The Winner's Crime(58)

With a fingernail, he flicked open a tiny compartment on the underside of his ring. He touched Arin, and the skull and the sky and the red dragonfly were gone.

*

The emperor was furious. He showed it in certain ways.

To the Herrani minister of agriculture, who had been the one to break the news of the infested hearthnut crop, the emperor sent a personal invitation to a theatrical performance of the conquest of Herran. Tensen had a front row seat and was spattered with animal blood during the killing of the Herrani royal family.

The court used flattering ways to soften the emperor’s mood. This irritated him with disastrous consequences. Many aristocrats found that their sons and daughters had abruptly “decided” to enlist in the military, and were sent east.

“Just stay out of his way,” Verex told Kestrel.

“It’s no one’s fault that gall wasps ruined the crop. He can’t blame me.”

“He blames everybody.”


But to Kestrel the emperor was unfailingly kind—doting, even, until the day that he announced that she was to attend a military parade at the end of the week. “Your father is coming home.”

In her mind, Kestrel was a girl again, clambering onto her pony to ride out to meet her father, to be the first to see him so brave on his horse, gloriously grimed by battle. She wore a child-size sword he’d had made for her. He smiled to see her. He called her his little warrior.

“Careful, Kestrel,” said the emperor. “You can of course be yourself around me. There is no need to hide anything. But society won’t understand such obvious happiness on your face, not when your father’s been injured.”

“He’s hurt?”

Kestrel asked, she asked what felt like a hundred times, a thousand times, how her father was, how badly he’d been hurt, where, how. Was he coming to Valoria to rest or die?

The emperor shrugged and smiled and said that, really, he didn’t know.

*

A black snake wound through the city. From the palace battlements, Kestrel could see the snake flash little scales of gold. She strained hard to discern the front line of the black-clad soldiers. It felt as if someone had clamped a hand down over her nose and mouth. Her fear had an airless quality.

Verex gently touched her arm.

The emperor noticed. His expression was unreadable. Verex stared back, defiant, and Kestrel felt a little better.

The battalion marched up the mountain, the boots of more than a thousand soldiers striking down on the stone road. Black flags and gold swallow-tailed pennants snapped in the wind. Kestrel took a small spyglass from her skirt pocket.

“Undignified,” the emperor said. “Do you think your father will want you to see his face before he sees yours? Is he an enemy, that you would peer at him? You will show respect for my friend.”

Kestrel flushed. She put the spyglass away.

They were the only three on the battlements: the emperor, the prince, and the lady. The rest of the court had collected in the inner yard, filed according to their rank, stiff and silent. Many of them knew what it meant to fight. The rest thought that they did. They all stood to attention.

Then Kestrel heard the shifting black troops march closer, and she could see, at the head of the line, one man on a horse, leading the rest.

Kestrel’s heart seemed to hatch inside her and let go something that soared. Her father must be well. His injury couldn’t have been bad, or he would have been borne to the palace on a litter.

Kestrel no longer cared for dignity. She ran for the stone steps leading down from the battlement. She raced down the staircase, tripping over the hem of her dress, catching at the railing, cursing her heeled shoes.

She burst into the yard just as brass horns sounded their fanfare. The barbican gates heaved open, and the battalion marched in.

The general rode his horse straight toward Kestrel. That winged feeling inside her faltered. Her father’s face was gray. A wide bandage wrapped around his lower torso leaked blood.

The general halted his horse. The battalion stopped behind him, and the walls of the yard rang silent.

Kestrel stepped toward him.

“No,” said her father. She stopped. He dismounted. It was agonizing to see how slow he was. Blood streaked his saddle.

Again Kestrel would have gone to him. Once he stood on the paved ground, she would have offered her arm. Not in an obvious way. Couldn’t a daughter walk arm in arm with her father? But he raised his gauntleted hand.

She came close anyway. “Let me help.”

“Don’t shame me.”

The general’s words were said low, through clenched teeth. No one heard their exchange. But Kestrel felt as if everyone had, and that every single person gathered there knew everything there was to know about her and her father as he led the way inside the palace, and she was forced to follow behind.





26

He refused medicine. “There’s a fine line between medicine and poison,” he said.

The cup was in the healer’s hand, not Kestrel’s, but she reacted as if she had been the one accused. “No one would poison you,” she told her father.

“That’s not what he means,” said Verex.

Everyone looked at him, including the emperor, whose expression was like when Verex had comforted Kestrel on the battlements. The face of the imperial physician, however, showed a clear respect for the prince. Kestrel’s father simply squinted and looked worn, and leaned back on the bloodied bed. Kestrel had no idea what her face showed.