The Winner's Crime(28)

“I would have lied, too.”

“The Herrani rebellion. I plotted for months. I plotted against you.”

“I understand why.”

“Your friends, then. Your people. The poison. Benix’s death. Jess’s sickness. It was my fault. You blame me.”

Kestrel shook her head—not to deny his words, but because it wasn’t as simple as he’d said. “Sometimes I imagine that I’m you. I imagine your life. What we did to it. And I know what you did back. So yes, I blame you … and I don’t. If I’d been you, I would have done the same. I might have done worse.”

“Then what can’t you understand?” His voice grew hoarse. “Was it … the kiss? In my kitchen. Was that the unforgivable thing?”

“Arin.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Arin.”

“I’m sorry, Kestrel. I’m sorry. Tell me what I can say.”

It wasn’t the misery that gave her pause. It was his voice. It was what lay beneath his voice: that underground river of song that was always there, that he tried to dam and block and bury. It had been his secret. When she had bought him, she’d felt the strain of this secret even then. Arin was a singer. Yet he had disowned it, he hid it. His secret had seemed so vital, so fiercely kept, that Kestrel had never forced its fact to the surface, and hadn’t thought to question whether Arin hid anything else.

He was waiting for her to speak. A library clock chimed. The sound woke her from her memory. A new thought made her skin prickle with fear.

Even if Arin didn’t know her secrets, he sensed them. It was as if he could hear them rustling in her dark heart. Kestrel had decided she would never tell him. Yet a mere moment ago she’d spoken too openly, like someone who hoped he would guess exactly what her secrets were.

She met his anxious eyes. She thought of the nails in the table and the force it had taken to drive them in. She thought about temptation, and the smart thing, and how in the seventeen years before she’d met Arin, she’d always known which to choose. “I forgive you.” Kestrel made her tone offhandedly kind, even bored. “There, do you feel better? My choice to marry the prince isn’t about blaming you. It’s not about you at all. I simply want something else.”

He stared.

“Really, Arin. I have the chance to rule half the known world one day. That isn’t too difficult to understand.”

He turned to look out the window. The light was stronger now. It bleached his face.

“Since we are being so honest,” she said, “I’d like for you to tell me why you’re here instead of Tensen. Did he send you?”

“He never read your note,” Arin said to the window. “I saw your seal. I opened the letter.”

“I suppose I should scold you for it.” She lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Though I might as well tell you as him.”

Arin looked at her then. “Tell me what?”

“That I am no longer the imperial ambassador to Herran.”

“But you agreed. It was part of the treaty the emperor signed. That I signed. It’s law.”

“The law is written by the sword. The emperor holds the sword, not you, and if he says that I am not to be burdened by a tiresome post, who are we to disagree? Come, let’s not quarrel. The tea is nice, isn’t it? A little too steeped, though. I might not finish my cup.”

Arin’s expression was turning dangerous. “So we’re to talk about tea?”

“Would you prefer chocolate?”

“And when I see you next, shall I compliment your dazzling shoes and doeskin gloves? Because what else will you have to discuss? Doesn’t the life of an empress-to-be bore you?” Arin had switched to speaking in his own language, but she’d never heard him sound like this before. His voice was mincing and sharp. It was a mockery of the way courtiers talked. “Maybe we can discuss the latest crimes of your beloved empire over tea. I can admire the cunning little shapes of hardened sugar and pass you a tiny sweet swan on a spoon. You can set it to swim in your cup while you pretend that the massacres in the east aren’t happening. And maybe I will note how the people of the southern isles are still slaves, and the tribes of the northern tundra were wiped out long ago. You will say that the southern slaves have it better under the empire than when they were free. Look at all that clean water piped down from the mountains through the imperial aqueducts, you’ll say. Isn’t that lovely? As for the northern tribes, there were never very many of them anyway.”

His voice tightened. The mockery was gone. “And I might tell you that Herran is thinned to the point of starvation. We are poor, Kestrel. We eat through a meager supply of grain and wait for the hearthnut harvest, and for news of how much your emperor will seize of it. What if I ask if you know how much? You’ll probably say that you remember how your Herrani nurse used to bake hearthnut bread for you. Maybe you’ve even been to the southern tip of Herran’s peninsula where the hearthnut trees grow, and remember how the sun there is hot year-round. You’ll say all this in a cozy tone as if we share something, when what we share is what your people steal from mine.

“I will say tell me. Tell me how much we’ll have to live by after the emperor’s tithe. You’ll say you don’t know. You have no intention of knowing.”