The Winner''s Crime

  With a fingernail, he flicked open a tiny compartment on the underside of his ring. He touched Arin, and the skull and the sky and the red dragonfly were gone.

  * * *

  The emperor was furious. He showed it in certain ways.

  To the Herrani minister of agriculture, who had been the one to break the news of the infested hearthnut crop, the emperor sent a personal invitation to a theatrical performance of the conquest of Herran. Tensen had a front row seat and was spattered with animal blood during the killing of the Herrani royal family.

  The court used flattering ways to soften the emperor’s mood. This irritated him with disastrous consequences. Many aristocrats found that their sons and daughters had abruptly “decided” to enlist in the military, and were sent east.

  “Just stay out of his way,” Verex told Kestrel.

  “It’s no one’s fault that gall wasps ruined the crop. He can’t blame me.”

  “He blames everybody.”

  But to Kestrel the emperor was unfailingly kind—doting, even, until the day that he announced that she was to attend a military parade at the end of the week. “Your father is coming home.”

  In her mind, Kestrel was a girl again, clambering onto her pony to ride out to meet her father, to be the first to see him so brave on his horse, gloriously grimed by battle. She wore a child-size sword he’d had made for her. He smiled to see her. He called her his little warrior.

  “Careful, Kestrel,” said the emperor. “You can of course be yourself around me. There is no need to hide anything. But society won’t understand such obvious happiness on your face, not when your father’s been injured.”

  “He’s hurt?”

  Kestrel asked, she asked what felt like a hundred times, a thousand times, how her father was, how badly he’d been hurt, where, how. Was he coming to Valoria to rest or die?

  The emperor shrugged and smiled and said that, really, he didn’t know.

  * * *

  A black snake wound through the city. From the palace battlements, Kestrel could see the snake flash little scales of gold. She strained hard to discern the front line of the black-clad soldiers. It felt as if someone had clamped a hand down over her nose and mouth. Her fear had an airless quality.

  Verex gently touched her arm.

  The emperor noticed. His expression was unreadable. Verex stared back, defiant, and Kestrel felt a little better.

  The battalion marched up the mountain, the boots of more than a thousand soldiers striking down on the stone road. Black flags and gold swallow-tailed pennants snapped in the wind. Kestrel took a small spyglass from her skirt pocket.

  “Undignified,” the emperor said. “Do you think your father will want you to see his face before he sees yours? Is he an enemy, that you would peer at him? You will show respect for my friend.”

  Kestrel flushed. She put the spyglass away.

  They were the only three on the battlements: the emperor, the prince, and the lady. The rest of the court had collected in the inner yard, filed according to their rank, stiff and silent. Many of them knew what it meant to fight. The rest thought that they did. They all stood to attention.

  Then Kestrel heard the shifting black troops march closer, and she could see, at the head of the line, one man on a horse, leading the rest.

  Kestrel’s heart seemed to hatch inside her and let go something that soared. Her father must be well. His injury couldn’t have been bad, or he would have been borne to the palace on a litter.

  Kestrel no longer cared for dignity. She ran for the stone steps leading down from the battlement. She raced down the staircase, tripping over the hem of her dress, catching at the railing, cursing her heeled shoes.

  She burst into the yard just as brass horns sounded their fanfare. The barbican gates heaved open, and the battalion marched in.

  The general rode his horse straight toward Kestrel. That winged feeling inside her faltered. Her father’s face was gray. A wide bandage wrapped around his lower torso leaked blood.

  The general halted his horse. The battalion stopped behind him, and the walls of the yard rang silent.

  Kestrel stepped toward him.

  “No,” said her father. She stopped. He dismounted. It was agonizing to see how slow he was. Blood streaked his saddle.

  Again Kestrel would have gone to him. Once he stood on the paved ground, she would have offered her arm. Not in an obvious way. Couldn’t a daughter walk arm in arm with her father? But he raised his gauntleted hand.

