. If she found him alone, and trusted their pri-

vacy, she would speak. Yet . . . would he listen? She remem-

bered that clarity in his voice as he had fi nally and fully

THE WINNER

given up on her, the coolness of his touch . . . a lightness.

That light, cool quality had been relief. She knew that. If

she tried to speak with him again, he might very well just

walk away.

Please, read this letter,
she’d say, and place it in his

hands. If all else failed, or they weren’t alone: the moth.

There was a tap at the dressing room door.

Kestrel opened it to see one of the maids: a very young

girl. Quiet, softly plain. “My lady,” the maid said, “forgive

me, but you seem upset.”

“I’m fi ne.” But Kestrel’s voice was strained.

“Should I send for the prince?”

So this was the maid in Verex’s employ. Kestrel realized

that regardless of why the arrangement had begun, at some

point Verex had asked the maid to watch over her, and to

tell him if Kestrel needed help.

How like Verex. How like her friend.

It gave her courage. “No,” she told the maid. “Truly,

I’m fi ne. Everything will be fi ne.”

At fi rst, Kestrel felt better. She left the imperial wing be-

hind her, clinging to her plan as if it were a guiding hand.

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But as she took a tightly wound marble staircase down,

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careful not to rush, careful to smile at a passing courtier

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and to ignore imperial guards stationed at the landings of

each fl oor, that guiding hand grew cold. When she reached

the wing that held suites for the lesser sort of guests, that

hand felt like a fi stful of bones. If she let go, they would

MARIE RUTK

scatter and roll.

Kestrel stole a glance behind her. No one seemed to be

following her.

She turned down one last hall. The day’s last light

seeped in from a lone window. It cast the hallway into lurid

orange.

Kestrel stood before the door. Could it really have been

this easy? But then, the hidden room behind the screen

had been empty. And the general was her
father
. He had

taught her how to ride. He loved her. She knew it. Wasn’t it a

betrayal of him to fear that he had reported the conversation

in the music room . . . if, indeed, he’d even witnessed it?

You have been betraying him all along,
whispered a voice

inside her.
You are betraying him now.

Yet she knocked at Tensen’s door. With a jittery grati-

tude, she heard someone stirring inside. Footsteps neared.

The handle clicked. The door widened, and so did Tensen’s

eyes when he saw who stood before him.

She didn’t wait for him to speak. She slipped inside.

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45

“YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE,” TENSEN SAID.

Kestrel ignored him. She threaded through the small

suite, ignoring the very existence of privacy as Tensen trailed

after her, protesting. She even entered his dressing room.

She rounded on Tensen. “Where’s Arin?”

“I told you,” Tensen said warily, “no one knows where

he is, and I assure you that I haven’t hidden him in the

wardrobe.”

“Well, he’s closer than you’d think, and he hasn’t been

in Herran’s city, or he would be dying.” She explained what

she knew about the poison fl owing through Herran’s aque-

ducts. The news made Tensen grow still. Stony. Telling the

news had the opposite eff ect on her, because beneath her

own words she heard the murmurs of everything Arin had

said to her in the music room, and what she’d said back.

Tensen caught her wild hands. “Kestrel, be calm. Lower

your voice.”

Had she been shouting? Her breath felt shallow, as if

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she’d been running. “Where can I fi nd him?”

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“I need for you to calm down.”

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She pulled away. “The city’s water supply is tainted. I

have to tell him.”

“It can’t be you.” His small green eyes were worried.

“There are places in the palace you can’t go without raising

MARIE RUTK

suspicion. Arin might even have left already. Your emper-

or’s punishment for treason is death. Do you
want
to be

caught?”

“It must be me,” she insisted. “I have to explain . . .

other things.”

“Ah.” Tensen covered his mouth and rubbed at his

cheek. “He risked a great deal meeting with you alone.

Would you have him risk that again?”

“No, but . . .” She felt desperate. The pieces of her were

coming apart, jumbling out of order. She took the letter from

her pocket. She could no longer believe that Arin might

accept it. Not from her. Not after the things that she had

said. “Find him. Give this to him. It explains.”

He took the folded page gingerly. The black and white of

the sonata’s score looked up at them. “What does it explain?”

“Everything.”

“Kestrel, what exactly do you hope giving him this will

do?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. I—”

“You’re not yourself. You’re not thinking clearly.”

“I don’t want to think clearly! I am
tired
of thinking

clearly. Arin should know about me. He should have al-

ways known.”

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“It was better for him that he didn’t. You believed that.

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I did, too.”

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“We were
wrong
.”

“So after he learns the truth, you’ll end your engage-

CRIME

ment.”

’S

“No.”

“You’ll run away with Arin to live in a dying country

for a few short days before the hammer of another invasion

THE WINNER

falls.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Tensen said. “You love him.”

Helplessly, she said, “I love my father, too.”

Tensen looked down at the letter. He turned it over in

his hands.

“If you don’t give that to Arin,” Kestrel said, “I will.”

Tensen grimaced. Then he opened his jacket and placed

the letter in an internal breast pocket. He refastened the

jacket and patted his chest once, just above the heart. Kes-

trel heard the faint crackle of paper.

“You’ll do it?” she said.

“I promise.”

Kestrel’s father was waiting in her suite. He must have sent

the maids away. He was alone, sitting in a chair in the out-

ermost receiving room. During daylight hours, the chair

had a view of the barbican through which the general had

entered months ago on his bloodied horse. He kept his

gaze to the window well after Kestrel had entered. Night

had fallen and the window was black. There was nothing