Read The Winner's Crime Online
Authors: Marie Rutkoski
“That’s your risk. My off er’s good for to night only.
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Take it and give me what I want . . . or doubt me, and I’ll
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walk away.” He closed his hand around the earring. Arin
could tell the bookkeeper was hungry for the sight of it
again. She looked exactly how he felt.
“Earrings come in pairs,” she said. “Where’s the other
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one?”
“Gone.”
“Got any more surprises like these?”
“No.”
Her black eyes
were bright in the rushlights. Even
though the Broken Arm tavern had in fact grown louder
since they’d started speaking, Arin had the sense of things
quieting: a muffl
ing of the world, a breath held as the
bookkeeper made her decision. He desperately hoped she
would say yes. He desperately wanted her to say no.
“Give it here,” she said.
Arin’s hand didn’t move. Then, slowly, he loosened his
hold on the jewel. He let it slide, green and glowing. He
held the memory with the bare tips of his fi ngers: his moth-
er’s face in the nighttime, hung with twin green stars. She
rested her palm on his forehead and said the blessing for
dreams. She lifted her hand away, and Arin opened his, and
dropped the earring into the bookkeeper’s waiting grasp.
Kestrel dragged the harbormaster’s unconscious body. Her
arms burned, her bad knee screamed in protest, but Kestrel
dug her heels into the rocks and pulled until the man was
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hidden behind the house where the shadows were darkest.
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Then, her breath sharp and thin in her throat, she stepped
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inside, locked the door, and went to the ledger open on the
man’s desk.
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She fl ipped back to entries from earlier that winter. She
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found the Senate leader’s ship— the
Maris
.
Point of origin: the southern isles. Goods: none.
Kestrel let go of the page. It sighed down.
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She’d been wrong to suspect that the Senate leader had
traveled to Herran instead of the isles. Here was the proof
of it.
What else might she have gotten wrong? Her pulse
sped with fear of herself, fear of her choices, her certainty.
Kestrel’s heartbeats fl ew, one right against the other, like
fl ipped pages of a book.
Were all her lies to Arin worth it, if she couldn’t see the
truth? Kestrel had thought she’d known what was best for
Arin. Perhaps her greatest lies were the ones she’d told to
herself.
But then . . .
Kestrel paged again through the ledger.
What if the Senate leader had lied to the harbormaster?
What if the harbormaster had lied to his book?
She found the latest entries. The
Maris
was docked in
the harbor now. The ledger listed the number of its pier.
Kestrel left the book open on the desk exactly as it had
been. She riffl
ed through desk drawers until she found a
purse fi lled with silver. She pocketed it, pulled out the
drawer, and dumped it and its contents on the fl oor.
Did you hear that the harbormaster was attacked?
she
imagined city guards saying.
A case of petty thievery.
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Kestrel left the house and headed for the piers.
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“You understand,” the bookkeeper said as she tucked the
emerald away, “that you can’t make any bets after you look
in my book. Not with me, not ever.” She sat more seriously
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now, all business, the four legs of the chair fi rmly on the
fl oor. She pulled a slim book from her inner jacket pocket.
“Got something in par tic u lar you’d like to see?”
“Show me the entries about the wedding.”
The bookkeeper raised one brow, which made Arin
wonder if she knew who he was. She found the list and
held the book out to Arin, her thumb wedged in its open
seam.
These bets concerned the wedding night. They went
into great detail. The wagers showed a breadth of curiosity
and imagination that made Arin wish he’d never looked.
“Not that,” he said. “That’s not what I meant. I want to
see bets about the dress.”
Both of the bookkeeper’s brows were arched now, this
time in disdainful boredom. She turned a few pages and
off ered the book again.
Arin saw the Senate leader’s bet. It was in the middle
of several entries that concerned the dress. Others had
guessed the same color the Senate leader had wagered on—
red—but no one else had bet on the number of buttons,
the neckline, the length of the train, the style of the
scabbard . . .
Arin examined the pages again. He’d been mistaken
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about something. He’d gone through the dress wagers
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too quickly before, racing to fi nd the Senate leader’s name
and to escape the memory of the fi rst set of bets he’d
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seen. He saw now that the Senate leader wasn’t the only
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one to have gone into careful detail about the wedding
dress. Another person had bet in the exact same way, and
more recently.
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Arin tapped the name. “Who’s that?”
The bookkeeper peered. “A palace engineer. She works
on water. Aqueducts. Canals. That sort of thing.”
Arin closed the book and handed it back.
“That’s it?” she said.
“Yes.” He added, “If you want a tip, that bet’s the cor-
rect one.”
The bookkeeper drew up her boot so that it was planted
on the seat of her chair as she sat, one leg dangling down,
the other bent into the perfect position for her to prop an
elbow on the knee, drop her chin onto her fi st, and look up
at Arin. “I think you’ve overpaid me. How about I give you
something extra before you go?”
Sailors strolled the wharf. Kestrel hung back, chafi ng her
arms for warmth. Waves slapped the sides of large mer-
chant ships docked at piers that reached out into the black,
glassy sea.
