Read The Winner's Crime Online
Authors: Marie Rutkoski
whether she wanted to see Arin here in the Winter Garden
or not. And that was a fool’s question. It was pure, punish-
ing foolishness, the mere consideration of either possibility,
when she had already decided that neither should matter.
So it did not matter that her short nails had found a
split in the bark. It did not matter that she was ner vous as
she peeled away a strip of bark in one long curl. Or that she
was unhappy, unrolling the strip like a scroll with a blank
message she couldn’t read.
Then she looked at the bark and thought of Thrynne’s
stripped skin. She dropped the bark. It fl uttered to the
ground. Kestrel lifted her eyes and saw the emperor again.
She emerged from the poison trees. Her footfalls were
-1—
quiet on the path. The fi rst group of courtiers, clustered
0—
98
around a brazier, didn’t notice her arrival.
+1—
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 98
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 98
9/25/14 2:52 PM
9/25/14 2:52 PM
Lady Maris, the Senate leader’s daughter, was murmur-
ing something that unleashed fl urries of breathless giggling
CRIME
from her friends.
’S
“—they all looked like that, I’d free them, too,” Maris
was saying. “Or make him
my
slave.”
Kestrel deliberately stepped on a fallen twig. It snapped.
THE WINNER
Maris glanced up. Her friends went pale and their
laughter died, but Maris’s eyes were defi ant. “Chocolate,
Lady Kestrel?” she off ered. “It’s hot.”
“Yes, thank you.” Kestrel joined the ladies. They made
room, edging away.
Maris lifted the chocolate pot from its stand over the
brazier and poured for Kestrel, who accepted the tiny cup
and sipped. It wasn’t until the chocolate scalded her tongue
that Kestrel knew the exact degree of her anger. It sim-
mered: dark and bitter and somehow even sweet. Kestrel
smiled. “Lady Maris, your father is looking very well. He’s
so tan. Has your family been somewhere sunny?”
“Oh, don’t talk to me about it!” Maris gave a little dra-
matic mew. “It is too, too horrible!”
The other ladies relaxed, relieved that Kestrel seemed
to have no interest in being vengeful. And why should she?
their expressions seemed to say. It had been a bit of harm-
less gossip. In fact, Lady Kestrel ought to be pleased to hear
compliments about the Herrani governor. It couldn’t have
been so bad being his captive, now could it? The ladies saw
quite another side to that Jadis coin.
Kestrel watched them think this through, and shrug
their furred shoulders, and drink their chocolate.
—-1
“Can you believe that my father sailed to the southern
99
—0
—+1
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 99
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 99
9/25/14 2:52 PM
9/25/14 2:52 PM
isles without me?” Maris said. “A luxury trip to blue skies
SKI
O
while his only child languishes here in winter. Though you
can be sure that if
I
had gone, I would never have let the sun
darken my skin. It makes one look so coarse! Like a dock-
worker! Really, what was my father thinking?”
MARIE RUTK
Kestrel shouldn’t have asked Maris about the Senate
leader. She should steer clear of everything to do with him.
She had sworn not to embroil herself any further in Her-
ran’s aff airs.
And yet, she had gotten angry. She was angry still.
And yet, the Senate leader was tan.
And yet, this was unusual.
Her mind kept returning to this detail, like a thumb
rubbing a fl aw in a bolt of silk, or that papery bark of the
poison berry trees.
But so what if the Senate leader was tan? A trip to the
southern isles explained it. She told herself once more to
leave the matter alone.
Yet she didn’t.
“The southern isles have many delights,” Kestrel said.
“Surely your father brought you gifts?”
“No,” said Maris. “The wretch. Oh, I love him, I do,
but couldn’t he have spared one little thought for me? One
little present?”
“He brought you nothing? But the southern isles have
linen, perfume, sugar, silver- tipped tea . . .”
“Stop! Don’t remind me! I can’t bear it!”
“Poor thing,” one of her friends said soothingly. “But
-1—
just think, Maris. Now your many suitors have more choice
0—
100
in gifts to please you.”
+1—
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 100
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 100
9/25/14 2:52 PM
9/25/14 2:52 PM
“They do, don’t they? And they
should
please me.”
“Is that what fashionable young men do in the capital?”
CRIME
Kestrel asked. “Give gifts?”
’S
“Oh, yes . . . though they often ask for something in
return.”
“A kiss!” cried a lady.
THE WINNER
“Or an answer to a riddle,” said another. “Riddles are
very pop u lar. And the answer is always love.” Which made
sense, given that the court was full of young people who
had chosen to marry rather than serve in the military. By
the time they turned twenty, every Valorian had to fi ght for
the empire or begin giving it babies.
Future soldiers
, her
father would say.
The empire must grow,
he’d add, and Kes-
trel would wonder if this was the working of every general’s
mind, or only her father’s: to see something as soft as a baby
and imagine it grown hard enough to kill. And then Kestrel
would shrink from the thought of becoming like her father,
and he would know that he had said the wrong thing, and
then they would both say nothing.
“No, I’ve heard other riddles,” said a girl, drawing Kes-
trel back to the conversation. “Ones with diff erent answers:
a mirror, a candle, an egg . . .”
“I like riddles,” said Kestrel. “Tell me one.”
“There is a riddle that I simply cannot fi gure out,” said
the lady sitting next to Maris. “It is:
I leap without feet to
land, my cloth head is fi lled with sand. I have no wings, yet
try to fl y . . . what am I?
”
Kestrel helped herself to some cream. She wasn’t angry
anymore. The truth was that she, like her father, knew
—-1
1
how good it felt to cut with certain weapons. She took a
10
—0
—+1
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 101
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 101
9/25/14 2:52 PM
9/25/14 2:52 PM
whitened sip of chocolate, the cream cool and pillowy
SKI
O
against her lips. “Maris knows the answer to that riddle,”
she said.
