The Winner's Crime(73)

“The runt,” Verex said proudly. “She survived.”

Kestrel bent low, her organza skirts rustling. She offered a hand to the animal, who snuffled it, then pushed beneath so that Kestrel could properly scratch behind her ears. Her stubby tail beat back and forth. Delightedly, the puppy nipped Kestrel’s wrist.

Kestrel felt suddenly quiet and warm, as if she had just come inside from a long walk on a day chillier than anyone had predicted.

She straightened. She went to Verex and kissed his cheek.

“Oh,” he said, and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Well.” He smiled.

They played with the puppy, whom Kestrel didn’t yet want to name. They tossed velvet cushions for the dog to catch. She savaged them. Feathers flurried over the floor.

This moment was simple, smooth, like a pebble lifted from a riverbed. Kestrel could have asked Verex about the screen in the music room. She could have talked about that Borderlands game with her father, or how her oldest friend was no longer her friend. But Kestrel didn’t want to. Nothing should spoil this moment. She played tug-of-war with the dog until the animal dropped her cushion, which no longer bore even the vaguest resemblance to a cushion. The puppy collapsed in a black heap and fell asleep.

Kestrel wondered what Jess would name her, then shoved that thought from her mind.

But …

Something had been troubling her. Something about that day in Jess’s parlor that she should be able to figure out. A mystery that Kestrel thought could have a clear answer when so much else seemed bewildering, like how she understood Jess’s anger—and didn’t.

“You know a lot about healing,” she said to Verex.

“Not really.” He sat on the floor by the sleeping puppy, who had huddled on Kestrel’s feet. “I studied it a bit. I told you: my father didn’t like it. I didn’t get far.”

“But you know some things.”

He shrugged. “I suppose.”

“Is there a brownish medicine one might take with water?”

“Diluted with water?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. The medicine leaves a residue at the bottom of the glass.”

He pursed his lips. “That could be a few different things. You should ask the palace physician. He’s developed many medicines made in concentrated form to be diluted later with water. He’s excellent at calculating dilution. He trained as a water engineer.” When he saw Kestrel’s surprise, Verex said, “Yes, he even served in the military with the palace water engineer. But that was long ago. He had a gift as a medic on the battlefield and changed professions.” Verex ran a hand down the back of the puppy, who sighed heavily. “Don’t you wish it were that easy? To change who you are?”

For a moment, Kestrel didn’t quite hear his question. Her mind was sparking with the connection between the palace physician and its chief water engineer, who had been bribed for some unknown thing.

She’d promised Tensen she would discover what that thing was.

She’d promised herself to live by her own ideas of honor. She would help Tensen. Because it was right. Because it mattered.

How can the inconsequence of your life not shame you?

Kestrel’s memory was so full of Arin’s voice that she didn’t realize that Verex was peering at her. What had he asked?

If she wished to change herself.

“No,” she lied. Then she decided that what she’d said was the truth. “No,” she said again, “I don’t.”





35

“This came for you,” the Dacran queen said in her language, handing Arin a parcel. “A Herrani ship brought it to the temple island.”

He tucked the package under his arm. It couldn’t be simply a package. It was news. Arin hid his eagerness.

And he hid his surprise. At the queen, delivering something to him. At her standing in his room, which was only one room, not a suite. The bed—much higher than Arin was used to, and narrower—was in a corner, neatly made. The light was soft and gray. It haloed a geometric star of small, triangular windows clustered into a radiant pattern. The queen’s black eyes, lined with streaks of blue paint that swirled greenly down to her brown cheekbones, seemed to glow. She was tall; her gaze was almost level with his.

“Open it,” she said.

Arin rubbed a palm against his scarred cheek.

“Do you understand me?” she said. “You seem to. You’ve learned my language quickly.”


“So could Herrani soldiers. We could fight together.”

“And yet you cannot obey even a simple command.”

Arin opened the package. It was a shirt edged with intricately woven trim in colors he knew well. He shouldn’t have stared and begun to decode the knots and colors beneath the queen’s gaze, but he did. The Moth—

“That cloth is too heavy for our weather,” said the queen.

“I’ll send it back.” Arin would cut away the woven trim and sew on a message of his own for Tensen.

He draped the shirt casually across the back of a chair, reading in the threads that the imperial water engineer was living beyond her apparent means, and was unfriendly to Herran. The Moth believed that the engineer had made a bargain with the emperor. There was no proof, but—

It began to rain. Arin heard water rushing through the castle pipes. The queen had been silent, watching him. He forced himself to turn away from the shirt.