Page 93 of The Winner's Crime
“You should use your cannon.”
He had the beginnings of a smile. “Have I foiled some strategy of yours?”
“I could decimate your front lines. I could do it right now.”
“Well, if you must.”
Kestrel was growing angry. She made no move.
Her father said, “Are we arguing?”
“No.”
“What are we arguing about?”
Kestrel thought of Ronan, fighting in the east. She thought about how she’d crushed the necklace Jess had given her because it had been expendable. It was the kind of choice her father had raised her to be able to make. She thought about how when they were little girls, she and Jess had walked hand in hand, Jess’s palm fresh against hers. Kestrel thought about Arin, in Herran’s city, and what he must think of her now. And finally, Kestrel thought about herself as if she were two people, and one self stood behind the screen in the music room, watching her other self, and judging.
“You are sacrificing them,” she told her father.
“It’s just a game.”
Kestrel said nothing.
“You worry about my methods,” said the general. “You think I don’t know how to go to war.”
“You’re wasting lives.”
“I protect my soldiers as best as I can. And I do use cannon. The Valorian army is well-gunned. We have significant stores of black powder. Our arsenal outstrips anything an enemy can offer. I rarely even need much cannon.”
She imagined Ronan at the very front of an army. “So you let our people fight hand to hand instead.”
“That’s what we do. It’s who we are. If we can’t take what we want with our own hands, we don’t deserve to win it.”
Kestrel leaned away from the gaming table. She sat back in her chair.
He said, “Would you rather I line up my cannon barrel to barrel and raze the eastern forces?”
No, of course not. That wasn’t what she’d meant.
“You accuse me of wasting lives. I could, Kestrel. I could waste them in the thousands, the tens of thousands. I don’t. I try to minimize enemy casualties.”
“Only so that you can enslave people afterward.”
His mouth thinned. “I think we should finish our game.”
He won.
* * *
Verex stopped her in the hallway. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Maybe you bribed the wrong lady-in-waiting. You should choose one who keeps a closer eye on my whereabouts.”
He laughed. “Or maybe you should bribe one of my valets, so that we’d be even. Then again”—he shrugged good-naturedly—“my whereabouts aren’t very interesting.” He tugged her hand. “Come. I have something to show you. Give you, actually.”
“A gift?”
“A wedding present.”
