Read The Winner's Crime Online
Authors: Marie Rutkoski
Arin just stormed through the ballroom. His mouth was
shiny. Maybe people will think it was from wine and not
glittered oil, but they won’t if they see you, too.”
MARIE RUTK
Kestrel’s fi ngers fl ew to her forehead and the engage-
ment mark Arin had kissed moments ago. She touched her
hair, its loosened tendrils.
How did she look?
Like someone who had had an illicit liaison?
“That’s right,” Tensen said grimly.
“Come,” Kestrel said, turning to retrace her steps back
down the hall, away from the ball.
“With you?”
“You and I need to talk.”
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9
KESTREL LED TENSEN TO A SMALL, EMPTY
salon where lamps and a fi re burned. Tensen shut the door
behind them.
“Block it with your cane,” Kestrel said, pointing at a
tapestry hook that was about level with the doorknob.
“Since you don’t need it anyway.”
Tensen glanced ruefully at her before setting the curved
end of his cane around the doorknob and latching the
straight end into the hook. “That won’t hold. Not if some-
one really wants to get in.”
She ignored him. She came close to the mirror above
the fi replace’s mantel, which held a wide- bottomed vase of
hot house fl owers.
Maybe it was the roses, the way that they covered her
neck in the mirror’s refl ection, reaching up to her chin.
Maybe it was the hurried escape down the hallway.
Kestrel looked breathlessly in bloom. Color was high in
her cheeks. Her lips, though Arin had not in fact touched
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them, were bitten red. The blacks of her eyes were wide
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pools. The necklace Jess had given her was broken, the
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cracked glass petals hanging limply from their ribbon,
crushed from the pressure between her and Arin.
Kestrel’s refl ection stared back. She had the air of some-
thing that has been opened and cannot be shut again.
MARIE RUTK
She looked like pure scandal.
Her hair wasn’t the worst of it. Yes, the upswept ar-
rangement was coming loose, a lock slipping here and there,
but her hair was too short for intricate braids, which meant
that it often came undone. Kestrel was in the habit of ap-
pearing a little disheveled, and pinning her hair back in
place herself.
The real problem was the mark. The golden line on her
brow had become a smear.
“Do you have extra oil and glitter with you?” Tensen
said.
Kestrel gave his refl ection in the mirror an exasperated
glance. She wasn’t carry ing a purse. Where did he think
she’d keep such items? The cosmetics were on the dressing
table in her suite.
“I’ll fi nd one of your ladies- in- waiting in the ballroom,”
Tensen said. “Or do you have a trusted friend? Someone
who can fetch what you need and bring it here?”
Kestrel thought about how long that would take. She
thought about how one of her maids reported to Verex. She
thought about Jess, and what her friend’s reaction would
be if the Herrani minister of agriculture approached her at
the ball to request her assistance in making Kestrel look
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“No,” Kestrel said. “Bring me a lamp.”
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Tensen’s expression was disapproving. It said that he
didn’t see how a lamp could serve, and that time was being
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wasted. But he did what she asked.
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Kestrel blew out the lamp and set it on the mantel to
cool. With her dagger, she cut fabric from the hem of her
inner slip, grateful for the dress’s many layers. She took the
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roses from the heavy ceramic vase, set their dripping stems
on the mantel, and tipped the vase’s water onto the silk rag.
She used it to scrub her forehead clean. She remembered
Arin’s kiss there, and scrubbed harder. She tossed the rag
aside. She untied her necklace, found the brightest amber
glass petals, and hammered them against the mantel’s sur-
face with the vase’s bottom. She ground the petals into
dust. Dipping one fi nger into the lamp’s oil, Kestrel hissed
at the burn, yet didn’t wait for the pain to fade. She drew
an oiled, horizontal line above her brows.
Now for the glitter. She tapped her fi nger into the glass
dust.
“You’ll cut yourself,” said Tensen, but his disapproval
had vanished.
“I’ll be careful,” she said, patting the dust over the oiled
line. She tucked loose tendrils back where they belonged
and pinned them more securely in place. The roses returned
to their vase, the vase resumed its place in front of the mir-
ror, and Kestrel wiped the remaining glass dust off the man-
tel with her wet silk rag. She threw the rag and necklace
into the fi re. “Well?” she asked Tensen, turning to face him.
“Excellent.”
She shook her head. “Optimistic.” The mark shimmered,
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but was barely golden. “Are you always so optimistic?” she
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asked. “I think you must be, or you wouldn’t have written
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that letter to me, or hinted that we have information to share.”
“Am I wrong?”
“You forget that I outrank you.
I
will inquire.
You
will
answer. Minister Tensen, what were you before the Herran
MARIE RUTK
War, ten years ago?”
Slaves had never liked that question. She’d seen teeth
clenched at its asking. If an emotion could have a sound,
Kestrel thought that the one produced by that question
might sound like the glass petals had, ground beneath the
heavy vase.
But Tensen only smiled. “I was an actor.”
“I suppose that’s good experience for a spymaster.”
Tensen wasn’t at all put out by having that title pinned
on him. He seemed positively delighted by this conversa-
tion. “I hope I’m not so obvious to everyone.”
