The Winner's Curse

26

Beyond its entryway, the ballroom rang with laughter and loud talk. Heat seethed over the threshold and into the hall where Kestrel stood.

She wove her fingers into a tight lattice. She was nervous.

She looked nervous.

No one must know how she felt.

Kestrel pulled her hands apart and stepped inside the ballroom.

There was a sudden valley of silence. If the windows had been open and air had rushed through them, Kestrel would have heard the chandeliers tinkle, it was so quiet.

Faces chilled. One by one, they turned away.

She sought the crowd for a friend and hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until she noticed Benix. She smiled. She moved toward him.

He saw her. She knew that he saw her. But his eyes refused to see her. It was as if she were transparent. Like ice, or glass, or something equally breakable.

She stopped.

Benix turned his back. He went to the other side of the room.

Whispers began. Irex, far away but not far enough, laughed and said something in Lady Faris’s ear. Kestrel’s cheeks prickled with shame, yet she couldn’t retreat. She couldn’t move.

She saw the smile first. Then the face: Captain Wensan, coming to her rescue, weaving past people. He would ask Kestrel for the first dance, and her appearance would be salvaged, at least for now, even if her reputation was ruined. And she would say yes, for she had no choice but to accept the captain’s pity.

Pity. The thought of it chased the blush from her face.

She scanned the crowd. Before the captain could reach her, she approached a senator standing alone. Senator Caran was twice Kestrel’s age. Thin-haired, thin-faced. His reputation was spotless, if only because he was too timid to break ranks with society.

“Ask me to dance,” she said quietly.

“Pardon me?”

At least he was speaking with her. “Ask me to dance,” she said, “or I’ll tell everyone what I know about you.”

His gaping mouth clamped shut.

Kestrel didn’t know any of Caran’s secrets. Perhaps he had none. She was counting, however, on his being too afraid to risk whatever she might say.

He asked her to dance.

He wasn’t, obviously, the ideal choice. But Ronan hadn’t arrived, and Benix still wouldn’t meet her gaze. Either he had changed his mind about her since the duel or his courage failed him in the absence of Ronan and Jess. Or maybe he was simply no longer willing to sink his reputation along with Kestrel’s.

The dance began. Caran remained silent the entire time.

When the instruments slowed to an end, a lute picking a light tune downward until there was no more music, Kestrel broke away. Caran gave her an awkward bow and left.

“Well, that didn’t look very fun,” said a voice behind her. Kestrel turned. Gladness washed over her.

It was Ronan. “I’m ashamed of myself,” he said. “Heartily ashamed, to be so late that you had to dance with such a boring partner as Caran. How did that happen?”

“I blackmailed him.”

“Ah.” Ronan’s eyes grew worried. “So things aren’t going well.”

“Kestrel!” Jess threaded through milling people and came close. “We didn’t think you’d come. You should have told us. If we’d known, we’d have been here from the first.” Jess took Kestrel’s hand and drew her to the edge of the dance floor. Ronan followed. Behind them, dancers began the second round. “As it was,” Jess continued, “we barely made it into the carriage. Ronan was so listless, saying he saw no point in coming if he couldn’t be with you.”

“Sweet sister,” said Ronan, “is it now my turn to share private things about you?”

“Silly. I have no secrets. Neither do you, where Kestrel is concerned. Well?” Jess looked triumphantly between them. “Do you, Ronan?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and thumb, brows rumpling into a pained expression. “Not anymore.”

“You look lovely, Kestrel,” Jess said. “Wasn’t I right about the dress? And the color will go perfectly with the iced apple wine.”

Kestrel felt giddy, whether from the relief of seeing her friends or because of Ronan’s forced confession, she wasn’t sure. She smiled. “You chose the fabric of my dress to coordinate with wine?”

“A special wine. Lady Neril is very proud of it. She told me months ago that she planned to import several casks from the capital for the ball, and it occurred to me that it is simply too easy to match a dress only to jewels, dagger, and shoes. A glass of wine in one’s hand is rather like a jewel, isn’t it, a large, liquid one?”

“I’d better have a glass then. To complete my ensemble.” Kestrel didn’t quite forget her promise to Arin not to drink, but rather willed it away along with everything else about him.

“Oh, yes,” said Jess. “You must. Don’t you think so, Ronan?”

