Read The Winner's Crime Online
Authors: Marie Rutkoski
“Tensen hopes that you will— soon.”
THE WINNER
Kestrel said nothing, but Deliah nodded as if she’d
spoken. The dressmaker looked somehow both disap-
pointed and relieved. “Well,” Deliah said, “I’m sure you
know what you’re doing.”
Did
Kestrel know? She thought of when she sat to play
Bite and Sting. When Kestrel turned the tiles, and fl ipped
the blank sides onto their backs, and showed their faces
and tallied their value, did she know? Sometimes the game
went too quickly for Kestrel to understand exactly what
she was doing. All she knew was that in the fi nal play she
would win.
Kestrel looked at Deliah. She wasn’t certain of winning
anymore, or even of what she could possibly hope to win.
She didn’t know what winning would mean.
Smoothly, she told Deliah, “Of course I do.”
There was a hunt in the mountain forest behind the pal-
ace. The hounds bayed. A few courtiers brought slaves to
load their crossbows for them, which would have appalled
Kestrel’s father, had he seen it. He’d chosen to stay behind.
Verex came, but refused to hunt. The emperor smiled
widely. “There’s my milk- blooded boy,” he said.
339
—-1
—0
—+1
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 339
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 339
9/25/14 2:53 PM
9/25/14 2:53 PM
“Walk with me, Verex,” said Kestrel. “I’ve no interest in
SKI
O
hunting either.”
They took the trail ahead of the emperor. Kestrel’s
puppy bounded alongside her.
“What a sweet dog,” Kestrel heard Maris say.
MARIE RUTK
The emperor’s cheerful voice fl oated clear. “Do you like
her?”
Verex stiff ened beside Kestrel.
“She’s yours,” the emperor told Maris.
Kestrel turned. “No. She’s mine.”
“What do you care if Maris has her?” There was that
smile again. “You haven’t even named her.”
“Let her go,” Verex whispered in Kestrel’s ear. “Re-
member.” He didn’t say what she should remember, but
Kestrel did anyway: Arin’s stitched face.
The dog nudged her damp nose against Kestrel’s trou-
sered leg.
“Her name,” Kestrel told the emperor, “is
Mine
.”
He shrugged and looked careless. Maris, with a court-
ier’s instinct, had caught the scent of danger and waited to
see what would happen next. When nothing did, and noth-
ing more was said, she moved to catch up with her friends.
Later that afternoon, the emperor shot a fox. “For my
daughter.” Blood marbled its reddish ruff . Its little black
feet looked like dried paintbrushes. The emperor declared
that its fur would be made into a stole for Kestrel.
When the court headed down to the castle and Verex
was walking alongside Risha, the emperor fell in step with
-1—
340
Kestrel.
0—
+1—
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 340
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 340
9/25/14 2:53 PM
9/25/14 2:53 PM
He wasn’t smiling anymore, but the smile was in his
hardened voice, trapped there: an insect in amber. “Don’t
CRIME
be more trouble than you’re worth,” he said.
’S
“Give the dog away,” Kestrel told Verex. She had held the
THE WINNER
prince back on the palace lawn, its grass soft and fi ne, the
green brightly pale. The other courtiers had gone ahead.
“Find her a home far from the court. Find the right per-
son.”
“
You
are the right person.”
Kestrel’s eyes stung. The puppy sat and happily chewed
her paws.
Verex said, “This is my fault.”
Kestrel said no. She said that she could no longer look
at this dog, this warm and perfect gift, without seeing it
hurt. It was diff erent to give something up than to see it
taken away. The diff erence, Kestrel said, was choice. A lim-
ited freedom, but better than none. Or so she had thought
when Arin had given her two keys to his guarded house.
She had thought the same when she’d off ered him his
country, nailed and bound and screwed tight with certain
conditions. Better than nothing. She’d thought this before,
and thought it again, but she didn’t believe it anymore.
