The Winner's Crime(4)

The light made the emperor’s words all too easy to read.

Arin crushed the paper into his fist and squeezed hard. He wished for a Favor-Keeper. He would forsake his pride to become a simple string, if only he could have what he wanted.

Arin would trade his heart for a snarled knot of thread if it meant he would never have to see Kestrel again.

*

He consulted with Tensen. The elderly man studied the uncrumpled and flattened invitation, his pale green eyes gleaming. He set the thick, wrinkled page on Arin’s desk and tapped the first line of writing with one dry finger. “This,” he said, “is an excellent opportunity.”

“Then you’ll go,” said Arin.

“Of course.”

“Without me.”

Tensen pursed his lips. He gave Arin that schoolmaster’s look that had served him well as a tutor to Valorian children. “Arin. Let’s not be proud.”

“It’s not pride. I’m too busy. You’ll represent Herran at the ball.”

“I don’t think that the emperor will be satisfied with a mere minister of agriculture.”

“I don’t care for the emperor’s satisfaction.”

“Sending me, alone, will either insult the emperor or reveal to him that I’m more important than I seem.” Tensen rubbed his grizzled jaw, considering Arin. “You need to go. It’s a part you must play. You’re a good actor.”

Arin shook his head.

Tensen’s eyes darkened. “I was there that day.”

The day last summer when Kestrel had bought him.

Arin could feel again the sweat crawling down his back as he waited in the holding pen below in the auction pit. The structure was roofed, which meant that Arin couldn’t see the crowd of Valorians ranged above at ground level, only Cheat in the center of the pit.

Arin smelled the stink of his skin, felt the grit beneath his bare feet. He was sore. As he listened to Cheat’s voice rise and fall in the bantering singsong of an expert auctioneer, he pressed tentative fingers to his bruised cheek. His face was like a rotten fruit.

Cheat had been furious with him that morning. “Two days,” he’d growled. “I rent you out for only two days and you come back looking like this. What’s so hard about laying a road and keeping your mouth shut?”

Waiting in the holding pen, not really listening to the drone of the auction, Arin didn’t want to think about the beating and everything that had led up to it.

In truth, the bruises changed nothing. Arin couldn’t fool himself that Cheat would ever be able to sell him into a Valorian household. Valorians cared about their house slaves’ appearance, and Arin didn’t fit the part even when his face wasn’t half-masked in various shades of purple. He looked like a laborer. He was one. Laborers were not brought into the house, and houses were where Cheat needed to plant slaves devoted to the rebellion.

Arin tipped his head back against the rough wood of the pen’s wall. He fought his frustration.

There came a long silence in the pit. The lull meant that Cheat had closed the sale while Arin wasn’t paying attention and had stepped into the auction house for a break.

Then: a locust-like whir from the crowd. Cheat was returning to the pit, stepping close to the block on which another slave was about to stand.

To his audience, Cheat said, “I have something very special for you.”

Each slave in the holding pen straightened. The afternoon torpor was gone. Even the old man, whose name Arin would later learn was Tensen, became sharply alert.

Cheat had spoken in code. “Something very special” conveyed a secret meaning to the slaves: the chance to be sold in a way to contribute to the rebellion. To spy. Steal. Maybe murder. Cheat had many plans.

It was the very in what Cheat had said that made Arin sick with himself, because that word signaled the most important sale of all, the one they’d been waiting for: the opportunity for a rebel to be placed in General Trajan’s household.

Who was there, above in the crowd of Valorians?

The general himself?

And Arin, stupid Arin, had squandered his chance at revenge. Cheat would never choose him for the sale.

Yet when the auctioneer turned to face the holding pen, his eyes looked straight into Arin’s. Cheat’s fingers twitched twice. The signal.

Arin had been chosen.

“That day,” Arin told Tensen as they sat in the winter light of his father’s study, “was different. Everything was different.”

“Was it? You were ready to do anything for your people then. Aren’t you now?”

“It’s a ball, Tensen.”

“It’s an opportunity. At the very least, we could use it to find out how much the emperor plans to take of the hearthnut harvest.”

The harvest would be soon. Their people needed it badly for food and trade. Arin pressed his fingertips against his brow. A headache was building behind his eyes. “What is there to know? Whatever he will take will be too much.”

For a moment, Tensen said nothing. Then, grimly: “I’ve heard nothing from Thrynne for weeks.”

“Maybe he hasn’t been able to get out of the palace and into the city to reach our contact.”

“Maybe. But we have precious few sources in the imperial palace as it is. This is a dicey time. The empire’s elite are pouring out gold to prepare themselves for the most lavish winter season in Valorian history, what with the engagement. And the colonists who once lived in Herran grow increasingly resentful. They didn’t like returning their stolen homes to us. They’re a minority, and the military is solidly with the emperor, so he can ignore them. But all signs point to the court being a volatile place, and we can never forget that we are at the emperor’s mercy. Who knows what he’ll choose to do next? Or how it will affect us? This”—Tensen nodded at the invitation—“would be a good means to look into Thrynne’s silence. Arin, are you listening? We can’t afford to lose such a well-placed spy.”