The Winner's Crime(63)

“I’m sorry,” Arin said carefully. “I tried. But I couldn’t do anything.”

“You did. You saved the thing in me that decided I would run away again.”





29

“I want you to do something for me,” Kestrel’s father said.

Firstspring had come and gone. Kestrel had missed most of the celebrations to be with her father in his rooms, as she was every day. The only event she’d attended was the one at the orphanage, where the children had looked dubiously at the bright kites she offered. “They’re not the right color,” a little girl had said. “I want a black one.” Afterward, Verex had gone through the leftovers. “May I keep this?” He lifted a pink-and-green kite. “It’s my favorite,” he said. Kestrel had smiled.

Now she looked warily at her father as he lay in his bed. She waited to see what he would ask.

“I want you to go to the battling clubs in the city,” he said, “and recruit people to the military.”

Kestrel edged her chair away from the bed. The wooden squeak was loud. She toyed with a bit of embroidery on her sleeve and imagined that her disappointment was a thread that could be tied into knots and stitched down tight. During all the hours she had sat by her father, this was the first time he’d asked her for anything. What had she hoped he would ask?

Perhaps to be brought a glass of water. Or to be told what had happened to the dagger he’d given her. He couldn’t have missed its replacement. The emperor’s gaudy blade was right there in full view, strapped to Kestrel’s waist.

It seemed impossible to tell her father certain things unless he asked for them.

But some words came easy, because they were angry and had been said many times before. “I want nothing to do with the military.”

“Kestrel.”

“Look at what it’s done to you.”

“I will heal.”

“And the next time? You are going to keep fighting until the day you’re killed, and I have to set an empty plate at the table for my father’s ghost.”

“We don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Then you’ll leave me with nothing at all.”

“We need more soldiers,” he said. “The army is stretched too thin.”

“Then stop trying to take new territory.”

“That isn’t what the emperor wants.”

“What do you want?”

“That,” he told her, “is a foolish question.”

Was it because he had known her all her life that he knew exactly which words would hurt most? But no, it couldn’t be time that gave someone that power. Arin had it, too. I don’t know you anymore, he’d said. And I don’t want to.

If she went to the battling clubs and signed more soldiers into the army, did that mean that their deaths would be her fault? Would the blood of the people they killed be on her hands? And the grief and anger of those who were left behind—was that her doing, too? She remembered how the war orphans had wanted black kites.

“Recruit them yourself,” she told her father.

He was silent as she strode to the door. It was that silence that ultimately stopped her. Though Kestrel’s back was to him, she still saw him as he lay wounded on the bed. Pale and drawn. Tired in a way she’d never seen.

If she recruited more Valorians … it might help him when he returned to the field. More soldiers could mean that he’d be kept safe for another year. Maybe two.

Kestrel sighed. Her back still to him, she said, “I don’t know why you think that I could persuade anyone to sign up.”

“The people love you.”

“They love you. I’m just your daughter.”

“You escaped from Herran. You alerted us to the rebellion. And by now everyone must know how I won the eastern plains.”

“I wish you’d claimed that idea for your own.”

“I would never do that.”

Kestrel turned, set her shoulders back against the door, and crossed her arms. She thought of Tensen’s latest request for information. “Do you know the chief water engineer?”

“Elinor?” From his bed, the general looked at Kestrel with eyes narrowed in pain. This conversation had exhausted him. His breath was uneven. If he’d been anyone else, he would have already asked for medicine. “I know her a little.”

“From your campaigns in the east?” With the exception of the plains, the lands there were watery, especially farther south, though Valorian soldiers had never reached the queen’s city in the delta.

“Yes, and in Herran. Why?”


“She has a townhome here. I thought that maybe … after I go to the battling clubs, you’d like for me to pay her a call. I could ask her to join the regiment when it returns east. You might need someone to build bridges, or dams—”

“Yes.” If he’d had more energy, the general would have looked amused. “I do. But she’s the emperor’s now. He doesn’t like to share. Don’t waste your time visiting her.”

Kestrel paused, then said, “I’m going to the battling clubs under one condition.”

“Ah.” His head leaned back into the damp pillow. “A bargain. What must I do now?”