The Winner's Crime Read Free Page A

invitation, his pale green eyes
    gleaming. He set the thick, wrinkled page on Arin’s desk
    and tapped the fi rst line of writing with one dry fi nger.
    “This,” he said, “is an excellent opportunity.”
    “Then you’ll go,” said Arin.
    “Of course.”
    “Without me.”
    Tensen pursed his lips. He gave Arin that schoolmas-
    ter’s look that had served him well as a tutor to Valorian
    children. “Arin. Let’s not be proud.”
    “It’s not pride. I’m too busy. You’ll represent Herran at
    the ball.”
    “I don’t think that the emperor will be satisfi ed with a
    mere minister of agriculture.”
    “I don’t care for the emperor’s satisfaction.”
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    “Sending me, alone , will either insult the emperor or
    SKI
    O
    reveal to him that I’m more important than I seem.” Tensen
    rubbed his grizzled jaw, considering Arin. “You need to go.
    It’s a part you must play. You’re a good actor.”
    Arin shook his head.
    MARIE RUTK
    Tensen’s eyes darkened. “I was there that day.”
    The day last summer when Kestrel had bought him.
    Arin could feel again the sweat crawling down his back
    as he waited in the holding pen below in the auction pit.
    The structure was roofed, which meant that Arin couldn’t
    see the crowd of Valorians ranged above at ground level,
    only Cheat in the center of the pit.
    Arin smelled the stink of his skin, felt the grit beneath
    his bare feet. He was sore. As he listened to Cheat’s voice
    rise and fall in the bantering singsong of an expert auction-
    eer, he pressed tentative fi ngers to his bruised cheek. His
    face was like a rotten fruit.
    Cheat had been furious with him that morning. “Two
    days,” he’d growled. “I rent you out for only two days and
    you come back looking like this. What’s so hard about lay-
    ing a road and keeping your mouth shut?”
    Waiting in the holding pen, not really listening to the
    drone of the auction, Arin didn’t want to think about the
    beating and everything that had led up to it.
    In truth, the bruises changed nothing. Arin couldn’t
    fool himself that Cheat would ever be able to sell him into
    a Valorian house hold. Valorians cared about their house
    slaves’ appearance, and Arin didn’t fi t the part even when
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    his face wasn’t half- masked in various shades of purple. He
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    looked like a laborer. He was one. Laborers were not brought
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    into the house, and houses were where Cheat needed to
    plant slaves devoted to the rebellion.
    CRIME
    Arin tipped his head back against the rough wood of
    ’S
    the pen’s wall. He fought his frustration.
    There came a long silence in the pit. The lull meant
    that Cheat had closed the sale while Arin wasn’t paying
    THE WINNER
    attention and had stepped into the auction house for a
    break.
    Then: a locust- like whir from the crowd. Cheat was re-
    turning to the pit, stepping close to the block on which
    another slave was about to stand.
    To his audience, Cheat said, “I have something very
    special for you.”
    Each slave in the holding pen straightened. The after-
    noon torpor was gone. Even the old man, whose name Arin
    would later learn was Tensen, became sharply alert.
    Cheat had spoken in code. “Something very special”
    conveyed a secret meaning to the slaves: the chance to be
    sold in a way to contribute to the rebellion. To spy. Steal.
    Maybe murder. Cheat had many plans.
    It was the very in what Cheat had said that made Arin
    sick with himself, because that word signaled the most im-
    portant sale of all, the one they’d been waiting for: the
    opportunity for a rebel to be placed in General Trajan’s
    house hold.
    Who was there, above in the crowd of Valorians?
    The general himself ?
    And Arin, stupid Arin, had squandered his chance at
    revenge. Cheat would never