“I don’t think. I am thinking of nothing other than what Kestrel could be thinking, and whether she will dance with me. If I’m not mistaken, there is one final dance before this legendary wine is served.”

Kestrel’s happiness faltered. “I’d love to, but … won’t your parents mind?”

Ronan and Jess exchanged a glance. “They’re not here,” Ronan said. “They’ve left to spend the winter season in the capital.”

Which meant that, were they here, they would object—as would any parents, given the scandal.

Ronan read Kestrel’s face. “It doesn’t matter what they think. Dance with me.”

He took her hand, and for the first time in a long while, she felt safe. He pulled her to the center of the floor and into the motions of the dance.

Ronan didn’t speak for a few moments, then touched a slim braid that curved in a tendril along Kestrel’s cheek. “This is pretty.”

The memory of Arin’s hands in her hair made her stiffen.

“Gorgeous?” Ronan tried again. “Transcendent? Kestrel, the right adjective hasn’t been invented to describe you.”

She attempted a light tone. “What will ladies do, when this kind of exaggerated flirtation is no longer the fashion? We shall be spoiled.”

“You know it’s not mere flirtation,” Ronan said. “You’ve always known.”

And Kestrel had, it was true that she had, even if she hadn’t wanted to shake the knowledge out of her mind and look at it, truly see it. She felt a dull spark of dread.

“Marry me, Kestrel.”

She held her breath.

“I know things have been hard lately,” Ronan continued, “and that you don’t deserve it. You’ve had to be so strong, so proud, so cunning. But all of this unpleasantness will go away the instant we announce our engagement. You can be yourself again.”

But she was strong. Proud. Cunning. Who did he think she was, if not the person who mercilessly beat him at every Bite and Sting game, who gave him Irex’s death-price and told him exactly what to do with it? Yet Kestrel bit back her words. She leaned into the curve of his arm. It was easy to dance with him. It would be easy to say yes.

“Your father will be happy. My wedding gift to you will be the finest piano the capital can offer.”

Kestrel glanced into his eyes.

“Or keep yours,” he said hastily. “I know you’re attached to it.”

“It’s just … you are very kind.”

He gave a short, nervous laugh. “Kindness has little to do with it.”

The dance slowed. It would end soon.

“So?” Ronan had stopped, even though the music continued and dancers swirled around them. “What … well, what do you think?”

Kestrel didn’t know what to think. Ronan was offering everything she could want. Why, then, did his words sadden her? Why did she feel like something had been lost? Carefully, she said, “The reasons you’ve given aren’t reasons to marry.”

“I love you. Is that reason enough?”

Maybe. Maybe it would have been. But as the music drained from the air, Kestrel saw Arin on the fringes of the crowd. He watched her, his expression oddly desperate. As if he, too, were losing something, or it was already lost.

She saw him and didn’t understand how she had ever missed his beauty. How it didn’t always strike her as it did now, like a blow.

“No,” Kestrel whispered.

“What?” Ronan’s voice cut into the quiet.

“I’m sorry.”

Ronan swiveled to find the target of Kestrel’s gaze. He swore.

Kestrel walked away, pushing past slaves bearing trays laden with glasses of pale gold wine. The lights and people blurred in her stinging eyes. She walked through the doors, down a hall, out of the palace, and into the cold night, knowing without seeing or hearing or touching him that Arin was at her side.

Kestrel didn’t see why carriage seats had to face each other. Why couldn’t they have been designed for moments like these, when all she wanted to do was hide? She took one look at Arin. She had given no order for the carriage lamps to be lit, but the moonlight was strong. Arin was silvered by it. He was staring out the window at the governor’s palace dwindling as the carriage trundled toward home. Then he tore his gaze from the window with a sharp turn of the head and sagged against his seat, face filled with something that looked like shocked relief.

Kestrel felt a flicker of instinctive curiosity. Then she reminded herself bitterly that this was what curiosity had bought her: fifty keystones for a singer who refused to sing, a friend who wasn’t her friend, someone who was hers and yet would never be hers. Kestrel looked away from Arin. She swore to herself that she would never look back.

Softly, he said, “Why are you crying?”

His words made the tears flow faster.

“Kestrel.”

She drew a shaky breath. “Because when my father comes home, I will tell him that he has won. I will join the military.”

There was a silence. “I don’t understand.”

Kestrel shrugged. She shouldn’t care whether he understood or not.

