*
Kestrel had questions of her own for Thrynne. She would seek a way to help him, and to understand what he had said—but this meant seeing Thrynne alone … and that required the permission of the emperor.
“I’m ashamed of myself,” she told the emperor the next morning. They were in his private treasury. His note accepting her request to see him, and naming this room for the meeting, seemed to have been made with good grace. But he was silent now, inspecting a drawer pulled out of a wall honeycombed from floor to ceiling with them. He was intent on the drawer’s contents, which Kestrel couldn’t see.
“I behaved badly in the prison,” Kestrel said. “The torture—”
“Interrogation,” he said to the drawer.
“It reminded me of the Firstwinter Rebellion. Of … what I experienced.”
“What you experienced.” The emperor looked up from the drawer.
“Yes.”
“We have never fully discussed what you experienced, Kestrel. I should think that whatever it was, it would make you encourage the captain in his proceedings instead of jeopardizing his line of inquiry. Or do we have a different understanding of what you suffered at the hands of the Herrani rebels? Do I need to reevaluate the story of the general’s daughter, who escaped captivity and sailed through a storm to alert me to the rebellion?”
“No.”
“Do you think that an empire can survive without a few dirty methods? Do you think that an empress will keep herself clean of them?”
“No.”
He slid the drawer shut. Its click was as loud as a bang. “Then what have we left to address but my disappointment? My grievous disappointment? I had thought better of you.”
“Let me redeem myself. Please. I speak Herrani very well, and my presence made the prisoner ready to talk. If I were to question him—”
“He’s dead.”
“What?”
“Dead, and whatever information he had with him.”
“How?”
The emperor waved an irritated hand. “Infection. Fever. A waste bucket.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The prison is designed to prevent suicide. But this man—Thrynne—was clever. Committed. Desperate. Any number of qualities that might make someone decide to infect open wounds by plunging them into a waste bucket.”
Kestrel’s nausea threatened to return. And guilt: a bad taste at the back of her throat.
The emperor sighed. He settled into a chair and gestured for Kestrel to sit in the one across from him. She sank into it. “You know his kind, Kestrel. Do you think that someone like him would resort to such measures to protect a Valorian senator who had paid him to learn which ways he should vote?”
“No,” she said. Any other answer would seem false.
“Who do you think hired him?”
“The east, perhaps. They must have spies among us.”
“Oh, they do.” The emperor held her gaze in a way that didn’t wait for an answer, but to see if she would voice what he already believed.
“He worked for Herran,” Kestrel said slowly.
“Of course. Tell me, is their leader an inspiring sort of man? I’ve never met him. But you were his prisoner. Would you say that this new governor has … charisma? The sort of pull and power that lure people to take extreme risks on his behalf?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“I have something to show you.” He pointed at the drawer he had closed. “Bring what lies inside.”
It was a gold coin stamped with the emperor’s profile.
“I had this series minted in celebration of your engagement,” he said. “Turn the coin over.”
Kestrel did. What she saw left her frightened. It was a symbol of crossed knitting needles.
“Do you know what that is?”
Kestrel hesitated to speak. “It’s the sign of Jadis.”
“Yes. The perfect story, I think, to represent you.”
Jadis had been a warrior girl from ancient Valorian legend. A lieutenant. Her army had been defeated, and she was taken prisoner by an enemy warlord who added her to his harem. He liked all his women, but developed a particular taste for the Valorian girl. He was not, however, stupid. He summoned her to his bed naked, so that she had no chance to hide a weapon. And he had her bound as well, at least at first. He didn’t trust her hands.
But Jadis was sweet and easy, and as time passed and the warlord’s camp traveled, he noticed that she had become friends with the other women in his harem. They taught her how to knit. Sometimes, when not at battle, he saw her outside the women’s tent, knitting something shapeless. It amused him to know that the reputation of Valorian ferocity was nothing more than myth. How domestic was his little warrior!
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s for you,” Jadis said. “You’ll like it, you’ll see.”