The Winner's Crime Read Online Free PDF Page A

leader?”
    “Nothing! Cleaning. I clean.”
    “That sounds like a ‘no’ to me.”
    “No! I mean, yes, yes, I was sweeping the fl oor. I clean.
    I’m a servant.”
    “You’re a slave,” the captain corrected, though the em-
    peror had issued a decree that emancipated the Herrani.
    “Aren’t you?”
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    “Yes. I am.”
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    Kestrel had quietly drawn her dagger. If the captain
    kept his back to her, she might be able to do something. It
    CRIME
    didn’t matter that her combat skills were pitiful. She could
    ’S
    stop him.
    Maybe.
    “And why,” the captain said to Thrynne in a gentle
    THE WINNER
    voice, “why were you listening outside that door?”
    The dagger in Kestrel’s hand shook. She smelled the
    emperor’s perfumed oil on the captain. She forced herself
    close. The breakfast milk swam up her throat.
    Thrynne tore his gaze from the captain to glance at
    her. “Money,” he said. “This is the year of money.”
    “Ah,” said the captain. “Now we come to it. You were
    paid to listen, weren’t you?”
    “No—”
    The captain’s knife came down. Kestrel vomited, her
    dagger falling into the shadows. The sound of it hitting stone
    was lost in Thrynne’s shriek. She wiped her mouth on her
    sleeve; she was not looking, she was pressing hands to her
    ears. She barely heard the captain say, “Who? Who paid
    you?”
    But there was no answer. Thrynne had fainted.
    Kestrel took to her rooms like someone sick. Infected. She
    bathed until she felt boiled. She left her ruined dress where
    it lay, balled up on the bathing room fl oor. Then she climbed
    into bed, hair loose and damp, and thought.
    Or tried to think. She tried to think about what she
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    should do. Then she noticed that the feather blanket, thick
    SKI
    O
    yet light, quivered like a living thing. She was shaking.
    She remembered Cheat, the Herrani leader. Arin had
    answered to him, followed him. Loved him. Yes, she knew
    that Arin had loved him.
    MARIE RUTK
    Cheat had always threatened Kestrel’s hands. To break
    them, cut off fi ngers, crush them with his own. He had
    seemed obsessed with them, until he became obsessed with
    her in a diff erent way. She felt it again: that cold roll of hor-
    ror as she began to understand what he wanted and what
    he would do to get it.
    He was dead now. Arin had gutted him. Kestrel had
    seen it. She’d seen Cheat die, and she reassured herself that
    he could not hurt her. Kestrel stared at her hands, whole and
    undamaged. They were not peeled and bloody meat. They
    were slim, nails kept short for the piano. Skin soft.
    Her hands were pretty, she supposed. Spread against
    the blanket, they seemed the height of uselessness.
    What could she do?
    Help the prisoner escape? That would require a strat-
    egy hinged upon enlisting the help of others. Kestrel didn’t
    have enough leverage over the captain. No one in the capi-
    tal owed her favors. She didn’t know the court’s secrets. She
    was new to the palace and had no one’s loyalty here, not for
    help with such an insane plan.
    And if she were caught? What would the emperor do to
    her ?
    And if she did nothing?
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    She couldn’t do nothing. Having done nothing in the
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    prison had already cost too much.
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    This is the year of money , Thrynne had said. He had
    spoken the words as if they were meant for her. It was an
    CRIME
    odd phrase. Yet familiar. Perhaps it was as the captain had
    ’S
    assumed: Thrynne was revealing that he had been paid to
    gather of information. The emperor had many enemies, not
    all of them foreign. A rival in the Senate might have
    THE WINNER
    employed Thrynne.
    But as the feather blanket stilled, transforming into