The Winner's Crime(56)

Though not always. There was a shining hot day when the sun was high over Arin’s head and he saw what he thought was the shadow of the ship in the water. Then the large shadow shifted and slid in a way that made no sense. Arin stared, realizing that the shadow was in fact an enormous sea creature swimming far below the ship. He hadn’t understood what he’d seen.

He heard Tensen’s words again: You’re seeing what you want to see.

Arin thought of Kestrel, and wondered if some wounds ever heal. His heart thumped in his ears. He was stunned all over again by his anger.

But what does Tensen want you to see? whispered a voice inside him. The very thought was an insult to Tensen, who had warned Arin from the first about his obsession with Kestrel.

Arin could now appreciate—in a gritty, unpleasant way—that Kestrel had been honest with him. For a long time, she’d tried to make things clear. She’d sent troops to attack Arin’s forces after she’d fled Herran. She’d told him of her engagement. She had not once—Arin cringed to think of it—responded to his advances. And when he’d asked her about the Valorian attack on the eastern plains, she hadn’t denied her involvement. The guilt had been plain on her face.

The noon sun beat down on Arin’s head. He hammered his thoughts into a kind of nonthinking: smooth and burnished like a shield.

Arin spun Tensen’s ring around his finger, but didn’t take it off.

*

The ship swam through the jade waters of the delta toward the eastern queen’s city. Then the vessel could go no farther. Arin gave Tensen’s ring to the captain. Arin had wrapped it in a handkerchief edged with a stitched, coded message.

The message told Tensen that Arin had arrived safely in the queen’s city. A white lie. It was almost true. Arin didn’t want the old man to worry. As for the ring—

I couldn’t bear to lose such a gift, Arin had sewn onto the handkerchief.

Then he had strapped on Kestrel’s dagger, which he rather wished he would lose.

Arin was lowered alone in a launch. He rowed away from the ship, which would sail back to Herran. The captain would pass the ring and message into other hands. There was a slight risk the ring wouldn’t make it to Tensen. It could be intercepted by a Valorian. But Arin trusted himself with it less, and wasn’t worried that the ring itself might be identified. It was very plain.

Arin faced the ship as he rowed away. When he rowed up a thin river fringed with reeds, he could no longer see the ship. Twice, tempestuous bursts of rain came out of nowhere, soaked him to the skin, and vanished.

The river gave way to winding canals. The city had begun. It was made from white, slick stone, with little bridges over each canal like bracelets on a lady’s arm. Somewhere, a bell began to ring in its tower.

Arin was just beginning to navigate the city’s watery labyrinth … but not the stares. The canal glided with sleek vessels that made his launch look like a duck. Even if that hadn’t marked him as a foreigner, his skin would have. People stopped what they were doing to look at him. A child washing laundry in the canal was so startled that he let go of the shirt in his hands. It floated out into the canal, then was sucked under.

Word must have traveled ahead of Arin, or loped along the banks of the canals.

Grappling hooks spun out over the water and snared Arin’s launch. One bit into his arm and tore a small red line.

Arin’s boat was dragged to a pier, where he was quickly seized.





24

The prison wasn’t terrible. He had a tiny window with a view of the sky.

Arin had tried to explain when they’d hauled him off the boat, but even though his language felt close to Dacran, like a thin skin was all that separated them from understanding him, the easterners regarded him with the same uncomprehending frustration Arin felt.

Their black eyes were lined with sunset colors. Both men and women had closely cropped hair, and wore the same loose white trousers and shirts. When a sudden rainfall plummeted down with a violence that bounced raindrops off the paved bank of the canal, it soaked through the white fabric, revealing trim muscle.

Kestrel’s dagger was taken. At the sight of an imperial weapon, something hardened in the air between Arin and them.

A woman had asked him a curt question.

“Look at me,” Arin had said. “I’m no Valorian.” The Dacrans could see his dark hair, the gray Herrani eyes. They must know that he had been their enemies’ slave.

But his last word had made matters worse. The tension tightened.

“Please,” he said then. “I need to speak with your queen.”

That was understood.

There was a sudden surge toward him. His arms were wrenched behind his back. His hands were bound, and he was dragged away.

In his cell, Arin passed his hand over the rectangle of blue sky. He blocked it, revealed it, blocked it again. Then he let the color fully in. The walls of his schoolroom in Herran had been painted this shade. Arin thought of the times when his father came to listen to his lesson in logic, and told the tutor to leave. He would take over from there.

The quiet pleasure of that memory tried to keep Arin company. When it slipped away, Arin knew that he was afraid.

A foreigner armed with an imperial dagger, asking to see the queen?

Arin had been so stupid. But not quite stupid enough to be able to ignore what might lie in store for him once someone opened that prison door.