She kept her eyes on one ship in par tic u lar. She saw
several sailors from the
Maris
clatter down its pier, ready
for shore leave, but she let them go.
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Then Kestrel spied the perfect target. He walked alone,
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cheeks ruddy from the cold and drink. His merry steps
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wavered a little. He was humming.
“Sailor,” she called as he passed, “care for a game of cards?”
He stopped. He came close, and Kestrel could see that
he wasn’t drunk after all. His eyes were alert, his expression
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a mix of friendly and sly. The sailor reached into his coat
pocket for a pipe, and the slow, deliberate way he packed it
told Kestrel that he wouldn’t be an easy opponent.
She would enjoy the game all the more.
“Well?” she said. “Will you play?”
He gave her an appreciative grin. “Absolutely.”
They stepped off the promenade and onto the rocky
beach, where they found a few wooden crates dragged to-
gether. There were signs of an earlier, abandoned game: an
empty bottle of wine and scattered tobacco ash.
Kestrel sat. “I trust you have a deck.”
“A sailor always does.” He joined her. He lit his pipe,
sucked until the tobacco crisped and glowed, and reached
for his purse.
Kestrel said, “Let’s play for something else.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Mind out of the gutter, seaboy. The stakes are ques-
tions and answers.”
“Can I ask the sort of questions that belong in the gut-
ter?”
“
If
you win.”
“I warn you, I’m pretty good.”
Kestrel smiled. “I’m better.”
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The bookkeeper climbed onto Arin’s lap. She settled her
knees at his hips, lifted smoke- scented fi ngers to his jaw.
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She tipped his head back. Her black eyes glinted down at
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him, and her red hair slipped over his cheek. Her hair lay
cool against his stitches. He thought about his ruined
face, and how, in this moment, it was to not feel so
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ruined.
“
I’ d
like to make a bet,” she said, and leaned to whisper
in his ear.
Arin’s hands went to her waist.
“You look disappointed,” Kestrel said.
The sailor tossed his cards onto Kestrel’s winning hand
spread out on the crate. “I did hope for something more
exciting than telling you that yes, the
Maris
sailed to south-
ern Herran about a month ago. Can’t I at least lose in an
interesting
way?”
Kestrel’s laugh was white in the cold. “We could gam-
ble for your coat.”
“Ah, love, why don’t we skip to the part where you win
and I give it to you?”
Arin lifted the bookkeeper off his lap. He set her gently
down on her chair.
“It’s sad,” she said, “to see someone act against his best
interests.”
Sometimes, it was as if Kestrel still owned him. Arin
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thought about the silver she’d paid for him. He felt its
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terrible weight. He couldn’t forgive it. It lay hard and shiny
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inside him. As he’d grown to know her, in Herran, the sil-
ver sank slowly down through uncertain waters. Then
came a current’s warm push. He’d fl oated up. That silver
lay deep below, and the thought of diving for it had felt like
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drowning. But sometimes— especially since the treaty, es-
pecially in this damned city, and especially now— the sil-
ver seemed close. Bright as trea sure.
Yet Arin knew the pull of his blood. He turned away
from the bookkeeper. “I know my own best interests,” he
told her.
She smiled, propping her boots back on the table.
“Someday you’ll know better.”
Arin quit the table. He stepped out of the tavern and
into the night.
The sailor stood and off ered Kestrel a fl ourished hand. She
let him lift her to her feet. He wrapped his coat around her
shoulders and bunched the loose fabric together in an al-
most fascinated sort of way. “Sweet palace maid, won’t you
come to sea with me?”
“I’d sink the ship. Can’t you tell? I’m bad luck.”
“Just my kind.” He gave her a hearty kiss on the cheek.
Then he took off over the rocks, running up onto the
promenade. “I’m freezing!” he shouted. He ran in the di-
rection of the city. He opened up, and began to sing the
melody he had been humming earlier. He sang it full and
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loud. The song was more or less on pitch, and Kestrel liked
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to hear it leaping over the wavebreaks, jagged with his run-
ner’s breath.
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It was not beautiful. It was not Arin’s voice: rich liquor
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poured to the brim. But it was happy. Kestrel was happy to
hear it, and thought about being grateful for what one
can get.
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18
KESTREL HAD WHAT SHE NEEDED. IT WAS TIME
to return to the palace. But her feet were slow on her way
through the city. They dragged up the hill.
She didn’t want to go back. Refusal rose up within her:
stony in her throat, hard and hurting. She stood before a
high bridge over the river that ran down from the moun-
tain and switchbacked through the city. Kestrel should
have crossed it. She should have come down on the other
side and made her way up through the aristocratic quarter
with its diamond- paned oil lamps.
But she didn’t.
Kestrel touched the wrought- iron railing that ran the
length of the river. The cold metal burned. Kestrel skimmed
her palm along it as she walked— slowly, then quickly, rac-
ing along the river’s edge for no other purpose than to see