Kestrel’s gaze fell again to the puppy. She wondered what it would be like to be able to tell someone everything. She stroked the soft creature. “Will it live?”
“I hope so.”
A quick, hot liquid streamed through Kestrel’s fingers. She yelped. The puppy’s urine trickled down her sleeve.
Verex widened his already large eyes. “That was lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“That’s not all puppies do, you know. It could have been worse.”
Kestrel smiled. “That’s true,” she said. “You’re right.” Her smile grew, and became a laugh.
* * *
Her maids were horrified. They ran a bath and practically stripped the clothes from her. But Kestrel nursed that floating feeling of forgiveness Verex had given her. It buoyed her in the warm bath.
She asked to be alone.
The bath cooled. Her hair, water-dark, lay flat and sleek over her breasts like armor.
Arin had changed her. It was time to admit that.
Kestrel stood in the bath. The water sheeted from her. She wrapped herself, oddly and unreasonably shy with her own nakedness.
What kind of change had Arin wrought?
She thought back to last summer, and how it had felt as if he were thumbing her eyes wide open to see her world. She thought about the puppy, velvety blind, and her wish never to have heard any plan for the eastern plains, so that she wouldn’t bear any responsibility for what had been done.
Kestrel thought that she needed to open her eyes wider.
She looked.
There was the plush robe around her, for the prince’s bride must have comfort. She saw stained glass set in the bathing room windows, for a Valorian must have beauty. Gold rings glimmered wetly on Kestrel’s wrinkled fingers. The general’s wars had won luxury for his daughter.
And there were the rules. They hung invisible in the humid air. But who had decided them? Who had decided that a Valorian honors her word? Who had convinced her father that the empire must continue to eat other countries whole, and that slaves were Valoria’s due right of conquest?
Her father held his honor so firmly, like a solid thing, something that couldn’t twist free. It occurred to Kestrel that she had wondered before what her father’s honor was like, and Arin’s, but she didn’t know the shape of her own.
There was dishonor, she decided, in accepting someone else’s idea of honor without question.
Kestrel bent to touch the faucet and pipe of the bath. There was running water in Herrani houses, for fountains, mostly, but the imperial palace was veined with an ingenious system of pipes that pumped in warm water from thermal sources in the mountain, heated it further with a furnace, and swept it up to the highest floors. This system had been invented by the chief water engineer, the one who had designed the canals.
On the day after Arin had left, Tensen had asked Kestrel to investigate something. “The chief water engineer has done the emperor a favor,” he’d said. “Could you find out what it was?”
Kestrel lifted her hand from the still warm bath pipe that led to the floor and vanished into it. She went to the window, and stood in the light of its brilliant stain. Her hands glowed blue and deep pink. She unlatched and swung open the window. Everything went clear. The air was raw. Kestrel could scent it on the wind: that thing that was going to blow her forward in time, to warmth, flowers blooming, trees in pollen and then spread green.
Spring.
23
On the sixth day at sea, Arin stopped being seasick. That night, there were no clouds. Stars frosted the sky. The ship was becalmed.
Arin was on deck, turning Kestrel’s dagger in his hands. In the end, he’d decided to take it with him. It was his now, by his own blood. Or so he told himself.
He sheathed it. He tipped his head back and gazed at the wide band of stars that arched over him in a glittery smear.
Sarsine had seemed so tired when Arin had seen her on his way from the capital. He’d worried over her wan face and shadowed eyes.
She’d snorted. “It’s the food.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“There’s too little of it.” She’d sighed then, and said that all of Herran was tired.
“That will change,” he told her. He explained how to save the hearthnut harvest. Sarsine had touched the back of his hand in gratitude. Then she’d looked at him hard. Her eyes were bright. She said, “Look at what they did to you.”
“It’s nothing.”
But she wept over his changed face, which made him feel worse about it. Arin let her. He didn’t know what else to do.
Later, Sarsine said, “Now tell me what you haven’t told me.”
