He laughed out loud.

* * *

Kestrel had stopped, too. She’d seen his face fill with a strange, hard mirth even before he’d laughed. “Arin,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head, still smiling. “Everything. I don’t know.”

“What is it?”

“A joke. Something stupid. Not real. Never mind.”

She was reluctant to press him. She didn’t want to hear that joyless laugh again.

They continued on for a few paces beneath the wooden signs that hung over establishments’ doors like rigid flags. Kestrel stopped when she realized where Arin was leading her. She eyed the tavern across the street, the one with the sign of the broken arm, under which that sick lord had almost seen through her disguise. “I can’t go in there.”

“Not grand enough for you?” Arin still had that satirical light in his eyes.

“Someone might recognize me.”

“They won’t.”

“Do I look so different in plain clothes?” She heard the self-conscious note in her voice, and was embarrassed.

“Kestrel, I’m going to suspect that you think yourself too fine a lady to enter the Broken Arm. Or that you’re afraid to lose to me, which is really quite understandable.”

She scowled at him, then led the way.

The tavern was all wild noise and light. There was a press of people. The air lay thick with tobacco smoke, the meaty smell of cheap tallow candles, and a yeasty, humid odor that seemed due to a mix of alcohol and sweat. Kestrel threaded through the crowd.

“Do you know where you’re going?” she heard Arin say near her ear, amused.

Kestrel pushed ahead. She could breathe a bit better closer to the bar, though when she came nearer she saw three disheveled courtiers, drunk and loud. She knew one of them by name. He ranked highly, and had been a part of the emperor’s inner circle at the Winter Garden party.

Kestrel ducked her head, afraid to be recognized.

She wasn’t quick enough. His gaze fell on her … and slid away. She saw him not see her, or at least not see anything worth his attention. One of his fellows laughed at something the other said. The senator turned to them. There was a merry call for another round. They didn’t glance her way.

“You’ve stopped,” Arin murmured in her ear.

Her heart still hammering, Kestrel spun so abruptly to face Arin that she jostled into him. His hand caught her shoulder.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“You promised. One game.”

“Not here. Not now.”

Arin’s grip tightened. “Then you forfeit. I win.”

Her heartbeat changed in her ears. It rode high at his touch. There was temptation, and then there was … something else, that might have been the smart thing if she hadn’t forgotten it.

That something else shape-shifted. It hardened inside her. It pushed for yes, spurned no, and called Kestrel a coward. It joined hands with temptation.

“I never forfeit,” she said. He smiled. She led him to a far corner with a cluster of tables. The tables were all occupied. A pair of Valorian merchants sat at the one farthest from the senators. Kestrel went up to the merchants. “Give us your seats,” she said, and dropped the purse she’d stolen from the harbormaster onto the table. The merchants looked at it, looked at her, and decided to drink on their feet. They took the purse and left.

“Blunt, but effective,” Arin commented as Kestrel claimed a chair, her back to the courtiers. Arin remained standing. She thought he might say something teasing. That steely mirth hadn’t quite left him, but it had softened during their push through the tavern. He looked a little tired, like a runner done running. Whatever thought had seized him in the alleyway was gone … or had gone away enough. She couldn’t see it anymore on his torn face.

His dear face, dear to her, dearer still. How could she love his face more for its damage? What kind of person saw someone’s suffering and felt her heart crack open even wider, even more sweetly than before?

There was something wrong with her. It was wrong to want to touch a scar and call it beautiful.

Arin wasn’t looking at her anymore. He’d been distracted.

Kestrel followed his gaze to see a black-eyed redhead at a nearby table giving Arin a cool look. His expression didn’t change, but something inside him did. Kestrel felt it. It twisted her heart.

When Arin’s attention returned to Kestrel, she examined the splintery surface of the table. “I’m going to get a Bite and Sting set,” he said. “And wine. Should I get wine?”

The answer to that was a clear no. Kestrel needed all her wits about her for a game she shouldn’t—couldn’t—lose. But she felt suddenly miserable, and realized that she’d been nervous ever since Arin had found her by the river. She said yes.

He hesitated, like he might counsel her against that choice. Then he left the table.

The crowd swallowed him. Kestrel couldn’t see where he had gone.

* * *

Arin didn’t like to leave her for long. She was going to attract attention. It was her nature. But when he returned with wine and a game set, she was alone and quiet: an almost eerie silence in the tavern’s storm.

He saw her before she did him. He saw that she was unhappy. He realized that this was what had arrested him by the canal when he’d thought she was a nameless maid: the sense that this stranger had lost something as precious to her as what he had lost was to him.