The Winner's Crime(64)

“Drink your medicine.”

*

The battling clubs were not-very-secret societies. There were four in the city, and they each served young aristocrats with luxurious headquarters designed for private parties, sultry moments in hidden rooms—and, of course, fighting.

Each club came equipped with an impressive variety of weaponry. There were keyed rooms for combatants who wished to be alone, and arenas for matches meant to be seen.

Everybody knew the few club rules. Clean up your own blood. Money up front for gambling. Members only. Even Lady Kestrel would have had problems at the door if she hadn’t shown her father’s signet ring.

The clubs unsettled her. It didn’t matter how much dark wainscoting lined the walls, or that the furnishings were backed by southern isle silk. The rooms still smelled like wine and sweat and blood. It made her think of fighting Irex in Herran. His boot cracking against her knee. She remembered Cheat’s weight flattening her against the floor.

Kestrel’s mouth was chalky.

She asked for water. She was served. Then she went about her business.

After three clubs, she had collected about twenty names. It wasn’t much. Several Valorians who signed were wild-eyed and laughing. Some were flattered. Others—especially those closest to twenty years old—were resigned, because the empire would soon make them choose between marriage and the military anyway. If a citizen wouldn’t make babies to boost the imperial population, she would have to make war.

In one club, two young women signed up together. They insisted on writing their names on the same line. This made Kestrel realize that they were a couple. People who loved that way—or who otherwise didn’t want to marry against their desires—often joined the military. Kestrel watched the women sign, and thought of her own marriage, and felt even worse than before.

Kestrel reclaimed the list. She shoved it inside her skirt pocket.

In the last club, a fight was on.

The small arena was packed and loud, the air heavy. Kestrel was a latecomer and had to stand at the back of the crowd. Peering over someone’s shoulder, she caught a glimpse of the fighters, both men, both with blond hair tied back. The one whose back was to her was slender but quick.

It was a fistfight. Kestrel couldn’t see any weapons either in the combatants’ hands or strapped to their bodies, so this wasn’t a duel fought over honor, but for pleasure.

The larger man crashed a fist into the face of the thinner one. He cried out. The crowd surged forward.

Kestrel did, too. She knew that cry. She would swear that she recognized that voice. But the gap that had given her a view of the fighters had closed. She could see nothing now, and people were shouting, and she couldn’t even tell if they were shouting someone’s name.

She did. She called out a name. The noise swallowed it.

Kestrel elbowed her way forward. She pushed her way to the front. The slender man was coming up from the ground. He delivered a series of uppercuts to his opponent’s gut, yanked on an ear, and punched his face.

The big fighter went down. He wasn’t getting up.

The crowd began shouting again, and this time they clearly were shouting a name. It was the same one on Kestrel’s lips, the one that she said again as the winner turned around, wiped blood from his mouth, and saw her.

Ronan.





30

After the crowd cleared, Kestrel told the club owner to find her a private room. Ronan was a member, and could have arranged this himself. Instead, he watched and listened to Kestrel’s instructions with something like amusement, or the air of someone pleasantly surprised by the appearance of an old friend. But his smile was bitter.

He ordered a carafe of cold wine. Once he and Kestrel were alone, he drank half of it down at once.

“A private audience with the future empress,” Ronan said, unwinding bloodied linen strips from his knuckles. “I’m honored.” He settled his long frame in a chair and looked up at her. He had a split lip. His blond hair was loose and sweaty, his finely drawn face purpled with bruises. He ran a finger along the rim of his glass until it hummed.

When Kestrel was little, Jess’s older brother had ignored her. Then one evening, when Kestrel was perhaps fifteen, she and her father had been invited to a society dinner at his house. Over the third course, she asked a senator whether he’d marry all of his mistresses if he could have more than one wife.

Kestrel hadn’t meant to upset the senator. She’d just been curious. She wasn’t aware that his wife, also at the dinner, hadn’t known about the mistresses.

Kestrel was sent from the table to sit alone in Jess’s suite.

Ronan smuggled her dessert. They ate white powdered cakes together, sugar dust all over their faces, and she laughed as Ronan imitated the senator’s reaction, puffing out his cheeks and holding his breath until his face turned red.

After that, Ronan noticed her.

Kestrel missed her friend. She missed him right now as he sat before her, everything about him playful and careless except for his eyes, which cared very much, and were cold.

He drank his cup dry. “What do you want, Kestrel?”

“Did you tell Jess?”

Ronan arched one brow. “Did I tell Jess.” He twirled his glass by its stem. “Let’s see. Did I tell Jess that those rumors were true, that all autumn long you had a lover—”

“I didn’t.”