  She came close anyway. “Let me help.”

  “Don’t shame me.”

  The general’s words were said low, through clenched teeth. No one heard their exchange. But Kestrel felt as if everyone had, and that every single person gathered there knew everything there was to know about her and her father as he led the way inside the palace, and she was forced to follow behind.

  26

  He refused medicine. “There’s a fine line between medicine and poison,” he said.

  The cup was in the healer’s hand, not Kestrel’s, but she reacted as if she had been the one accused. “No one would poison you,” she told her father.

  “That’s not what he means,” said Verex.

  Everyone looked at him, including the emperor, whose expression was like when Verex had comforted Kestrel on the battlements. The face of the imperial physician, however, showed a clear respect for the prince. Kestrel’s father simply squinted and looked worn, and leaned back on the bloodied bed. Kestrel had no idea what her face showed.

  “Almost anything that heals can also hurt … depending on the amount,” said Verex. “Even in the right amount, the general might not like the side effects.”

  “It’s only to fight infection,” said the physician, “and to make you sleep.”

  “Exactly,” said Kestrel’s father. The way he looked at the cup made clear what he would do if it came any nearer.

  “I need to clean the wound.”

  “You can do that just as well while I’m awake.”

  “Please, Father,” said Kestrel. He ignored her.

  “Old friend,” said the emperor, “you’ve proved yourself a thousand times over. There’s no need for this stubbornness.”

  “It could be forced down,” Verex suggested. Everyone gave him a look of horror.

  “You’ll drink it,” the emperor told General Trajan. “I order you to.”

  Kestrel’s father sighed. “I hate being outnumbered,” he said, and drank.

  He blinked heavily. He turned his gaze toward Kestrel. She didn’t know whether he meant to speak or only to look, and if it was to look at her, she didn’t know what he wanted to see, or did see. But she held her breath, waiting for a word. A gesture. A gesture would be enough.

  He closed his eyes. His face seemed to slow. He slept.

  Kestrel realized that she had never seen her father sleep. Somehow that was what made the tears finally fall.

  “It’s not so serious,” said the emperor, but the expressions on the physician’s face—and Verex’s—disagreed. “Come. No more tears.” The emperor offered her a handkerchief, and his voice was gentle.

  Verex looked away.

  When the emperor had left, the physician said to Kestrel, “You should leave, too, my lady.”

  “No.”

  The physician tried to hide his impatient disapproval.

  “I won’t faint,” she said, though she didn’t trust her own promise.

  “Would you mind if I stayed with you?” Verex asked her. For all that the question was meek, it managed to decide things. The healer went to work.

  Verex talked to her the entire time. He described what each of the healer’s tools did, and the antiseptic properties of the wash. “Abdominal wounds are dangerous,” he said, “but the blade didn’t damage any internal organs.”

  “How do you know?” asked Kestrel.

  “He’d be dead by now,” the healer said shortly.

  It was a gash, long and deep. It exposed p
ink layers of flesh and went down right to yellow fat. The healer’s antiseptic fizzed in the wound, and blood ran out.

  Kestrel felt sickeningly light. She was going to faint after all. Then she looked at her father’s sleeping face and wondered who would protect him while he slept, if not her. She kept her eyes open. She kept her feet on the ground.

  “Too deep for stitches,” muttered the physician.

  “He’s going to pack it with wet, sterile gauze instead,” Verex explained. “It will heal slowly, from the inside out.” The prince’s voice was strong and sure. He was turning the grim words of the physician into something hopeful. “Really, that’s the best way to avoid infection, because the wound can be cleaned out daily.”

  The physician gave him a sidelong look. “I’m not sure I need the commentary.” But Kestrel did, and Verex knew that she did.

  When it was finished and the gore was cleaned away, the wound hidden below swaths of gauze, Kestrel’s father looked both larger and smaller than he ever had to her. His face had always seemed to be cut from stone. It was softer now. The sun lines that fanned from his closed eyes were as white as thin scars. His light brown hair held no trace of gray. He had been young when she was born. He wasn’t old now. Yet he looked ancient.

