Kestrel mixed the tiles and tried again.

* * *

She invited Jess to the ball. Her letter practically begged Jess to come. Jess’s reply arrived: she would be there, of course she would. She promised to stay with Kestrel for at least a week. Kestrel felt a terrible relief.

It didn’t last.

* * *

She took tea in the palace salons with the daughters and sons of high-ranking military officers. She ate canapés on fashionable white bread that tasted awful because its color came from powdered chalk. Kestrel pretended to herself that the dry, tight quality of her throat had everything to do with the bread and nothing with the increasing disappointment of each day that did not bring Arin.

* * *

On the last morning before the ball, when the weather watchers in the palace predicted that a storm building above the mountains would close the pass to Herran with snow before the day was out, Kestrel stood on a block while the dressmaker pinned a panel of silver-threaded lace to her ball gown.

It was the final touch. Kestrel stared down at the layered fabric. The color of its satin base was uncertain. Sometimes it resembled pearl scraped from the inside of shells. Then light from the window would dim and the dress became dark, full of shadows.

Kestrel was tired of the long hours on the dressmaker’s block, tired to think of all the eyes that would watch her enter the ballroom, of all the gossip that swirled through the palace about details so minute as her choice of dress. Bets had been laid, she’d heard. Entire fortunes might be won or lost based on what she wore.

She lifted her gaze from the dress to watch the snow-heavy clouds build in the sky. She watched as if the window were her last exit, each cloud a stone laid to wall it off.

The dressmaker was Herrani. She’d been freed with the rest of her people when the emperor had issued his edict almost two months ago. Why Deliah stayed in the capital instead of returning to Herran, Kestrel didn’t know. She didn’t ask, and Deliah rarely spoke. She didn’t say anything that day, either—not at first. She pinned in silent precision. But her gray eyes glanced up once to peer at Kestrel.

Kestrel saw a certain curiosity in the way they lingered. A waiting, a wondering.

“Deliah, what is it?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

Deliah fussed with the hem. “The Herrani representative has arrived.”

“What?”

“He arrived this morning on horseback. He came through the pass in the nick of time.”

“Take this dress off.”

“But I’m not finished, my lady.”

“Off.”

“Just a few more—”

Kestrel tugged the fabric from her shoulders. She ignored Deliah’s small cry, the pricks of pins, the thin chime of them scattering onto the stone floor. Kestrel stepped out of the dress, pulled on her day clothes, and rushed out the door.

7

He was waiting in the reception hall, a lone figure lost in the vast, vaulted chamber. The Herrani representative was an elderly man whose thin frame leaned heavily on his walking stick.

Kestrel faltered. She approached more slowly. She couldn’t help looking over his shoulder for Arin.

He wasn’t there.

“I thought the barbarian days of the Valorian empire were over,” the man said dryly.

“What?” said Kestrel.

“You’re barefoot.”

She glanced down, and only then realized that her feet were freezing, that she’d forgotten even the existence of shoes when she’d left her dressing chamber and hurtled through the palace for all to see, for the Valorian guards flanking the reception hall to see right now.

“Who are you?” Kestrel demanded.

“Tensen, the Herrani minister of agriculture.”

“And the governor? Where is he?”

“Not coming.”

“Not…” Kestrel pressed a palm to her forehead. “The emperor issued a summons. To a state function. And Arin declines?” Her anger was folding onto itself in as many layers as her ball gown—anger at Arin, at the way he was committing political suicide.

Anger at herself. At her own bare feet and how they were proof—pure, naked, cold proof—of her hope, her very need to see someone that she was supposed to forget.

Arin had not come.

“I get that disappointed look all the time,” Tensen said in a cheerful tone. “No one is ever excited to meet the minister of agriculture.”

She finally focused on his face. His green eyes were small but clever, his wrinkled skin darker than hers. “You wrote me a letter.” Her voice sounded strained. “You said that we had much to discuss.”

“Oh, yes.” Tensen waved a negligent hand. The lamplight traced the plain gold ring he wore. “We should talk about the hearthnut harvest. Later.” His eyes slid slowly to glance at the Valorian soldiers lining the hall, then met Kestrel’s gaze again and held it. “I could use your insight on a few matters concerning Herran. But I’m an old man, my lady, and very saddle sore. A little rest in the privacy of my rooms is in order, I think. Perhaps you could show me where they are?”

Kestrel didn’t miss his message. She wasn’t blind to the way he had indicated that their conversation could be overheard, nor was she deaf to his coded invitation that they could speak more freely in his guest suite. But she struggled against the pain in her throat, and said only, “Your ride here was hard?”

“Yes.”