The Winner's Crime(60)

For a moment, he was silent. “Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t know.” There was another silence, long enough for Kestrel to think that that was all he would say, but he spoke again. “Look how you’ve grown. I remember the day you were born. I could hold you with one hand. You were the world’s best thing. The most precious.”

Aren’t I now, to you? she wanted to say. Instead, she whispered, “Tell me how I was.”

“You had a warrior’s heart, even then.”

“I was just a baby.”

“No, you did. Your cry was so fierce. You held my finger so tightly.”

“All babies cry. All babies hold on tight.”

He let go of her hand to lift his, and brush his knuckles across her cheek. “Not like you.”

*

He had fallen asleep again. When the physician came at dawn to clean the wound, the pain woke him.

“More?” The physician nodded at the empty cup that had held the medicine. The general gave him a dark look.

When the physician had left again, her father rubbed his eyes. His face was slack with pain. “How long did I sleep?”

“About four hours after the healer first cleaned your wound. After you woke in the night, another three.”

He frowned. “I woke in the middle of the night?”

“Yes,” said Kestrel, confused, but already feeling wary, already tensing as if some blow was about to fall.

“Did I … say something I shouldn’t have?”

Kestrel realized that he didn’t remember waking, or the conversation. She could no longer tell if he had meant what he had said to her then. Even if he had meant it, had he meant to say it?

He had, after all, been drugged.

An emotion leaked away. It came from a small cut that Kestrel couldn’t close.

“No,” she told her father. “You didn’t.”





27

Arin woke with the movement of being heaved up onto something hard. His head thumped, and the world was a weird, jigsawed thing of sky and stone and water. Then his vision cleared, and Arin realized that he was lying on a stone pier. The skull-faced man was stepping out of the narrow boat anchored to the pier. He muttered something.

“What did you say?” Arin croaked.

The man hunkered down and gently slapped Arin’s cheek twice. “That I need a wheelbarrow.”

Wherever Arin was going, he wanted to be on his feet. “There’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Foreigners are illegal in Dacra. You broke our laws by entering the country. You’ll have to pay the price.”

“Just let me tell you why—”

“Oh, reasons. Everyone has reasons. I don’t care to know yours.” The easterner stared down at Arin, and although it wasn’t the man’s eyes that had been mutilated, it was hard to hold his gaze. Arin remembered seeing him for those few bare minutes in Herran. How the runaway eastern slave was being dragged past the road Arin was forced to pave. A Valorian dagger had flashed. Arin had cursed his masters. He had been beaten down. The man’s face was whole, and then it wasn’t.

“You ran away again,” Arin said. “You got free.”

The man straightened. He stared down at Arin from a height. “Do you think you did something for me that day?”

“No.”

“Good. Because I think that you liked your chains, little Herrani. Otherwise, you would have fought with everything you had. You would look like me.” He bent to grasp the ropes wound around Arin’s chest, and Arin realized that he meant to drag him.

“Let me walk.”

“All right.” The easy response surprised Arin until the man pulled Kestrel’s dagger from the satchel slung over his shoulder, cut the ropes binding Arin’s ankles, and watched him with a smile.

It was then that Arin realized that he couldn’t quite feel his feet. Standing up was going to be hard. Walking no longer seemed like a great idea.

Arin’s wrists were bound in front of him. Rope coiled around his upper body at the biceps. He decided to take that as a healthy amount of respect for the way he’d attacked the prison guard.

The easterner was still smirking.

Arin inchwormed to his knees. He struggled to his feet. He nearly fell back down.

The soles of his feet stung with a thousand little knives. He wobbled. Arin saw, again, Kestrel’s blade in the easterner’s hand. He was suddenly furious at her, as if she had drugged him, tied him, and watched him try to walk when he couldn’t.

He clenched his teeth until it hurt. He took a step.

The Dacran said something in his language.

“What?” said Arin. He took another wavering step. He bent his arms at the elbows, lifting his bound wrists. It helped him balance. He flexed his fingers. The feeling in them was fine. He could open and close his hands. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me what you said.”

“You want to know? Learn my language for yourself.” The man was unsettled, apparently by whatever he’d said as Arin tried to walk. He looked down and opened the satchel to place Kestrel’s dagger inside.

Arin knew an opportunity when he saw it.

He shouldered his weight into the man, toppling them both down. The dagger hit stone. The man was shoving Arin off him, but Arin jerked a knee up into the Dacran’s stomach and rolled to claim the dagger.