The Winner's Crime (61 page)

would allow. They were drawing closer.

“Did a senator corner you?” Verex asked. “They’ll do

that. They’ll try to worm their way into your good graces

for a chance to infl uence my father. Well, Kestrel? Where

were
you? And what . . .” He frowned, peering closely at

her. “Your mark has faded.”

“Oh,” she said. “I have a headache.” As the courtiers

watched, she rubbed at her forehead, smudging the mark.

She hoped the gesture seemed casual, absentminded, as if

she had been doing it all eve ning.

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Arin rambled around the palace suite he was to share with

Tensen. It was not small or large, neither luxurious nor

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spare. Arin had thought that the palace steward would as-

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sign the Herrani contingent an insulting set of rooms, but

this suite seemed chosen to send the message that the Her-

rani didn’t matter one way or the other.

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He shrugged off his shirt. It was early in the eve ning,

not yet midnight. The ball was still whirling on its giddy

axis. Tensen hadn’t returned.

Arin could smell Kestrel’s perfume on him. It exhaled

faintly from his shirt, mingled with the scent of the sea.

Folding the fabric— or not really folding it, more smooth-

ing it out over the back of a dressing room chair, as if the

cloth were a living thing that needed soothing— Arin found

a hole in the seam where the shoulder met the body. He

worked a fi nger through the rip and swore.

Well, it was an old shirt. He had worn his fi nest clothes.

He’d torn them out of the trunk upon his arrival in the

palace and fl ung them on, fumbling with the cuff s, know-

ing he was late for the ball. Maybe the hole had happened

then, in his haste.

It would have happened sooner or later. All of his best

garments were ten years old. They had been his father’s.

They fi t Arin badly. Even after alterations, it seemed

that there wasn’t enough room anywhere. His father had

been an elegant man, his proportions artistic. If he stood

here now next to Arin, a stranger would never guess they

were related.

Arin pressed a hand to his face. He felt the bones that

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made him look so diff erent. There was the prickle of a

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beard.

How ridiculous he must have looked next to those pol-

ished courtiers, with his ill- fi tting clothes and unshaven face.

How rough, how thuggish.

MARIE RUTK

How wrong.

Arin fl icked open a straight razor, fi lled the washbasin,

and lathered soap. He tried to shave without looking too

closely at his face in the washbasin mirror.

A nick pinkened the lather with blood.

He kept at it, more attentive this time, until he had fi n-

ished, wiped off the lather, and poured water over his bowed

head. He looked up again, dripping. His face was clear.

Sometimes Arin could see the boy he had been before

the war. When he did, he usually felt a tenderness for that

child as if he were wholly other than Arin, not part of him-

self at all. That boy didn’t blame Arin, exactly, for existing

when he did not, but when Arin caught a glimpse of the

child, usually lingering about the eyes, Arin always looked

away. He would feel a small sharpness, like the nick of the

razor.

Arin’s face was wet, his hair black with water. He shiv-

ered, suddenly aware of the winter. He searched for some-

thing to wear, and pulled on a nightshirt and robe.

Arin felt again his ner vous ness as he’d stood outside

the balcony curtain. The curtain had swung after Kestrel

had closed it behind her, and he’d gingerly touched its

sway. He remembered that hunted expression she had

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And then there, in the dark, with her . . . it made Arin’s

throat tighten as if he were thirsty.
Prove it,
he’d told her,

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words thick with desire, full of a traitorous kind of confi -

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dence, one that came and then abandoned him and then

returned and left in such rapid tides that he couldn’t keep

his footing.
Prove that you want him
. Kestrel had pushed

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him away.

He could have sworn that he had sensed in her the

same wish that was in him. It had been on her skin like a

scent. Hadn’t it? But then Arin remembered how she’d es-

caped his house in Herran. He saw her again on the har-

bor: her hand on a weapon, that fl ash in her eyes. It had

wrecked him.
He
had done this, he had made this, had lied

to her, tricked her, killed her people, killed what ever it was

that had made Kestrel open up to him on Firstwinter

night . . . before she knew his treachery.

Of course she had chosen someone else.

There was a knock at the dressing room door.

“Arin?” Tensen called. “Can I come in?”

No,
Arin wanted to say, and had he still been in front of

the mirror and could have seen his face he
would
have said

it, because his refl ection would have shown something vul-

nerable and uncertain, and he would have despised it. He

wouldn’t have let anyone see him then.

Tensen knocked again.

Arin’s wet hair was cold. A chilly rivulet crept down his

neck. Arin dried himself off , rubbing a towel at his short

hair as he kept his back to the mirror. He went to open the

door.

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Tensen scrutinized Arin, which made the younger man’s

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jaw go tight. But Tensen gave him an easy smile, pulled up

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the dressing room chair, and sat gustily down. “That,” he

said, “was exhausting. And profi table.”

“What have you learned?” Arin asked.

