*
Arin rambled around the palace suite he was to share with Tensen. It was not small or large, neither luxurious nor spare. Arin had thought that the palace steward would assign the Herrani contingent an insulting set of rooms, but this suite seemed chosen to send the message that the Herrani didn’t matter one way or the other.
He shrugged off his shirt. It was early in the evening, not yet midnight. The ball was still whirling on its giddy axis. Tensen hadn’t returned.
Arin could smell Kestrel’s perfume on him. It exhaled faintly from his shirt, mingled with the scent of the sea. Folding the fabric—or not really folding it, more smoothing it out over the back of a dressing room chair, as if the cloth were a living thing that needed soothing—Arin found a hole in the seam where the shoulder met the body. He worked a finger through the rip and swore.
Well, it was an old shirt. He had worn his finest clothes. He’d torn them out of the trunk upon his arrival in the palace and flung them on, fumbling with the cuffs, knowing he was late for the ball. Maybe the hole had happened then, in his haste.
It would have happened sooner or later. All of his best garments were ten years old. They had been his father’s.
They fit Arin badly. Even after alterations, it seemed that there wasn’t enough room anywhere. His father had been an elegant man, his proportions artistic. If he stood here now next to Arin, a stranger would never guess they were related.
Arin pressed a hand to his face. He felt the bones that made him look so different. There was the prickle of a beard.
How ridiculous he must have looked next to those polished courtiers, with his ill-fitting clothes and unshaven face.
How rough, how thuggish.
How wrong.
Arin flicked open a straight razor, filled the washbasin, and lathered soap. He tried to shave without looking too closely at his face in the washbasin mirror.
A nick pinkened the lather with blood.
He kept at it, more attentive this time, until he had finished, wiped off the lather, and poured water over his bowed head. He looked up again, dripping. His face was clear.
Sometimes Arin could see the boy he had been before the war. When he did, he usually felt a tenderness for that child as if he were wholly other than Arin, not part of himself at all. That boy didn’t blame Arin, exactly, for existing when he did not, but when Arin caught a glimpse of the child, usually lingering about the eyes, Arin always looked away. He would feel a small sharpness, like the nick of the razor.
Arin’s face was wet, his hair black with water. He shivered, suddenly aware of the winter. He searched for something to wear, and pulled on a nightshirt and robe.
Arin felt again his nervousness as he’d stood outside the balcony curtain. The curtain had swung after Kestrel had closed it behind her, and he’d gingerly touched its sway. He remembered that hunted expression she had thrown over her shoulder before disappearing behind the velvet.
And then there, in the dark, with her … it made Arin’s throat tighten as if he were thirsty. Prove it, he’d told her, words thick with desire, full of a traitorous kind of confidence, one that came and then abandoned him and then returned and left in such rapid tides that he couldn’t keep his footing. Prove that you want him. Kestrel had pushed him away.
He could have sworn that he had sensed in her the same wish that was in him. It had been on her skin like a scent. Hadn’t it? But then Arin remembered how she’d escaped his house in Herran. He saw her again on the harbor: her hand on a weapon, that flash in her eyes. It had wrecked him. He had done this, he had made this, had lied to her, tricked her, killed her people, killed whatever it was that had made Kestrel open up to him on Firstwinter night … before she knew his treachery.
Of course she had chosen someone else.
There was a knock at the dressing room door.
“Arin?” Tensen called. “Can I come in?”
No, Arin wanted to say, and had he still been in front of the mirror and seen his face he would have said it, because his reflection would have shown something vulnerable and uncertain, and he would have despised it. He wouldn’t have let anyone see him then.
Tensen knocked again.
Arin’s wet hair was cold. A chilly rivulet crept down his neck. Arin dried himself off, rubbing a towel at his short hair as he kept his back to the mirror. He went to open the door.
Tensen scrutinized Arin, which made the younger man’s jaw go tight. But Tensen gave him an easy smile, pulled up the dressing room chair, and sat gustily down. “That,” he said, “was exhausting. And profitable.”
“What have you learned?” Arin asked.
Tensen told him about Thrynne.
“Gods,” Arin said.
“No, Arin. I won’t have that look on your face. Thrynne knew what he risked when he came to the capital. He did it for Herran.”
“I asked him to.”
“We all make our choices. What would you choose: Herran’s sake, or yours?”
Arin’s answer was quick. “Herran’s.”
Tensen said nothing for a moment, only gazed up at him with the pensiveness of someone considering a question not so easily answered. Arin didn’t like that expression, he bristled at it, but before he could speak, Tensen said, “What would you have me choose?”
“I can’t tell you what to choose for yourself.”
“No, what would you have me choose for you? Say that you were in Thrynne’s position—imprisoned, worse—and my intervention could help you but hurt our country. What should I do?”
“Leave me there.”
“Yes,” Tensen said slowly. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
Arin threaded fingers through his damp hair and tugged until his scalp hurt. “Are you sure of this news?”
“My source is good.”
“Who?”
Tensen waved a hand. “No one important.”
“But who?”
“I promised not to tell. Don’t make an old man break his promises.”
Arin frowned, but said only, “This isn’t the year of money. And what did Thrynne overhear the emperor and Senate leader say?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll find out.”
“Caution, Arin. I myself might have a way.”
“Oh?”
Tensen smiled. “A new recruit.” He refused to say anything more. He found a comfortable position in his chair and changed the subject in a way that spun Arin’s head. “Well, I think they make a charming couple.”
“What?”
“The prince and Lady Kestrel.”
Arin had known whom Tensen had meant.
“Their kiss was sweet,” said the spymaster. “One would assume their marriage was just a political alliance—I certainly did, until I saw them kiss.”
Arin stared.
“You must have missed it,” Tensen said. “It was at the beginning of the ball. But of course you were late.”
“Yes,” Arin said finally. “I was.”