“You would give up your music?”

Yes. She would.

“But your bargain with the general was for spring.” Arin still sounded confused. “You have until spring to marry or enlist. Ronan … Ronan would ask the god of souls for you. He would ask you to marry him.”

“He has.”

Arin didn’t speak.

“But I can’t,” she said.

“Kestrel.”

“I can’t.”

“Kestrel, please don’t cry.” Tentative fingers touched her face. A thumb ran along the wet skin of her cheekbone. She suffered for it, suffered for the misery of knowing that whatever possessed him to do this could be no more than compassion. He valued her that much. But not enough.

“Why can’t you marry him?” he whispered.

She broke her word to herself and looked at him. “Because of you.”

Arin’s hand flinched against her cheek. His dark head bowed, became lost in its own shadow. Then he slipped from his seat and knelt before hers. His hands fell to the fists on her lap and gently opened them. He held them as if cupping water. He took a breath to speak.

She would have stopped him. She would have wished herself deaf, blind, made of unfeeling smoke. She would have stopped his words out of terror, longing. The way terror and longing had become indistinguishable.

Yet his hands held hers, and she could do nothing.

He said, “I want the same thing you want.”

Kestrel pulled back. It wasn’t possible his words could mean what they seemed.

“It hasn’t been easy for me to want it.” Arin lifted his face so that she could see his expression. A rich emotion played across his features, offered itself, and asked to be called by its name.

Hope.

“But you’ve already given your heart,” she said.

His brow furrowed, then smoothed. “Oh. No, not the way you think.” He laughed a little, the sound soft yet somehow wild. “Ask me why I went to the market.”

This was cruel. “We both know why.”

He shook his head. “Pretend that you’ve won a game of Bite and Sting. Why did I go? Ask me. It wasn’t to see a girl who doesn’t exist.”

“She … doesn’t?”

“I lied.”

Kestrel blinked. “Then why did you go to the market?”

“Because I wanted to feel free.” Arin raised a hand to brush the air by his temple, then awkwardly let it fall.

Kestrel suddenly understood this gesture she’d seen many times. It was an old habit. He was brushing away a ghost, hair that was no longer there because she had ordered it cut.

She leaned forward, and kissed his temple.

Arin’s hand held her lightly to him. His cheek slid against hers. Then his lips touched her brow, her closed eyes, the line where her jaw met her throat.

Kestrel’s mouth found his. His lips were salted with her tears, and the taste of that, of him, of their deepening kiss, filled her with the feeling of his quiet laugh moments ago. Of a wild softness, a soft wildness. In his hands, running up her thin dress. In his heat, burning through to her skin … and into her, sinking into him.

He broke away, barely. “I haven’t told you everything,” he said. The carriage jostled, swaying the weight of his body against hers, then away again.

Kestrel smiled. “Do you have more imaginary friends?”

“I—”

A distant explosion rumbled through the night. One of the horses screamed. The carriage shook, knocking Kestrel’s head against the window frame. She heard the driver’s shout, the crack of a whip. The carriage ground to a halt. The hilt of Kestrel’s dagger jabbed her side.

“Kestrel? Are you all right?”

Dazed, she touched the side of her head. Her fingers came away wet.

There was a second explosion. The carriage jerked again as the horses shied, but Arin’s hand held Kestrel steady. She looked out the window, toward the city, and saw a faint glow in the sky. “What was that?”

Arin was silent. Then: “Black powder. The first explosion was at the city guards’ barracks. The second was at the armory.”

That might have been a guess, but it didn’t sound like one. Half of Kestrel’s mind knew exactly what it meant if Arin knew this, but the other half slammed a door on this knowledge, letting her understand only what it meant if he was correct.

The city was under attack.

Sleeping city guards had been killed.

Enemies were ransacking weapons from the armory.

Kestrel scrambled out the carriage door.

Arin was right behind her. “Kestrel, you should get back in the carriage.”

She ignored him.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

Kestrel looked at the Herrani driver hauling on the reins and swearing at the shifting horses. She saw the growing light over the city’s center, a sure sign of fire. She stared up the road. They were only minutes away from her estate.

Kestrel took a step toward home.

“No.” Arin seized her arm. “We need to go back together.”

The horses quieted. The uneven rhythm of their snorts and stamped hooves floated into the night as Kestrel thought about Arin’s word: need.

