Page 86 of The Winner's Crime
“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.
31
When the general’s wound finally closed, the emperor gave him a gold watch.
Kestrel stood with her father and the emperor on the pale green lawn of the Spring Garden. Archery targets had been set up, and courtiers took their turns. The sky was heaped with whipped-cream clouds. The wind blew soft and warm. Kestrel’s maids had packed away her winter clothes and brought out dresses of lace and toile.
She thought of Arin in his twinned rooftop garden in Herran. She wondered what bloomed for him there now.
The watch struck the hour.
General Trajan raised his brows. “It chimes.”
The emperor looked pleased, and Kestrel supposed that it might have been easy to mistake her father’s expression for wonder. But she saw the uncomfortable line of his mouth.
“Don’t be jealous, Kestrel,” said the emperor. “I haven’t forgotten that your birthday is coming up.”
