*
“I didn’t realize you were interested in water engineering,” said Elinor as a southern isle slave served them a rare liquor that tasted like burnt caramel. It was very expensive.
Kestrel sipped from her cut-crystal glass. Elinor’s townhome was modest. The walls were painted instead of papered. A long crack ran through the lacy white plaster molding in the ceiling.
But the water engineer had expensive liquor. There were pale, sweet, imported berries heaped in a bowl on the low table near the divan where she and Kestrel sat. Of course, Elinor would set out her finest food and drink for a visitor of Kestrel’s rank. But the liquor and berries seemed too much for someone of her means, judging by the state of her house. Tensen had told Kestrel about the bets placed on her wedding dress. She thought that the berries, liquor, and even the crystal glasses could have been acquired on credit by someone expecting a large windfall in a matter of months. The Firstsummer wedding was, after all, not so far away.
Kestrel forced a smile. “The emperor thinks I should be interested in anything that concerns the empire. And my father valued your skills during war.”
The engineer’s plain face went pink with pride.
“Didn’t you serve with the general in the east?” Kestrel said.
“Years ago.” Elinor’s face lost its pleasure. When she caught Kestrel’s questioning look, she said, “The east is a savage land. Engineers might technically be members of the military, my lady, but I wasn’t ready. The Dacrans are devious fighters. I was supposed to build bridges and dams, not fight, but the reeds by the rivers were high. They were infested with tigers. They hid barbarians with poisoned crossbow quarrels. Your father kept me safe. He kept me alive.”
If the emperor had rewarded the engineer, could it have been for a favor she had done in the east? Maybe it had nothing to do with Herran.
The southern isle slave refilled the engineer’s cup. Kestrel watched her. She was a young girl, younger than Kestrel. The southern islands—the Cayn Saratu, as their people had once called them—had been one of the first territories Valoria had conquered. Kestrel’s father had been a lieutenant then. This girl was young enough to have been born into slavery. She’d never known another life. She might not have ever known her mother tongue—or even her mother.
Suddenly Kestrel no longer cared whether the emperor’s secret was about Herran, or the east, or some other territory. She wanted the empire to be that long table that haunted her mind. She wanted to flip it over and send all those empty plates crashing to the floor.
The slave stirred uneasily. Kestrel realized that she was staring at the girl, who said, “More, my lady?”
“No, thank you.”
The engineer said to Kestrel, “I suppose you don’t remember me. You were a little girl when I saw you last. It was just after the colonization of Herran.”
Kestrel looked at Elinor again, at the solid, intelligent way of her. Kestrel had a faint memory of kneeling by the fountain in her Herran villa and tipping red dye filched from the slaves’ workroom into the fountain. She’d been curious. She had overheard a word at dinner the night before, while her father talked with his guest. Dilution. It was a word she didn’t know.
“I dyed our fountain pink because of you,” Kestrel told the engineer.
“Really?”
“I was trying for red, but I didn’t have enough dye.” Kestrel pressed her thumb into the pattern cut into her crystal glass and said, “Why were you in Herran then? Did you live there?”
“No, I designed the city aqueducts. The Herrani system of running water was too primitive.”
“Have you been to Herran recently?”
“No,” said the engineer, but she was looking away. “Why would I?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I wish that you had, and that we could talk about it. Sometimes I’m homesick.”
Elinor frowned. “Herran is a colony. This is your home.”
“Herran was a colony. Now it’s an independent territory.”
“By the grace of our emperor.”
Quietly, and helplessly, the way one reaches for a lost thing that had always been there before, Kestrel said, “I miss the birds that sing there this time of the year. They carried straw in their beaks and built nests under the eaves. I miss the flickering light of the horse paths.” The engineer was staring with disapproval. Kestrel didn’t care. The words were said to Arin, who wasn’t there, and Jess, who wouldn’t listen, and Ronan, who was leaving, and her father, who had shared her home. She spoke to the southern isle slave, who had probably been born and sold and raised in the capital, and had never known her home, and so had been robbed, along with everything else, of homesickness. “There was a hill in the orange grove,” Kestrel said. “When I was little, I would lie there in summer and look at the fruit hanging in the trees like party lanterns. Then I was old enough to go to parties, and my friends and I would stay up until even the fireflies went to sleep.”
“How nice.” Yet the engineer’s voice was cold.
“Herran is beautiful.”
“The problem has never been Herran. It’s the Herrani.”
Then, as if neither of them noticed the great fault line that had opened up with their words to split the ground between them, Elinor said, “Do try the berries, my lady. They are very sweet.”
*
When the general was well enough to leave his rooms, the emperor insisted on a celebration. A mock sea battle was staged at night on the man-made pond in the Spring Garden. Two small boats were painted to look like ships of war and loaded with courtiers who shot off fireworks.
“You don’t like it?” the emperor said when General Trajan remained silent during the applause.
“Fireworks are a waste of black powder.”
“Valoria has more than enough. Our enemies will never be able to compete with our cannons. Our stores of black powder are vast.”
“Every resource has its limits.”
“He’s always like this in the capital,” the emperor told Kestrel cheerfully. “He’s never happy unless he’s in the field.”
Kestrel wanted to say that he had been happy in their home in Herran. In truth, though, he’d rarely been there, and she’d never dared to ask after his happiness.
The general shifted in his wrought-iron chair. The walk to the garden had exhausted him, Kestrel could tell. Though the court physicians packed his wound with less gauze every day, it hadn’t yet closed.
“Where’s Verex?” Kestrel wished he were there.
The emperor shrugged.
A firework popped into a shower of gold. It illuminated the crowd gathered around the pond. Its light glimmered on Risha’s face, and on Verex, who sat next to her on the other side of the pond.
The emperor saw them, too. Kestrel was coming to understand that the emperor’s anger tended to coil itself tightly. It was the kind that could seem to sleep. Inevitably, though, it lashed out.
“I hear that you paid a call to my water engineer,” he said to Kestrel.
Another firework went off. It seemed to thud inside Kestrel’s chest. The emperor was looking at her in the same way he had looked at his son: as if he didn’t like what he saw.
Kestrel said, “I thought that maybe I could convince her to return to the east with my father.”
A firework lit the emperor’s face with exploded light. “That is my decision.”
“It was just an idea. In the end, I said nothing about it to her.”
“She tells me, however, that your conversation was nonetheless interesting.”
The smell of sulfur was strong. The smoke burned Kestrel’s lungs. And she knew, from the threat in the emperor’s voice, that she had been prodding at a secret about the water engineer.
She looked at her father. He was staring straight ahead, watching as a drunk gentleman stood in one of the boats, teetered, and fell into the water. The crowd laughed.
Kestrel held her breath. The fireworks cracked and burst inside her. She waited for the emperor to speak again. She worried that her father would say that he had told Kestrel not to go to the engineer’s house.
“Perhaps the capital isn’t entertaining enough for you,” the emperor said to Kestrel. “I hear that you long for Herran.”
“Why wouldn’t she?” General Trajan said curtly. “She grew up there.”
The sky rained green and red. The two men looked at each other. Kestrel knew that expression on her father’s face.
Her fear slowed. She breathed again. Though the spring night was chilly, she felt suddenly warm. She felt the cloak of her father’s protection. She pulled it tightly around her.
“Of course,” the emperor said silkily, and turned to watch as another fuse was lit.