*
“At last,” Tensen said. “A night with nothing to do.” He turned an appraising eye toward Arin, who lay on a divan near the sitting room fire. “You look better. Almost fit for society.”
“I doubt that.”
“Well, you’re no longer feverish, are you? And the swelling in your face has gone down. You don’t look quite so puffy. One more night of rest, Arin, and then it’s back into the fray. You can’t avoid the court forever. Besides, the reactions could be telling.”
“Yes, stifled gasps and open disgust will be very informative.”
“You’ll cause a stir. Stirs are good. They churn up all kinds of gossip and conjecture … and the occasional truth.”
“I’m surprised you need me. I thought you had the perfect access to information. Where’s your Moth, Tensen?”
The minister said nothing.
Arin stood and went to the fire. He was weak from the fever, his movements disjointed. The heart of the fire was as red as the ruby set in the hilt of the dagger Arin kept in his boot. “Still no word about who arranged for the ambush?”
Tensen shrugged. “The emperor isn’t happy. I can think of a good reason why. You’re alive, and your assailant isn’t.”
“There’s no proof that the emperor’s behind it.”
“The palace guard’s insignia on that dead man isn’t good enough proof for you?”
“If it was the emperor, why does he do nothing? Say nothing?”
“I think,” Tensen said, “that he wouldn’t want to acknowledge a failure.” His green eyes narrowed. “What makes you believe that the emperor wasn’t behind it? Do you have other enemies I don’t know about?”
“No. It was him.”
“So you’re just being difficult.”
“One of my enduring qualities.”
Tensen rose from his chair. “I’m going to visit the art gallery.”
“You go there a lot.”
“I played an art connoisseur once, in the Herrani theater festival fifteen years ago. Old habits die hard.”
“Then you must enjoy looking at all of the emperor’s pretty things.”
Tensen paused with his hand on the doorknob. He glanced back at Arin. “You might not believe me, but certain people will respect you more for how you look now. The emperor is going to regret making his mark on you. Be ready for tomorrow, Arin. It’s time you left this suite. You’re well enough, and there’s no excuse to avoid the world.”
Arin mulled over Tensen’s words long after the minister left. He thought about his fevered dreams, which he couldn’t quite remember, though they had filled him with a nameless urgency. A restlessness.
In Arin’s boot there was a sheath, in his sheath was Kestrel’s dagger, and in the dagger’s groove was his dried blood.
In the capital city was a tavern, in the tavern was a bookkeeper, and in the bookkeeper’s hands was a book of bets.
Arin pulled on his winter coat, made sure he had everything he needed, and set out for the city.
17
The cold was exhilarating. It pinched Kestrel’s cheeks and chased her down sloping streets. She wanted to laugh. The palace was at her back, high on its hill, and she was here, winding through the city’s wealthy quarter with its haughty town houses and blazing oil lamps. The cobblestone streets were marbled sheets of ice. Carriages moved slowly, but Kestrel didn’t. She skidded through this quarter. She wanted no part of it.
She wanted the tight, dirty streets of the Narrows, the fishy smell of the wharf. And she would have it.
I wanted to feel free, Arin had told her once in Herran. She breathed in the cold, and it felt free, so she felt free, and it felt alive, so she felt alive.
Kestrel wondered what would happen if she never went back to the palace.
She hugged her arms to her chest. She had entered a darker quarter of the city. Streetlamps were few. Soon there were none. Kestrel took any street that went down, for that was the way to the sea. The streets became a network of alleys: the Narrows.
She sidestepped a cat that streaked into the shadows. The cold was loud here. It rang off the jam-packed buildings. It shattered with noise tumbling from the flung-open door of a tavern. Kestrel saw its sign, which showed a broken arm, and watched as a man with the looks of a Valorian aristocrat stumbled outside the tavern and was sick in the street. He lifted his head, wiped his mouth, and blearily stared at Kestrel without really seeing her.
Then he squinted. His gaze was fuzzy, but gaining focus. “Do I know you?” he said.
Kestrel hurried away.
*
“You don’t look so good,” the bookkeeper said. She had her hands stuffed in her trouser pockets and her boots up on the table. She studied Arin over the steel-toed tops of them.
It was early for the Broken Arm to be this lively. But a ship had come in, and its sailors were already drunk. In a corner, Valorian soldiers argued over a game of Bite and Sting.
The bookkeeper, however, was calm—tipped back serenely in her chair, surveying the scene, smoking, waiting. People came to her.
“Want to place a bet?” she asked Arin. About his age or a bit older, the bookkeeper was only part Valorian. Her loose hair was a color that turned up sometimes in Valorians, who called it “warrior red,” but her flat black eyes and light brown skin hinted at a northern heritage.
Arin smiled. The smile tugged painfully at his stitches. “What I want,” he said, “is a word.”
“Just that? You strike me as the type to want more than what’s good for him. That mark on your face is fresh.”
“I want to see the bets.”
She exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I was right. You are a mad one. No one sees the bets … unless they ask very nicely.”
“I can be nice.”
She nodded at the empty chair beside her.
Arin sat. “I can share information.”
She shrugged. “I’ve got no call to trust it.”
“I could work for you.”
“What I need you can’t give. I’m a one-woman business. I’ve got thugs, sure, to remind people when they need to pay up. You’d fit that part. But—no offense—that’s not worth what you’re asking.”
Arin hesitated, then reached into his pocket. He opened his hand. On his palm lay an emerald earring, its stone the size of a bird’s egg. It had been his mother’s.
“Would this do?” he said.