The Winner's Crime(10)

“I think we understand each other, don’t we? I get a daughter intelligent enough to manage the empire one day, and in the meanwhile I can count on the goodwill of her father’s soldiers. You get a crown and absolution from any past … indiscretions.”

Kestrel lowered her hand, fist loose, but not loose enough to let the coin slip.

“Your dagger, please, Kestrel.” He held out his palm.

“What?”

“Give me your dagger.” When she still didn’t move, he said. “It’s too plain. My son’s bride must have something finer.”

“My father gave it to me.”

“Won’t I be your father, too?”

The emperor had just made it impossible for Kestrel to refuse without offending him. She drew the dagger, which she cherished. She pressed her thumb once against the ruby set into the dagger’s hilt and carved with her seal: the talons of a bird of prey. She pressed hard enough for it to hurt. Then she gave her weapon to the emperor.

He placed it in the drawer that had held the coin and pushed it shut. He regarded Kestrel, his own dagger gleaming at his hip. He touched the golden line on her brow that marked her as an engaged woman. “I have your loyalty to the empire, don’t I?”

“Of course.” She tried to ignore the weightlessness of her scabbard.

“Good. And what’s past is past, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The emperor seemed satisfied. “There will be no hint of any sympathy you might have toward Herran—or its governor. If you have any, rub it out. If you don’t, you won’t like the consequences. Do you understand?”

She did. Kestrel saw now that the emperor hadn’t intended her visit to the prison to be a mere test or lesson. It had been a warning of what came to those who crossed him.





4

Kestrel carried the Jadis coin with her everywhere. It was in her pocket on the day she surprised the prince in her music room.

She was drawn up short by the sight of Prince Verex sitting at a table set with the pieces of an eastern game. He glanced at her, then down at the marble pieces. A blush seeped into his cheeks. He toyed with a miniature cannon.

“Borderlands is a game meant to be played by two opponents,” Kestrel said. “Are you waiting for me?”

“No.” He dropped the gaming piece and shoved his hands under his arms. “Why would I be?”

“Well, this is my room.”

Within her first days in the palace, the emperor had given Kestrel a new piano and had had it installed here in the imperial wing, saying that this room’s acoustics were excellent. This wasn’t true. The room echoed too much. It sounded larger than it really was. Its stone walls were bare, the furniture stiff. Shelves were sparsely decorated with objects that had nothing to do with music: astrolabes, gaming sets, a clay soldier, collapsed telescopes.

“Your room,” Verex repeated. “I suppose everything in the palace is here for your taking. My father is giving you the empire. You might as well have my old playroom, too.” His shrug was tight-shouldered.

Kestrel’s gaze fell again on the clay soldier. She saw its chipped paint, its place of prestige in the center of a shelf. The room was a cold, uninviting place for any child. She recalled that Verex, too, had lost his mother at an early age.

Kestrel went to sit across from him. “Your father didn’t give me this room,” she said. “He probably hoped we would share this space and spend more time with each other.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“But here we are together.”

“You’re not supposed to be here. I paid one of your ladies-in-waiting. She told me you planned to spend the afternoon in the library.”

“One of my servants reports to you?”

“It seems that the general’s daughter, despite her reputation for being so very clever, thinks she’s immune to all the petty espionage a court is capable of. Not really that smart, is she?”

“Certainly smarter than someone who decides to reveal that he has her maid in his employ. Why don’t you tell me which maid, Verex, and make your mistake complete?”

For a moment, she thought he’d overturn the table and send the Borderlands pieces flying. She realized then what he’d been doing as he sat alone in front of the Borderlands set, a game that was the rage at court. The pieces were organized in a beginner’s pattern. Verex had been practicing.

It seemed that the hurt lines of his expression spoke in the clearest of words.

“You hate me,” Kestrel said.

He sagged in his chair. His messy, fair hair fell forward, and he rubbed his eyes like someone woken too early. “No, I really don’t. I hate this.” He waved a hand around the room. “I hate that you’re using me to get the crown. I hate that my father thinks it’s a brilliant idea.”

Kestrel touched a piece from the Borderlands game. It was a scout. “You could tell him that you don’t wish to marry me.”

“Oh, I have.”

“Maybe neither of us has much choice in the matter.” She saw his swift curiosity and regretted her words. She moved the Borderlands scout closer to the general. “I like this game. It makes me think that the eastern empire appreciates a good story as well as a battle.”