Read The Winner's Crime Online
Authors: Marie Rutkoski
Don’t think we don’t know whose.” He shoved at a broken
mold. Ceramic dust scraped across the table. Yet Roshar
saved the real damage for what he said before leaving, the
tiger at his heels. “Don’t wonder, Arin, why we won’t ally
with you.”
Another article of clothing arrived for Arin. A pair of
trimmed gloves. Tensen’s woven code told him that the
Moth had uncovered a connection between the water en-
gineer and the emperor’s physician. Sarsine reported that
conditions in Herran had worsened. Had Arin secured
an eastern alliance? the knots asked. He should return
home.
Tensen, despite Arin’s insistence that Kestrel have no
colored thread, managed to work her in anyway. Firstsum-
mer had almost arrived, Tensen said. She was a glowing
bride.
Be happy for her, Arin,
said a knotted line as bumpy
as a badly healed scar.
But Tensen didn’t know what Arin knew. Tensen didn’t
know how cynically Kestrel had sold herself to the person
with the most power. He hadn’t seen her face above the
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sticky tavern table when she admitted her role in the mur-
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der of so many people.
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Arin threw the gloves in the forge’s fi re. They smelled
like burning fl esh.
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Kestrel would never have his happiness.
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Roshar came again some days later. “It looks like a big,
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metal reed.” He poked at the cooled object resting on one
half of the opened mold. “I think I know what you’re
doing, Arin. I think it won’t work.”
“I told you to stay away.”
“And didn’t I? Notice that this time I didn’t bring the
tiger with me. Arin makes you ner vous. As you see, I am
attentive to your every wish, spoken or otherwise.”
“Then leave.”
“How did you ever survive, little slave, with that mouth
of yours? Did you pray to your god of luck?” Roshar stud-
ied him, his gaze lingering on the left half of Arin’s face.
The scar seemed to prickle under Roshar’s scrutiny. “You
are luckier than I.”
Roshar was right, Arin shouldn’t have survived, not
with his great skill for saying what he shouldn’t. Arin said,
“Were you with Risha when she was taken?”
“No.” But it sounded like “yes.”
“Was that when you were enslaved?”
“I
will
kill you.”
“Why do you come here, if it’s not because I’ll say what
no one else will?”
“What I want,” Roshar said, “is for you to accuse me.
That
is what no one else will do. Not my people, who think
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I’m the victim. And never, ever the queen.”
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“Accuse you of what? Escaping when your sister didn’t?
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Surviving?” Gently, Arin said, “If that’s your crime, it’s
mine, too.”
“Did
you
sell your sister?”
Arin recoiled. “What?”
MARIE RUTK
“When the Valorians came for your country, did you
trade her for something better? That’s what we did with
Risha. Our little girl. So gifted, even that young, with a
blade. No river reed dolls for her. No, her bedroom was a
fencing salle. Her toy box was an armory. Our older sister
saw it. She knew what to do.
“We’re twins, the queen and I. Did you know that?
No? Well, if you cut off her nose and ears you’ll fi nd that
we look very much alike. But oh, the key diff erence of four
minutes. She was born before me. She got the country. Not
that I wanted it. I didn’t know what I wanted. But this is
what I was: expendable.
“Tell me, Arin, the solution to this tempting conun-
drum. If you had a child assassin with lovely, innocent
eyes, a princess your enemy was sure to snatch up if given
the chance, what would you do? Would an idea cook in
the heat of your mind? Maybe your older sister is the cun-
ning one. She’ll tell you the way to topple the empire. You:
middle child, only boy, what do
you
do? You explain things
to your little sister. You ride with her into enemy territory.
You pretend to be her servant. You make yourselves no-
ticed. You are conspicuous. And when you’re captured, you
let her go.” Roshar’s expression grew embittered, sly. “And
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then you wait. You wait, your queen waits, to see if Risha
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will put a knife in the emperor’s neck.”
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It made unexpected sense to Arin. It explained Risha’s
claim that she belonged in the palace. It explained her
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haunted look. But . . . “She was captured years ago. What
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is she waiting for?”
“Revenge, maybe, on a brother and sister who used her.
After the fi rst year, we thought that she was waiting for the
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right opportunity to kill the emperor. More years passed.
Now . . . we think she’s become Valorian. Maybe that’s
what happens after someone grows up and understands
that she was betrayed by her own family.”
“You shouldn’t have told me this. Why did you tell me
this?”
“Because I know that what I said about that dagger
isn’t true. I knew, that day when they cut my face in your
country, that you would never sell yourself. I could see it.
You would never sell what’s dear to you. Look at you, Arin.
You’re made of so many splendid, stupid
limits
.”
Arin saw, in his mind’s eye, the burning gloves, their
curling fi ngers. He smelled that acrid reek. He remembered
the Moth’s coded news. “I don’t think Risha is the empire’s
friend.”
In his memory, fl ames shriveled the knots’ message:
Have you secured the eastern alliance?