Tensen told him about Thrynne.

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“Gods,” Arin said.

“No, Arin. I won’t have that look on your face. Thrynne

knew what he risked when he came to the capital. He did

it for Herran.”

“I asked him to.”

“We all make our choices. What would you choose:

Herran’s sake, or yours?”

Arin’s answer was quick. “Herran’s.”

Tensen said nothing for a moment, only gazed up at

him with the pensiveness of someone considering a ques-

tion not so easily answered. Arin didn’t like that expression,

he bristled at it, but before he could speak, Tensen said,

“What would you have
me
choose?”

“I can’t tell you what to choose for yourself.”

“No, what would you have me choose for
you
? Say that

you were in Thrynne’s position— imprisoned, worse— and

my intervention could help you but hurt our country.

What should I do?”

“Leave me there.”

“Yes,” Tensen said slowly. “That’s what I thought you’d

say.”

Arin threaded fi ngers through his damp hair and

tugged until his scalp hurt. “Are you sure of this news?”

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“My source is good.”

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“Who?”

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Tensen waved a hand. “No one important.”

“But who?”

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“I promised not to tell. Don’t make an old man break

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his promises.”

Arin frowned, but said only, “This isn’t the year of

money. And what
did
Thrynne overhear the emperor and

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Senate leader say?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll fi nd out.”

“Caution, Arin. I myself might have a way.”

“Oh?”

Tensen smiled. “A new recruit.” He refused to say any-

thing more. He found a comfortable position in his chair

and changed the subject in a way that spun Arin’s head.

“Well, I think they make a charming couple.”

“What?”

“The prince and Lady Kestrel.”

Arin had known whom Tensen had meant.

“Their kiss was sweet,” said the spymaster. “One would

assume their marriage was just a po liti cal alliance—
I
cer-

tainly did, until I saw them kiss.”

Arin stared.

“You must have missed it,” Tensen said. “It was at the

beginning of the ball. But of course you were late.”

“Yes,” Arin said fi nally. “I was.”

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10

KESTREL CREPT INTO BED AT DAWN, FOOTSORE

from dancing. She hung her unbuckled dagger from its

hook on the bedpost. She shivered, more from fatigue than

cold, as she got beneath the blankets next to Jess. The other

girl lay sleeping, curled on her side.

“Jess,” Kestrel whispered. “I broke your necklace.”

Jess gropingly stretched out her hand and caught Kes-

trel’s. “I’ll make you another one,” she murmured. Eyes

still shut, she frowned. “I saw him at the ball.”

“Who?” But Kestrel knew who, and Jess slipped back

into sleep.

An elite group of courtiers and visiting dignitaries were in-

vited to join Kestrel for hot chocolate in the Winter Gar-

den the morning following the ball. White and gray furs

muffl

ed the ladies, while the men favored sable, except for

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fur of an eastern tiger. Braziers burned throughout the gar-

den’s open patio, which was bounded at the southern end

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by an evergreen hedge maze.

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Kestrel had arrived late, and alone. Despite the meager

rest, she’d woken up a few hours after dawn because her

body knew that she needed to. Jess still slept. Kestrel daw-

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dled in her preparations, changing her dress twice, hoping

that Jess might stir. But she didn’t, and Kestrel was reluctant

to wake her. Finally, she left the suite.

Although the footmen in the Winter Garden should

have announced Kestrel’s presence upon her arrival, she

bribed them not to. She pulled her white furs more closely

about her face and walked alone through a pathway of trees

with sprays of pink and red berries. They were poisonous—

yet beautiful, sprinkled like bright musical notation against

the black bars of branches. Through the trees, Kestrel

watched the party and listened.

Many complained about their dancing blisters. “I’ll

plunge my bare feet right into the snow, to numb them!”

cried a colonial lady from the southern isles.

“Oh no,” smiled a naughty young man. “Let me warm

them instead.”

The entire scene looked pretty and fun . . . and fake.

Who knew if that fl irty young man even liked the lady— or

if he liked ladies at all. Kestrel wasn’t the only person at

court who planned to marry someone she didn’t want.

Kestrel could see the emperor seated in the patio’s center

next to the largest brazier, surrounded by senators. At the

far end of the patio, near the hedge maze, Verex hunched

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over a Borderlands table. His back was to Kestrel. The east-

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ern princess sat across from him, her expression gentle as

she executed a merciless move.

The Herrani hadn’t been invited to this exclusive event.

Kestrel needn’t worry about meeting Arin’s gaze . . . or not

MARIE RUTK

meeting his gaze.

Then again, he might come anyway. It would be like

him to turn up uninvited.

Wouldn’t it?

Kestrel found that she had come close to a tree. Her

hands were on its bark. It was silver; smooth and papery in

places, rough in others. She had been running fi ngers over

the bark’s striations and knots the way she’d seen blind

people come to understand an object. When she thought

of this, she realized that she was trying to understand

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.