  The physician left. He would return, he said. Verex brought a chair so that Kestrel could sit by her father’s bedside. Then he became awkward again. His stooped shoulders hunched a little more as he asked whether she needed him to stay with her.

  She shook her head. “But … thank you. Thank you for helping me.”

  He smiled. There was a touch of surprise in his smile. Kestrel thought that he was probably not used to being thanked.

  Then she was alone with her father. His breath was slow and even. His hand lay palm up on the bed beside him, fingers slightly curled.

  Kestrel couldn’t remember when she had last held his hand. Had she been a child then? Surely she had held his hand before.

  She hesitated, then she let her palm rest upon his. With her other hand, Kestrel made his loose fingers hold hers close.

  * * *

  He woke during the night. The lamp had been turned down low. His eyes opened just slightly, and gleamed in the feeble light. He opened them wider. He saw Kestrel, and didn’t smile, not exactly, yet the set of his mouth changed. His hand tightened around hers.

  “Father.” Kestrel would have said more, but he closed his eyes briefly in the way of someone who wants to say no without speaking, yet hasn’t the strength to shake his head. Softly, he said, “Sometimes I forget that you aren’t a soldier.”

  He was thinking about when he’d entered the palace yard, and the way she had greeted him. Kestrel said flatly, “You believe I don’t know how to behave around you.”

  For a moment, he was silent. “Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t know.” There was another silence, long enough for Kestrel to think that that was all he would say, but he spoke again. “Look how you’ve grown. I remember the day you were born. I could hold you with one hand. You were the world’s best thing. The most precious.”

  Aren’t I now, to you? she wanted to say. Instead, she whispered, “Tell me how I was.”

  “You had a warrior’s heart, even then.”

  “I was just a baby.”

  “No, you did. Your cry was so fierce. You held my finger so tightly.”

  “All babies cry. All babies hold on tight.”

  He let go of her hand to lift his, and brush his knuckles across her cheek. “Not like you.”

  * * *

  He had fallen asleep again. When the physician came at dawn to clean the wound, the pain woke him.

  “More?” The physician nodded at the empty cup that had held the medicine. The general gave him a dark look.

  When the physician had left again, her father rubbed his eyes. His face was slack with pain. “How long did I sleep?”

  “About four hours after the healer first cleaned your wound. After you woke in the night, another three.”

  He frowned. “I woke in the middle of the night?”

  “Yes,” said Kestrel, confused, but already feeling wary, already tensing as if some blow was about to fall.

  “Did I … say something I shouldn’t have?”

  Kestrel realized that he didn’t remember waking, or the conversation. She could no longer tell if he had meant what he had said to her then. Even if he had meant it, had he meant to say it?

  He had, after all, been drugged.

  An emotion leaked away. It came from a small cut that Kestrel couldn’t close.

  “No,” she told her father. “You didn’t.”

  27

  Arin woke with the movement of being heaved up onto something hard. His head thumped, and the world was a weird, jigsawed thing of sky and stone and water. Then his vision cleared, and Arin realized that he was lying on a stone pier. The skull-faced man was stepping out of the narrow boat anchored to the pier. He muttered something.

  “What did you say?” Arin croaked.

  The man hunkered down and gently slapped Arin’s cheek twice. “That I need a wheelbarrow.”

  Wherever Arin was going, he wanted to be on his feet. “There’s been a misunderstanding.”

  “Foreigners are illegal in Dacra. You broke our laws by entering the country. You’ll have to pay the price.”

  “Just let me tell you why—”

  “Oh, reasons. Everyone has reasons. I don’t care to know yours.” The easterner stared down at Arin, and although it wasn’t the man’s eyes that had been mutilated, it was hard to hold his gaze. Arin remembered seeing him for those few bare minutes in Herran. How the runaway eastern slave was being dragged past the road Arin was forced to pave. A Valorian dagger had flashed. Arin had cursed his masters. He had been beaten down. The man’s face was whole, and then it wasn’t.

