Read The Winner's Crime Online
Authors: Marie Rutkoski
“I thought Prince Verex should decide.” If the choice
were left to the prince, the wedding date would be never.
“Why don’t
we
decide?”
“Without him?”
“My dear girl, if the prince’s slippery mind cannot re-
member something so simple as the day and time of a din-
ner with his father and lady, how can we expect him to
plan any part of the most important state event in de cades?”
Kestrel said nothing.
“You’re not eating,” he said.
She sank the clear fork into the cream and lifted it to
her mouth. The fork’s tines dissolved against her tongue.
“Sugar,” she said with surprise. “The fork is made of hard-
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ened sugar.”
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“Do you like the dessert?”
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“Yes.”
“Then you must eat it all.”
But how to fi nish the cream if the fork continued to dis-
solve each time she took a mouthful? Most of the fork re-
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mained in her hand, but it wouldn’t last.
A game. The dessert was a game, the conversation a
game. The emperor wanted to see how she would play.
He said, “I think the end of this month would be ideal
for a wedding.”
Kestrel ate more of the cream. The tines completely
vanished, leaving something that resembled an aborted
spoon. “A winter wedding? There will be no fl owers.”
“You don’t need fl owers.”
“If you know that young ladies like dessert, you must
also know that they like fl owers.”
“I suppose you’d prefer a spring wedding, then.”
Kestrel lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Summer would
be best.”
“Luckily my palace has hot houses. Even in winter, we
could carpet the great hall with petals.”
Kestrel silently ate more of the dessert. Her fork turned
into a fl at stick.
“Unless you want to postpone the wedding,” said the
emperor.
“I’m thinking of our guests. The empire is vast. People
will come from every province. Winter is a terrible time to
travel and spring little better. It rains. The roads become
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muddy.”
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The emperor leaned back in his chair, studying her
with an amused expression.
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“Also,” she said, “I’d hate to waste an opportunity. You
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know that the nobles and governors will give you what
they can— favors, information, gold— for the best seats at
the wedding. The mystery of what I’ll wear and what music
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will be played will distract the empire. No one would notice
if you made a po liti cal decision that would otherwise out-
rage thousands. If I were you, I would enjoy my long en-
gagement. Use it for all it’s worth.”
He laughed. “Oh, Kestrel. What an empress you will
be.” He raised his glass. “To your happy union, on the day
of Firstsummer.”
She would have had to drink to that, had not Prince
Verex entered the dining room and stopped short, his large
eyes showing every shift of emotion: surprise, hurt, anger.
“You’re late,” his father said.
“I am not.” Verex’s hands clenched.
“Kestrel managed to be here on time. Why couldn’t
you?”
“Because you told me the wrong hour.”
The emperor tsked. “You misremember.”
“You’re making me look the fool!”
“
I
am making you look nothing of the kind.”
Verex’s mouth snapped shut. His head bobbed on his
thin neck like something caught in a current.
“Come,” Kestrel said gently. “Have dessert with us.”
The look he shot her told Kestrel that he might hate his
father’s games, but he hated her pity more. He fl ed the room.
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Kestrel toyed with her stub of a sugar fork. Even after
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the prince’s noisy course down the hall had dwindled into
silence, she knew better than to speak.
“Look at me,” the emperor said.
She raised her eyes.
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“You don’t want a summer wedding for the sake of fl ow-
ers, or guests, or po liti cal purchase,” he said. “You want to
postpone it for as long as possible.”
Kestrel held the fork tightly.
“I’ll give you what you want, within reason,” he said,
“and I will tell you why. Because I don’t blame you, given
your bridegroom. Because you don’t whine for what you
want, but seek to win it. Like I would. When you look at
me, you see who you will become. A ruler. I have chosen
you, Kestrel, and will make you into everything my son
cannot be. Someone fi t to take my place.”
Kestrel looked, and her look became a stare that searched
for her future in an old man capable of cruelty to his own
child.
He smiled. “Tomorrow I’d like for you to meet with
the captain of the imperial guard.”
She had never met the captain before, but was familiar
enough with his role. Offi
cially, he was responsible for the
emperor’s personal safety. Unoffi
cially, this duty spread to
others that no one discussed. Surveillance. Assassinations.
The captain was good at making people vanish.
“He has something to show you,” the emperor said.
“What is it?”
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“A surprise. Now look happy, Kestrel. I’m giving you
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everything that you could want.”
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Sometimes the emperor
was
generous. She’d seen audi-
ences with him where he’d given senators private land in
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new colonies, or powerful seats in the Quorum. But she’d
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also seen how his generosity tempted others to ask for just a
little more. Then his eyes went heavy- lidded, like a cat’s, and
she would see how his gifts made people reveal what they
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really wanted.
Nonetheless, she couldn’t help hoping that the wed-
ding could be put off for longer than a few months. First-
summer was better than next week, of course, but still too
soon. Much too soon. Would the emperor agree to a year?
More? She said, “Firstsummer—”
“Is the perfect date.”
