The Winner's Crime(79)

She closed her eyes, and tried to find her way back into her dream.

*

Later, in the Butcher’s Row, Kestrel told Tensen to find out if the water engineer changed her bet on the wedding dress. If she did, then it meant that Elinor and the physician were working together.

Kestrel plucked at her work scarf. She tugged it low. Her disguise felt very thin. “There’s something else…” The weather remained warm, but she shivered. “I was wrong to make you promise not to tell Arin about me.”

Tensen raised his white brows.

“I want him to know,” she said.

“I’m not sure that’s wise.”

“Of course,” she said hastily, “a letter sent to Herran would be too risky. But maybe you know of a way…” She heard the pleading in her voice, and stopped.

Tensen’s expression shifted. It showed a flash of something—what, Kestrel couldn’t quite tell, it had come and gone too quickly—and then settled into sympathy. “Oh, Kestrel,” Tensen said. “I would tell him, but he’s not in Herran. I don’t know where he is.”

“You’re his spymaster. How can you not know?”

“No one does.” Tensen spread his hands. His gold ring caught the light. “If you don’t believe me, you can certainly ask around. But”—his voice grew concerned—“given your … history with Arin, I’m not sure such inquiries would be safe. They could come to the attention of the emperor. Or your father.”

Kestrel felt horribly trapped and robbed, though she hadn’t known it was possible to feel robbed of something she had already given up. She struggled not to show this. Already, that dream on the grass had faded in her memory. It was as if she’d worn it out by thinking too much about it. But in the moment, it had felt so real. Kestrel couldn’t quite believe that it hadn’t been.

She looked numbly at Tensen’s ring. He hadn’t worn it in a while. She supposed that it had been lost, and found again. Sometimes things happened that way. But sometimes, Kestrel knew, what’s lost stays lost forever.





38

Kestrel wasn’t sure how, but General Trajan had learned about the deserter: the well-bred son who had left his post in a brigade fighting in the east.

“And he’s here.” Her father’s voice was flat. “Living in a palace suite.”

“I haven’t decided what to do with him.” The emperor reached for his fork and knife and suggested that they begin the third course. He caught Kestrel’s eye. She began to eat.

Her father did not. “What is there to decide?”

“Trajan, he’s just a boy. No older than Verex.” The emperor smiled fondly at his son, who looked down at his plate.

“He betrayed you. He betrayed me. He betrayed himself. Where is his honor now?”

“I imagine it’s with his parents’ lucrative mills in the southern isles. Maybe it’s been ground along with their fine grain and baked into delicious bread.”

“The law on desertion is clear.”

The emperor drank his wine. “To be honest, I was saving him for you. Go see him if you like.”

“I will,” her father said, “and then I’ll return to the east.”

“You can’t even walk the length of the Spring Garden without catching your breath. Would you follow such a commander into battle?”

Her father’s eyes squinted as if narrowed against a sudden glare of light. Kestrel brought her fork clattering down on her plate. Anger boiled up her throat. She opened her mouth to speak, but her father’s eyes cut to her, and it was the same as when he’d stood in the palace courtyard, his blood on his horse, and she had moved to help him.

“All in good time, old friend,” the emperor said gently. His voice had an almost smoky sound, a quality that might have been love if love were like cured meat: hung, dried, and stored to be eaten a little at a time in hard conditions.

Verex pushed his food around his plate. Kestrel’s father didn’t move.

“I’m sorry,” the emperor told him. “I’m not ready to lose you yet.”

*

The general wanted her to come with him. “One day you’ll rule the empire,” he said. “You need to know what to do.”

This was what he did.

He went to the young soldier’s palace suite. He watched the young man, not much older than Kestrel, grow pale. The general brought Kestrel into the sitting room with him, then drew the soldier to the side, one firm hand on the shoulder. The general murmured in his ear. The boy sank in on himself, and turned his face so that Kestrel couldn’t see.

The general’s voice took the tone of a question. The boy inhaled a shuddering breath. Kestrel’s father said something that sounded soothing. Safe. She’d heard him like that before, when she was small.

“Forgive me,” the soldier said in a strangled whisper.

“I will,” the general said. “After.”

Then he told Kestrel that it was time to go.

*

The deserter used his dagger. An honor suicide.

For a few days, the gossip was on every courtier’s lips. Then news came from the east. The barbarians had burned the plains, said the report. The empire’s latest prize was black, barren, smoking.