The Winner's Curse

15

Enai’s words troubled Kestrel, but not so much that she changed her ways. She continued to bring Arin with her on visits into society. She enjoyed his sharp mind—even his sharp tongue. She had to admit, however, that their conversations in Herrani created a false sense of privacy. She thought this was due to the language itself; Herrani had always felt more intimate than Valorian, probably because after her mother’s death her father had had little time for her, and it was Enai who had filled the void, distracting Kestrel from her tears by teaching her the Herrani word for them.

Kestrel frequently had to remind herself that Arin knew her language as well as she did his. Sometimes, when she caught a glimpse of him listening to an absurd dinner conversation, she wondered how he had mastered Valorian so completely. Few slaves did.

Not long after her second game of Bite and Sting with Arin, they went to Jess’s home.

“Kestrel!” Jess embraced her. “You’ve neglected us.”

Jess waited for an explanation, but when Kestrel mentally sifted through her reasons—the strategy lessons with her father, hours of practice at piano, and two Bite and Sting games that took up much more time in her mind than they had actual hours—she said only, “Well, I’m here now.”

“And ready with an apology. If not, I shall take my revenge on you.”

“Oh?” Kestrel followed Jess into the parlor, listening to Arin’s footsteps behind them soften as he moved from the marble hallway to the carpeted floor. “Should I be afraid?”

“Yes. If you don’t beg my forgiveness, I won’t go with you to the dressmaker’s to order gowns for the governor’s Firstwinter ball.”

Kestrel laughed. “The first day of winter is ages away.”

“But your apology, I hope, isn’t.”

“I am very, very sorry, Jess.”

“Good.” Jess’s brown eyes glittered with mirth. “I forgive you, on the condition that you let me choose your gown.”

Kestrel gave her a helpless look. She glanced at Arin, who was standing against the wall. Though his expression was bland, she had the impression he was laughing at her.

“You dress too modestly, Kestrel.” When Kestrel began to protest, Jess caught one of her hands with both of hers and shook it. “There. It is agreed. It is done. A Valorian honors her word.”

Kestrel sank onto a sofa next to Jess, admitting defeat.

“Ronan will be sorry to have missed you,” Jess said.

“He is out?”

“He is visiting Lady Faris’s household.”

Kestrel lifted one brow. “Then I am sure her charms will soothe any regret he might have in missing me.”

“Don’t tell me that you’re jealous. You know what Ronan feels for you.”

Kestrel became acutely conscious of Arin’s presence in the room. She glanced at him, expecting the bored expression he usually wore in Jess’s company. It wasn’t there. He seemed oddly intent. “You may go,” she told him.

It looked like he might disobey. Then he spun on his heel and strode from the room.

When the door had shut behind him, Kestrel told Jess, “Ronan and I are friends.”

Jess huffed with impatience.

“And there is only one reason young men of his set visit Lady Faris,” Kestrel continued, thinking of Faris’s baby and his dimpled smile. She considered the possibility that the child was Ronan’s. This didn’t trouble her—which did trouble her. Shouldn’t she care? Didn’t she welcome Ronan’s attention? Yet the idea that he had fathered a child skimmed the surface of her mind and slipped in quietly, without a splash or gulp or quiver.

Well, if the baby was his, he had been conceived more than a year ago. And if Ronan was with Faris now, what promise was there between him and Kestrel?

“Faris is notorious,” she told Jess. “Plus, her husband is in the capital.”

“Young men visit her because her husband is one of the most influential men in the city, and they hope Faris will help them become senators.”

“What price do you think she makes them pay?”

Jess looked scandalized.

“Why would Ronan mind paying?” Kestrel said. “Faris is beautiful.”

“He would never.”

“Jess, if you think you can convince me that Ronan is an innocent who has never been with a woman, you are mistaken.”

“If you think Ronan would prefer Faris over you, you are mad.” Jess shook her head. “All he wants is a sign of your affection. He has given you plenty.”

“Meaningless compliments.”

“You don’t want to see it. Don’t you think he is handsome?”

Kestrel couldn’t deny that Ronan was everything she might hope. He cut a fine figure. He was witty, good-natured. And he didn’t mind her music.

Jess said, “Wouldn’t you like for us to be sisters?”

Kestrel reached for one of Jess’s many shining, pale braids. She slipped it out of the girl’s upswept arrangement, then tucked it back in. “We already are.”

“Real sisters.”

“Yes,” Kestrel said in a low voice. “I would like that.” She had always wanted to be part of Jess’s family, ever since she had been a child. Jess had the perfect older brother and indulgent parents.

Jess made a delighted sound. Kestrel looked at her sharply. “Don’t you dare tell him.”

“Me?” Jess said innocently.

Later that day, Kestrel sat with Arin in the music room. She played her tiles: a pair of wolves and three mice.

Arin turned his over with a resigned sigh. He didn’t have a bad set, but it wasn’t good enough, and beneath his usual level of skill. He stiffened in his chair as if physically bracing himself for her question.

