The Winner's Crime by Marie Rutkoski

Author:Marie Rutkoski
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374384715
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

22

Young courtiers were making kites for the city’s war orphans. Waxed black parchment was glued to stick frames and painted with the golden eyes and feathers of birds of prey. Kestrel and Verex would bring them to the orphanage on Firstspring.

In the large solarium, which had been added to the palace after the Herrani invasion as if the emperor had seized the whole history of Herrani architecture along with its country, Kestrel made a paper chain for a kite’s tail. At other tables, courtiers talked quietly. Kestrel sat alone. Her fingers moved quickly, but she felt as if someone else was making them move, and that she was no more than that cloth doll she’d seen carried through the crowd of the Butcher’s Row.

Kestrel thought of visiting the children. She thought of telling them how their parents had brought honor to the empire. She thought of a ship sailing far away from her.

Her fingers stopped. Her throat closed. Kestrel summoned a new set of paints. She began to cover her kites with swirls of green and blue and pink.

Kestrel heard a rustle of silk as a woman claimed a nearby chair.

“Very pretty,” Maris commented. “But not military colors.”

Kestrel dipped her brush in a jar of water, rang it noisily around, and then set it in a pot of violet. “They’re children, not soldiers.”

“Why, you’re right, of course. This is much more cheerful! Here, let me help.”

Kestrel eyed her briefly, but Maris contented herself with painting in silence. After making her second kite look like a gaudy butterfly, Maris said, “Your friend has a delicious brother. Tell me all about him. Is he taken?”

Kestrel lifted her brush. Paint dribbled down her sleeve. “What?”

“Lord Ronan. Very lucky, isn’t it, that the conquering of Herran gave us so many more titled young men? All that new territory, so nicely portioned out by the emperor ten years ago, with lovely titles to go with it. Too bad the land is gone. But a lord is a lord forever. And he is such a lord! Just the other day, I saw Ronan fight in the city, and—”

“You didn’t. You can’t have.”

Maris’s eyes flashed. “He’s not yours to keep or give.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“We can’t all be empresses. I must marry. I am nearly twenty.” Maris’s voice dropped. “I don’t want to go to war.”

“I meant that you must have seen someone else in the city.” Kestrel tried to speak evenly, but she already didn’t believe her own words. “Ronan isn’t in the capital. He went with Jess and their parents to the south.”

“I assure you, he didn’t.”

“They went away.” Kestrel’s lips had gone numb. “For Jess’s health.”

Maris’s expression changed. Kestrel saw it shift from confusion to a curious understanding before it settled, finally, into a kindness that made Kestrel’s stomach clench. “Lady Kestrel,” said Maris, “you are mistaken. I have wondered why their family avoids the court, but Jess and Ronan attend many functions in the city. I have seen them several times. They’ve been in the capital ever since your engagement ball.

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