* * *

In the palace kitchens, dressed in the servant’s clothes, Arin asked for help again. Yet again, it was a risk. He could be reported. The moment his presence became known in the palace, what he wanted would quickly become impossible: namely, the opportunity to speak with Kestrel alone.

“The music room,” suggested a maid. “Her recital’s tomorrow. She’s there practicing more often than not.”

“What do you want with her?” A footman’s mouth curled in contempt.

Arin almost gave a violent answer. He was anxious, he wasn’t being smart, and for years now there’d been something hard and glittery—and stupid—in him that liked making enemies. He felt like making one right now. But he checked himself. Arin gave the footman a sweet smile. The kitchens became uncomfortably silent.

The cook decided matters. “It’s none of our business.” To Arin she said, “You want to get from here to there without being noticed, do you? Well, then. Someone had better fetch Lady Maris’s maid.”

The Herrani maid arrived soon, a cosmetics kit in hand. She unscrewed a small pot with thick, tinted cream. She mixed it darker. As Arin sat at the scored and pitted worktable, the maid dabbed the cream on his scar.

* * *

Kestrel closed the music room door. The piano waited. Before that day in the slave market—before Arin—this had been enough for her: that row of keys like a straight border between one world and the next.

Kestrel’s fingers trickled out a few high notes, then stopped. She glanced at the screen. She hadn’t heard her father’s watch chime. Then again, it wasn’t the hour.

She set the sheet music on its rack. She shuffled the pages. She studied the first few lines of the sonata the emperor had chosen, and made herself slowly read the notes she had already memorized.

A breeze from an open window stroked Kestrel’s shoulder. The air was soft, velvety, lushly scented with flowering trees. She remembered playing for Arin. It had just been the one time, though it felt like many more.

The breath of wind stirred the sheet music, then gusted the pages to the floor. Kestrel went to collect them. When she straightened, she glanced involuntarily at the door in a flash of unreasonable certainty that Arin was there.

But of course he wasn’t. A needle of ice pierced her heart. What a foolish thing to have thought: him, here. Her breath caught at the pain of it.

Kestrel made herself sit again at the piano. She pushed that icy needle in deeper. It grew frosted crystals. Kestrel imagined the ice spreading until it lacquered her in a clear, cold shell. Kestrel lifted her hands from her lap and played the emperor’s sonata.

* * *

The cook insisted that servants should accompany Arin. The maid’s cream had softened the appearance of his scar, but it would fool no one who looked closely. “Walk the halls with a few of us,” said the cook. A curious courtier could be distracted. The servants could flank Arin so that his features were obscured.

He refused.

“At least partway,” urged a Herrani.

“No,” Arin said. “Think of what the emperor would do if he discovered that you were helping me walk through his palace unnoticed.”

The Herrani gave Arin two keys and let him go alone.

* * *

When Arin mounted the steps up to the other world of the palace, the one with fresh air, he made sure to walk close alongside the walls, the left side of his face turned to them. A bucket of hot, soapy water swung from his hand. The steam curled damply over his wrist. He walked as quickly as he could.

Arin remembered little-used hallways, and had the advice of the servants, who knew which areas of the palace attracted the least attention at this hour. He followed their instructions. His pulse stuttered when he stumbled upon a couple of courtiers emerging, disheveled and giggling, from an alcove cloaked by a tapestry. But they were glad to ignore him.

The heavy keys in his pocket knocked hard against his thigh. He might not find Kestrel, or find her alone. It was astounding: the risk of what he was doing. Yet he picked up his pace. He dismissed that sinuous voice whispering inside him, calling him a fool.

But the treaty. Kestrel had offered it to him outside his city’s gate. The treaty had saved him. Why had it taken Arin so long to wonder whether it had been she who had saved him?

Fool, the voice said again.

Arin reached the imperial wing. He took a key from his pocket and let himself in.

* * *

Somewhere in the midst of the sonata, Kestrel’s hands paused. She hadn’t been reading the sheet music, so when her memory failed her and she lost her place in the progression of phrases, she lost it completely. This was unlike her. The music throbbed away.

Her old self would have been annoyed, but the frozen needle in her heart gave the orders now, and it said that she should simply make a note of the mistake and move on. She found a pen and did just that, underscoring the forgotten passage. She set the pen on the rack that held the sheet music and prepared to play again.

Then it came: her father’s silvery chime.

The corner of her mouth lifted.

All at once, she knew what she wanted to play for him. The general wouldn’t recognize one half of a duet, and if he did, he couldn’t guess whose voice was meant to sing with what she played. Kestrel thought again about how much she wanted to tell her father, and how little she could say.

But she could say this music. He would hear it, and even if he didn’t understand what he heard, she would feel what it would be like to tell him.

* * *