Kestrel’s gaze fell to her closed hand. It opened with a
sweet scent and rested empty on the table.
The sugar fork had vanished against the heat of her
palm.
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2
ARIN WAS IN HIS FATHER’S STUDY, WHICH HE
probably would never be able to think of as his own, no
matter how old the ghosts of his dead family grew.
It was a clear day. The view from the study window
showed the city in detail, with its ruined patches left by the
rebellion. The pale wafer of a winter sun gave Herran’s har-
bor a blurry glow.
Arin wasn’t thinking of her. He wasn’t. He was think-
ing of how slowly the city walls were being rebuilt. Of the
hearthnut harvest soon to come in the southern countryside,
and how it would bring much- needed food and trade to
Herran. He wasn’t thinking of Kestrel, or of the past month
and a week of not thinking of her. But not thinking was
like lifting slabs of rock, and he was so distracted by the
strain of it that he didn’t hear Sarsine enter the room, or
notice his cousin at all until she had shoved an opened let-
ter at him.
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The broken seal showed the sigil of crossed swords. A
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letter from the Valorian emperor. Sarsine’s face told Arin
that he wouldn’t like what he was about to read.
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“What is it?” he asked. “Another tax?” He rubbed his
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eyes. “The emperor must know we can’t pay, not again, not
so soon after the last levy. This is ruinous.”
“Well, now we see why the emperor so kindly returned
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Herran to the Herrani.”
They had discussed this before. It seemed the only ex-
planation to such an unexpected decision. Revenues from
Herran used to go into the pockets of the Valorian aristo-
crats who had colonized it. Then came the Firstwinter Re-
bellion and the emperor’s decree, and those aristocrats had
returned to the capital, the loss of their land named as a
cost of war. Now the emperor was able to bleed Herran dry
through taxes its people were unable to protest. The terri-
tory’s wealth fl owed directly into imperial coff ers.
A devious move. But what worried Arin most was the
nagging sense that he was missing something. It had been
hard to think that day when Kestrel had handed him the
emperor’s off er and demands. It had been hard to see any-
thing but the gold line that had marked her brow.
“Just tell me how much it’ll cost this time,” he said to
Sarsine.
Her mouth screwed into a knot. “Not a tax. An invita-
tion.” She left the room.
Arin unfolded the paper. His hands went still.
As governor of Herran, Arin was requested to attend a
ball in the Valorian capital.
In honor of the engagement of
Lady Kestrel to Crown Prince Verex
, read the letter.
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Sarsine had called it an invitation, but Arin recognized
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it for what it was: an order, one that he had no power to
disobey, even though he was supposedly no longer a slave.
Arin’s eyes lifted from the page and gazed upon the
harbor. When Arin had worked on the docks, one of the
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other slaves was known as the Favor- Keeper.
Slaves had no possessions, or at least nothing that their
Valorian conquerors would recognize as such. Even if Arin
had
had something of his own, he had no pockets to hold
it. Clothes with pockets went to house slaves only. This
was the mea sure of life under the Valorians: that the Her-
rani people knew their place according to whether they
had pockets and the illusion of being able to keep some-
thing private within them.
Yet slaves still had a currency. They traded favors. Extra
food. A thicker pallet. The luxury of a few minutes of rest
while someone else worked. If a slave on the docks wanted
something, he asked the Favor- Keeper, the oldest Herrani
among them.
The Favor- Keeper kept a ball of thread with a diff erent-
colored string for each man. If Arin had had a request, his
string would have been spooled and looped and spindled
around another one, perhaps yellow, and that yellow string
might have wound its way about a green one, depending on
who owed what. The Favor- Keeper’s knot recorded it all.
But Arin had had no string. He had asked for nothing.
He gave nothing. Already a young man then, he had de-
spised the thought of being in debt to anyone.
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Now he studied the Valorian emperor’s letter. It was
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beautifully inked. Artfully phrased. It fi t well with Arin’s
surroundings, with the liquid- like varnish of his father’s desk
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and the leaded glass windows that shot winter light into
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the study.
The light made the emperor’s words all too easy to read.
Arin crushed the paper into his fi st and squeezed hard.
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He wished for a Favor- Keeper. He would forsake his pride
to become a simple string, if only he could have what he
wanted.
Arin would trade his heart for a snarled knot of thread
if it meant he would never have to see Kestrel again.
He consulted with Tensen. The el der ly man studied the
uncrumpled and fl attened invitation, his pale green eyes
gleaming. He set the thick, wrinkled page on Arin’s desk
and tapped the fi rst line of writing with one dry fi nger.
“This,” he said, “is an excellent opportunity.”
“Then you’ll go,” said Arin.
“Of course.”
“Without me.”
Tensen pursed his lips. He gave Arin that schoolmas-
ter’s look that had served him well as a tutor to Valorian
children. “Arin. Let’s not be proud.”
“It’s not pride. I’m too busy. You’ll represent Herran at
the ball.”
“I don’t think that the emperor will be satisfi ed with a