He hadn’t been here since the Firstwinter Rebellion. He hadn’t wanted to be drawn to Kestrel’s rooms, or to see the kitchens where his people had been forced to work, or to find the place where the steward accused him of touching something he shouldn’t have. A flogging had followed, set far back on the grounds so that no one in the house would be bothered by unpleasant sounds. Arin hadn’t wanted to remember the music room ringing with Kestrel’s playing, or to see the library where he’d once shut himself inside with her. He’d wanted nothing of this place at all. Even when he’d come with men and a cart and draft horses to bring the piano to his house, Arin hadn’t gone inside. He’d waited outside, rigging a system of pulleys he used to help haul the instrument up and onto the cart after it had been wheeled out the wide doors of the music room.

So he wasn’t prepared for the filth he saw and smelled.

Cheat had been vengeful. The corners reeked of piss. There were stains on the walls, the windows. Several panes were shattered.

Arin’s feet carried him swiftly to the music room. Things were odd there: leaves of sheet music scattered on the floor, some of it burned, but only a little, as if Cheat had started and then had had a better idea, prob ably the same idea that had kept him from ruining the piano. Maybe Cheat hadn’t been sure whether to force Kestrel to do what he wanted, or bribe her . . .

Arin’s stomach seized. His lungs blazed. He flung open a window.

He stared into the garden, remembering this view. He’d watched flowers dip and float in a breeze while Kestrel played a melody written for the flute. His mother used to sing along to it, in the evenings, for guests.

He wondered if this was what it meant to have been born in the year of the god of death: to see every thing defiled.

But the air cleared his head. He made his way to the kitchens. There he started yet another fire, this time to boil water. He found a harsh-smelling block of lye. Rags. Buckets. Orange-scented wood oil. Vinegar for the windows and walls. Arin began to clean the house from top to bottom.

As he wrung out a cloth, he felt his god sneer. Cleaning? Ah, Arin. This is not why I made you. This is not our agreement.

Arin had no sense of having agreed to anything, only of having been claimed, and liking it.

He couldn’t dishonor his god. But he also couldn’t dishonor himself. He pushed the voice from his head and kept at his task.

When he returned to the forge, the fire was long dead. He restarted it and stoked the flames. Then he set his father’s sword into the fire, heated it to the point of flexibility, and held it against the anvil. He chopped the blade. His mind was quiet as he trimmed it down and something new formed beneath his hands. Folded steel, layer upon layer. Forge-welded. Shorter, thinner. Strong and sprung. He reformed the hilt. Shaped and ground the blade. He did all that he could to make Kestrel’s dagger his finest work.

Chapter 12

She swam out of the murk.

She was sore—shoulders and ribs and stomach especially. But the spasms that had racked her body were gone. Every thing was impossibly soft. The feather bed. Her thin shift. Clean skin. The tender give of the pillow beneath her cheek. She blinked, heard the short sweep of her eyelashes against the pillow’s fabric. Her hair lay loose, smooth. It had been disgusting when she’d arrived here. She remembered Sarsine working oiled fingers through it. “Cut it off,” Kestrel had said. She’d felt disjointed and eerie as the words left her dry lips, like she wasn’t really speaking but echoing something she’d already said.

“Oh no,” Sarsine had replied. “Not this time.”

Cut it off. Yes. There had been another time. Then, there’d been a tangle of myriad little braids beneath her fingers, and she’d hated the feel of them . . . because of the ghost of an unexpected plea sure . . . yet what kind of pleasure, and why it had vanished, her mind refused to say.

You might regret cutting your hair, a society lady like you, Sarsine had said in this other, earlier time.

Please. I can’t bear it.

Sarsine unsnarled the dense clumps left by the prison camp. The movement of fingers in Kestrel’s hair made her dizzy. She’d gagged, and was sick all over again.

Now, puzzling through this, Kestrel touched a ribbon of hair on the pillow. She’d lost track of its color in the prison.

Familiar. Dark blonde. A little reddish. It had been a more fiery hue when she was little. Warrior red, her father had said, tweaking a braid. She suspected that he’d been disappointed to see it darken over time.

She sat up—too swiftly. Her sight dimmed. She got light-headed.