“ ‘Hope’ is the operative word here, since your governor
gave all signs that he wouldn’t be here to night, and if he sent
someone to the capital in his stead it must have been a per-
son of po liti cal value to him, someone he trusts, someone
intelligent and observant. You’ve taken some pains to appear
weaker than you are, but you’re no old man ready to doze
off .”
“Well, I
am
old. That much is true.”
Kestrel made an impatient noise. “Are you even really
the minister of agriculture?”
“I like to think that I’m able to play many roles.”
“And you are very optimistic indeed if you believe that
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the emperor won’t notice, especially when he knows full
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well that Herran has spies in the palace.”
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Tensen lost his smile. “What do
you
know, my lady?”
“That this conversation will end now unless you make
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me a promise.”
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He raised his brows.
“Promise that Arin will never learn that you and I
spoke,” she said. “I can off er information. You can give it to
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your governor. But it can’t be linked to me.”
Tensen considered her. He passed a gnarled hand over
the carved back of a chair and pursed his lips as if there was
something wanting in the chair’s design. “I know that your
presence in Arin’s house after the Firstwinter Rebellion
was . . . complicated.”
“I didn’t want to be there.”
“Maybe not at fi rst.”
Slowly, Kestrel said, “I never could have stayed.”
“My lady, it’s not for me to know what you wanted or
what you could or could not do. But your condition sur-
prises me. If you’re sympathetic enough toward my gover-
nor— or his cause— to share something with me, why can’t
Arin know? I swore by the god of loyalty to serve him. You
would make me break my oath.”
“Do you know how I escaped from your city’s harbor?”
“No.”
“Arin let me go,” she said, “even though letting me go
was the same thing as inviting the Valorian army to break
down his city’s walls. So promise me, because it is in
your
interest that Arin can’t know. You can’t trust that he’ll al-
ways choose the safety of his country— or even of himself.”
Tensen was silent.
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“Do you see?” Kestrel pressed. “Do you see that the
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very reason you stopped me from entering the ballroom is
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why you can’t tell Arin that your information comes from
me? Let’s not pretend that you don’t know how I came to
look like I did, and why I can’t look that way when I return
to the ballroom.” Kestrel’s gaze dropped to her hands. She
MARIE RUTK
wished she had something to do with them. She imagined
that she held one of those roses on the mantel. She could
almost feel the bloom’s texture, its curled velvet as sink-
ingly soft as the balcony’s curtain.
“Arin and I are impossible,” she said quietly. “Danger-
ous. It’s best that we keep our distance from each other.”
“Yes,” said Tensen. “I see.”
“Do you promise?”
“Would you trust me to keep that promise?”
“I trust my ability to ruin you if you don’t.”
He laughed. It wasn’t quite a disbelieving laugh, only
the kind that the aged sometimes have for the young.
“Then speak, my lady. You have my word.”
Kestrel told him about Thrynne and what the tortured
man had said.
The minister pressed a palm to his mouth, thumb rum-
pling the wrinkles near one eye. As he heard more, his
hand shifted into a fi st, still covering his mouth. He had
the look of someone trying not to be sick.
His hand fell away. “You think that Thrynne had
something important to tell Arin. What did Thrynne over-
hear during the emperor’s meeting with the Senate leader?”
“I don’t know.”
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“You could fi nd out.”
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But Kestrel was already walking toward the door. “No.”
Tensen spread his hands. “Where’s the harm?”
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She shook her head at the obvious absurdity of such a
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question.
“Are you afraid of the risk of fi nding out more?” said
Tensen. “I hear that you love a gamble.”
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“This isn’t a game.”
“Yet you’ve played it well so far. You’re playing it now.”
Kestrel set her hand on the cane blocking the door.
“This kind of conversation won’t happen again. I am not
one of your people. I have my own country and code . . .
and no reason to become your spy.”
“Then why tell me anything at all?”
Kestrel shrugged. “Valorians see little point in the sa-
cred, but we honor the last request of the dying. I’ve told
you what I know for Thrynne’s sake.”
“Only for him?”
Kestrel handed Tensen his cane. “Good night, Minis-
ter. Enjoy the remainder of the ball.”
Verex found Kestrel in a corner of the ballroom pouring
a glass of iced lemon water with fl oating sprigs of mint.
“Where have you been? And why are you serving yourself ?
Here.” He took the cut- crystal dipper from her and poured.
But Kestrel wasn’t really watching him. Her mind was
a curtained balcony. It was fi lled with the memory of warm
movement. Of almost coming undone. Coming close, push-
ing away, letting go . . .
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Verex set the cold cup in her hand. The lemon- mint
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water tasted alien: piercingly sweet and clear.
He took his time pouring a cup for himself. His move-
ments were tense. He seemed constantly on the point of
saying something.
MARIE RUTK
“Thank you,” he fi nally murmured.
“For what?” Kestrel’s heart was made of treason. Didn’t
Verex sense that? Couldn’t he tell? Why would he ever thank
her?
“For the Borderlands game. You helped me win.”
She’d forgotten about that. “Oh. It was nothing.”
“I’m sure to
you
it was,” he said bitterly. His eyes roamed