So he had told her about Kestrel. Arin recalled it now as he shifted to look out over the black mirror of the sea.
Sarsine had been quiet. They’d been in the library of his family home, not the salon. Kestrel’s piano was in the salon. Though out of sight, the instrument had loomed in his mind: large, shining. Intrusive. He wanted to rid himself of it.
Sarsine said, “This doesn’t sound like her.”
Arin shot her a cold glance.
“You know her better than I do,” Sarsine admitted.
He shook his head. “I’ve been lying to myself.”
It seemed that he’d been confused for a long time, that the last clear thing he’d done was to declare that the emperor’s treaty was a trick. Arin knew that his army would have lost that day. The Valorians had already breached the city walls. But the fight would have been vicious. The Herrani would have fought to the death. They would have killed as many as they could. The treaty ended up being a bloodless victory for the emperor: a way to drain Herran’s resources without losing another Valorian soldier.
It could be a trick, Kestrel had said, but you will choose it.
It had been snowing then. Snow had caught in her eyelashes. He used to wonder what would have happened if he had reached to brush it away. He used to imagine the snowflakes melting beneath his fingertips. It shamed him to remember this.
Arin hadn’t fallen asleep on the deck of his strangely still ship, yet it felt as if he’d been dreaming. As if dreams and memories and lies were all the same thing.
He startled at the sound of a fish breaking the water. He had no idea how long he had been standing there. The stars had moved in the sky.
Chilled, tired, Arin went below.
* * *
He left winter behind him. The wind had picked up. It luffed the sails. It filled their canvas bellies. The Herrani captain, who had been somewhat of a legend before the war, was pleased. The ship sped over the waves.
The sun became melted butter. Arin stripped away his father’s hot, threadbare jacket. He didn’t want to wear it again.
The sea sheered into green: marvelously clear. Arin saw whole worlds in the water below. Fish broke away and came together and rearranged themselves like pieces of a colored puzzle.
Once, a creature leaped out of the water. Its dorsal fin was scalloped and pink. It made a strange, whistling cry, then dived under again.
Arin’s wound finally healed. He tugged out the stitches himself.
* * *
He was truly in eastern waters now. The wind and sea and sun made it easier not to think.
Though not always. There was a shining hot day when the sun was high over Arin’s head and he saw what he thought was the shadow of the ship in the water. Then the large shadow shifted and slid in a way that made no sense. Arin stared, realizing that the shadow was in fact an enormous sea creature swimming far below the ship. He hadn’t understood what he’d seen.
He heard Tensen’s words again: You’re seeing what you want to see.
Arin thought of Kestrel, and wondered if some wounds ever heal. His heart thumped in his ears. He was stunned all over again by his anger.
But what does Tensen want you to see? whispered a voice inside him. The very thought was an insult to Tensen, who had warned Arin from the first a
bout his obsession with Kestrel.
Arin could now appreciate—in a gritty, unpleasant way—that Kestrel had been honest with him. For a long time, she’d tried to make things clear. She’d sent troops to attack Arin’s forces after she’d fled Herran. She’d told him of her engagement. She had not once—Arin cringed to think of it—responded to his advances. And when he’d asked her about the Valorian attack on the eastern plains, she hadn’t denied her involvement. The guilt had been plain on her face.
The noon sun beat down on Arin’s head. He hammered his thoughts into a kind of nonthinking: smooth and burnished like a shield.
Arin spun Tensen’s ring around his finger, but didn’t take it off.
* * *
The ship swam through the jade waters of the delta toward the eastern queen’s city. Then the vessel could go no farther. Arin gave Tensen’s ring to the captain. Arin had wrapped it in a handkerchief edged with a stitched, coded message.
The message told Tensen that Arin had arrived safely in the queen’s city. A white lie. It was almost true. Arin didn’t want the old man to worry. As for the ring—
I couldn’t bear to lose such a gift, Arin had sewn onto the handkerchief.