Kestrel studied his tiles. She was certain he could have done better than a pair of wasps. She thought of the tiles he had shown earlier in the game, and the careless way in which he had discarded others. If she didn’t know how little he liked to lose against her, she would have suspected him of throwing the game.

She said, “You seem distracted.”

“Is that your question? Are you asking me why I am distracted?”

“So you admit that you are distracted.”

“You are a fiend,” he said, echoing Ronan’s words during the match at Faris’s garden party. Then, apparently annoyed at his own words, he said, “Ask your question.”

She could have pressed the issue, but his distraction was a less interesting mystery compared to one growing in her mind. She didn’t think Arin was who he appeared to be. He had the body of someone born into hard work, yet he knew how to play a Valorian game, and play it well. He spoke her language like someone who had studied it carefully. He knew—or pretended to know—the habits of a Herrani lady and the order of her rooms. He had been relaxed and adept around her stallion, and while that might not mean anything—he had not ridden Javelin—Kestrel knew that horsemanship among the Herrani before the war had been a mark of high class.

Kestrel thought that Arin was someone who had fallen far.

She couldn’t ask if that was true. She remembered his angry response when she had asked why he had been trained as a blacksmith, and that question had seemed innocent enough. Yet it had hurt him.

She did not want to hurt him.

“How did you learn to play Bite and Sting?” she asked. “It’s Valorian.”

He looked relieved. “There was a time when Herrani enjoyed sailing to your country. We liked your people. And we have always admired the arts. Our sailors brought back Bite and Sting sets a long time ago.”

“Bite and Sting is a game, not an art.”

He folded his arms across his chest, amused. “If you say so.”

“I’m surprised to hear that Herrani liked anything about Valorians. I thought you considered us stupid savages.”

“Wild creatures,” he muttered.

Kestrel was sure she had misheard him. “What?”

“Nothing. Yes, you were completely uncultured. You ate with your hands. Your idea of entertainment was seeing who could kill the other first. But”—his eyes met hers, then glanced away—“you were known for other things, too.”

“What things? What do you mean?”

He shook his head. He made that strange gesture again, lifting his fingers to flick the air by his temple. Then he folded his hands, unfolded them, and began to mix the tiles. “You have asked too many questions. If you want more, you will have to win them.”

He showed no sign of distraction now. As they played, he ignored her attempts to provoke him or make him laugh. “I’ve seen your tricks on others,” he said. “They won’t work with me.”

He won. Kestrel waited, nervous, and wondered if the way she felt was how he felt when he lost.

His voice came haltingly. “Will you play for me?”

“Play for you?”

Arin winced. In a more determined tone, he said, “Yes. Something I choose.”

“I don’t mind. It’s only … people rarely ask.”

He stood from the table, searched the shelves along the wall, and returned with a sheaf of sheet music. She took it. “It’s for the flute,” he said. “It will probably take you time to transpose it for the piano. I can wait. Maybe after our next game—”

She fanned the paper impatiently to silence him. “It’s not that hard.”

He nodded, then sat in the chair farthest away from the piano, by the glass garden doors. Kestrel was glad for his distance. She settled on the piano’s bench, flipping through the sheet music. The title and notations were in Herrani, the pages yellow with age. She propped the paper on the piano’s rack, taking more time than necessary to neaten the sheets. Excitement coursed through her fingers as if she had already plunged her hands into the music, but that feeling was edged with a metallic lace of fear.

She wished that Arin hadn’t chosen music for the flute, of all instruments. The beauty of the flute was in its simplicity, in its resemblance to the human voice. It always sounded clear. It sounded alone. The piano, on the other hand, was a network of parts—a ship, with its strings like rigging, its case a hull, its lifted lid a sail. Kestrel always thought that the piano didn’t sound like a single instrument but a twinned one, with its low and high halves merging together or pulling apart.

Flute music, she thought with frustration, and would not look at Arin.

Her opening notes were awkward. She paused, then gave the melody over to her right hand and began inventing with her left, pulling dark, rich phrases out of her mind. Kestrel felt the counterpoint knit itself into being. Forgetting the difficulty of what she was doing, she simply played.

It was a gentle, haunting music. When it ended, Kestrel was sorry. Her eyes sought Arin across the room.

She didn’t know if he had watched her play. He wasn’t looking at her now. His gaze was unfocused, directed toward the garden without really seeming to see it. The lines of his face had softened. He looked different, Kestrel realized. She couldn’t say why, but he looked different to her now.

Then he glanced at her, and she was startled enough to let one hand fall onto the keys with a very unmusical sound.

Arin smiled. It was a true smile, which let her know that all the others he had given her were not. “Thank you,” he said.

Kestrel felt herself blush. She focused on the keys and played something, anything. A simple pattern to distract herself from the fact that she wasn’t someone who easily blushed, particularly for no clear reason.

But she found that her fingers were sketching an outline of a tenor’s range. “Do you truly not sing?”

“No.”

She considered the timbre of his voice and let her hands drift lower. “Really?”

“No, Kestrel.”

Her hands slid from the keys. “Too bad,” she said.