Arin could make rumor look real.

A Valorian always wore her dagger, except in the bath or bed. Whether the courtiers judged it a theft or gift, they would think very hard about how close Arin must have been to Kestrel in order to take her blade.

“As much as I would dearly love to stay,” Arin said, “if I’m to govern your territory in a way that will please you, I must return to it.”

“A serious young man, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Arin shifted his grip on the hilt—not so much as to reveal the seal, but to show that he would.

The emperor didn’t like that. Neither would Kestrel if she were here, or Tensen, who had gone to his beloved gallery at dawn and was probably there still. The minister wouldn’t like anything at all about what Arin was doing. Blackmail the emperor? In front of the court?

Arin wasn’t supposed to be in possession of that dagger. He was supposed to be dead, or mutilated beyond recognition. Or both. It felt good to remind the emperor of his mistake. It felt good to threaten him with having to explain to the court why the dagger of his son’s bride was strapped to another man’s hip.

“Am I free to go?” Arin asked.

“My dear governor, what a question! We’ll miss you, of course, but we would not hold you here.”

Arin thought that he was going to leave the state room without any mention made of the prickling red-and-black wound that crawled down his face. But the emperor said sweetly, “Those are very neat seams,” and then Arin was dismissed.

* * *

“Fair tides to you,” called a voice behind him in the empty hallway outside the state room.

Arin turned and saw Risha. Her words had a warm but stilted quality that suggested that her farewell was an eastern one, translated into Valorian.

“I’m glad to see you go,” Risha said. “You don’t belong here. People who don’t belong pay for it.”

Arin instinctively touched his cut cheek and winced. Then he grit his teeth. His face wasn’t his face anymore, but so what? Maybe it suited him. Maybe Arin had been too soft, too trusting, too baby-skinned, too much like that boy he’d been before the war, the one who had made him turn back to find Kestrel standing by the moonlit canal.

Arin was glad that boy was gone. He was glad to be someone new.

“I don’t know how you bear it,” he told Risha in Valorian. The words came slow and heavy. He hated the feel of that language on his tongue.

Risha frowned. “Bear what? Living in the imperial court?” She shook her head. “My place is here.”

It was dangerous to mention Tensen, or the information Arin’s spymaster had suggested Risha might give them. They were alone for now, but the state room doors could open at any time. Quickly, in his own language, Arin said, “Thank you.”

A look of confusion crossed Risha’s face. “I don’t speak Herrani,” she reminded him in Valorian.

Arin might have said more, but then the state room doors did open. The court began to file out and look at them. He turned away. He left with his unsaid words burning inside him. Thank you, he wanted to say again, with wonder at the thought that Risha would risk herself for a people not her own.

How different she was, Arin thought as he walked away. His mouth was tight and tasted metallic, as if he’d bitten his tongue.

How different Risha was from Kestrel.

* * *

A fish thrashed against the board. Kestrel saw the fishmonger bring the mallet down hard. She flinched, though she knew that a palace maid wouldn’t be bothered by this sight. A maid wouldn’t glance twice at the pink slush of frozen blood at the base of the stalls in the Butcher’s Row. A palace maid wouldn’t stare at the slick organs in the gutter and realize that she’d never seen the inside of a chicken, or paid any thought to it.

Kestrel made herself look hard at the slurry that ran down the Row. When her throat closed up, there was a reason right before her. It was there in the disgusting street. It was on the damp wood of the fishmonger’s mallet. It wasn’t in the Broken Arm tavern last night, or in Arin’s wounded face turning away from her. It wasn’t in what she’d done to deserve it.

She pulled the sailor’s coat tight around her, and lifted the blue-and-white hem of her work dress as she walked down the Row.

A little Valorian girl ran ahead of her, braided ropes of white-blond hair bouncing against her shoulders. The girl gripped a cloth doll by the arm. Something about the doll caught Kestrel’s eye, and she wasn’t sure why until the child caught up to her mother and begged for another toy the woman carried in her basket. It was a boy doll dressed in black. Then Kestrel noticed the golden thread stitched across the girl doll’s brow and realized who these toys were supposed to be.

Kestrel pushed past the girl and her mother. She tried to forget the doll. She looked for Tensen.

She found him inspecting a gutted suckling pig that hung from a hook in a stall. “Oh, good,” he said when he saw Kestrel. “Just in time. I might have had to buy a pig to keep up appearances, and who knows how I would have smuggled that back into my rooms.”

They merged into the crowd of shoppers—servants, mostly, sent to get the morning meat while it was fresh. Kestrel and Tensen worked their way to the end of the line of stalls and up the slope of a hill, where there were few people.

“The Senate leader has been to southern Herran,” Kestrel told him. “I can think of only one reason. The emperor asked him to inspect the hearthnut harvest and gauge how large the crop will be. The emperor must plan to take it all from Herran. He’ll know if you try to hold back any for yourselves.”