Then he had strapped on Kestrel’s dagger, which he rather wished he would lose.
Arin was lowered alone in a launch. He rowed away from the ship, which would sail back to Herran. The captain would pass the ring and message into other hands. There was a slight risk the ring wouldn’t make it to Tensen. It could be intercepted by a Valorian. But Arin trusted himself with it less, and wasn’t worried that the ring itself might be identified. It was very plain.
Arin faced the ship as he rowed away. When he rowed up a thin river fringed with reeds, he could no longer see the ship. Twice, tempestuous bursts of rain came out of nowhere, soaked him to the skin, and vanished.
The river gave way to winding canals. The city had begun. It was made from white, slick stone, with little bridges over each canal like bracelets on a lady’s arm. Somewhere, a bell began to ring in its tower.
Arin was just beginning to navigate the city’s watery labyrinth … but not the stares. The canal glided with sleek vessels that made his launch look like a duck. Even if that hadn’t marked him as a foreigner, his skin would have. People stopped what they were doing to look at him. A child washing laundry in the canal was so startled that he let go of the shirt in his hands. It floated out into the canal, then was sucked under.
Word must have traveled ahead of Arin, or loped along the banks of the canals.
Grappling hooks spun out over the water and snared Arin’s launch. One bit into his arm and tore a small red line.
Arin’s boat was dragged to a pier, where he was quickly seized.
24
The prison wasn’t terrible. He had a tiny window with a view of the sky.
Arin had tried to explain when they’d hauled him off the boat, but even though his language felt close to Dacran, like a thin skin was all that separated them from understanding him, the easterners regarded him with the same uncomprehending frustration Arin felt.
Their black eyes were lined with sunset colors. Both men and women had closely cropped hair, and wore the same loose white trousers and shirts. When a sudden rainfall plummeted down with a violence that bounced raindrops off the paved bank of the canal, it soaked through the white fabric, revealing trim muscle.
Kestrel’s dagger was taken. At the sight of an imperial weapon, something hardened in the air between Arin and them.
A woman had asked him a curt question.
“Look at me,” Arin had said. “I’m no Valorian.” The Dacrans could see his dark hair, the gray Herrani eyes. They must know that he had been their enemies’ slave.
But his last word had made matters worse. The tension tightened.
“Please,” he said then. “I need to speak with your queen.”
That was understood.
There was a sudden surge toward him. His arms were wrenched behind his back. His hands were bound, and he was dragged away.
In his cell, Arin passed his hand over the rectangle of blue sky. He blocked it, revealed it, blocked it again. Then he let the color fully in. The walls of his schoolroom in Herran had been painted this shade. Arin thought of the times when his father came to listen to his lesson in logic, and told the tutor to leave. He would take over from there.
The quiet pleasure of that memory tried to keep Arin company. When it slipped away, Arin knew that he was afraid.
A foreigner armed with an imperial dagger, asking to see the queen?
Arin had been so stupid. But not quite stupid enough to be able to ignore what might lie in store for him once someone opened that prison door.
Arin rubbed at his cheek, felt the raised and tender scar. He was no stranger to pain. The Valorians had shown him the ways a body can betray you.
When Arin was a slave in the quarries, Cheat had tried to teach him about it, too. It was for Arin’s own good, he’d said. Arin should learn to resist it. Cheat had cut Arin’s inner arm with a sharp stone. Arin had gasped at the blood. He’d dragged at Cheat’s grip. “Stop,” he’d said. “Please.”
“All right, all right.” Cheat finally let go. “I don’t want to do this, either. What can I say? I’m too fond of you.”
And Arin, who had been twelve years old, felt ashamed and grateful.
There were various ends to the story of this eastern prison cell, this window. Most of them weren’t good. Arin didn’t know how he would do under torture.
He remembered telling his plan to Tensen. He’d travel to the east. He’d gain the queen’s sympathy and help. Easy. In his memory, Arin’s own voice sounded almost blithe.
