The Winner's Crime(33)

Arin made himself speak. “When?”

“I told you when.”

“Was Kestrel with someone the day she wore that dress?”

Deliah spread her hands helplessly. “I have no idea exactly when she wore it, or the company she might have kept. You’d have to ask her ladies-in-waiting, and I don’t recommend that. At least one of them is in the pocket of the prince, and only the gods know how many report to the emperor.”

“You must know something more.”

“I’ve told you everything.”

“You see her. When you fit her to a dress … you see her skin. Was there … damage?” He had a gut-wrenching memory of Kestrel’s face after Cheat had attacked her. “Bruises. Scars. Anything. Anything around that time. Anything since.”

“No,” said Deliah, which was a deep relief to him until she added, “not that I could see. I haven’t fitted her in the past week, though.”

“Watch her.”

“I can’t do that. I can’t keep reporting to you. The emperor…”

“I am Herran’s governor.”

She gave him a pitying look. “We both know how much that’s worth.”

He covered his eyes. He shook his head. “At least let me know if there’s been anything else … strange.”

She shrugged. “The usual. Orders for a new day dress. Minor repairs. Complaints about pests getting into the wardrobes and eating the fabric. That sort of thing.” Deliah still had that look on her face, and Arin wanted to defend himself, to say that the only reason she should report on Kestrel’s doings was that the general’s daughter was obviously up to something, that the ruined dress was evidence of what he couldn’t see and must see, because Kestrel had a knack for working her fingers through schemes, and sometimes she pulled the strings, and sometimes she tugged at the edges until she uncovered something she shouldn’t.

Arin wanted to insist that if a secret concerned Kestrel, it concerned the emperor, and that concerned Herran. This was why he asked for Deliah’s help. It was for his country. Only for that.

It was not out of worry for Kestrel.

Not out of love.

Not because the description of that dress made Arin try to imagine every possible thing that had been done to Kestrel while she wore it, or everything she might have tried to do.

In the end, none of this was easy for him to say. He was silent as he made to leave Deliah’s workshop.

“She cares for you,” Deliah said suddenly. “I know that she does.”

It was so blatantly untrue that it almost seemed like a cruel joke.

Arin laughed.

*

Arin’s mind had gone dark, which was perhaps why he didn’t notice that the hallway had, too. All the lamps but one had burned down. The last sputtered in its oil.

He hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going. He’d intended to return to his rooms, but this hall was nowhere near that wing. He found himself in a disused part of the palace hung with frayed tapestries that—as far as he could tell in the dim light—glorified Valorian conquests from a century before, when Herran was at its height and Valoria was a speck of a country with unwashed warriors who liked the sight of blood so much they’d cut their own flesh to get it.

The tapestries were crude. It might have amused him, if he were in the mood to be amused, how bad Valorians were at beauty. They stole it. They forced it. They had never been able to bring beauty to life.

Yet this made him think of Kestrel’s hands springing from piano keys, and coming down again, and running wild, and this made him think of the ruined dress, and this made him stride farther into the shadowed hall as if he could escape his own thoughts, and that brought him smack against a blank wall.

He swore. He looked up at the scrolled woodwork of the ceiling and tried to be very careful not to insult the god of the lost. Instead, he focused on the woodwork carvings of his dead end, and noticed an odd, rigid line cutting through the swirling pattern. Narrowing his eyes in the light of the dying lamp, he caught a gleam in the ceiling. Metal. There was a metal strip running horizontally across the ceiling—no, not across, not exactly. It was set into the ceiling.

Arin was so distracted by wondering what that thing was that he didn’t see a shadow slip toward him and then behind.

He heard a metallic cranking sound. That line burst into full being—an iron gate hurtling down from its slit in the ceiling.

It hit the stone floor. It trapped Arin into the dead end. And even though he was already turning, adrenaline punching through his veins and singing high in his brain, he didn’t quite see the shadow behind him become a man. He didn’t see a face.

There was a rush of air. Arin was shoved back against the grate, and then he didn’t see anything at all.





14

Arin lay on stone. His neck crooked painfully against something hard and cold. It took several blurry seconds before he thought gate, and then ambush.

He didn’t move. He didn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t have been knocked out for long, because hands were patting him down for weapons. Arin wore no dagger at his hip. That was too Valorian. But his knife was pulled from one boot. His attacker came down on him, kneeling on his chest. Heavy. The air squeezed out of him.

Arin’s head throbbed. It took everything he had not to be sick.