29
“I want you to do something for me,” Kestrel’s father said.
Firstspring had come and gone. Kestrel had missed most of the celebrations to be with her father in his rooms, as she was every day. The only event she’d attended was the one at the orphanage, where the children had looked dubiously at the bright kites she offered. “They’re not the right color,” a little girl had said. “I want a black one.” Afterward, Verex had gone through the leftovers. “May I keep this?” He lifted a pink-and-green kite. “It’s my favorite,” he said. Kestrel had smiled.
Now she looked warily at her father as he lay in his bed. She waited to see what he would ask.
“I want you to go to the battling clubs in the city,” he said, “and recruit people to the military.”
Kestrel edged her chair away from the bed. The wooden squeak was loud. She toyed with a bit of embroidery on her sleeve and imagined that her disappointment was a thread that could be tied into knots and stitched down tight. During all the hours she had sat by her father, this was the first time he’d asked her for anything. What had she hoped he would ask?
Perhaps to be brought a glass of water. Or to be told what had happened to the dagger he’d given her. He couldn’t have missed its replacement. The emperor’s gaudy blade was right there in full view, strapped to Kestrel’s waist.
It seemed impossible to tell her father certain things unless he asked for them.
But some words came easy, because they were angry and had been said many times before. “I want nothing to do with the military.”
“Kestrel.”
“Look at what it’s done to you.”
“I will heal.”
“And the next time? You are going to keep fighting until the day you’re killed, and I have to set an empty plate at the table for my father’s ghost.”
“We don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Then you’ll leave me with nothing at all.”
“We need more soldiers,” he said. “The army is stretched too thin.”
“Then stop trying to take new territory.”
“That isn’t what the emperor wants.”
“What do you want?”
“That,” he told her, “is a foolish question.”
Was it because he had known her all her life that he knew exactly which words would hurt most? But no, it couldn’t be time that gave someone that power. Arin had it, too. I don’t know you anymore, he’d said. And I don’t want to.
If she went to the battling clubs and signed more soldiers into the army, did that mean that their deaths would be her fault? Would the blood of the people they killed be on her hands? And the grief and anger of those who were left behind—was that her doing, too? She remembered how the war orphans had wanted black kites.
“Recruit them yourself,” she told her father.
He was silent as she strode to the door. It was that silence that ultimately stopped her. Though Kestrel’s back was to him, she still saw him as he lay wounded on the bed. Pale and drawn. Tired in a way she’d never seen.
If she recruited more Valorians … it might help him when he returned to the field. More soldiers could mean that he’d be kept safe for another year. Maybe two.
Kestrel sighed. Her back still to him, she said, “I don’t know why you think that I could persuade anyone to sign up.”
“The people love you.”
“They love you. I’m just your daughter.”
“You escaped from Herran. You alerted us to the rebellion. And by now everyone must know how I won the eastern plains.”
“I wish you’d claimed that idea for your own.”
“I would never do that.”
Kestrel turned, set her shoulders back against the door, and crossed her arms. She thought of Tensen’s latest request for information. “Do you know the chief water engineer?”
“Elinor?” From his bed, the general looked at Kestrel with eyes narrowed in pain. This conversation had exhausted him. His breath was uneven. If he’d been anyone else, he would have already asked for medicine. “I know her a little.”
“From your campaigns in the east?” With the exception of the plains, the lands there were watery, especially farther south, though Valorian soldiers had never reached the queen’s city in the delta.
“Yes, and in Herran. Why?”
“She has a townhome here. I thought that maybe … after I go to the battling clubs, you’d like for me to pay her a call. I could ask her to join the regiment when it returns east. You might need someone to build bridges, or dams—”
“Yes.” If he’d had more energy, the general would have looked amused. “I do. But she’s the emperor’s now. He doesn’t like to share. Don’t waste your time visiting her.”
Kestrel paused, then said, “I’m going to the battling clubs under one condition.”
“Ah.” His head leaned back into the damp pillow. “A bargain. What must I do now?”
“Drink your medicine.”
*
The battling clubs were not-very-secret societies. There were four in the city, and they each served young aristocrats with luxurious headquarters designed for private parties, sultry moments in hidden rooms—and, of course, fighting.
Each club came equipped with an impressive variety of weaponry. There were keyed rooms for combatants who wished to be alone, and arenas for matches meant to be seen.
Everybody knew the few club rules. Clean up your own blood. Money up front for gambling. Members only. Even Lady Kestrel would have had problems at the door if she hadn’t shown her father’s signet ring.
The clubs unsettled her. It didn’t matter how much dark wainscoting lined the walls, or that the furnishings were backed by southern isle silk. The rooms still smelled like wine and sweat and blood. It made her think of fighting Irex in Herran. His boot cracking against her knee. She remembered Cheat’s weight flattening her against the floor.
Kestrel’s mouth was chalky.
She asked for water. She was served. Then she went about her business.
After three clubs, she had collected about twenty names. It wasn’t much. Several Valorians who signed were wild-eyed and laughing. Some were flattered. Others—especially those closest to twenty years old—were resigned, because the empire would soon make them choose between marriage and the military anyway. If a citizen wouldn’t make babies to boost the imperial population, she would have to make war.
In one club, two young women signed up together. They insisted on writing their names on the same line. This made Kestrel realize that they were a couple. People who loved that way—or who otherwise didn’t want to marry against their desires—often joined the military. Kestrel watched the women sign, and thought of her own marriage, and felt even worse than before.
Kestrel reclaimed the list. She shoved it inside her skirt pocket.
In the last club, a fight was on.
The small arena was packed and loud, the air heavy. Kestrel was a latecomer and had to stand at the back of the crowd. Peering over someone’s shoulder, she caught a glimpse of the fighters, both men, both with blond hair tied back. The one whose back was to her was slender but quick.
It was a fistfight. Kestrel couldn’t see any weapons either in the combatants’ hands or strapped to their bodies, so this wasn’t a duel fought over honor, but for pleasure.
The larger man crashed a fist into the face of the thinner one. He cried out. The crowd surged forward.
Kestrel did, too. She knew that cry. She would swear that she recognized that voice. But the gap that had given her a view of the fighters had closed. She could see nothing now, and people were shouting, and she couldn’t even tell if they were shouting someone’s name.
She did. She called out a name. The noise swallowed it.
Kestrel elbowed her way forward. She pushed her way to the front. The slender man was coming up from the ground. He delivered a series of uppercuts to his opponent’s gut, yanked on an ear, and punched his face.
The big fighter went down. He wasn’t getting up.
The crowd began shouting again, and this time they clearly were shouting a name. It was the same one on Kestrel’s lips, the one that she said again as the winner turned around, wiped blood from his mouth, and saw her.
Ronan.