Now she knew that to give something up
was
to have it
taken away.
Kestrel said all this silently to herself. The words felt so
loud inside her head that she almost forgot that she hadn’t
actually spoken them. But then she looked again at Verex
341
—-1
—0
—+1
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 341
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 341
9/25/14 2:53 PM
9/25/14 2:53 PM
and saw him waiting, worried, and remembered what he’d
SKI
O
said last. She shook her head:
no.
Quietly, Verex said, “My father needs for you to love
him best. He needs for you to love what he loves. There’s
no room for anything else.”
MARIE RUTK
“I know.”
“I’m not sure you do. Kestrel, your dressmaker is dead.”
The news dropped hard. It sank and hit bottom. Kes-
trel saw Deliah, the woman’s gray eyes lined with heavy
lashes— Arin’s eyes— as she lifted the ivory hem of the
dress. The fabric went sheer, then solid as it settled. The
skirt had swelled like a lung, then sighed.
Fear came over Kestrel in a nasty, shimmering breath-
lessness.
“She was seen meeting with the Herrani minister of
agriculture,” Verex said. “Later, the captain of the guard
came for her. She killed herself with her own shears.”
Kestrel remembered Thrynne’s bloody fi ngers in the
guttering prison light.
“The meeting with the minister wasn’t why the captain
was sent,” Verex said. “That was an excuse. The real reason
happened the day your governor left. The reason was the
stitches on his face. Neat seams. Kestrel, don’t you remem-
ber how perfect they were? My father saw. That dressmak-
er’s loyalty to Arin was clear on his face.”
The puppy was licking Kestrel’s palm. Warm wet skin,
cooling. Breath gently huff ed into Kestrel’s hand. The sky
was a feather blanket of clouds, save for one blue hole in
-1—
342
the fabric. A blue cloud in a white sky.
0—
+1—
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 342
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 342
9/25/14 2:53 PM
9/25/14 2:53 PM
The hole grew wider, bluer. It pulled itself open. It si-
lently stretched, like Kestrel’s guilt, like the moment when
CRIME
she’d seen Arin’s sewn cheek, like her father’s gaze, drawn
’S
to the moth on the painting’s frame. Kestrel saw satin
blue, the color of Jess’s dress. Powdered-sugar clouds, Kes-
trel thought. In her memory, Ronan handed her a cake.
THE WINNER
She tasted it. It ate into her tongue like poison.
Verex said, “You need to watch yourself. If you play
against my father, you’ll lose. This kind of game isn’t about
intelligence, Kestrel. It’s about experience. And you’re con-
fl icted, and so . . .
hurt
that . . .” He shook his head. “Please,
just don’t do anything reckless.”
“For how long?”
“You know.”
Kestrel rested her wet palm on the big puppy’s black
skull.
Mine
, she thought. Then she lifted her hand away
and told Verex to take the dog by the collar.
How long? Until the emperor was dead.
“Kestrel . . . one day, we could change things.”
She looked up from the dog and at Verex, at his long,
thin frame, the hunched shoulders, the shock of pale hair,
the large, liquid eyes.
She wondered what would happen if she took his free
hand. She wondered if he would imagine that Risha, not
she, held his hand, and if this was how Kestrel’s marriage
to him would always be. She saw herself and Verex holding
each other. She felt, almost, the kindness of it . . . and she
felt, surely, its cruelty. Its claim on them. Its crime as they
each pretended the other was someone else.
343
—-1
—0
—+1
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 343
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 343
9/25/14 2:53 PM
9/25/14 2:53 PM
“I will never keep you from Risha,” she said.
SKI
O
“I wouldn’t do this to her,” he said. “If—”
There was no need to fi nish. They both knew what the
emperor was capable of doing to the princess if Verex de-
fi ed him.
MARIE RUTK
“We could remake the world,” Verex said. “Would it be
so bad, to rule the empire together?”
