Arin said, “Did you tell the general to poison the horses of the eastern plainspeople?”

“What?”

“Did you?”

“Yes,” she said haltingly, “but—”

“Do you realize what you’ve done? Hundreds of people—innocent people—died in the exodus to the queen’s city.”

“I know. It was a horrible thing—”

“Horrible? Children starved while their mothers wept. There are no words for that.”

Guilt swelled in her throat. “I can explain.”

“How do you explain murder?”

“How do you?” she said with a flash of her own anger. “People died because of you, too, Arin. You have killed. Your hands aren’t clean. The Firstwinter Rebellion—”

“This is not the same.”

He seemed to choke on his words, and Kestrel was appalled at how everything she said went so wrong. “I meant that you had your reasons.”

“I can’t even speak of my reasons. I can’t believe that you’d bring them up, that you would compare…” His voice shook, then dropped low. “Kestrel. The empire’s only reason is dominion. And you have helped.”

“I had no choice. My father would’ve—”

“Thought you weak? Disowned you for not being his warrior girl, ready with the perfect plan of attack? Your father.” Arin’s mouth curled. “I know you want his approval. I know that you’d marry the prince to get it. But your father’s hands run with blood. He is a monster. What kind of person feeds a monster? What kind of person loves one?”

“Arin, you’re not listening. You’re not thinking clearly.”

“You’re right. I haven’t been thinking clearly, not for a long time. But I understand now.” Arin pushed his tiles away. His winning hand scattered out of line. “You have changed, Kestrel. I don’t know who you are anymore. And I don’t want to.”

Later, when Kestrel remembered this moment, she said the right things. In her imagination, he understood.

But that was not what happened.

Arin’s anger curdled into disgust. He was sick with it. She could tell. She could tell from the swift way he stood, as if escaping contamination. She saw it in the set of his shoulders when he turned his back, even as she called to him. Arin walked away. He let the tavern door slam behind him.

* * *

It was silent in the palace gallery. Bones must be silent like this, Kestrel thought, when they lay deep in the earth.

She stood in front of Tensen’s painting longer than she actually looked at it. Finally, she set a moth on its frame. She told herself the kind of lie that knows itself for what it is. Kestrel decided that it was better that Arin think this way of her.

Yes. It had all been for the best.

21

“And what,” said the emperor, “is so urgent that you must return to Herran now?”

“My duty to you, Your Imperial Majesty,” said Arin.

“He speaks so handsomely,” the emperor said to the court, and the senators and lords and ladies hid their smirks in a way that showed them all the more. There was no longer anything handsome about the governor of Herran.

Risha didn’t smile. From across the room, Arin caught the easterner’s gaze: somber and steady.

“I’m not sure what to think about this request for my permission for you to leave,” the emperor said. “Governor, have you been … treated badly here?”

Arin smiled with the cut side of his face. “Not at all.”

The courtiers whispered delightedly. It was as good as a play. The disfigured face. The emperor’s slippery mockery. The pretense that nothing was wrong.

“What if we enjoy having you at court?” said the emperor.

Arin stepped more fully into the light. He saw, as if outside himself, the way he stood before the emperor in this echoing state room. Arin hadn’t slept since he’d left Kestrel in the city the night before, but he felt extremely lucid. He knew how the morning sun caught the dust motes around him. It cast a harsh glare on his slashed face. It picked out the frayed threads of his clothes. And it paused, lingering, over the dagger strapped to his hip, and the way Arin’s hand was curled around the hilt and covered its seal. The blade was unsheathed. It had two cutting edges. The crossguard was short, meant to protect a much smaller hand than Arin’s, and was hooked in the Valorian style. Everything about the dagger was Valorian.

The courtiers buzzed.

His face.

Who did it?

That blade.

Whose is it?

That’s a lady’s dagger. How did he get it?

Stole it, maybe.

Or … could it have been a gift?

Arin almost heard the whispered words.

“Your welcome has been so much more than I could expect,” Arin said. The emperor smiled a little. His eyes didn’t leave Arin’s hand on the dagger’s hilt. Arin was glad. He thought that the emperor was quite pleased with his son’s engagement to the military’s favorite daughter. The marriage would make General Trajan part of the imperial family … and would renew the soldiers’ loyalty to the emperor.

But there were those rumors. Even the minting of an engagement coin hadn’t laid them to rest. It was the first time that Arin thought of the rumors about him and Kestrel coldly. He thought about them as something he could use. Yes, Arin bargained that if he lifted his hand to reveal the hilt and seal of Kestrel’s dagger, it would be recognized. Courtiers would gasp.