The Winner's Crime(88)

It made no sense. Its senselessness was painful. How had Kestrel become someone who didn’t make sense?

Two days before her birthday recital, which was two days before the wedding, Verex stopped the emperor on the palace grounds after a horse race where one of the imperial mounts had taken the prize. The prince had approached his father precisely at the moment when the emperor had his back to Kestrel. The emperor didn’t see how close she was.

“Should we be concerned that the Herrani governor hasn’t returned for the wedding?” Verex asked. His gaze flickered over his father’s shoulder to light on Kestrel.

The emperor laughed.

“There’s only one representative from that territory,” Verex said. “It will look a little strange. Maybe the governor ought to be here.” His eyes asked Kestrel’s wish. She shook her head.

“Oh, the Herrani.” The emperor chuckled again. “No one cares about the Herrani. Honestly, I had forgotten all about them.”

*

When Arin arrived in the capital’s harbor, he reined himself in. During the sea journey, he’d let himself pace the ship’s deck, or curse faint winds. The waves didn’t make him sick, not this time. He was too intent on the movements of his thoughts. Arin was incandescent, nervy, sleepless, and possibly mad.

Sometimes he managed to think of other things than Kestrel. He’d shudder at the memory of his cousin. He’d stopped in Herran to see Sarsine and resupply his ship. A Dacran fleet had sailed with him, as part of the alliance, and were stationed now in his city’s harbor to protect it. Arin had been shocked by the change in Sarsine. She seemed so weak. Everyone did. He hated to leave her … yet he had, so possessed he was by the need to speak with Kestrel.

He needed to know. On the ship, his heart and brain galloped over what he knew and thought he knew, or hoped he knew, and then his thoughts would run right back over where they’d already been until they dug deep ruts inside him.

But when he dropped his boots to the capital’s rocky wharf, he became nothing but careful.

He didn’t wash the sea from him. He was too recognizable; the scar especially was a problem. His dirty hair hung just long enough to curtain his brow, but the scar cut clear from his left eye into his cheek. Arin kept his head down as he headed through the Narrows. He hoped he looked disreputable enough that no one would take him for the governor of an imperial territory.

He prowled the city. He didn’t rest. The morning ripened into noon. Then it grew late.

Finally, Arin glimpsed a Herrani man about his size dressed in the blue livery of the imperial palace. The basket strapped to the servant’s back weighed low on his shoulders—heavy, probably filled with foodstuffs for the imperial kitchens. Arin dogged him. He crossed skinny streets. His stride quickened, but he wouldn’t let himself do anything so noticeable as to run.

It was at the edge of the canal, where the opened locks let the full spring waters gush loud, that Arin caught up with him. Arin hailed him, quietly. He called to him by the gods. He invoked their names in a way that made ignoring him a mortal sin. And then, for good measure, he spoke plainly. “Please,” he said. “Help me.”

*

In the palace kitchens, dressed in the servant’s clothes, Arin asked for help again. Yet again, it was a risk. He could be reported. The moment his presence became known in the palace, what he wanted would quickly become impossible: namely, the opportunity to speak with Kestrel alone.

“The music room,” suggested a maid. “Her recital’s tomorrow. She’s there practicing more often than not.”

“What do you want with her?” A footman’s mouth curled in contempt.

Arin almost gave a violent answer. He was anxious, he wasn’t being smart, and for years now there’d been something hard and glittery—and stupid—in him that liked making enemies. He felt like making one right now. But he checked himself. Arin gave the footman a sweet smile. The kitchens became uncomfortably silent.

The cook decided matters. “It’s none of our business.” To Arin she said, “You want to get from here to there without being noticed, do you? Well, then. Someone had better fetch Lady Maris’s maid.”

The Herrani maid arrived soon, a cosmetics kit in hand. She unscrewed a small pot with thick, tinted cream. She mixed it darker. As Arin sat at the scored and pitted worktable, the maid dabbed the cream on his scar.

*

Kestrel closed the music room door. The piano waited. Before that day in the slave market—before Arin—this had been enough for her: that row of keys like a straight border between one world and the next.

Kestrel’s fingers trickled out a few high notes, then stopped. She glanced at the screen. She hadn’t heard her father’s watch chime. Then again, it wasn’t the hour.

She set the sheet music on its rack. She shuffled the pages. She studied the first few lines of the sonata the emperor had chosen, and made herself slowly read the notes she had already memorized.

A breeze from an open window stroked Kestrel’s shoulder. The air was soft, velvety, lushly scented with flowering trees. She remembered playing for Arin. It had just been the one time, though it felt like many more.

The breath of wind stirred the sheet music, then gusted the pages to the floor. Kestrel went to collect them. When she straightened, she glanced involuntarily at the door in a flash of unreasonable certainty that Arin was there.