The Winner's Crime(41)

*

Sailors strolled the wharf. Kestrel hung back, chafing her arms for warmth. Waves slapped the sides of large merchant ships docked at piers that reached out into the black, glassy sea.

She kept her eyes on one ship in particular. She saw several sailors from the Maris clatter down its pier, ready for shore leave, but she let them go.

Then Kestrel spied the perfect target. He walked alone, cheeks ruddy from the cold and drink. His merry steps wavered a little. He was humming.

“Sailor,” she called as he passed, “care for a game of cards?”

He stopped. He came close, and Kestrel could see that he wasn’t drunk after all. His eyes were alert, his expression a mix of friendly and sly. The sailor reached into his coat pocket for a pipe, and the slow, deliberate way he packed it told Kestrel that he wouldn’t be an easy opponent.

She would enjoy the game all the more.

“Well?” she said. “Will you play?”

He gave her an appreciative grin. “Absolutely.”

They stepped off the promenade and onto the rocky beach, where they found a few wooden crates dragged together. There were signs of an earlier, abandoned game: an empty bottle of wine and scattered tobacco ash.

Kestrel sat. “I trust you have a deck.”

“A sailor always does.” He joined her. He lit his pipe, sucked until the tobacco crisped and glowed, and reached for his purse.

Kestrel said, “Let’s play for something else.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Mind out of the gutter, seaboy. The stakes are questions and answers.”

“Can I ask the sort of questions that belong in the gutter?”

“If you win.”

“I warn you, I’m pretty good.”

Kestrel smiled. “I’m better.”

*

The bookkeeper climbed onto Arin’s lap. She settled her knees at his hips, lifted smoke-scented fingers to his jaw. She tipped his head back. Her black eyes glinted down at him, and her red hair slipped over his cheek. Her hair lay cool against his stitches. He thought about his ruined face, and how, in this moment, it was to not feel so ruined.

“I’d like to make a bet,” she said, and leaned to whisper in his ear.

Arin’s hands went to her waist.

*

“You look disappointed,” Kestrel said.

The sailor tossed his cards onto Kestrel’s winning hand spread out on the crate. “I did hope for something more exciting than telling you that yes, the Maris sailed to southern Herran about a month ago. Can’t I at least lose in an interesting way?”

Kestrel’s laugh was white in the cold. “We could gamble for your coat.”

“Ah, love, why don’t we skip to the part where you win and I give it to you?”

*

Arin lifted the bookkeeper off his lap. He set her gently down on her chair.

“It’s sad,” she said, “to see someone act against his best interests.”

Sometimes, it was as if Kestrel still owned him. Arin thought about the silver she’d paid for him. He felt its terrible weight. He couldn’t forgive it. It lay hard and shiny inside him. As he’d grown to know her, in Herran, the silver sank slowly down through uncertain waters. Then came a current’s warm push. He’d floated up. That silver lay deep below, and the thought of diving for it had felt like drowning. But sometimes—especially since the treaty, especially in this damned city, and especially now—the silver seemed close. Bright as treasure.

Yet Arin knew the pull of his blood. He turned away from the bookkeeper. “I know my own best interests,” he told her.

She smiled, propping her boots back on the table. “Someday you’ll know better.”

Arin quit the table. He stepped out of the tavern and into the night.

*

The sailor stood and offered Kestrel a flourished hand. She let him lift her to her feet. He wrapped his coat around her shoulders and bunched the loose fabric together in an almost fascinated sort of way. “Sweet palace maid, won’t you come to sea with me?”

“I’d sink the ship. Can’t you tell? I’m bad luck.”

“Just my kind.” He gave her a hearty kiss on the cheek. Then he took off over the rocks, running up onto the promenade. “I’m freezing!” he shouted. He ran in the direction of the city. He opened up, and began to sing the melody he had been humming earlier. He sang it full and loud. The song was more or less on pitch, and Kestrel liked to hear it leaping over the wavebreaks, jagged with his runner’s breath.

It was not beautiful. It was not Arin’s voice: rich liquor poured to the brim. But it was happy. Kestrel was happy to hear it, and thought about being grateful for what one can get.





18

Kestrel had what she needed. It was time to return to the palace. But her feet were slow on her way through the city. They dragged up the hill.

She didn’t want to go back. Refusal rose up within her: stony in her throat, hard and hurting. She stood before a high bridge over the river that ran down from the mountain and switchbacked through the city. Kestrel should have crossed it. She should have come down on the other side and made her way up through the aristocratic quarter with its diamond-paned oil lamps.

But she didn’t.

Kestrel touched the wrought-iron railing that ran the length of the river. The cold metal burned. Kestrel skimmed her palm along it as she walked—slowly, then quickly, racing along the river’s edge for no other purpose than to see where it would lead her … so long as it was away from where she was supposed to be.