Read The Winner's Crime Online
Authors: Marie Rutkoski
she was a prisoner being led to her cell. Kestrel’s heartbeat
tricked her; it fumbled at the thought of being caught at
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some crime, of being locked up in the dark.
They passed a cell. Fingers curled like white worms
through the bars of the cell’s small window. A voice rasped
something in a language Kestrel didn’t recognize. It had a
lisping quality she couldn’t place until she realized that this
must be the sound of someone who had no teeth. She shrank
back.
“Keep away from the bars,” said the captain. “This
way,” he added, as if there were any way but down.
When the staircase fi nally ran out of steps, it threw
Kestrel off balance to stand on unstaggered ground. The
corridor smelled like wet rock and sewage.
The captain opened a cell and ushered Kestrel inside. For
a moment she hesitated, instantly and wildly sure that he
meant to trap her here. Her hand went to the dagger at
her hip.
The captain chuckled. The sound triggered a metal-
lic rattle in the corner of the cell, and the captain lifted
his lamp to illuminate a sitting man who strained at
chains embedded in the wall. His bare heels scrubbed the
uneven fl oor as he tried to push back, away from the cap-
tain.
“Don’t worry,” the captain said to Kestrel. “He’s harm-
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less. Here.” He passed her the lamp, then dragged on a
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loose end of chain to draw the prisoner tight against the
wall. The man shuddered and wept. He began to pray to
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all hundred of the Herrani gods.
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She didn’t recognize him. A relief. Then came a clammy
shame. What did it matter if she knew him or not? The
prisoner was going to suff er. She could see his suff ering
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written in the captain’s lamplit eyes.
Kestrel would not stay. She could not watch. She turned
toward the door.
“That’s against the emperor’s rules,” the captain told
her. “He said that you have to be here for the whole of it.
He said that if you became uncooperative, I should cut off
this man’s fi ngers instead of his skin.”
The prisoner’s prayer halted. Shakily, it started up
again.
Kestrel felt like that thin, keening voice. Like the sound
of a gear cranked tight and then let go. “I don’t belong
here,” she said.
“You’re my future empress,” said the captain. “You do.
Or did you think that ruling meant only dresses and
dances?” He checked that the chain was taut. The man hung
from his bonds. “The lamp, my lady.” The captain beckoned
her closer.
The prisoner lifted his head. Lamplight fl ared on his
eyes, and even though Kestrel knew that this broken man
wasn’t Arin— the prisoner was too old, his features too
delicate— her heart seized. They were ordinary eyes for a
Herrani. But gray and clear, just like Arin’s. And it sud-
denly seemed that Arin was the one stumbling over the
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name of the god of mercy, that
he
was begging her for
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something she had no idea how to give.
“The
lamp
,” the captain said again. “Are you going to
be diffi
cult so soon, Lady Kestrel?”
She came forward. She saw, then, the outline of a
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bucket near the prisoner, fi lled to the brim with feces and
urine, and that the man’s right hand was a padded mitten
of gauze.
The captain stripped it off . The prisoner choked on his
prayer.
The skin on three fi ngers was missing.
Kestrel caught a glimpse of pink muscle and creamy,
glistening bands of tendon. Her stomach heaved. The cap-
tain pulled a small table from a dark corner of the cell and
fl attened the man’s hand across it, palm up.
“What is your name?” the captain asked him. When
there was no answer, the Valorian drew his dagger and cut
into the prisoner’s fourth fi nger. Blood fountained up.
“Stop,” Kestrel begged. “Stop this.”
The prisoner thrashed, but was pinioned by the wrist.
The captain raised his dagger again.
Kestrel caught his arm. Her fi ngers dug in, and the
captain’s face seemed to open— almost greedily, with a
shine that said that he had awaited her failure. That’s
what this was. Kestrel had been failing the emperor’s test
even without knowing its criteria. Every hesitation was a
black mark against her. Each ounce of her pity was being
tallied by the captain, hoarded to be tipped out later be-
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fore the emperor, spilled before him to say,
Look what a
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pathetic girl she is. How weak of will. She has no stomach
to rule.
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She didn’t. Not if this was what ruling an empire
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meant.
She wasn’t sure what she would have done next if the
prisoner hadn’t gone still. He was staring at Kestrel. His
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eyes were wide, streaming. Stunned. He recognized her. She
didn’t know him. The urgency of his expression, however,
was that of someone who has found a familiar key to a box
he is desperate to unlock.
“My name is Thrynne,” he whispered to her in Her-
rani. “Tell him that I—”
The captain shook off Kestrel’s slackened grip and
rounded on the prisoner. “You’ll tell me yourself.” The captain
spoke Herrani with heavily accented fl uency. “It’s good
that you’re ready to talk. Now, Thrynne. What were you
saying? Tell me
what
?”
The prisoner’s mouth worked soundlessly. Blood welled
across the table. The captain’s blade gleamed.
Kestrel was calm now. It was the way the prisoner was
looking at her— as if she were a stroke of good fortune. She
couldn’t betray that, even if she didn’t understand it. She
would make herself capable. She would handle what ever
his expression was asking her to handle.
“I don’t remember,” Thrynne said.
“Tell me or I’ll strip you bare.”
