The Winner's Curse

13

Kestrel’s first lesson with her father took place in their library, a dark room with inset shelves jammed end-to-end with beautifully bound volumes. Only some were in her language; the empire had little literary tradition. The majority of the books were in Herrani, and if few Valorians spoke that language well, fewer still could read it, for the alphabet was in a different script. Yet all Valorian colonizers had kept their conquered libraries intact. They looked nicer that way.

Her father stood, looking out the window. He didn’t like to sit. Kestrel settled into a reading chair as a deliberate gesture of difference.

He said, “The project of the Valorian empire began twenty-four years ago when we took the northern tundra.”

“An easy territory to conquer.” Kestrel couldn’t prove herself to the general with a sword, but at least she could show him that she knew her history. “Its people were few, scattered into distant tribes who lived in tents. We invaded in the summer, with little life lost on either side. It was a trial, to see if Valoria’s neighbors would object to our expansion. It was also a symbolic victory, meant to encourage our people. But the tundra offers no agriculture, little meat, and few slaves. It’s mostly worthless.”

“Worthless?” The general opened one of the drawers lining the walls below the bookshelves and pulled out a scrolled map, which he unfurled and pinned to a table with glass weights. Kestrel stood and came close to study the outline of the continent and the empire’s reaches.

“Perhaps not worthless,” she conceded. She pointed to the tundra, which maintained a thin strip of land over much of the empire’s north—until the frozen territory stretched east and widened, dipping south to curve around the northeastern corner of the empire. “It provides Valoria with a natural barrier against a barbarian invasion. The tundra isn’t a friendly land for war, particularly now that it’s defended by us.”

“Yes. But the tundra has another value to us, one that you can’t see by looking at this map. It’s a state secret, Kestrel. I’m trusting you to keep it.”

“Of course.” She couldn’t help a thrill of intrigue as well as happiness to be brought into her father’s confidence, though she knew that this was exactly what he wanted her to feel.

“Spies were sent into the tundra well before we attacked. We do this with every territory we want to acquire; the tundra wasn’t special in this. But what the spies found there was: mineral deposits. Some silver, which has been mined and helps fund our wars. More important, there is a vast amount of sulfur, a key ingredient in making black powder.”

He smiled when he saw her eyes widen. Then he described in great detail the preparations for invasion, the initial skirmishes, and how the tundra was won by General Daran, who had seen promise in Kestrel’s father when he was a young officer and tutored him in the ways of war.

When her father finished, Kestrel touched the Herran peninsula. “Tell me about the Herran War.”

“We wanted this territory long before I took it. Once I did, Valorian colonists were eager for a piece of the prize. For decades before the war, the Herrani flaunted their country’s wealth, its goods, its beauty, its rich land—its near perfection, not least because it might as well have been an island.” The general swept a finger around the peninsula, bordered on almost all sides by the southern sea except where a mountain range separated it from the rest of the continent. “The Herrani considered us nothing more than stupid, bloody savages. They liked us enough to send ships to our mainland with luxuries for sale. They didn’t seem to think that every alabaster bowl or sack of spice was a temptation to the emperor.”

Although Kestrel knew most of this, it was as if the story she had known was a rough sculpture, and her father’s words sharp blows with a chisel, chipping details into marble until she could see the true shape hidden inside the stone.

“The Herrani believed they were untouchable,” he said. “They were almost right. They had mastered the sea. Their navy was far more sophisticated than ours, both in ships and training. Even if our navy had been more of a match for theirs, the sea was against us.”

“The green storms,” said Kestrel. Storm season was coming. It would last until spring, with squalls appearing out of nowhere along the sea routes and slamming into the shores, turning the sky an eerie green.

“Invasion by sea was suicide. By land it was impossible. There was no way to bring an army through the mountains. There was one pass, yet it was so narrow that an army would have had to squeeze through it almost in single file, and slowly, making it easy for Herrani forces to whittle away at ours until we were nothing.”

Kestrel knew what her father had done, but she hadn’t realized something until now. “You got all that black powder from the earlier conquest of the tundra.”

“Yes. We used it to pack the mountains and explode our way through that pass, widening it until the army could sweep down to victory. The Herrani weren’t prepared for a land invasion. Their strength was at sea.

“And their folly was in their early surrender. Of course, once I seized the city there was little they could do. Yet they still had their navy: a fleet of almost a hundred swift ships with cannon. I doubt they could have won the city back; the sailors would have had to come on land eventually and their numbers were smaller than ours, not very capable against cavalry. But their ships could have harassed us. Engaged in pirate attacks. They could have brought war to Valorian waters and used that damage to negotiate better terms of surrender. But I had the city and its people—and a reputation.”

Kestrel turned. She tugged a book of Herrani poetry off the shelf and paged through it. Her father was no longer looking at her, but into the past.

“So the Herrani surrendered,” he said. “They chose life as slaves over none at all. They gave us their ships, and with them our navy became the greatest in the known world. Every Valorian soldier can sail well now. I made sure you learned, too.”

Kestrel found the passage she was searching for. It was the beginning of a canto about a journey to magical islands where time had no meaning. It was a call to sailors to steer the ship toward open water. Set keel to the wave-breaks, she read. Set forth on the brine-hearted sea.

“There are many reasons we won,” her father said, “and I will teach them to you. But the most fundamental reason is simple. They were weak. We were not.”

He took her book and closed it.

Her meetings with the general were not frequent. He was busy, and Kestrel was grateful. Their conversations tipped her too easily between fascination and revulsion.

More leaves drifted from the trees. Summer warmth drained from the air. Kestrel barely noticed, for she stayed indoors, finding that she was able to forget most of what she had learned from her father while she played the piano. She played almost every free hour, now that she could. Music made her feel as if she were holding a lamp that cast a halo of light around her, and while she knew there were people and responsibilities in the darkness beyond it, she couldn’t see them. The flame of what she felt when she played made her deliciously blind.

Until the day she found something waiting for her in the music room. A small, ivory tile was balanced on the exact middle key of the piano. The Bite and Sting piece had been set facedown. The blank side looked up.

It searched her like a question … or an invitation.