The Winner's Curse

30

Kestrel was taken down the reception hall of Irex’s home—no, Arin’s. Valorian weapons winked at her from their mounts on the walls, asking why she didn’t knock her nearest guard off balance and seize the hilt of a blade. Even with hands bound, she could do damage.

Arin had been the first into the house. He strode ahead of her, back turned. He moved so eagerly that his emotion was obvious. He would be easy to surprise. A dagger between the shoulder blades.

Yet Kestrel made no move.

She had a plan, she told herself, one that didn’t include her death, which was the logical course of events should she kill Arin.

The Herrani pushed her down the hall.

A dark-haired young woman was waiting in the atrium by the fountain. When she saw Arin, her face filled with light and tears. He almost ran across the short space between them to gather her in his arms.

“Sister or lover?” Kestrel said.

The woman looked up from their embrace. Her expression hardened. She stepped away from Arin. “What?”

“Are you his sister or lover?”

She walked up to Kestrel and slapped her across the face.

“Sarsine!” Arin hauled her back.

“His sister is dead,” Sarsine said, “and I hope you suffer as much as she did.”

Kestrel’s fingers went to her cheek to press against the sting—and cover a smile with the heels of her tied hands. She remembered the bruises on Arin when she had bought him. His surly defiance. She had always wondered why slaves brought punishment upon themselves. But it had been sweet to feel a tipping of power, however slight, when that hand had cracked across her face. To know, despite the pain, that for a moment Kestrel had been the one in control.

“Sarsine is my cousin,” Arin said. “I haven’t seen her in years. After the war, she was sold as a house slave. I was a laborer, so—”

“I don’t care,” Kestrel said.

His shadowed eyes met hers. They were the color of the winter sea—the water far below Kestrel’s feet when she had looked down and imagined what it would be like to drown.

He broke the gaze between them. To his cousin he said, “I need you to be her keeper. Escort her to the east wing, let her have the run of the suite—”

“Arin! Have you lost your mind?”

“Remove anything that could be a weapon. Keep the outermost door locked at all times. See that she wants for nothing, but remember that she is a prisoner.”

“In the east wing.” Sarsine’s voice was thick with disgust.

“She’s the general’s daughter.”

“Oh, I know.”

“A political prisoner,” Arin said. “We must be better than the Valorians. We are more than savages.”

“Do you truly think that keeping your clipped bird in a luxurious cage will change how the Valorians see us?”

“It will change how we see ourselves.”

“No, Arin. It will change how everyone sees you.”

He shook his head. “She’s mine to do with as I see fit.”

There was an uneasy rustle among the Herrani. Kestrel’s heart sickened. She kept trying to forget this: the question of what it meant to belong to Arin. He reached for her, pulling her firmly toward him as her boots dragged and squeaked against the tiles. With the flick of a knife, he cut the bonds at her wrists, and the sound of leather hitting the floor was loud in the atrium’s acoustics—almost as loud as Sarsine’s choked protest.

Arin let Kestrel go. “Please, Sarsine. Take her.”

His cousin stared at him. Eventually, she nodded, but her expression made clear that she thought he was indulging in something disastrous. “Follow me,” she told Kestrel, and led the way from the atrium.

They had not gone far before Kestrel realized that Arin must have returned to the reception hall. She heard the sound of weapons ripped off walls and flung to the floor.

The harsh noise echoed throughout the house.

Rooms radiated from the suite’s center: the bedroom, an utterly quiet space lit with gray as the coming dawn filtered through the windows. The suite was elegant the way a pearl is: smooth and pure. Its colors were muted, though Kestrel knew, from what Arin had once said long ago, that they had meaning. Despite its ornate Valorian furniture, this had been the suite of an aristocratic Herrani woman.

Sarsine said nothing, only lifted the apron of her house uniform so that it made a cradle. She began filling it with mirrors, a candle snuffer, a heavy marble inkpot … objects bulged the cloth and threatened to rip through.

“Fetch a basket,” Kestrel said, “or a trunk.”

Sarsine glared, because they both knew she would have to do just that. There were too many things in the suite that could become weapons in the right hands. Kestrel hated to see them leave, but was glad that when they did, at least it would feel as if she had given an order and Sarsine had obeyed.

But Sarsine went to the outermost door and called for assistance. Soon, Herrani were trooping in and out of the rooms, carrying fireplace pokers. A copper pitcher. A clock with pointed hour and minute hands.

