Verex nudged the fallen red general with his green one, listening to the rocking tap of marble on marble. “Maybe we could be friends, if you could explain why you don’t tell my father that you don’t wish to marry me.”

But Kestrel couldn’t explain.

“You don’t want me,” Verex said.

She couldn’t lie.

“You claimed that you don’t have a choice,” he said. “What did you mean?”

“Nothing. Truly, I want to marry you.”

His anger returned. “Then let’s list the reasons.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “You seek the empire, and a husband you can manipulate as easily as these game pieces.”

“No,” she said, but why wouldn’t Verex believe his portrait of her: power-hungry, unfeeling? It was what Arin believed.

“You want a good laugh. So that at our engagement ball you can watch me lose at Borderlands while every single aristocrat and governor of the territories laughs with you.”

“A ball? All the governors? Are you sure? No one’s told me about this.”

“My father tells you everything.”

“He didn’t. I swear, I knew nothing of a ball.”

“So he plays games with you, too. My father is two-faced, Kestrel. If you think he adores you, you’d better think again.”

Kestrel threw up her hands. “You’re impossible. You can’t blame me for his favor and claim that I’m no more than an amusing toy to him.” She stood and went toward the door, for she saw that the brief peace between them had disintegrated, and her mind was reeling. An engagement ball. With all the governors. Arin was coming. Arin would be here.

“I wonder why my father didn’t tell you,” Verex said. “Could it be so that in catching you off guard, he could observe exactly what lies between you and the new governor of Herran?”

Kestrel stopped, turned. “There is nothing between us.”

“I’ve seen the Jadis coin. I’ve heard the rumors. Before the rebellion, he was your favorite slave. You fought a duel for him.”

She almost reached out to a bookshelf to steady herself. It felt as if she might fall.

“I know why you’re marrying me, Kestrel. It’s so that everyone will forget that after the rebellion, no one put you in a prison, not like every other Valorian in Herran’s city. You were special, weren’t you? Because you were his. Everyone knows what you were.”

Her vertigo vanished. She snatched the clay soldier off the shelf.

She saw instantly from Verex’s expression that she held something he cherished. She would smash it, she would smash it against the floor. She would break Verex like his father had broken him.

Like she had broken her own heart. Kestrel felt the pieces of her heart suddenly, as if love had been an object, something as frail as a bird’s egg, its shell an impossible cloudy pink. She saw the shock of its bloody yolk. She felt the shards of shell pricking her throat and lungs.

Kestrel set the soldier back on the shelf. She made certain her voice was clear when she spoke her last words before leaving the room. “If you won’t be my friend, you’ll regret being my enemy.”

* * *

Kestrel retreated to her suite and sent her maids away. She didn’t trust any of them now. She sat by a tiny window that gave a feeble light. When she took the Jadis coin from her pocket, it looked dull on her palm.

This is the year of money, she remembered. She had indeed planned on going to the library earlier today, as her maid had informed Verex. She’d hoped to research the Herrani gods, then thought better of it. The library possessed a paltry collection of books; it was mostly a glamorous room where courtiers sometimes met for a quiet tea, or where a military officer might consult one of the thousands of maps. The library would have suited Kestrel well if she had wanted to find a map or to socialize … or if she’d wanted members of the court to see her researching Herrani books.

She had turned away from the thick library doors.

Now she huddled in her velvet chair, trying to concentrate on the actual words of her conversation with Verex instead of on their emotional undertow. She flipped the coin, flipped it again. Emperor. Jadis. Emperor. Jadis. He’s two-faced, Verex had said of his father. Kestrel thought about that phrase as she considered each side of the coin. Two-faced: the word dangled a hook into the dark well of her memory. It snagged on something.

The Herrani believed that a god ruled not just one thing, but a whole domain of associated ideas, actions, objects. The god of stars was the god of stars, yes, but also of accidents, beauty, and disasters. The god of souls … Kestrel’s throat closed as she remembered Arin invoking that god, who ruled love. My soul is yours, he had said. You know that it is. His expression had been so open, so true. Frightened, even, of what he was saying. And she had been frightened, too, by how he had spoken what she felt. It frightened her still.

The coin. Kestrel forced her attention again to the coin.

There was nothing honest about the god of money. She recalled that now. This god was two-faced, like this piece of gold. Sometimes male, sometimes female. He rules buying and selling, Enai had said, which means she rules negotiation. And hidden things. You can’t see both sides of one coin at once, can you, child? The god of money always keeps a secret.

The god of money was also the god of spies.

5

Arin remembered.

It had been easy at first, the promise to be Cheat’s spy. “I trust you most,” the leader of the rebellion had murmured in Arin’s ear after his sale to the general’s daughter. “You are my second-in-command, lad, and between you and me we will have the Valorians on their knees.”