The Winner's Crime (46 page)

She wanted to drop her face into her hands. She wanted

to laugh— or weep, she wasn’t sure. Something was churn-

ing inside her that felt frighteningly like panic. She would

MARIE RUTK

have moved to leave if she didn’t think that Arin might

physically stop her— and
that
, if nothing else, would bring

her father into the room.

She tried to speak coolly. “I don’t know what you’re

talking about,” she told Arin. “I’m sure I haven’t done any-

thing for any treaty. I’ve had a wedding to plan. I’ll have

plenty of time for politics when I’m empress.”

“You know exactly which treaty I mean. You placed it

in my hand. And I swear that it has the traces of you
all

over it.
”

“Arin—”

“It gave me my country’s freedom. It saved my life.”

His face was pale, his gray eyes urgent. He towered over

her as she remained sitting. The piano bench felt like a raft

at sea. “What did you do to make the emperor sign it?”

Arin’s anxious voice rang loud. It didn’t matter that he had

spoken in Herrani. Her father knew Herrani. Kestrel knit-

ted her hands. She thought of how her father had told the

deserter to kill himself rather than live with his shame.

Would he do that to her if she answered Arin truthfully?

What would the general do to
him
?

“Arin, please. I did nothing for that treaty. I don’t have

time for your delusions.”

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“But you have time to meet with Tensen. Don’t you?”

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Innocently, she said, “Who?”

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His mouth went hard.

Don’t say it,
Kestrel told him.
Please, please.
She didn’t

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know if Tensen had somehow told Arin, or if Arin had

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guessed, but if he said the word
Moth
out loud . . . she re-

membered her father brushing the moth from Tensen’s

painting to the fl oor. The general’s eyes had questioned the

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sight of a masker moth— infamous eater of fabrics, denizen

of wardrobes— in such an odd place. It wouldn’t take much

for her father to guess what that moth was doing there, and

why.

Especially if Arin asked her if
she
was Tensen’s Moth.

Don’t.
She wanted to shake him.
Don’t
.

Frustration rippled across Arin’s face. She saw him war

with himself.

Yes,
Kestrel told him.
That’s right. You can’t tell the em-

peror’s future daughter the code name of your spy, or admit the

part Tensen plays for you at court. No, don’t say it. What if

you’re wrong? You’ d risk people’s lives. Arin, you can’t.

With forced calm, Arin said, “If I’ve been deluded, it’s

because you have been
pretending
. You’re pretending even

now
. You are not so cold. You tried to help the plains-

people. When we were together in the city tavern—”

Kestrel felt a sinking sickness.

“—I blamed you for the exodus. But poisoning the

horses was better than setting fi re to the plains. Isn’t that

why you chose it? Your father—”

“I love my father.”

Arin drew slightly back. “I know.”

“If I’d given him anything less than the best military

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advice I could, I would have put him in danger.” She only

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now realized this, and was appalled anew at herself. “The

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east burned the plains we took.”

“Yes.” It seemed like Arin would say more, but he

didn’t.

“If my father had been there then . . . many Valorians

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died in the fi re.” She thought of Ronan. Her throat closed.

She couldn’t say his name. “If I did what you think I did,

those deaths would be my fault.”

“They deserved it,” he said fl atly. “All those soldiers

cared about was feeding the empire’s appetite. The empire

eats
everything
. Everyone in Herran is weak. We’ve been

taxed too much. There’s been too little food. Now people

are so weak they don’t even want to eat what’s left.”

Kestrel glanced up. “That doesn’t sound like starvation.”

“You know nothing about starvation.”

That silenced her.

Arin sighed. He rubbed hard at his brow, pushing

along the line of the scar, which was poorly disguised by a

cosmetic. “Everyone’s thin, tired. Hollow- eyed. It’s gotten

worse. They sleep most of the day, Sarsine said. Even
she

does. If you could see her . . . she couldn’t stop her hands

from shaking.”

Kestrel’s mind snagged on his last word.
Shaking
. It

made her think— inexplicably—about how she had dyed

her villa’s fountain pink when she was a little girl. She re-

membered telling the water engineer about it, not more

than two months ago. She saw again the red dye spreading

through the water and fading to pink. An experiment.

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Kestrel— had she been ten years old then?— had overheard

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the water engineer talking about a strange word,
dilution
,

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with her father at dinner. He thought well of the engineer,

who had served with him in the war and designed Her-

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ran’s aqueducts. The girl Kestrel decided she should under-

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stand how dilution worked.

But dilution had nothing to do with shaking. The

grownup Kestrel frowned, and as she did, she remembered

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that
shaking
had been the imperial physician’s word to de-

scribe the sign that someone had taken his medication for

too long . . . long enough for it to become deadly.

Understanding seeped into her. It spread, red drops in

still water, and she forgot that her father was listening and

watching and judging behind the screen. She forgot even

that Arin’s shoulders were hunched in worry and doubt.

She saw only the meaning of those six imagined Bite and

Sting tiles she had mixed over and over in her mind: the

emperor, the water engineer, the physician, a favor, Herran,

and Valoria.