Kestrel watched it all go. Apparently, Sarsine could see almost as many threats in everyday objects as Kestrel did. No matter. Kestrel could always unscrew a leg from one of the tables.

But she would need more than a weapon to escape. The suite was too high to jump from a window to the ground. Only one room, and one door, led to the rest of the house—and it seemed to have a very solid-looking lock.

When the Herrani had filed out, leaving Sarsine alone with her, Kestrel said, “Wait.”

Sarsine didn’t lower the thick key in her hand.

“I’m supposed to see my friend,” Kestrel said.

“Your days of social calls are over.”

“Arin promised.” A lump rose in Kestrel’s throat. “My friend is ill. Arin said that I could see her.”

“He didn’t mention that to me.”

Sarsine pulled the outermost door shut behind her, and Kestrel didn’t beg. She didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt to hear the key grate in the lock, and to hear the bolt thud home.

“Just what do you think you’re doing, Arin?”

He looked up at Sarsine, blearily rubbing his eyes. He had fallen asleep in a chair. It was full morning. “I couldn’t sleep in my old rooms. At least here, in Etta’s suite—”

“I’m not talking about your choice of bedchamber, though I can’t help but notice how conveniently close it is to the east wing.”

Arin winced. There was usually only one reason why a man kept a conquered woman prisoner after a battle. “This isn’t what it seems.”

“Oh, no? Too many people heard you call her a spoil of war.”

“It’s not true.”

Sarsine threw her hands up in the air. “Then why did you say it?”

“Because I couldn’t think of any other way to save her!”

Sarsine stood still. Then she leaned over him and shook his shoulder as if waking him from a nightmare. “You? Save a Valorian?”

Arin captured her hand. “Please listen to me.”

“I will when you say something I can understand.”

“I did your lessons for you, when we were children.”

“So?”

“I told Anireh to shut up when she made fun of your nose. Do you remember? She pushed me down.”

“Your sister was too beautiful for her own good. But all this was long ago. What’s your point?”

Arin held both her hands now. “We share something, and probably not for very long. The Valorians will come. There will be a siege.” He groped for what to say. “By the gods, just listen.”

“Oh, Arin. Haven’t you learned? The gods won’t hear you.” She sighed. “But I will.”

He told her about the day he had been sold to Kestrel, and every day since. He held nothing back.

When he finished, Sarsine’s expression had changed. “You’re still a fool,” she said, but gently.

“I am,” he whispered.

“What do you plan to do with her?”

Arin tilted his head helplessly against the carved back of his father’s chair. “I don’t know.”

“She demanded to see a sick friend. Said you made her a promise.”

“Yes, but I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Kestrel hates me, but she still speaks to me. Once she sees Jess … she’ll never do that again.”

Kestrel sat in the sunroom. It was warm, filled with potted plants and their mineral, almost milky fragrance. The sun was already high above the skylight. It had burned through the ripples of rain left on the glass from the night’s storm, which had drummed out the fire in the city. From the southernmost window, Kestrel had watched the flames fade.

It had been a long night, a long morning. But Kestrel didn’t want to sleep.

Her eyes fell on a plant. The Herrani word for it was damselthorn. It was large and thick-stemmed, at least as old as the war. It had leaves that looked like flowers, because their green became a brilliant red in the sun.

Despite herself, Kestrel thought of Arin’s kiss. How it had flared a light inside her, and transformed her from plain leaf into fire.

Kestrel opened the sunroom door and stepped into a high-walled rooftop garden. She breathed the chilled air. Everything was dead here. Fans of brown leaves. Stems that would snap as soon as touched. Stones lay strewn in artful patterns on the ground, in gray, blue, and white, the shape of birds’ eggs.

She passed her hands over the cold walls. There were no rough edges, nothing that might give her fingers or toes purchase. She couldn’t climb. There was a door set into the far wall, but where it led Kestrel would probably never know. It was locked.

Kestrel stood, considering. She bit her lips hard. Then she walked back into the sunroom and brought out the damselthorn.

She smashed the pot on the stones.

The day aged. Kestrel watched the light outside yellow. Sarsine came and saw the wreckage of plants in the garden. She gathered the ceramic shards, then had a group of Herrani search the suite for more.

