The Winner's Curse

8

Arin was satisfied. He was given more orders for weapons and repair, and took the absence of complaints from the guard to mean his work was valued. Though the steward frequently demanded more horseshoes than could possibly be necessary, even for stables so large as the general’s, Arin didn’t mind that rote and easy labor. It was mind numbing. He imagined his head was filled with snow.

As his newness to the general’s slaves wore away, they spoke more with him during meals, grew less cautious with their words. He became such a common feature in the stables that he was soon ignored by the soldiers. He overheard accounts of training sessions outside the city walls. He listened, knuckles whitened as they gripped a horse’s bridle, to awed tales of ten years ago, of how the general, then a lieutenant, had razed a path of destruction from this peninsula’s mountains to its port city and brought an end to the Herran war.

Arin unclenched his fingers, one by one, and went about his business.

Once, at dinner, Lirah sat next to him. She was shy, sending sidelong looks of curiosity his way well before she asked, “What were you, before the war?”

He lifted a brow. “What were you?”

Lirah’s face clouded. “I don’t remember.”

Arin lied, too. “Neither do I.”

He broke no rules.

Other slaves might have been tempted, during the walk through the orange grove that stood between the forge and the slaves’ quarters, to pluck a fruit from the tree. To peel it hurriedly, bury the bright rind in the soil, and eat. Sometimes as Arin ate his meals of bread and stew he thought about it. When he walked under the trees, it was almost unbearable. The scent of citrus made his throat dry. But he didn’t touch the fruit. He looked away and kept walking.

Arin wasn’t sure which god he had offended. The god of laughter, maybe. One with an idle, cruel spirit who looked at Arin’s unprecedented streak of good behavior, smiled, and said it couldn’t last forever.

It was almost dusk and Arin was returning from the stables to the slaves’ quarters when he heard it.

Music. He went still. His first thought was that the dreams he had almost every night were spooling out of his head. Then, as notes continued to pierce through wavering trees and dart over the whir of cicadas, he realized that this was real.

It was coming from the villa. Arin’s feet moved after the music before his mind could tell them to stop, and by the time his mind understood what was happening, it was enchanted, too.

The notes were quick, limpid. They struggled with each other in gorgeous ways, like crosscurrents at sea. Then they stopped.

Arin looked up. He had reached a clearing in the trees. The sky grayed into purple.

Curfew was coming.

He had almost regained his senses, had almost turned back, when a few low notes stole into the air. The music now came in slow strokes, in a different key. A nocturne. Arin moved toward the garden. Past it, ground-floor glass doors burned with light.

Curfew had come and gone, and he didn’t care.

He saw who was playing. The lines of her face were illuminated. She frowned slightly, leaned into a surging passage, and dappled a few high notes over the troubled sound.

Night had truly fallen. Arin wondered if she would lift her eyes, but wasn’t worried he would be seen in the garden’s shadows.

He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.