She knew how they all played out. The pattern stared

her in the face.

The emperor had decided the Herrani were more trou-

ble than they were worth. He decided to have them slowly

poisoned through the water supply. A neat solution to a

troublesome, rebellious people. He had eked as much out

of them as he could. Once they were dead he’d claim the

land again. He’d show the empire Herran’s ultimate re-

ward for rebellion.

It was more important than ever that she speak with

Arin frankly . . . and that she not do so
here
. She looked at

the door. She wasn’t entirely sure her father wouldn’t walk

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through it— maybe even with the palace guard.

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But how could she get Arin to leave? How could she

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follow him, and not have it be blatantly obvious to her

father why? He’d heard the rumors. He had seen her fi ght

a duel on Arin’s behalf in Herran. If all that wasn’t

enough, he must have surely heard the intimacy in Arin’s

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voice.
You are not so cold
.
When we were together in the city

tavern . . .

Arin dropped his elbows to the piano’s frame and

leaned to press his face into his palms. “I shouldn’t have

left Sarsine. I shouldn’t have come.”

Kestrel wanted to touch him. He looked so miserable.

Could her father see the longing in her face? It felt like a

burning lamp. If she could, she would have touched three

fi ngers to the back of Arin’s hand: the Herrani gesture of

thanks and regret.
I’m sorry,
she’d say.
Thank you,
she’d say,

because somehow he still believed in her and had guessed

what she’d tried so hard to hide.
I love you,
she’d say. She

almost heard the words. She almost saw her hand reach out.

She craved it.

Slowly, Kestrel said, “You wanted to talk about the

treaty.”

He lifted his head. His face refl ected in the piano lid’s

varnish.

The decision fell on Kestrel like a white sheet. She

would lie one last time, for her father. She would be com-

posed. Convincing. Later she would set things right with

Arin, and tell him everything.

She could do this. She must.

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6

“You think that I somehow arranged it. Isn’t that what

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you implied? That I swayed the emperor.” Kestrel sank one

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fi nger down on a high key, but slowly, so that it made no

sound. “Does the emperor
seem
easily infl uenced?”

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“No.”

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“Yet
I
managed it?”

“Yes.”

She played a merry trill.

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“Please don’t do that.”

She stopped. “Arin,
why
would I persuade the emperor

to off er that treaty? We do agree that it was I who told the

empire of your rebellion, don’t we? It’s common knowl-

edge. I sent war to your doorstep.”

“Yes.”

She said, “We were friends in Herran, weren’t we, for a

time?”

Arin’s reply was hoarse. “Yes.”

“Was what I did the act of a friend?”

“No,” he whispered.

“Yet I did that, and then supposedly arranged this sal-

vifi c treaty. It doesn’t make much sense, Arin.”

“It makes sense,” he said, “if you changed your mind.”

She raised one brow. “That’s a dramatic change in-

deed.”

He was silent.

Kestrel’s fear, which she had briefl y managed to squeeze

shut, opened again. It spread.

She was afraid of failing in this lie. She was afraid of

succeeding. And she was, she realized with a horrible clench

of the heart, very afraid of her father.

Arin faced Kestrel fully: unblinking, eyes gray as a

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wind- torn sky, the scar livid against his drawn cheek. “It

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was
a dramatic change,” he said, “but you made it. I know

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you did.”

Kestrel closed the lid over the keys. Something was com-

ing that she couldn’t control. The game was changing, and

her best option now was to leave. She rose.

MARIE RUTK

Arin stopped her. “I’m not
nothing
to you. I heard what

you were playing.”

She tried to laugh. “I don’t even remember what I was

playing.” Arin’s hand was on her arm. She stepped away

from his touch. What must her father think? She glanced

at the screen. She stared at the door. It didn’t open.

“Why are you doing this?” Arin demanded. “Stop

lying. I heard your music. And I
know.
You bargained with

the emperor for the treaty.”

She heard a faint, scratching sound. Had she imagined

it? It was the sound of a sword drawn from its sheath in a

hidden room. “I didn’t.”

Arin blocked her path.

“Let me go.” Her voice sounded like it was falling apart.

“This is what I think: that there is no change more dra-

matic than you agreeing to marry when you have never—

never
—wanted to marry anyone.”

“We’ve already discussed the many incentives to my

marrying the prince.”

“Have we discussed them all?” He dragged a hand

through his dirty hair. “Kestrel, I feel like I’m going mad.

That I’m seeing things— or
not
seeing things. Just tell me.

Did you . . . are you . . . marrying the prince because of

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8

me? Was it . . . part of some kind of deal you made with

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the emperor?”

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The silence wasn’t just Kestrel’s. It was her father’s,

too.

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She sucked in a sharp breath. She could say this. She

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could do it, she promised herself, because she would make

it better later. She would take it all back very, very soon.

Gently, Kestrel told him, “That sounds like a story.”

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Arin hung back, eyes uncertain, and despite his insis-

tence that he knew what she had done, Kestrel sensed how