The Winner's Crime(71)

Kestrel’s father would recognize that look, because it was made for war.

But he wouldn’t see Jess’s unshed tears. Or if he did, he’d pretend they weren’t there.

Kestrel’s own eyes stung. “Tell me what I’ve done.”

“You know. You’re the one who knows everything. I know nothing. I’m a little innocent, struggling to keep up. Why don’t you tell me? Tell me that I’m slow. Laugh at how I fell asleep in your bed, how tired I was, how I had looked for you at your wretched ball and you never spoke with me there, not once. How I hid in the crowd and drank glass after glass of lemon water, just to have something to do. Tell me how I saw that slave of yours, pushing through the crowd. He looked dirty. He wore rags. He was dark and disgusting.

“Yet he glittered.” Jess’s voice came low, ferocious. “His mouth glittered. His jacket did, too. Why don’t you explain that, Kestrel? I’m too stupid to figure it out on my own.”

Kestrel felt herself go slowly, icily pale.

“I didn’t think anything of the way his jacket caught the light,” Jess said. “Like crystals, I thought. Or bits of glass. Strange. But I didn’t want to look at him. I would not look at him. I turned away.

“And then I went to sleep. You woke me, you told me about the broken necklace. I’m so slow. Can you believe that it wasn’t until morning, when I was alone in your bedroom, that it occurred to me that there was a very simple explanation for everything?” Tears trembled on Jess’s lashes. “Why don’t you tell me what it is, Kestrel? Tell me the truth.”

Kestrel didn’t understand how the truth could be so two-sided, like a coin. So precious—and ugly. She stood in the center of the parlor: silent, trapped by her own silence … and by how her silence became her answer.

Jess wept freely now. “He took everything from me.”

Kestrel stepped toward her. Jess threw up her hands as if in defense. Kestrel halted. “Jess,” she said quietly, “he didn’t.”

Jess gave a short, hard laugh. She swiped at the tears on her cheeks. “No? He took my home.”

“Not for himself. It was part of the emperor’s treaty to give the colonial homes back.”

“Which he signed.”

“It wasn’t your house to begin with.”

“Listen to yourself! We won that land. It was ours. That’s the rule of war.”

“Whose rule, Jess? Who says that this is the way it must be?”

Jess’s eyes narrowed as if seeing something from far away. “He has done this to you.”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“You’ve been my friend for more than ten years. Do you think I can’t tell when you lie?”

“No one has made me change.”

“But you have.”

Kestrel was silent.

“He took Ronan,” Jess said. “Ronan’s joined the Rangers, did you know that?”


No. Kestrel had known only of his enlistment. The Rangers were an elite brigade. They vied for the deadliest missions. A bright shard of fear entered Kestrel’s heart. “Ronan took himself away,” she said finally. “No one made him enlist.”

“No one?” Jess’s voice was hoarse with fury.

“I begged him,” Kestrel said. “I begged him not to.”

“What does it matter what you begged? Ronan knew. I would bet anything that he did. He knows what I know. That slave took you. That was my gift on his clothes. That was your engagement mark on his mouth. And that was what you wanted. It was what you wanted when I lay dying on the floor of the governor’s palace. And even before that: when I chose your dress and asked you to be my sister. You wanted it all along.”

Kestrel’s gaze fell to the needlepoint sofa. She stared at the unraveling hunter girl.

“Deny it,” Jess said.

If Kestrel pulled on the loose thread, the embroidered face would come undone. If she pulled hard enough, maybe the needlepoint girl would disappear altogether.

“Deny it!”

“I can’t,” Kestrel said miserably.

“Then leave.”

But Kestrel couldn’t move.

“Go away, Kestrel. I don’t want to see you again.”

*

Kestrel sat before the piano in the stark palace music room. The row of keys looked blankly back.

Jess knew.

Kestrel sank one hand down into a violent chord. And there it was again, that odd, troubling echo, the one that always made her music sound as if it were listening to itself. She took her hand away. Her body became rigid, her bones grimly set. Maybe she would have been able to do what she usually did, which was to forget the echo. Maybe she would have stormed right into the music. But she was held tight by a feeling she’d never had.

She didn’t want to play.

Kestrel left the piano. She considered the room. What would make the acoustics sound right? Tapestries on the walls? Kestrel thought about this. She thought hard, hard enough to ignore how desperately she had wanted Jess to understand.

Kestrel was inspecting a shelf and wondering whether the acoustics would be better if she filled the shelves with more books when she saw it. At the back of one of the high shelves set into the wall, there was no wooden panel. The other shelves had wooden backs.