“I?” said Maris. “Not at all. I cannot guess it.”
“Can you not? The answer is a fool.”
MARIE RUTK
Maris’s smile wilted. There was a silence broken only
by the delicate clink of Kestrel setting her cup on the tray.
She gathered her white furs about her and swept away.
She noticed the eastern princess making a move at Bor-
derlands. Her rider hopped over Verex’s pieces to kill an en-
gineer. Verex laughed. The sound surprised Kestrel. He
sounded so happy. Kestrel would have gone to their table, to
fi nd out once and for all just what kind of player the prin-
cess was, and why Verex had laughed as he had. But the
emperor caught Kestrel’s eye. He beckoned her toward him.
“We have a problem,” the emperor told Kestrel as she
approached. “Come help us.” The senators surrounding
him were high- ranking, all with seats in the Quorum. Kes-
trel joined them, grateful that the Senate leader had his
back to his daughter’s coterie.
“Problem?” said Kestrel to the emperor. “Don’t tell me
you’ve run out of chocolate already.”
“A more serious matter,” he said. “The barbarian plains.”
Kestrel glanced at the eastern princess, but Risha was
engaged in her game with Verex, and the emperor’s voice
had been pitched not to carry. Risha possessed a grace
perfectly proportioned to her beauty. Her black hair was
braided like a Valorian’s. She wore rings when a true east-
-1—
2
erner would have kept her fi ngers bare, and the contrast of
0—
10
gold against Risha’s richly dark skin was striking. She was
+1—
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 102
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 102
9/25/14 2:52 PM
9/25/14 2:52 PM
about Kestrel’s age. Maybe Risha didn’t remember much of
her life in the east before her kidnapping. Maybe she had
CRIME
grown accustomed to the capital and thought of it as her
’S
home. Kestrel couldn’t say what the girl would have thought
about the emperor referring to her country as a problem,
and to her people as barbarians. Uncomfortably, Kestrel
THE WINNER
remembered that she’d called them barbarians before,
too, just because that’s what people she knew did. Kestrel
wouldn’t do that now. This seemed at once a meaningful
diff erence and yet also worth very little.
“Your father writes that the plainspeople prove tricky,”
the emperor said. “The eastern tribes at our borders are
skilled at stealth attacks. They vanish when the general
musters his army against them.”
“Burn the plains,” said a senator, a woman who had
served under Kestrel’s father. “They’re dry this time of
year.”
“It’s good land,” said the emperor. “I’d like to turn it
into farms. A fi re would spoil my prize.”
And kill the plainspeople, Kestrel thought, though this
was a factor no one raised. The plains were vast, and north
enough in Dacra that it didn’t rain much there this time of
year. Valorian soliders would set the fi re while the plains-
people slept. They would wake, and they would fl ee to
the river, if they could make it. But a fi re would rage fast
and fi erce through the dry grasses, and by the time the
plainspeople woke it would likely be too late. They’d be
burned alive.
There was some debate about whether a fi re might en-
—-1
danger Valorian troops. But if not, it would be a signifi cant
103
—0
—+1
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 103
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 103
9/25/14 2:52 PM
9/25/14 2:52 PM
victory, argued the Senate leader. The plains lay north of
SKI
O
the delta where the eastern queen ruled. If Valoria captured
the plains, it would squeeze the savages into the southeast-
ern corner of the continent. “And then it’s only a matter of
time,” said the emperor, “before Valoria rules the entire con-
MARIE RUTK
tinent.”
“Then burn the grasses,” said the senator who had been
in the military. “Fire is good for the earth anyway. Eventu-
ally.”
Kestrel watched Risha knock over one of Verex’s pieces,
an unimportant one. Risha shivered in her furs. It was
never cold in the east. Did this knowledge live in Risha’s
memory, or had it been given to her as it had been to Kes-
trel, as a piece of someone else’s information? The princess
was young when she’d been captured, as young as Kestrel
when her family had moved from the capital to the newly
conquered territory of Herran. Maybe Risha didn’t remem-
ber her home at all.
Kestrel saw Herran, and her garden there, and seeds
beneath her childhood fi ngers as her nurse pressed them
into the soft earth.
She saw a plain of fi re. Flames waving and snapping,
horses running wild, tents burned to their frames, then
crackling down. Parents would snatch up their children.
The air would choke hot and black.
“Kestrel?” said the emperor. “What do you think? Your
father wrote that you’ve advised him well on the east before.”
She blinked. The sky was white over the Winter Gar-
-1—
den. The trees dripped their deadly berries. “Poison the
0—
104
horses.”
+1—
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 104
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 104
9/25/14 2:52 PM
9/25/14 2:52 PM
The emperor smiled. “Intriguing. Tell me more.”
“The plainspeople rely on horses,” Kestrel said. “For
CRIME
their milk, their hides, their meat, to ride for hunting . . .
’S
Kill the horses, and the tribes won’t be able to live without
them. They’ll trek south to take refuge in the delta. The
plains will be yours. You’ll mow the grasses and send it to
THE WINNER
feed our own horses. You can plant the earth as soon as you
like.”
“And how do you propose to poison the horses?”
“Water supply,” suggested the military senator.
That might poison people as well. Kestrel shook her
head. “The river is wide and rapid. Any poison would be
diluted. Instead, have my father send scouts to determine
where the horses graze. Spray those grasses with the poison.”
The emperor leaned back in his seat. His cup of choco-
late steamed, veiling his face as he tipped his chin and