The Winner's Crime(47)

Arin made himself study his tiles again. He tried to think which Sting tile would profit Kestrel least. He discarded a bee. The instant he set the tile down, he regretted it.

He pulled a high Bite tile. This should have encouraged him, yet Arin had the sense of flying toward the inevitable moment when Kestrel won and he asked her what she wanted.

“I thought…”

“Arin?”


She looked concerned. That decided him. Arin took a deep breath. His stomach changed to iron. His body was girding itself in a way he knew well. Arin was tightening the muscles needed before a plunge into deep water. A punch to the gut. The lift of the hardest, lowest, highest notes he could possibly sing. His stomach knew what he’d have to sustain.

“Marry him,” Arin said, “but be mine in secret.”

Her hand lifted from the tiles as if scorched. She sat back in her chair. She rubbed at her inner elbow. She drank the dregs of her wine and was silent. Finally, she said, “I can’t do that.”

“Why?” Arin was hot with humiliation, hating himself for having asked. The cut burned in his cheek. “It’s not so different than what you would have chosen before. When you kissed me in your carriage on Firstwinter, you thought to keep me your secret. If you thought of anything. I would have been one of those special slaves, the ones called for at night when the rest of the house is sleeping. Well? Isn’t that how it was?”

“No.” She spoke low. “It wasn’t.”

“Then tell me.” Arin was damning himself with every word. “Tell me how it was.”

Slowly, Kestrel said, “Things have changed.”

Arin jerked his head to the side, chin up, stitched left cheek tilted to catch the light. “Because of this?”

She replied as if the answer was obvious. “Yes.”

He shoved back from the table. “I think I’ll have that drink.”

Arin began to walk away, then glanced back over his shoulder. He made sure his words were an insult. “Don’t touch the tiles.”

*

Kestrel didn’t understand. His anger made no sense. Wasn’t it clear that Arin’s wound was her fault? And that worse could happen?

He didn’t return.

She thought about what she didn’t understand. She thought about how Arin’s wound might run deeper than the flesh. She remembered his question and her answer. She remembered them again.

Slowly, she began to see the misunderstanding. For her, yes was the emperor’s message carved into Arin’s face. For Arin, yes was the scar itself, not what it meant. His anger was for how he looked … how he thought he looked to her now.

A horror sank into her. She couldn’t wait until he returned. She must find him. She must set things straight.

*

Arin had forced his way up to the bar, where he waited to ask for a second glass. The Valorian barkeep ignored him. She served everyone else first. When new Valorians came up to the bar, she served them, too. She wasn’t going to glance at Arin unless he made a scene—which he was very ready to do. In his head, he heard Kestrel say Yes.

The surface of the bar was sticky and smelled sour. Arin stared at it and thought of the emerald earring, how it had shone: enchanted, his. Sarsine had found it hooked into a thick, patterned carpet that had been rolled up and shoved into storage in a disused quarter of his house in Herran. The emerald had been like one of those tales where a god is revealed. Arin had sworn he would never part with it.

Yet he had, and he understood now that it hadn’t really been information he wanted to buy. It had been trust. Arin could no longer trust himself. Arin had believed the bets in the bookkeeper’s hand were important. The emerald had seemed to promise that if this belief could be proven true, then Arin could trust his every belief.

Arin’s palms were sticky now, flattened against the bar. His temper slowed. He remembered the Kestrel he’d known in Herran. He didn’t think about who she’d been lately. And he didn’t make his increasingly frequent mistake of reimagining this new Kestrel—so fully Valorian, so nicely set in the court and capital—as the person he wanted her to be.

He simply remembered the person she’d been. Arin asked that Kestrel the same question he’d asked the Kestrel dressed as a palace maid, and she gave the same answer. But this time, her yes was also a no. This time, her answer was a box with a false bottom, and the meaning of it went deeper than he had seen.

He had misunderstood her.

Arin began to think he shouldn’t have walked away from that table. He should go back. He should go back right now.

And he would have, if he hadn’t been distracted by a snatch of conversation from a nearby table.

A group of senators were drinking. The Broken Arm had a very mixed crowd that night, more than its usual share of courtiers. These were talking about the east.

“… an impressive victory,” said one. “Exactly the sort of thing I’d expect from General Trajan.”

“He can’t take all the credit,” said another. “The idea was his daughter’s.”

“Really?”

“I was there. There was a gathering in the Winter Garden the morning after the engagement ball. Only the most important members of the court were invited, of course. A group of us discussed how best to take the eastern plains. The emperor even asked my advice. If I say so myself, my idea was very good. Yet let no one believe that I am ungenerous. I understand why the emperor preferred Lady Kestrel’s plan. It was she who suggested that the general poison the horses. The eastern savages won’t be able to live without them, she said. We all knew that would do the trick. And didn’t it just?”