Read The Winner's Crime Online
Authors: Marie Rutkoski
She wanted to drop her face into her hands. She wanted
to laugh— or weep, she wasn’t sure. Something was churn-
ing inside her that felt frighteningly like panic. She would
MARIE RUTK
have moved to leave if she didn’t think that Arin might
physically stop her— and
that
, if nothing else, would bring
her father into the room.
She tried to speak coolly. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about,” she told Arin. “I’m sure I haven’t done any-
thing for any treaty. I’ve had a wedding to plan. I’ll have
plenty of time for politics when I’m empress.”
“You know exactly which treaty I mean. You placed it
in my hand. And I swear that it has the traces of you
all
over it.
”
“Arin—”
“It gave me my country’s freedom. It saved my life.”
His face was pale, his gray eyes urgent. He towered over
her as she remained sitting. The piano bench felt like a raft
at sea. “What did you do to make the emperor sign it?”
Arin’s anxious voice rang loud. It didn’t matter that he had
spoken in Herrani. Her father knew Herrani. Kestrel knit-
ted her hands. She thought of how her father had told the
deserter to kill himself rather than live with his shame.
Would he do that to her if she answered Arin truthfully?
What would the general do to
him
?
“Arin, please. I did nothing for that treaty. I don’t have
time for your delusions.”
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“But you have time to meet with Tensen. Don’t you?”
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Innocently, she said, “Who?”
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His mouth went hard.
Don’t say it,
Kestrel told him.
Please, please.
She didn’t
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know if Tensen had somehow told Arin, or if Arin had
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guessed, but if he said the word
Moth
out loud . . . she re-
membered her father brushing the moth from Tensen’s
painting to the fl oor. The general’s eyes had questioned the
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sight of a masker moth— infamous eater of fabrics, denizen
of wardrobes— in such an odd place. It wouldn’t take much
for her father to guess what that moth was doing there, and
why.
Especially if Arin asked her if
she
was Tensen’s Moth.
Don’t.
She wanted to shake him.
Don’t
.
Frustration rippled across Arin’s face. She saw him war
with himself.
Yes,
Kestrel told him.
That’s right. You can’t tell the em-
peror’s future daughter the code name of your spy, or admit the
part Tensen plays for you at court. No, don’t say it. What if
you’re wrong? You’ d risk people’s lives. Arin, you can’t.
With forced calm, Arin said, “If I’ve been deluded, it’s
because you have been
pretending
. You’re pretending even
now
. You are not so cold. You tried to help the plains-
people. When we were together in the city tavern—”
Kestrel felt a sinking sickness.
“—I blamed you for the exodus. But poisoning the
horses was better than setting fi re to the plains. Isn’t that
why you chose it? Your father—”
“I love my father.”
Arin drew slightly back. “I know.”
“If I’d given him anything less than the best military
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advice I could, I would have put him in danger.” She only
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now realized this, and was appalled anew at herself. “The
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east burned the plains we took.”
“Yes.” It seemed like Arin would say more, but he
didn’t.
“If my father had been there then . . . many Valorians
MARIE RUTK
died in the fi re.” She thought of Ronan. Her throat closed.
She couldn’t say his name. “If I did what you think I did,
those deaths would be my fault.”
“They deserved it,” he said fl atly. “All those soldiers
cared about was feeding the empire’s appetite. The empire
eats
everything
. Everyone in Herran is weak. We’ve been
taxed too much. There’s been too little food. Now people
are so weak they don’t even want to eat what’s left.”
Kestrel glanced up. “That doesn’t sound like starvation.”
“You know nothing about starvation.”
That silenced her.
Arin sighed. He rubbed hard at his brow, pushing
along the line of the scar, which was poorly disguised by a
cosmetic. “Everyone’s thin, tired. Hollow- eyed. It’s gotten
worse. They sleep most of the day, Sarsine said. Even
she
does. If you could see her . . . she couldn’t stop her hands
from shaking.”
Kestrel’s mind snagged on his last word.
Shaking
. It
made her think— inexplicably—about how she had dyed
her villa’s fountain pink when she was a little girl. She re-
membered telling the water engineer about it, not more
than two months ago. She saw again the red dye spreading
through the water and fading to pink. An experiment.
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Kestrel— had she been ten years old then?— had overheard
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the water engineer talking about a strange word,
dilution
,
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with her father at dinner. He thought well of the engineer,
who had served with him in the war and designed Her-
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ran’s aqueducts. The girl Kestrel decided she should under-
’S
stand how dilution worked.
But dilution had nothing to do with shaking. The
grownup Kestrel frowned, and as she did, she remembered
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that
shaking
had been the imperial physician’s word to de-
scribe the sign that someone had taken his medication for
too long . . . long enough for it to become deadly.
Understanding seeped into her. It spread, red drops in
still water, and she forgot that her father was listening and
watching and judging behind the screen. She forgot even
that Arin’s shoulders were hunched in worry and doubt.
She saw only the meaning of those six imagined Bite and
Sting tiles she had mixed over and over in her mind: the
emperor, the water engineer, the physician, a favor, Herran,
and Valoria.