Kestrel had made certain to hide some wicked-looking shards in places where they would be found. But the best—one that could cut a throat as easily as a knife—she had hung outside from the window. She had tied it with a strip of cloth, dangled it into the thick evergreen ivy that climbed the walls outside the bathing room, and closed the window on the strip’s edge, securing it between the frame and the sill.

It wasn’t discovered, and Kestrel was left alone again.

Her eyes itched and her bones turned to lead, yet she refused to sleep.

Finally she did something she had been dreading. She tried to unbraid her hair. She yanked at the plaits, swore as they snarled into knots. The pain kept her awake.

So did the shame. She remembered Arin’s hands sinking into her hair, the brush of a fingertip against the hollow behind her ear.

Sarsine returned.

“Bring me scissors,” Kestrel said.

“You know I won’t do that.”

“Because you’re afraid I’ll kill you with them?”

The woman didn’t answer. Kestrel glanced at her, surprised at the silence and the way Sarsine’s face had become thoughtful, curious.

“Cut it off then,” Kestrel said. She would have done it herself with the makeshift dagger hiding in the ivy if it wouldn’t have raised questions.

“You might regret cutting your hair, a society lady like you.”

Kestrel felt another wave of tiredness. “Please,” she said. “I can’t bear it.”

Arin’s sleep was fitful, and when he woke he was disoriented to be in his father’s rooms. But happy, in spite of everything, to be there. Maybe it was the happiness, and not the place, that was disorienting. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Old and somewhat stiff, as if its joints ached when it moved.

He passed a hand across his face and got to his feet. He had to leave. Cheat wouldn’t begrudge Arin his homecoming, but plans had to be made.

He was walking down the stairs of the west wing when he saw Sarsine on the floor below. She was coming from the east wing, a basket in her arms. He stopped.

It looked like she held a basketful of woven gold.

Arin leaped down the stairs. He strode up to his cousin and seized her arm.

“Arin!”

“What did you do?”

Sarsine jerked away. “What she wanted. Pull yourself together.”

But Arin saw Kestrel as she had been last night before the ball. How her hair had been a spill of low light over his palms. He had threaded desire into the braids, had wanted her to sense it even as he dreaded that she would. He had met her eyes in the mirror and didn’t know, couldn’t tell, her feelings. He only knew the fire of his own.

“It’s just hair,” Sarsine said. “It will grow back.”

“Yes,” said Arin, “but not everything does.”

Afternoon tipped toward evening. It was almost one full day since the Firstwinter ball, and more since Kestrel had slept. She stayed awake, staring at the outermost door to her rooms.

Arin opened it. Then he stepped back, inhaling as if she had frightened him. His hand tightened on the doorjamb, and he stared. Yet he said nothing of the fact that she still wore her black dueling uniform. He didn’t mention the jagged ends of hair brushing her shoulders.

“You need to come with me,” he said.

“To see Jess?”

His mouth thinned. “No.”

“You said you would take me. Apparently there is no such thing as Herrani honor.”

“I will as soon as I can. Right now, I can’t.”

“When?”

“Kestrel, Cheat is here. He wants to see you.”

Her hands curled shut.

Arin said, “I can’t say no.”

“Because you’re a coward.”

“Because if I do, things will go worse for you.”

Kestrel lifted her chin. “I will come,” she said, “if you never again pretend that anything you do is on my behalf.”

Arin didn’t comment on the obvious: that she had no choice in the matter. He simply nodded. “Be careful,” he said.

Cheat wore a Valorian jacket Kestrel was sure she had seen on the governor the night before. He sat at the right hand of the empty head of the dining table, but stood when Kestrel and Arin entered. He approached.

His eyes dragged over her. “Arin, your slave looks positively wild.”

Lack of sleep made her thoughts broken and shiny, like pieces of mirrors on strings. Cheat’s words spun in her head. Arin tensed beside her.

“No offense,” Cheat told him. “It was a compliment to your taste.”

“What do you want, Cheat?” Arin said.

The man stroked a thumb over his lower lip. “Wine.” He looked straight at Kestrel. “Get some.”

The order itself wasn’t important. It was how Cheat had meant it: as the first of many, and how, in the end, they translated into one word: obey.

The only thing that kept Kestrel’s face clean of her thoughts was the knowledge that Cheat would take pleasure in any resistance. Yet she couldn’t make herself move.

“I’ll get the wine,” Arin said.

“No,” Kestrel said. She didn’t want to be left alone with Cheat. “I’ll go.”

