The Winner's Crime(55)

And there were the rules. They hung invisible in the humid air. But who had decided them? Who had decided that a Valorian honors her word? Who had convinced her father that the empire must continue to eat other countries whole, and that slaves were Valoria’s due right of conquest?

Her father held his honor so firmly, like a solid thing, something that couldn’t twist free. It occurred to Kestrel that she had wondered before what her father’s honor was like, and Arin’s, but she didn’t know the shape of her own.

There was dishonor, she decided, in accepting someone else’s idea of honor without question.

Kestrel bent to touch the faucet and pipe of the bath. There was running water in Herrani houses, for fountains, mostly, but the imperial palace was veined with an ingenious system of pipes that pumped in warm water from thermal sources in the mountain, heated it further with a furnace, and swept it up to the highest floors. This system had been invented by the chief water engineer, the one who had designed the canals.

On the day after Arin had left, Tensen had asked Kestrel to investigate something. “The chief water engineer has done the emperor a favor,” he’d said. “Could you find out what it was?”

Kestrel lifted her hand from the still warm bath pipe that led to the floor and vanished into it. She went to the window, and stood in the light of its brilliant stain. Her hands glowed blue and deep pink. She unlatched and swung open the window. Everything went clear. The air was raw. Kestrel could scent it on the wind: that thing that was going to blow her forward in time, to warmth, flowers blooming, trees in pollen and then spread green.

Spring.





23

On the sixth day at sea, Arin stopped being seasick. That night, there were no clouds. Stars frosted the sky. The ship was becalmed.

Arin was on deck, turning Kestrel’s dagger in his hands. In the end, he’d decided to take it with him. It was his now, by his own blood. Or so he told himself.

He sheathed it. He tipped his head back and gazed at the wide band of stars that arched over him in a glittery smear.

Sarsine had seemed so tired when Arin had seen her on his way from the capital. He’d worried over her wan face and shadowed eyes.

She’d snorted. “It’s the food.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“There’s too little of it.” She’d sighed then, and said that all of Herran was tired.

“That will change,” he told her. He explained how to save the hearthnut harvest. Sarsine had touched the back of his hand in gratitude. Then she’d looked at him hard. Her eyes were bright. She said, “Look at what they did to you.”

“It’s nothing.”

But she wept over his changed face, which made him feel worse about it. Arin let her. He didn’t know what else to do.

Later, Sarsine said, “Now tell me what you haven’t told me.”

So he had told her about Kestrel. Arin recalled it now as he shifted to look out over the black mirror of the sea.

Sarsine had been quiet. They’d been in the library of his family home, not the salon. Kestrel’s piano was in the salon. Though out of sight, the instrument had loomed in his mind: large, shining. Intrusive. He wanted to rid himself of it.

Sarsine said, “This doesn’t sound like her.”

Arin shot her a cold glance.

“You know her better than I do,” Sarsine admitted.

He shook his head. “I’ve been lying to myself.”

It seemed that he’d been confused for a long time, that the last clear thing he’d done was to declare that the emperor’s treaty was a trick. Arin knew that his army would have lost that day. The Valorians had already breached the city walls. But the fight would have been vicious. The Herrani would have fought to the death. They would have killed as many as they could. The treaty ended up being a bloodless victory for the emperor: a way to drain Herran’s resources without losing another Valorian soldier.

It could be a trick, Kestrel had said, but you will choose it.

It had been snowing then. Snow had caught in her eyelashes. He used to wonder what would have happened if he had reached to brush it away. He used to imagine the snowflakes melting beneath his fingertips. It shamed him to remember this.

Arin hadn’t fallen asleep on the deck of his strangely still ship, yet it felt as if he’d been dreaming. As if dreams and memories and lies were all the same thing.

He startled at the sound of a fish breaking the water. He had no idea how long he had been standing there. The stars had moved in the sky.

Chilled, tired, Arin went below.

*

He left winter behind him. The wind had picked up. It luffed the sails. It filled their canvas bellies. The Herrani captain, who had been somewhat of a legend before the war, was pleased. The ship sped over the waves.

The sun became melted butter. Arin stripped away his father’s hot, threadbare jacket. He didn’t want to wear it again.

The sea sheered into green: marvelously clear. Arin saw whole worlds in the water below. Fish broke away and came together and rearranged themselves like pieces of a colored puzzle.

Once, a creature leaped out of the water. Its dorsal fin was scalloped and pink. It made a strange, whistling cry, then dived under again.

Arin’s wound finally healed. He tugged out the stitches himself.

*

He was truly in eastern waters now. The wind and sea and sun made it easier not to think.