The Winner's Crime(32)

Kestrel felt the shame of her mistake. The instinctive guilt of being caught. And worse: a slippery, eel-like uncertainty in herself. What did she think she was doing, with her moths and treasonous promises to Tensen?

She thought about what her father would say if he knew.

She thought about the prison and Thrynne’s skinned fingers.

But maybe the emperor planned a punishment fit for a child, like barring Kestrel from the piano.

Maybe he would humiliate her at court.

Maybe the stolen letters were enough.

Kestrel’s bruise faded. The scab flaked away.

Uneasy, Kestrel finally decided that the emperor wouldn’t risk doing anything extreme to General Trajan’s daughter.

She dined with the emperor every day. He was slyly kind, even solicitous. He acted as if nothing had happened.

Kestrel stopped tensing herself for a blow that didn’t come.

Maybe it never would.

*

To Arin, the imperial palace was a big box of architectural tricks. It didn’t matter, though, how many dead-end hallways there were. He didn’t care about the dizzying array of chambers for leisure. He ignored the way that tight, winding staircases could split into several directions.

In the end, the palace was really just a building, and in every building servants were housed in the same place: the worst.

So when Arin went looking for Kestrel’s dressmaker, she wasn’t hard to find. He took staircases down. He went into the dark. He followed musty air. Insufferable heat. The kitchen’s fires. Sweat and fried onion smells.

The Herrani servants were helpful. Too helpful. Their eyes were shining. They would have shared anything with him. Their faces fell to be asked so little as the whereabouts of a dressmaker. Even the slaves from various conquered territories, whose languages Arin didn’t speak, and who worked in tense and arcane hierarchies with the newly freed Herrani, watched Arin with expressions approaching awe.

Arin’s failure felt hot within him. It was a kind of poison, steeping steadily. The Herrani servants asked to be told the story of how Arin had brought a mountain down on Valorian troops. How had he saved Minister Tensen during that assault on a country estate? Was it from a crossbow quarrel, or a thrown dagger?

The stories were worthless. Everything Arin had done, from the Firstwinter Rebellion to his last stand against the Valorian general, had changed nothing. His people still belonged to the empire.

“Deliah,” Arin reminded the Herrani gathered in the largest kitchen. “Where is she?”

Her workshop was in a nicer section of the palace, on the ground floor in a room with enough light to make the bolts of fabric glow. When Arin entered, Deliah was sewing, her lap heaped with rich, wine-dark cloth. Her mouth was full of straight pins. She removed them slowly, one by one, when Arin asked his question.

“I want to know who’s been bribing you,” he said.

“That’s not what I thought you’d ask.”

“I’ve been to the city.” Arin hated being in the palace. He felt better in the city, though he didn’t like that either, and never shook the feeling of being in enemy territory. He prowled it, and kept to the alleys. “There’s a tavern—”

“I know the one you mean. It’s the only place that serves Herrani.”

“They serve everyone—especially bet-makers and bookkeepers. If I were to bet on something, it’d be on the fact that you must have every courtier in the palace hounding you for a tip on what your lady will wear to her wedding. The payout could be huge.”


Deliah had been stabbing pins into the small cushion strapped to her wrist. Now she stopped and ran a finger over the stiff silver grass of clustered pins. “I don’t tell anyone anything about the wedding dress. I don’t take bribes. Not even from you.”

“I’m not saying that you do. That’s not what I want. Just tell me who’s been asking.”

“If you want a list, it’ll be long.”

“So tell me who isn’t asking.”

She was still wary. “Why?”

“Because that’s the person who already knows.”

Deliah touched the pins again. “The Senate leader,” she said. “Most of the courtiers ask in person, even the important ones. They don’t want to risk that somebody else might learn what they think I’ll tell. But I’ve never seen the Senate leader. Even his daughter, Maris, wants to find out. Her bribe was the promise that I could work for her.” Deliah gave a short laugh. “I dress the imperial family. The emperor would never let me go.” Her eyes challenged Arin, daring him to promise that something would change, that he could make it change for her.

His hot feeling of shame cooled into a black lump: a hard, burnt thing.

He moved to leave.

“Something happened to her,” Deliah said suddenly.

He stopped. “What do you mean?”

“Before you came—weeks before you came—Lady Kestrel’s maids brought me a dress. It was white and gold. And filthy. The hem had been dragged through something, I’m not sure what. It was on the seat of the dress, too. The knees. There was vomit on one sleeve. Some seams had split.”

Arin’s mouth went dry.

“The maids wanted to know if I could salvage it,” Deliah said. “Impossible. It was ruined. I tore that dress into rags.”