She looked numbly at Tensen’s ring. He hadn’t worn it in a while. She supposed that it had been lost, and found again. Sometimes things happened that way. But sometimes, Kestrel knew, what’s lost stays lost forever.

38

Kestrel wasn’t sure how, but General Trajan had learned about the deserter: the well-bred son who had left his post in a brigade fighting in the east.

“And he’s here.” Her father’s voice was flat. “Living in a palace suite.”

“I haven’t decided what to do with him.” The emperor reached for his fork and knife and suggested that they begin the third course. He caught Kestrel’s eye. She began to eat.

Her father did not. “What is there to decide?”

“Trajan, he’s just a boy. No older than Verex.” The emperor smiled fondly at his son, who looked down at his plate.

“He betrayed you. He betrayed me. He betrayed himself. Where is his honor now?”

“I imagine it’s with his parents’ lucrative mills in the southern isles. Maybe it’s been ground along with their fine grain and baked into delicious bread.”

“The law on desertion is clear.”

The emperor drank his wine. “To be honest, I was saving him for you. Go see him if you like.”

“I will,” her father said, “and then I’ll return to the east.”

“You can’t even walk the length of the Spring Garden without catching your breath. Would you follow such a commander into battle?”

Her father’s eyes squinted as if narrowed against a sudden glare of light. Kestrel brought her fork clattering down on her plate. Anger boiled up her throat. She opened her mouth to speak, but her father’s eyes cut to her, and it was the same as when he’d stood in the palace courtyard, his blood on his horse, and she had moved to help him.

“All in good time, old friend,” the emperor said gently. His voice had an almost smoky sound, a quality that might have been love if love were like cured meat: hung, dried, and stored to be eaten a little at a time in hard conditions.

Verex pushed his food around his plate. Kestrel’s father didn’t move.

“I’m sorry,” the emperor told him. “I’m not ready to lose you yet.”

* * *

The general wanted her to come with him. “One day you’ll rule the empire,” he said. “You need to know what to do.”

This was what he did.

He went to the young soldier’s palace suite. He watched the young man, not much older than Kestrel, grow pale. The general brought Kestrel into the sitting room with him, then drew the soldier to the side, one firm hand on the shoulder. The general murmured in his ear. The boy sank in on himself, and turned his face so that Kestrel couldn’t see.

The general’s voice took the tone of a question. The boy inhaled a shuddering breath. Kestrel’s father said something that sounded soothing. Safe. She’d heard him like that before, when she was small.

“Forgive me,” the soldier said in a strangled whisper.

“I will,” the general said. “After.”

Then he told Kestrel that it was time to go.

* * *

The deserter used his dagger. An honor suicide.

For a few days, the gossip was on every courtier’s lips. Then news came from the east. The barbarians had burned the plains, said the report. The empire’s latest prize was black, barren, smoking.

The names came later. A much longer list of casualties than usual.

One name was passed around the court like a pearl. It was said slowly, in appreciation of its luster, its smooth weight, the way it rolled into the well of a palm and warmed.

When Kestrel heard it, she realized that she had been expecting this since the day Ronan had snatched the recruitment list from her. The discovery of that expectation cracked some brittle thing inside her. She had known. She had known this would happen. And yet it was now clear that she hadn’t believed that she did, that she had shunted thoughts of it away into a part of her mind where things were kept but never looked at.

How could she have hidden from that knowledge?

How could she have known that Ronan would die, and yet not know it?

It had been so clear.

In her rooms, alone, Kestrel covered her mouth. The pearl of Ronan’s name lodged in her throat. She swallowed. It hurt.

She had dreams that shamed her in the morning, dreams where Ronan gave her a white powdered cake, yet spoke in Arin’s voice. I made this for you, he said. Do you like it?

The powder was so fine that she inhaled its sweetness, but always woke before she could taste.

* * *

Kestrel wrote to Jess. She was afraid to visit.

The next day, Kestrel’s maid brought her a letter. Kestrel’s heart leaped to see Jess’s handwriting on the outside, and that familiar wax seal. Instantly, she blamed herself for that surge of relieved hope. It was wrong for her to feel this way when Ronan was dead.

But she hadn’t thought Jess would answer her. And this letter—Kestrel weighed it in her hand before she broke the seal—was just as thick as the one she had sent Jess. Surely Jess wouldn’t write so much if she wanted nothing to do with Kestrel.

Kestrel opened it. She felt again that strange mixture of knowing and not knowing, of shock and resignation.

She unfolded the envelope. Hadn’t she seen this coming? Hadn’t it been obvious?

The envelope contained the letter Kestrel had sent to Jess: unopened, unread.

* * *