For an uncertain moment, Arin stood awkwardly. Then he walked to the door and motioned a Herrani girl into the room. “Please escort Kestrel to the wine cellar, then bring her back here.”

“Choose a good vintage,” Cheat said to Kestrel. “You’ll know the best.”

As she left the room, his eyes followed her, glittering.

She returned with a clearly labeled bottle of Valorian wine dated to the year of the Herran War. She placed it on the table in front of the two seated men. Arin’s jaw set, and he shook his head slightly. Cheat lost his grin.

“This was the best,” Kestrel said.

“Pour.” Cheat shoved his glass toward her. She uncorked the bottle and poured—and kept pouring, even as the red wine flowed over the glass’s rim, across the table, and onto Cheat’s lap.

He jumped to his feet, swatting wine from his fine stolen clothes. “Damn you!”

“You said I should pour. You didn’t say I should stop.”

Kestrel wasn’t sure what would have happened next if Arin hadn’t intervened. “Cheat,” he said, “I’m going to have to ask you to stop playing games with what is mine.”

It was almost alarming how quickly Cheat’s rage vanished. Revealing a simple tunic beneath, he stripped off the spattered jacket and used it to mop up wine. “Plenty more clothes where this came from.” He tossed the jacket aside. “Especially with so many dead. Why don’t we get down to business?”

“I would be grateful if you did,” said Arin.

“Listen to him,” Cheat said to Kestrel in a friendly tone. “So quick to slip back into his high-class ways. Arin was never a commoner, even when breaking rock. Not like me.” When Kestrel was silent, Cheat said, “I have a small task for you, my girl. I want you to write a letter to your father.”

“I assume that I’m to tell him that all is well, so that you can keep the secret of your revolution as long as possible.”

“You should be glad. Such letters of misinformation are keeping Valorians like you alive. If you want to live, you must be good for something. Though I get the sense that you’re not interested in being good. Remember, you don’t need all of your fingers to write a letter. Probably three on one hand will do.”

Arin’s breath was a hiss.

“And stain the pages with my blood?” Kestrel said coolly. “I doubt that will convince the general that I’m in good health.” When Cheat started to reply, Kestrel cut him off. “Yes, I’m sure you have a long list of inventive threats you’d enjoy making. Don’t bother. I’ll write the letter.”

“No,” said Arin. “You’ll transcribe it. I’ll dictate. Otherwise, you’ll find a way to warn him through code.”

Kestrel’s heart sank. That had, in fact, been her plan.

Paper and ink were set before her.

Arin said, “Dear Father.”

Her pen wavered. She held her breath against a sudden pain in her throat. But it was for the best if the inked letters sloped and wobbled, she decided. Her father might see the distress in her handwriting.

“The ball went better than expected,” Arin continued. “Ronan has asked me to marry him, and I have accepted.” He paused. “This news must disappoint you, but you will have to bring glory to the empire’s army for both of us. I know you will. I also know that you cannot be surprised. I made clear to you my wishes regarding a military life. And Ronan’s affection has been clear for some time.”

Kestrel lifted her pen, wondering when Arin had become aware of something she had refused to see for so long. Where was Ronan now? Did he despise her as much as she did herself?

“Be happy for me,” Arin said. It took her a moment to realize that these words were meant for the page. “Now sign.”

It was exactly the kind of letter Kestrel would have written in normal circumstances. She felt how deeply she had failed her father. Arin understood her heart, her thoughts, the very way she would speak to someone she loved. And she didn’t know him at all.

Arin took the letter and studied it. “Again. Neatly this time.”

She wrote several copies before he was satisfied. The final letter was in a firm hand.

“Good,” Cheat said. “One last thing.”

Kestrel rubbed tiredly at the ink on her skin. She could have slept then. She wanted to. Sleep was blind, it was deaf, and it would take her away from this room and these men.

Cheat said, “Tell us how long we have before the reinforcements come.”

“No.”

“Now might be the time when I start making my inventive threats.”

“Kestrel will tell us,” Arin said. “She’ll see the wisdom of it.”

Cheat raised his brows.

“She’ll tell us once she sees what we can do to her people.” Arin’s expression was trying to tell her something his words didn’t. Kestrel focused, and realized she had seen this look in his eyes before. It was the careful gleam of Arin striking a bargain. “I’m going to take her to the governor’s palace, where she’ll see the dead and the dying. She will see her friends.”

Jess.