The door she had slammed shut in her mind sailed open.

Why had Arin told her not to drink the wine?

What had been wrong with the wine?

She thought of Jess and Ronan, and all the dancers at the ball.

“Kestrel.” Arin’s voice was low but insistent, the beginning of an explanation she did not want to hear.

“Let me go.”

His hand fell, and Kestrel saw that he saw that she knew. She knew that, whatever was happening tonight, it was no surprise to him. That whatever awaited her at home was as dangerous as black powder or poisoned wine.

Both Arin and Kestrel were aware that her options here—on this road, isolated, at night—were few.

“What is going on?” The Herrani driver climbed down from his seat. He came close, then stared out over the dark crest of a hill at the city’s faint glow. He met Arin’s eyes. “The god of vengeance has come,” he breathed.

Kestrel drew her dagger and pressed it to the driver’s throat. “Curse your gods,” she said. “Unhitch a horse.”

“Don’t,” Arin told the driver, who swallowed nervously against Kestrel’s blade. “She won’t kill you.”

“I’m Valorian. I will.”

“Kestrel, there will be … changes, after tonight. But give me a chance to explain.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then think about this.” In the moonlight, Arin’s jaw hardened into a black line. “What would your next move be, after killing your driver? Will you attack me? Would you succeed?”

“I’ll kill myself.”

Arin took a step back. “You wouldn’t.” Yet there was fear in his eyes.

“An honor suicide? All Valorian children are taught how, when we come of age. My father showed me where to stab.”

“No. You wouldn’t. You play a game to its end.”

“The Herrani were enslaved because they were too poor at killing and too cowardly to die. I told you I didn’t want to kill, not that I wouldn’t. And I never said I was afraid of death.”

Arin looked at the driver. “Unhitch both horses.”

Kestrel held the knife steady as the driver stripped the first horse of its gear.

When she mounted its bare back, Arin lunged for her. She had expected this, and had the advantage of height and a wooden-heeled shoe. She kicked his brow, saw him reel. Then she dug one hand into the horse’s mane and forced it to gallop.

Kestrel could see well enough by the moon to avoid deep ruts in the road. She concentrated on that, not on the betrayal seared into her skin. Branded on her mouth. The shoes fell from her feet and braids whipped her back.

It wasn’t long before she heard the beating of hooves behind her.

The gate to the estate was open and the path strewn with the bodies of the general’s guard. Kestrel saw Rax, his dead eyes staring. A short sword was buried in his gut.

Her horse was hurtling across the grounds to the house when the quarrel of a crossbow whined through the air and punched into the beast’s side.

The horse screamed. Kestrel was thrown to the ground. She lay there, stunned. Then the fingers of her right hand realized what they no longer held and began scrabbling for the knife.

Her hand closed around its hilt just as a boot materialized in her line of sight. The heel drove into the winter dirt, the sole hovering over her knuckles.

“It’s the lady of the house,” said the auctioneer. Kestrel stared up at him, at the crossbow he held so easily, at the way he appraised her, moving from bare feet to torn dress to bleeding forehead. “The piano player.” His boot lowered and rocked a slight pressure over the bones of her fingers. “Drop the knife or I’ll crush your hand.”

Kestrel dropped it.

He grabbed the back of her neck and hauled her up. Her breath came quickly, in short bursts of fear. He smiled, and she saw him again as he had been in the pit, pitching the sale of Arin. This slave has been trained as a blacksmith, the auctioneer had said. He would be perfect for any soldier, especially for an officer with a guard of his own and weapons to maintain.

No Valorian in the city had a guard of his own save General Trajan.

Kestrel saw again how the auctioneer had met her eyes that day. His delight when she had bid, his expression when others had joined. He hadn’t been excited to see the price drive higher, Kestrel realized. He had been anxious.

As if the sale of Arin had been meant for her, her alone.

The ground trembled with approaching hooves.

The auctioneer’s smile grew wider as Arin dragged his horse to a halt. The auctioneer motioned toward the shadows of trees. Armed Herrani appeared. They trained their weapons on Kestrel.

The auctioneer walked toward Arin, who dismounted. He placed one palm against Arin’s cheek. Arin did the same to him. They stood, creating an image Kestrel had seen only in dust-covered Herrani art. It was a gesture of friendship as deep as family.

Arin’s eyes met hers.

“You are the god of lies,” she hissed.