She knew how they all played out. The pattern stared
her in the face.
The emperor had decided the Herrani were more trou-
ble than they were worth. He decided to have them slowly
poisoned through the water supply. A neat solution to a
troublesome, rebellious people. He had eked as much out
of them as he could. Once they were dead he’d claim the
land again. He’d show the empire Herran’s ultimate re-
ward for rebellion.
It was more important than ever that she speak with
Arin frankly . . . and that she not do so
here
. She looked at
the door. She wasn’t entirely sure her father wouldn’t walk
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through it— maybe even with the palace guard.
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But how could she get Arin to leave? How could she
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follow him, and not have it be blatantly obvious to her
father why? He’d heard the rumors. He had seen her fi ght
a duel on Arin’s behalf in Herran. If all that wasn’t
enough, he must have surely heard the intimacy in Arin’s
MARIE RUTK
voice.
You are not so cold
.
When we were together in the city
tavern . . .
Arin dropped his elbows to the piano’s frame and
leaned to press his face into his palms. “I shouldn’t have
left Sarsine. I shouldn’t have come.”
Kestrel wanted to touch him. He looked so miserable.
Could her father see the longing in her face? It felt like a
burning lamp. If she could, she would have touched three
fi ngers to the back of Arin’s hand: the Herrani gesture of
thanks and regret.
I’m sorry,
she’d say.
Thank you,
she’d say,
because somehow he still believed in her and had guessed
what she’d tried so hard to hide.
I love you,
she’d say. She
almost heard the words. She almost saw her hand reach out.
She craved it.
Slowly, Kestrel said, “You wanted to talk about the
treaty.”
He lifted his head. His face refl ected in the piano lid’s
varnish.
The decision fell on Kestrel like a white sheet. She
would lie one last time, for her father. She would be com-
posed. Convincing. Later she would set things right with
Arin, and tell him everything.
She could do this. She must.
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“You think that I somehow arranged it. Isn’t that what
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you implied? That I swayed the emperor.” Kestrel sank one
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fi nger down on a high key, but slowly, so that it made no
sound. “Does the emperor
seem
easily infl uenced?”
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“No.”
’S
“Yet
I
managed it?”
“Yes.”
She played a merry trill.
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“Please don’t do that.”
She stopped. “Arin,
why
would I persuade the emperor
to off er that treaty? We do agree that it was I who told the
empire of your rebellion, don’t we? It’s common knowl-
edge. I sent war to your doorstep.”
“Yes.”
She said, “We were friends in Herran, weren’t we, for a
time?”
Arin’s reply was hoarse. “Yes.”
“Was what I did the act of a friend?”
“No,” he whispered.
“Yet I did that, and then supposedly arranged this sal-
vifi c treaty. It doesn’t make much sense, Arin.”
“It makes sense,” he said, “if you changed your mind.”
She raised one brow. “That’s a dramatic change in-
deed.”
He was silent.
Kestrel’s fear, which she had briefl y managed to squeeze
shut, opened again. It spread.
She was afraid of failing in this lie. She was afraid of
succeeding. And she was, she realized with a horrible clench
of the heart, very afraid of her father.
Arin faced Kestrel fully: unblinking, eyes gray as a
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wind- torn sky, the scar livid against his drawn cheek. “It
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was
a dramatic change,” he said, “but you made it. I know
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you did.”
Kestrel closed the lid over the keys. Something was com-
ing that she couldn’t control. The game was changing, and
her best option now was to leave. She rose.
MARIE RUTK
Arin stopped her. “I’m not
nothing
to you. I heard what
you were playing.”
She tried to laugh. “I don’t even remember what I was
playing.” Arin’s hand was on her arm. She stepped away
from his touch. What must her father think? She glanced
at the screen. She stared at the door. It didn’t open.
“Why are you doing this?” Arin demanded. “Stop
lying. I heard your music. And I
know.
You bargained with
the emperor for the treaty.”
She heard a faint, scratching sound. Had she imagined
it? It was the sound of a sword drawn from its sheath in a
hidden room. “I didn’t.”
Arin blocked her path.
“Let me go.” Her voice sounded like it was falling apart.
“This is what I think: that there is no change more dra-
matic than you agreeing to marry when you have never—
never
—wanted to marry anyone.”
“We’ve already discussed the many incentives to my
marrying the prince.”
“Have we discussed them all?” He dragged a hand
through his dirty hair. “Kestrel, I feel like I’m going mad.
That I’m seeing things— or
not
seeing things. Just tell me.
Did you . . . are you . . . marrying the prince because of
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me? Was it . . . part of some kind of deal you made with
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the emperor?”
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The silence wasn’t just Kestrel’s. It was her father’s,
too.
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She sucked in a sharp breath. She could say this. She
’S
could do it, she promised herself, because she would make
it better later. She would take it all back very, very soon.
Gently, Kestrel told him, “That sounds like a story.”
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Arin hung back, eyes uncertain, and despite his insis-
tence that he knew what she had done, Kestrel sensed how