Read The Winner's Crime Online
Authors: Marie Rutkoski
She stayed where she was. The glass fogged.
‘
No’ doesn’t exist, Kestrel. Only ‘yes.’
The view had clouded over.
She left the window. There was nothing to see anyway.
The days wore on.
There was a per for mance for the court. A Herrani
singer. His voice was acceptable. But higher than Arin’s.
Thinner. Kestrel became angry at the way this unknown
man’s voice scraped the bottom of his register. This music
was inferior, thready stuff . It had none of Arin’s strength,
his lithe resilience.
Kestrel hoarded the memory of Arin’s song. It was
honey in the hive of her heart. As the per for mance contin-
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ued, Kestrel began to worry that the music she was hearing
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now was going to replace what she remembered of Arin’s
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voice. He would never sing for her again. What if she could
no longer even remember how he had sung for her once?
She curled her fi ngers under the edge of her chair and
gripped hard.
MARIE RUTK
Finally the peformance came to an end. The audience
met the singer’s silence with a dull silence of their own. No
one clapped— not because everyone else had been able to
judge the music’s quality and found it wanting, but because
they saw no point in applauding a slave, even after remem-
bering that he no longer was one. And Kestrel, who had
never forgotten what this man was and was not, certainly
had no intention of applauding either.
Her music, too, was a problem. The piano brought little
comfort— and what comfort it gave turned out to be false.
Kestrel began to craft something that she thought was an
impromptu, as diffi
cult as she could make it. Then the
notes nudged aside, twined together, and left spaces that
she couldn’t fi ll.
This was no impromptu. Impromptus were for soloists.
This was a duet.
No, not quite a duet . . . only half of one.
Kestrel brought the lid down on the keys.
She invented a solitaire version of Bite and Sting. She
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played against a ghost. She played against herself. The
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boneyard— the stock of tiles left on the table after players
drew their hands— dwindled until all the pieces were face-
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up like a fi nal truth that she should have been able to
’S
decode. The tiger bared its teeth. The spider wove its web.
Mouse, stonefi sh, viper, wasp . . . the black engravings on
the ivory tiles became suddenly sharp in defi nition, then
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blurred before her eyes.
Kestrel mixed the tiles and tried again.
She invited Jess to the ball. Her letter practically begged
Jess to come. Jess’s reply arrived: she would be there, of
course she would. She promised to stay with Kestrel for at
least a week. Kestrel felt a terrible relief.
It didn’t last.
She took tea in the palace salons with the daughters and
sons of high- ranking military offi
cers. She ate canapés on
fashionable white bread that tasted awful because its color
came from powdered chalk. Kestrel pretended to herself
that the dry, tight quality of her throat had everything to
do with the bread and nothing with the increasing disap-
pointment of each day that did not bring Arin.
On the last morning before the ball, when the weather
watchers in the palace predicted that a storm building above
the mountains would close the pass to Herran with snow
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before the day was out, Kestrel stood on a block while the
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dressmaker pinned a panel of silver- threaded lace to her
ball gown.
It was the fi nal touch. Kestrel stared down at the lay-
ered fabric. The color of its satin base was uncertain. Some-
MARIE RUTK
times it resembled pearl scraped from the inside of shells.
Then light from the window would dim and the dress be-
came dark, full of shadows.
Kestrel was tired of the long hours on the dressmaker’s
block, tired to think of all the eyes that would watch her
enter the ballroom, of all the gossip that swirled through the
palace about details so minute as her choice of dress. Bets
had been laid, she’d heard. Entire fortunes might be won
or lost based on what she wore.
She lifted her gaze from the dress to watch the snow-
heavy clouds build in the sky. She watched as if the
window were her last exit, each cloud a stone laid to wall
it off .
The dressmaker was Herrani. She’d been freed with
the rest of her people when the emperor had issued his edict
almost two months ago. Why Deliah stayed in the capital
instead of returning to Herran, Kestrel didn’t know. She
didn’t ask, and Deliah rarely spoke. She didn’t say anything
that day, either— not at fi rst. She pinned in silent precision.
But her gray eyes glanced up once to peer at Kestrel.
Kestrel saw a certain curiosity in the way they lingered.
A waiting, a wondering.
“Deliah, what is it?”
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“You haven’t heard?”
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“Heard what?”
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Deliah fussed with the hem. “The Herrani representa-
tive has arrived.”
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“What?”
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“He arrived this morning on
horse
back. He came
through the pass in the nick of time.”
“Take this dress off .”
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“But I’m not fi nished, my lady.”
“Off .”
“Just a few more—”
Kestrel tugged the fabric from her shoulders. She ig-
nored Delia’s small cry, the pricks of pins, the thin chime
of them scattering onto the stone fl oor. Kestrel stepped out
of the dress, pulled on her day clothes, and rushed out the
door.
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7
HE WAS WAITING IN THE RECEPTION HALL, A
lone fi gure lost in the vast, vaulted chamber. The Herrani
representative was an el der ly man whose thin frame leaned
heavily on his walking stick.