No, not quite.
Arin had been eager to leave the capital. Desperate. He had needed to escape, and he knew whom he was fleeing. How could Arin ever trust his instincts, when Kestrel had proven him so grievously wrong? Arin should have known that sailing to the east was a bad idea. He swore that from now on, he would doubt everything he was tempted to believe.
There were footsteps, multiple ones, approaching the other side of his solid cell door.
Logic is a game, came the memory of his father’s voice. Let’s see how you play.
There was a window in his cell.
A prisoner would be drawn to it, like an insect to light. Like he had been.
Whoever was coming would expect to see him near it.
Arin moved away.
He positioned himself in the path the door’s swing would take. When it opened, and someone began to step forward, Arin slammed the door back against him. Arin hauled the man close and choked an arm around his neck.
The guard cried out in his language.
“Let me go,” Arin said, even though it was he who held the man tight. “Get me out of here.”
The Dacran wheezed. He scratched Arin’s arms, his face. He spoke again, and Arin remembered only then that he’d heard more than one set of footsteps.
The other set belonged to a man standing in the doorway.
“Do something!” Arin thought the guard in his grasp must be trying to say. Because the second Dacran was oddly still. Arin peered, not understanding what kept him back from the fray, or from bargaining for the safety of his friend.
The silent man took one step into the cell. The light caught his face. Arin’s grip on the guard tightened.
The man in the doorway had a skull’s face. The tip of his nose was gone, the nostrils unnaturally wide slits. A scar that grazed the upper lip showed that the knife had gone downward to cut off the nose. The man’s ears were nothing but holes.
“You,” the man said to Arin in Herrani. “I remember you.”
25
The day before Kestrel had bought him.
The eastern slave who had tried to run away.
The emperor will get what he deserves, he had told Arin.
“I see that you, too, have earned your marks,” said the Dacran as he stood in the
cell’s doorway. “But you still aren’t as good-looking as me.”
“Who are you?”
“Your translator. Are you going to let him go?” He nodded at the guard, who had gone unconscious in Arin’s grip.
“What will happen to me if I do?”
“Something nicer than if you don’t. Come, youngling. Do you think my queen would have bothered to send someone who speaks your language if she meant you harm?”
Arin let the guard slide to the floor.
“Good boy,” said the skull-faced man, and lifted a hand. Arin thought it was to touch his scar, or maybe to place a palm to his cheek as Herrani men did. That gesture wasn’t appropriate with a stranger, let alone someone from another country, yet Arin decided to allow it.
The man wore a heavy ring, and the hand went not to Arin’s face but his neck.
The ring stung Arin. It drove in a little needle that fuzzed the blood.
Arin’s limbs became lead. Darkness climbed up his body, opened its wide mouth, and swallowed him whole.
* * *
Someone was weeping. Her tears fell warm on his brow, his lashes, his mouth.
Don’t cry, he tried to say.
Please listen, she said.
He would, of course he would. How could she think that he wouldn’t? But when Arin tried to answer her, there was only a rustling of air in his throat. He thought of leaves. He remembered the punishment of the god of music, how he had been cast into the body of a tree for one cycle of the pantheon: one hundred years of silence. Arin felt his skin splitting into bark. Twigs burst from him. Leaves grew. They stuffed his mouth with green. The wind swayed his branches.
Arin opened his eyes. Water dropped in. He blinked, and realized that no one had been weeping over him after all. He was on a boat beneath the rain. He was trussed up and flat on his back in a slow-moving, narrow vessel not very different from a canoe.
The rain stopped. A dragonfly with wings as large as a bird’s swept over him. It shimmered red against the suddenly blue sky.
Arin strained against his bonds.
The boat shifted, and a face leaned over him. The eastern man’s mutilations were starker in open daylight. He tsked. “Didn’t it occur to you, little Herrani, that the queen might have sent me to translate an interrogation of a not-so-friendly nature? You’re too trusting.”
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