“Captain,” said Kestrel. “He’s confused. Give him a
moment—”
“
You
are confused if you think to interfere with my
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interrogation. You’re here to listen. Thrynne, I asked you a
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question. Stop looking at her. She isn’t important. I am.”
Thrynne’s gaze jumped between them. He made a
guttural sound, urgent and rough, with the slight whine of
tamped- down pain. He focused on Kestrel. “Please,” he said
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hoarsely, “he needs to know.”
The captain peeled off a piece of skin and fl icked it into
the bucket.
Thrynne screamed. The scream broken by sucked
breaths, it rang through Kestrel’s head.
She reached for the captain. She tried to snag the hand
that held his blade. He shoved her back easily, and without
even looking, she fell.
“Don’t refuse
me
, Thrynne,” said the captain. “ ‘No’
doesn’t exist anymore. Only ‘yes.’ Do you understand?”
The scream was bitten off . “Yes.”
Kestrel got to her feet. “Captain—”
“Quiet. You’re only making this worse.” To Thrynne
he said, “What were you doing eavesdropping outside the
doors of a private meeting between the emperor and the
Senate leader?”
“Nothing! Cleaning. I clean.”
“That sounds like a ‘no’ to me.”
“No! I mean, yes, yes, I was sweeping the fl oor. I clean.
I’m a servant.”
“You’re a slave,” the captain corrected, though the em-
peror had issued a decree that emancipated the Herrani.
“Aren’t you?”
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“Yes. I am.”
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Kestrel had quietly drawn her dagger. If the captain
kept his back to her, she might be able to do something. It
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didn’t matter that her combat skills were pitiful. She could
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stop him.
Maybe.
“And why,” the captain said to Thrynne in a gentle
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voice, “why were you listening outside that door?”
The dagger in Kestrel’s hand shook. She smelled the
emperor’s perfumed oil on the captain. She forced herself
close. The breakfast milk swam up her throat.
Thrynne tore his gaze from the captain to glance at
her. “Money,” he said. “This is the year of money.”
“Ah,” said the captain. “Now we come to it. You were
paid to listen, weren’t you?”
“No—”
The captain’s knife came down. Kestrel vomited, her
dagger falling into the shadows. The sound of it hitting stone
was lost in Thrynne’s shriek. She wiped her mouth on her
sleeve; she was not looking, she was pressing hands to her
ears. She barely heard the captain say, “Who?
Who
paid
you?”
But there was no answer. Thrynne had fainted.
Kestrel took to her rooms like someone sick. Infected. She
bathed until she felt boiled. She left her ruined dress where
it lay, balled up on the bathing room fl oor. Then she climbed
into bed, hair loose and damp, and thought.
Or tried to think. She tried to think about what she
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should do. Then she noticed that the feather blanket, thick
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yet light, quivered like a living thing. She was shaking.
She remembered Cheat, the Herrani leader. Arin had
answered to him, followed him. Loved him. Yes, she knew
that Arin had loved him.
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Cheat had always threatened Kestrel’s hands. To break
them, cut off fi ngers, crush them with his own. He had
seemed obsessed with them, until he became obsessed with
her in a diff erent way. She felt it again: that cold roll of hor-
ror as she began to understand what he wanted and what
he would do to get it.
He was dead now. Arin had gutted him. Kestrel had
seen it. She’d seen Cheat die, and she reassured herself that
he could not hurt her. Kestrel stared at her hands, whole and
undamaged. They were not peeled and bloody meat. They
were slim, nails kept short for the piano. Skin soft.
Her hands were pretty, she supposed. Spread against
the blanket, they seemed the height of uselessness.
What could she do?
Help the prisoner escape? That would require a strat-
egy hinged upon enlisting the help of others. Kestrel didn’t
have enough leverage over the captain. No one in the capi-
tal owed her favors. She didn’t know the court’s secrets. She
was new to the palace and had no one’s loyalty here, not for
help with such an insane plan.
And if she were caught? What would the emperor do to
her
?
And if she did nothing?
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prison had already cost too much.
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This is the year of money
, Thrynne had said. He had
spoken the words as if they were meant for her. It was an
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odd phrase. Yet familiar. Perhaps it was as the captain had
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assumed: Thrynne was revealing that he had been paid to
gather of information. The emperor had many enemies, not
all of them foreign. A rival in the Senate might have
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employed Thrynne.
But as the feather blanket stilled, transforming into a
peaked fi eld of snow over Kestrel’s tucked- in knees, she re-
membered her Herrani nurse saying, “This is the year of
stars.”
Kestrel had been little. Enai was tending to her skinned
knee. Kestrel hadn’t been a clumsy girl, but she had always
tried too hard, with predictable bruised and bloodied results.
“Be careful,” Enai had said, wrapping the gauze. “This is
the year of stars.”
It had seemed such a curious thing to say. Kestrel had
asked for an explanation. “You Valorians mark the years
by numbers,” Enai had said, “but we mark them by our
gods. We cycle through the pantheon, one god of the
hundred for each year. The god of stars rules this year, so
you must mind your feet and gaze. This god loves acci-
dents. Beauty, too. Sometimes when the god is vexed or
simply bored, she decides that the most beautiful thing is