The Winner's Crime(11)

He gave her a look that noted a sharp change in subject, but said only, “Borderlands is a game, not a book.”

“Borderlands could be like a book, if one had constantly shifting possibilities for different endings, and for the way characters can veer off course into the unexpected. Borderlands is tricky, too. It tempts a player into thinking she knows the story of her opponent. Take the story of the inexperienced player. The beginner who doesn’t see traps being set.” Verex’s expression had grown softer, so Kestrel arranged the Borderlands pieces into an opening gambit and moved them into different patterns of play for two opponents, explaining how a perceived beginner might win a game by deliberately falling for a trap in order to set one of his own. When the green general finally toppled the red, Kestrel said, “We could practice together.”

Verex’s large eyes were suddenly too shiny. “By ‘practice,’ you mean ‘teach.’”

“Friends play games together all the time without thinking of it as practicing or teaching or winning or losing.”

“Friends.”

“I don’t have many.” She had one. She missed Jess terribly. Jess had gone to the southern isles with her family for her health. In the past, Jess would have gone to a charming little house her family owned by the sea on the warm southern tip of Herran, but the Midwinter Edict ordered Valorian colonists to surrender all property in Herran. The colonists were compensated by the emperor, and Jess’s parents had purchased a new house in the islands. But Kestrel read the homesickness in Jess’s letters. Kestrel wrote back. They wrote often, but letters weren’t enough.

Verex nudged the fallen red general with his green one, listening to the rocking tap of marble on marble. “Maybe we could be friends, if you could explain why you don’t tell my father that you don’t wish to marry me.”

But Kestrel couldn’t explain.

“You don’t want me,” Verex said.

She couldn’t lie.

“You claimed that you don’t have a choice,” he said. “What did you mean?”

“Nothing. Truly, I want to marry you.”

His anger returned. “Then let’s list the reasons.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “You seek the empire, and a husband you can manipulate as easily as these game pieces.”

“No,” she said, but why wouldn’t Verex believe his portrait of her: power-hungry, unfeeling? It was what Arin believed.

“You want a good laugh. So that at our engagement ball you can watch me lose at Borderlands while every single aristocrat and governor of the territories laughs with you.”

“A ball? All the governors? Are you sure? No one’s told me about this.”

“My father tells you everything.”

“He didn’t. I swear, I knew nothing of a ball.”

“So he plays games with you, too. My father is two-faced, Kestrel. If you think he adores you, you’d better think again.”

Kestrel threw up her hands. “You’re impossible. You can’t blame me for his favor and claim that I’m no more than an amusing toy to him.” She stood and went toward the door, for she saw that the brief peace between them had disintegrated, and her mind was reeling. An engagement ball. With all the governors. Arin was coming. Arin would be here.

“I wonder why my father didn’t tell you,” Verex said. “Could it be so that in catching you off guard, he could observe exactly what lies between you and the new governor of Herran?”

Kestrel stopped, turned. “There is nothing between us.”

“I’ve seen the Jadis coin. I’ve heard the rumors. Before the rebellion, he was your favorite slave. You fought a duel for him.”

She almost reached out to a bookshelf to steady herself. It felt as if she might fall.

“I know why you’re marrying me, Kestrel. It’s so that everyone will forget that after the rebellion, no one put you in a prison, not like every other Valorian in Herran’s city. You were special, weren’t you? Because you were his. Everyone knows what you were.”

Her vertigo vanished. She snatched the clay soldier off the shelf.

She saw instantly from Verex’s expression that she held something he cherished. She would smash it, she would smash it against the floor. She would break Verex like his father had broken him.

Like she had broken her own heart. Kestrel felt the pieces of her heart suddenly, as if love had been an object, something as frail as a bird’s egg, its shell an impossible cloudy pink. She saw the shock of its bloody yolk. She felt the shards of shell pricking her throat and lungs.

Kestrel set the soldier back on the shelf. She made certain her voice was clear when she spoke her last words before leaving the room. “If you won’t be my friend, you’ll regret being my enemy.”

*

Kestrel retreated to her suite and sent her maids away. She didn’t trust any of them now. She sat by a tiny window that gave a feeble light. When she took the Jadis coin from her pocket, it looked dull on her palm.

This is the year of money, she remembered. She had indeed planned on going to the library earlier today, as her maid had informed Verex. She’d hoped to research the Herrani gods, then thought better of it. The library possessed a paltry collection of books; it was mostly a glamorous room where courtiers sometimes met for a quiet tea, or where a military officer might consult one of the thousands of maps. The library would have suited Kestrel well if she had wanted to find a map or to socialize … or if she’d wanted members of the court to see her researching Herrani books.