  “You ran away again,” Arin said. “You got free.”

  The man straightened. He stared down at Arin from a height. “Do you think you did something for me that day?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Because I think that you liked your chains, little Herrani. Otherwise, you would have fought with everything you had. You would look like me.” He bent to grasp the ropes wound around Arin’s chest, and Arin realized that he meant to drag him.

  “Let me walk.”

  “All right.” The easy response surprised Arin until the man pulled Kestrel’s dagger from the satchel slung over his shoulder, cut the ropes binding Arin’s ankles, and watched him with a smile.

  It was then that Arin realized that he couldn’t quite feel his feet. Standing up was going to be hard. Walking no longer seemed like a great idea.

  Arin’s wrists were bound in front of him. Rope coiled around his upper body at the biceps. He decided to take that as a healthy amount of respect for the way he’d attacked the prison guard.

  The easterner was still smirking.

  Arin inchwormed to his knees. He struggled to his feet. He nearly fell back down.

  The soles of his feet stung with a thousand little knives. He wobbled. Arin saw, again, Kestrel’s blade in the easterner’s hand. He was suddenly furious at her, as if she had drugged him, tied him, and watched him try to walk when he couldn’t.

  He clenched his teeth until it hurt. He took a step.

  The Dacran said something in his language.

  “What?” said Arin. He took another wavering step. He bent his arms at the elbows, lifting his bound wrists. It helped him balance. He flexed his fingers. The feeling in them was fine. He could open and close his hands. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell me what you said.”

  “You want to know? Learn my language for yourself.” The man was unsettled, apparently by whatever he’d said as Arin tried to walk. He looked down and opened the satchel to place Kestrel’s dagger inside.

  Arin knew an opportunity when he saw it.

  He shouldered his weight into the man, toppling them both down. The
dagger hit stone. The man was shoving Arin off him, but Arin jerked a knee up into the Dacran’s stomach and rolled to claim the dagger.

  Later, Arin would realize how lucky he’d been. But for now he thought nothing at all. The dagger was in his hands, he was flipping it by its hilt. That exquisitely sharp edge sliced through the ropes at his wrists.

  The Dacran gasped on the ground, clutching his gut. Arin loomed over him and couldn’t quite remember when or how he’d gotten to his feet. When had he yanked the ropes that had bound his chest up over his head? Ropes lay in a heap on the pier. Arin stared at them. He stared at the man, who stared back.

  No, not really.

  The Dacran wasn’t really looking at Arin. His gaze was going over Arin’s shoulder.

  Arin turned. For the first time, he truly saw where he was: on a large island in the middle of the river. The pier was grand, edged with low, scalloped walls of translucent stone. A path traveled from it up onto the island, to a castle with steeply pitched roofs and walls that gleamed like glass.

  But the pier didn’t matter, or the path, or the castle.

  What mattered were the ranks of white-clad guards who had trained their small crossbows, wound and notched, at Arin.

  “Good,” said the skull-faced man. He stood, and held out his hand for Kestrel’s dagger.

  Arin hated that he always hated to let it go.

  The man took it. “Good.”

  Defeated, Arin muttered, “You said that already.”

  It began to rain. The Dacran looked at him through the bright gray of it. “No. It was what I said earlier, when you got to your feet and walked.”

  * * *

  The castle had looked like glass because it had been made from that odd, translucent stone. Through the rain, Arin could see dark shapes of people moving behind its outer walls. But other figures seemed to stand inside the stone.

  Arin wiped water from his eyes. “Does it always rain so much here?”

  “Wait till summer,” said the Dacran. “It gets so hot that some of the city canals dry up and we walk in them like deep roads. Then you’ll wish for rain.”