Roshar’s eyes were starving for news of his sister. Arin’s
people were starving, having run through the hearthnut har-
vest more quickly than thought. And Arin was starving as he
remembered how the gloves had burned. He was hungry. He
was hungry for this: to put his trust where it belonged.
He drew Roshar’s attention to the long metal barrel on
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the worktable. “Let me tell you what this will do.”
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It took time to complete the parts of the miniature can-
non. There was a chamber at one closed end for a paper
twist of black powder, which rested on an internal pan be-
MARIE RUTK
hind where one placed the little metal ball. Arin cut a short,
stiff fuse. He inserted it into the black powder twist.
He knew how to work leather from his time in the Val-
orian general’s stables. He wrestled with stiff stuff used for
saddles, making a packed leather handle for the end where
the barrel would be lifted, leveled, and loaded with explo-
sive. When Arin slid the barrel’s end into the slim, hard
leather box, he thought, oddly, of his family gardener. Long
before the Herran War, the gardener had bred trees in the
orchard, inserting a slip of one tree into the thick stock of
another.
Arin attached his strange stock to the fi tted barrel. He
set steel pins through punctured holes in the stock and
then soldered them to the barrel. Last, he cut a long strip of
leather and fashioned a strap. This weapon was meant to
be carried.
Arin slung it over his shoulder like he would a Dacran
crossbow. Then he summoned the queen and her brother.
They cleared the castle yard outside the forge. Just before
Arin fi tted the black powder twist and metal ball into their
chamber, he had a vision of the whole device exploding in
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his hands and taking his head with it. He’d used black
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powder before. He’d felt a cannon’s burst. He’d heard it:
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that single, booming heartbeat of the god of war. But it
wasn’t fear that he felt when he lit the fuse and set the stock
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against his shoulder. It was hunger.
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The fuse burned.
The weapon cracked the air. It slammed into Arin’s
shoulder, punched the breath out of him. It seared his palm.
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He almost dropped it.
There was a brutalized silence. Shock had changed Ro-
shar’s and the queen’s faces. A wisp of smoke trailed from
the broad, blessedly big kitchen door. Arin’s aim had been
terrible. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was the
little lead ball, buried deep in the door. What mattered was
the queen pacing the yard to stand tiptoe before the door.
She touched the smoking hole.
Yes.
He willed her to say it. As Arin found his breath
again, his mind didn’t think words like
alliance
or
trust
or
even
something more
. Just
yes.
Later, he would consider the
weapon fully. Later, he would shrink from what he’d
done. But now there was only
no
or
yes
, and he’d had to
choose. He’d had to fi nd what would give him the word
he wanted.
“That,”
Roshar said. “
That
against the empire.”
“Think about how much black powder it takes to fi re a
cannon,” Arin said. “The Valorians don’t care. They have a
lot of it. We don’t, but we won’t need much with this, and
it can go anywhere. Let
them
drag their heavy cannon. Let
them
waste horses and soldiers maneuvering artillery into
position. I know”— Arin shook his head—“the device isn’t
precise. Not yet. I can make it precise.”
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Roshar and the queen still stared at him.
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“Come with me,” Arin said. “I want to show you some-
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thing else.”
He led them into the forge, which was hot from the vat of
molten metal Arin had prepared. Arin unslung the weapon.
He strode toward the vat. There was a choking gasp from the
MARIE RUTK
queen as she realized what he was about to do. He dropped
the weapon into the vat.
He turned back to the queen and her brother. “The
Herrani will make more. I’ll tell them how. We’ll supply
you with them. We would do that . . . for our allies.”
“Did you have to
melt
it?” Roshar said.
“I need you to need me. You could have taken it, exam-
ined its mechanism, and found a way to reproduce it. Then
you wouldn’t need Herran.”
“Arin, you idiot. What makes you think we won’t tor-
ture the design out of you?”
“You won’t.”
“
I
might. I might enjoy it.”
“You wouldn’t.” He looked at them. “Well? Can we
fi ght together?”
It was the queen who said the word, but Roshar who
made it real. He crossed the short space of the forge and
placed one palm on Arin’s cheek. It was the Herrani gesture
of kinship. The queen smiled as Arin returned the gesture,
and then the word came: beautiful, deadly, as small and hot
as the hole in the kitchen door. In that moment, that word
was all that Arin wanted.
“Yes.”
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Arin was coming from the baths. His face had been sprayed
with black powder. It had been in his hair. Even in his
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teeth. He looked like he’d survived a fi re. He’d cleaned
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himself, noting the massive bruise that darkened his scarred
right shoulder and crept toward his chest. Then he returned
to his room to pack.
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The queen was waiting outside his door. She opened it for
him to enter. Thinking that she needed to discuss something
in private, perhaps a detail of the alliance, he was silent, too,
as they walked in. When the queen had shut the door softly
behind her, he said, “My people need to hear the news. I’d
like to leave.”
The queen came to him, then came closer. She reached
to thread fi ngers through his damp hair. He froze. Whis-
pering her cheek across his, she brought her warm lips to
his ear. “Yes,” she murmured. “But not yet.”
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