Kestrel faltered. She approached more slowly. She
couldn’t help looking over his shoulder for Arin.
He wasn’t there.
“I thought the barbarian days of the Valorian empire
were over,” the man said dryly.
“What?” said Kestrel.
“You’re barefoot.”
She glanced down, and only then realized that her feet
were freezing, that she’d forgotten even the existence of
shoes when she’d left her dressing chamber and hurtled
through the palace for all to see, for the Valorian guards
fl anking the reception hall to see right now.
“Who are you?” Kestrel demanded.
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“Tensen, the Herrani minister of agriculture.”
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“And the governor? Where is he?”
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“Not coming.”
“Not . . .” Kestrel pressed a palm to her forehead. “The
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emperor issued a
summons
. To a state function. And Arin
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declines
?” Her anger was folding onto itself in as many lay-
ers as her ball gown— anger at Arin, at the way he was com-
mitting po liti cal suicide.
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Anger at herself. At her own bare feet and how they
were proof— pure, naked, cold proof— of her hope, her very
need to see someone that she was supposed to forget.
Arin had not come.
“I get that disappointed look all the time,” Tensen said
in a cheerful tone. “No one is ever excited to meet the min-
ister of agriculture.”
She fi nally focused on his face. His green eyes were
small but clever, his wrinkled skin darker than hers. “You
wrote me a letter.” Her voice sounded strained. “You said
that we had much to discuss.”
“Oh, yes.” Tensen waved a negligent hand. The lamp-
light traced the plain gold ring he wore. “We should talk
about the hearthnut harvest. Later.” His eyes slid slowly to
glance at the Valorian soldiers lining the hall, then met Kes-
trel’s gaze again and held it. “I could use your insight on a
few matters concerning Herran. But I’m an old man, my
lady, and very saddle sore. A little rest in the privacy of my
rooms is in order, I think. Perhaps you could show me where
they are?”
Kestrel didn’t miss his message. She wasn’t blind to the
way he had indicated that their conversation could be over-
heard, nor was she deaf to his coded invitation that they
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could speak more freely in his guest suite. But she struggled
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against the pain in her throat, and said only, “Your ride
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here was hard?”
“Yes.”
“And the snow. It’s falling already?”
“Yes, my lady.”
MARIE RUTK
“The mountain pass will close.”
“Yes,” Tensen said gently, and he saw too much. Kestrel
could tell that he heard that horrible note in her voice, and
that he recognized it as the sound of someone fi ghting
tears. “As expected,” he added.
But she hadn’t expected this: this stupid hope, this
punishing one, for who would long to see someone who was
already lost? What good would it have done?
None.
Apparently Arin knew this, too. He knew it better than
she, or his hope would have been equal to hers, and would
have driven him here.
Kestrel drew herself up straight. “You can fi nd your
rooms by yourself, Minister Tensen. I have more important
matters to attend to.”
She strode from the hall. The veined marble fl oor was
icy beneath her feet: a frozen lake with fractures she did not
care to see.
She walked, she did not care.
She did not.
Jess adjusted Kestrel’s ball gown, stepped back, cocked her
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head, and peered. “You’re anxious,” Jess said, “aren’t you?
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Your face looks pinched.”
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“I didn’t sleep well last night.” This was true. Kestrel
had asked Jess to come early from her house in the city, and
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spend the night before the ball in Kestrel’s palace rooms.
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Kestrel and Jess had shared a bed, like they sometimes did
when they were little girls in Herran, and talked until the
lamp had burned all its oil. “You snored,” Kestrel said.
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“I did
not
.”
“You did. You snored so loudly that the people in my
dreams complained.”
Jess laughed, and Kestrel was glad for her silly little lie.
Laughter softened Jess’s face, fi lled the hollows of her cheeks.
It drew attention away from the dark rings beneath her
brown eyes. Jess never looked well. Not anymore, not since
she had been poisoned on the night of the Herrani rebel-
lion.
“I have something for you.” Jess opened her trunk and
lifted out a velvet bundle. “An engagement present.” Jess
unwrapped the bundle. “I made this for you.” The velvet
held a necklace of fl owers strung on a black ribbon, the
petals large, blown open, fashioned from sanded shards of
amber glass and thin curls of horn. The colors were muted,
but the fl owers’ size and spread made them almost feral.
Jess tied the ribbon around Kestrel’s neck. The fl owers
clicked against one another, sliding low to rest against the
dress’s bodice.
“It’s beautiful,” Kestrel said.
Jess adjusted the necklace. “I understand why you’re
ner vous.”
The crackle of fl owers went silent. Kestrel became
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aware that she was holding her breath.
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“I shouldn’t say this.” Jess’s eyes met Kestrel’s. They
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were hard, unblinking. “I hate that you’re marrying into
the emperor’s family. I hate that you’re going to walk
straight from this room to your engagement ball. With the
prince
. You should be my sister. You should be Ronan’s
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wife.”
Kestrel hadn’t seen Ronan since the night of the First-