The Winner's Crime(20)

She had to return to the ball. Surely she’d already been missed. The emperor would be wondering where she was.

Kestrel slowly walked down the hall toward the ballroom.

She had almost reached it when someone came out of its open doors. Tensen took one look at her. His eyes widened, and he shook his head, striding toward her with an urgency that defied his age and made his cane seem purposeless.

“You can’t go in there,” he said.

“I must.”

“No, you must find a mirror. A private one. Because Arin just stormed through the ballroom. His mouth was shiny. Maybe people will think it was from wine and not glittered oil, but they won’t if they see you, too.”

Kestrel’s fingers flew to her forehead and the engagement mark Arin had kissed moments ago. She touched her hair, its loosened tendrils.

How did she look?

Like someone who had had an illicit liaison?

“That’s right,” Tensen said grimly.

“Come,” Kestrel said, turning to retrace her steps back down the hall, away from the ball.

“With you?”

“You and I need to talk.”





9

Kestrel led Tensen to a small, empty salon where lamps and a fire burned. Tensen shut the door behind them.

“Block it with your cane,” Kestrel said, pointing at a tapestry hook that was about level with the doorknob. “Since you don’t need it anyway.”

Tensen glanced ruefully at her before setting the curved end of his cane around the doorknob and latching the straight end into the hook. “That won’t hold. Not if someone really wants to get in.”

She ignored him. She came close to the mirror above the fireplace’s mantel, which held a wide-bottomed vase of hothouse flowers.

Maybe it was the roses, the way that they covered her neck in the mirror’s reflection, reaching up to her chin. Maybe it was the hurried escape down the hallway.

Kestrel looked breathlessly in bloom. Color was high in her cheeks. Her lips, though Arin had not in fact touched them, were bitten red. The blacks of her eyes were wide pools. The necklace Jess had given her was broken, the cracked glass petals hanging limply from their ribbon, crushed from the pressure between her and Arin.

Kestrel’s reflection stared back. She had the air of something that has been opened and cannot be shut again.

She looked like pure scandal.

Her hair wasn’t the worst of it. Yes, the upswept arrangement was coming loose, a lock slipping here and there, but her hair was too short for intricate braids, which meant that it often came undone. Kestrel was in the habit of appearing a little disheveled, and pinning her hair back in place herself.

The real problem was the mark. The golden line on her brow had become a smear.

“Do you have extra oil and glitter with you?” Tensen said.

Kestrel gave his reflection in the mirror an exasperated glance. She wasn’t carrying a purse. Where did he think she’d keep such items? The cosmetics were on the dressing table in her suite.

“I’ll find one of your ladies-in-waiting in the ballroom,” Tensen said. “Or do you have a trusted friend? Someone who can fetch what you need and bring it here?”

Kestrel thought about how long that would take. She thought about how one of her maids reported to Verex. She thought about Jess, and what her friend’s reaction would be if the Herrani minister of agriculture approached her at the ball to request her assistance in making Kestrel look respectable again.

“No,” Kestrel said. “Bring me a lamp.”

Tensen’s expression was disapproving. It said that he didn’t see how a lamp could serve, and that time was being wasted. But he did what she asked.

Kestrel blew out the lamp and set it on the mantel to cool. With her dagger, she cut fabric from the hem of her inner slip, grateful for the dress’s many layers. She took the roses from the heavy ceramic vase, set their dripping stems on the mantel, and tipped the vase’s water onto the silk rag. She used it to scrub her forehead clean. She remembered Arin’s kiss there, and scrubbed harder. She tossed the rag aside. She untied her necklace, found the brightest amber glass petals, and hammered them against the mantel’s surface with the vase’s bottom. She ground the petals into dust. Dipping one finger into the lamp’s oil, Kestrel hissed at the burn, yet didn’t wait for the pain to fade. She drew an oiled, horizontal line above her brows.

Now for the glitter. She tapped her finger into the glass dust.

“You’ll cut yourself,” said Tensen, but his disapproval had vanished.

“I’ll be careful,” she said, patting the dust over the oiled line. She tucked loose tendrils back where they belonged and pinned them more securely in place. The roses returned to their vase, the vase resumed its place in front of the mirror, and Kestrel wiped the remaining glass dust off the mantel with her wet silk rag. She threw the rag and necklace into the fire. “Well?” she asked Tensen, turning to face him.

“Excellent.”

She shook her head. “Optimistic.” The mark shimmered, but was barely golden. “Are you always so optimistic?” she asked. “I think you must be, or you wouldn’t have written that letter to me, or hinted that we have information to share.”

“Am I wrong?”

“You forget that I outrank you. I will inquire. You will answer. Minister Tensen, what were you before the Herran War, ten years ago?”