“What is it?”

“A surprise. Now look happy, Kestrel. I’m giving you everything that you could want.”

Sometimes the emperor was generous. She’d seen audiences with him where he’d given senators private land in new colonies, or powerful seats in the Quorum. But she’d also seen how his generosity tempted others to ask for just a little more. Then his eyes went heavy-lidded, like a cat’s, and she would see how his gifts made people reveal what they really wanted.

Nonetheless, she couldn’t help hoping that the wedding could be put off for longer than a few months. Firstsummer was better than next week, of course, but still too soon. Much too soon. Would the emperor agree to a year? More? She said, “Firstsummer—”

“Is the perfect date.”

Kestrel’s gaze fell to her closed hand. It opened with a sweet scent and rested empty on the table.

The sugar fork had vanished against the heat of her palm.

2

Arin was in his father’s study, which he probably would never be able to think of as his own, no matter how old the ghosts of his dead family grew.

It was a clear day. The view from the study window showed the city in detail, with its ruined patches left by the rebellion. The pale wafer of a winter sun gave Herran’s harbor a blurry glow.

Arin wasn’t thinking of her. He wasn’t. He was thinking of how slowly the city walls were being rebuilt. Of the hearthnut harvest soon to come in the southern countryside, and how it would bring much-needed food and trade to Herran. He wasn’t thinking of Kestrel, or of the past month and a week of not thinking of her. But not thinking was like lifting slabs of rock, and he was so distracted by the strain of it that he didn’t hear Sarsine enter the room, or notice his cousin at all until she had shoved an opened letter at him.

The broken seal showed the sigil of crossed swords. A letter from the Valorian emperor. Sarsine’s face told Arin that he wouldn’t like what he was about to read.

“What is it?” he asked. “Another tax?” He rubbed his eyes. “The emperor must know we can’t pay, not again, not so soon after the last levy. This is ruinous.”

“Well, now we see why the emperor so kindly returned Herran to the Herrani.”

They had discussed this before. It seemed the only explanation to such an unexpected decision. Revenues from Herran used to go into the pockets of the Valorian aristocrats who had colonized it. Then came the Firstwinter Rebellion and the emperor’s decree, and those aristocrats had returned to the capital, the loss of their land named as a cost of war. Now the emperor was able to bleed Herran dry through taxes its people were unable to protest. The territory’s wealth flowed directly into imperial coffers.

A devious move. But what worried Arin most was the nagging sense that he was missing something. It had been hard to think that day when Kestrel had handed him the emperor’s offer and demands. It had been hard to see anything but the gold line that had marked her brow.

“Just tell me how much it’ll cost this time,” he said to Sarsine.

Her mouth screwed into a knot. “Not a tax. An invitation.” She left the room.

Arin unfolded the paper. His hands went still.

As governor of Herran, Arin was requested to attend a ball in the Valorian capital. In honor of the engagement of Lady Kestrel to Crown Prince Verex, read the letter.

Sarsine had called it an invitation, but Arin recognized it for what it was: an order, one that he had no power to disobey, even though he was supposedly no longer a slave.

Arin’s eyes lifted from the page and gazed upon the harbor. When Arin had worked on the docks, one of the other slaves was known as the Favor-Keeper.

Slaves had no possessions, or at least nothing that their Valorian conquerors would recognize as such. Even if Arin had had something of his own, he had no pockets to hold it. Clothes with pockets went to house slaves only. This was the measure of life under the Valorians: that the Herrani people knew their place according to whether they had pockets and the illusion of being able to keep something private within them.

Yet slaves still had a currency. They traded favors. Extra food. A thicker pallet. The luxury of a few minutes of rest while someone else worked. If a slave on the docks wanted something, he asked the Favor-Keeper, the oldest Herrani among them.

The Favor-Keeper kept a ball of thread with a different-colored string for each man. If Arin had had a request, his string would have been spooled and looped and spindled around another one, perhaps yellow, and that yellow string might have wound its way about a green one, depending on who owed what. The Favor-Keeper’s knot recorded it all.

But Arin had had no string. He had asked for nothing. He gave nothing. Already a young man then, he had despised the thought of being in debt to anyone.

Now he studied the Valorian emperor’s letter. It was beautifully inked. Artfully phrased. It fit well with Arin’s surroundings, with the liquid-like varnish of his father’s desk and the leaded glass windows that shot winter light into the study.

The light made the emperor’s words all too easy to read.

Arin crushed the paper into his fist and squeezed hard. He wished for a Favor-Keeper. He would forsake his pride to become a simple string, if only he could have what he wanted.

Arin would trade his heart for a snarled knot of thread if it meant he would never have to see Kestrel again.

* * *

He consulted with Tensen. The elderly man studied the uncrumpled and flattened invitation, his pale green eyes gleaming. He set the thick, wrinkled page on Arin’s desk and tapped the first line of writing with one dry finger. “This,” he said, “is an excellent opportunity.”