It had been a question Kestrel hadn’t allowed herself to
ask. Now she did. The question kept asking itself, an echo
with no answer.
“We can do this,” Verex said, “if we wait. If we’re care-
ful. Kestrel, can you be careful?”
In her mind, Kestrel played the tiles.
The emperor.
The water engineer.
The physician.
A favor.
Herran.
Valoria.
She noted the new engravings. She arranged them in
diff erent orders. She sought a pattern and came up empty.
She mixed the tiles again. But the emperor made it hard to
think. She fl ipped his tile so she wouldn’t have to look at
him.
Its other side, however, wasn’t blank. It showed her fa-
ther’s face.
-1—
What game was this?
0—
344
What did Kestrel think she was doing?
+1—
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 344
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 344
9/25/14 2:53 PM
9/25/14 2:53 PM
Hadn’t she lost enough? Hadn’t she done enough? She
remembered Verex’s advice.
CRIME
The riddle of the engineer and physician wasn’t hers to
’S
solve. She needed to stop.
Yes, stop playing, Kestrel, she told herself. Clear the
bets, clear the table. Walk away from the game.
THE WINNER
Now.
—-1
345
—0
—+1
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 345
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 345
9/25/14 2:53 PM
9/25/14 2:53 PM
40
FIRST, ARIN MADE THE MOLDS. ONE, THE SIZE
and shape of a child’s marble. The other, long and thin and
cylindrical. He made two of each kind from fi red clay and
set the twinned halves aside. He heated lead in the forge’s
fi re until the metal oozed red.
Arin had been a blacksmith, but blacksmiths rarely
work with molds. His clay molds cracked. Hot lead spilled.
There was nothing to do but let everything cool into a mis-
begotten heap and shove it to the side.
It was maddening. And surprising, how Arin realized
that he needed those hours in the forge, how work he was
once forced to do was now
his
. He loved that feeling of
making something. He smoothed fresh clay, curving it,
hollowing it out with a mea sured tool. He watched new
molds bake in the forge’s fi re.
When they broke again, he almost didn’t mind. He
would make more. One day, they would be right.
-1—
0—
+1—
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 346
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 346
9/25/14 2:53 PM
9/25/14 2:53 PM
Arin had told the queen and her brother not to enter the
forge. Roshar did anyway, his arm still heavily ban daged,
CRIME
the little tiger padding behind him.
’S
“I think”— Roshar surveyed the disarray—“that you
should have taken that dagger and been happy with it.”
Arin handed him a list. “Supplies.”
THE WINNER
“My, how the lowly have risen. I’m not your messenger
boy.” He read the list. “What do you want
that
for? What
are you making?”
“Your queen’s
something more
.”
Roshar laughed. “She asked you for ‘something more’?
I doubt that this”— he fl ourished the list at Arin’s latest
disaster—“was what she had in mind.”
The tiger nipped Arin’s ankle. He gently nudged its
face away. “Roshar, why are you here?”
“I’ve named the cub. I named him after you.”
“Roshar.”
“When Arin grows up, you’ll be sentenced to death by
tiger in the Dacran arena. Arin will eat you alive.”
Arin looked at Roshar’s feral grin, and at the soft,
mazed face of the tiger. The fi re caught its eyes.
Roshar said, “I came to tell you that we burned the
plains yesterday.”
Arin glanced up. The green paint that lined Roshar’s
eyes made them look narrower, bright. Roshar’s smile
changed. It dug in deep. “Casualties?” Arin asked.
“Many.”
“Good.”
“Not quite good enough for you, I’m afraid. You gave
—-1
sound advice, I admit, but that won’t buy your alliance. I
347
—0
—+1
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 347
135-58876_ch01_2P.indd 347
9/25/14 2:53 PM
9/25/14 2:53 PM
don’t see how
this
will either.” Roshar looked contemptu-
SKI
O
ously at the items littering the forge’s worktable.