The Winner's Curse

by Marie Rutkoski

  “Twenty-five!” shouted a woman from behind.

  The price was now more than Kestrel had in her purse. The auctioneer looked like he barely knew what to do with himself. The bidding spiraled higher, each voice spurring the next until it seemed that a roped arrow was shooting through the members of the crowd, binding them together, drawing them tight with excitement.

  Kestrel’s voice came out flat: “Fifty keystones.”

  The sudden, stunned quiet hurt her ears. Jess gasped.

  “Sold!” cried the auctioneer. His face was wild with joy. “To Lady Kestrel, for fifty keystones!” He tugged the slave off the block, and it was only then that the youth’s gaze broke away from Kestrel’s. He looked at the sand, so intently that he could have been reading his future there, until the auctioneer prodded him toward the pen.

  Kestrel drew in a shaky breath. Her bones felt watery. What had she done?

  Jess slipped a supporting hand under her elbow. “You are sick.”

  “And rather light of purse, I’d say.” The pointy-chinned woman snickered. “Looks like someone’s suffering the Winner’s Curse.”

  Kestrel turned to her. “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t come to auctions often, do you? The Winner’s Curse is when you come out on top of the bid, but only by paying a steep price.”

  The crowd was thinning. Already the auctioneer was bringing out someone else, but the rope of excitement that had bound the Valorians to the pit had disintegrated. The show was over. The path was now clear for Kestrel to leave, yet she couldn’t move.

  “I don’t understand,” said Jess.

  Neither did Kestrel. What had she been thinking? What had she been trying to prove?

  Nothing, she told herself. Her back to the pit, she made her foot take the first step away from what she had done.

  Nothing at all.

  2

  The waiting room of the holding pen was open to the air and faced the street. It smelled of unwashed flesh. Jess stayed close, eyeing the iron door set into the far wall. Kestrel tried not to do the same. It was her first time here. House slaves were usually purchased by her father or the family steward, who supervised them.

  The auctioneer was waiting near soft chairs arranged for Valorian customers. “Ah.” He beamed when he saw Kestrel. “The winner! I hoped to be here before you arrived. I left the pit as soon as I could.”

  “Do you always greet your customers personally?” She was surprised at his eagerness.

  “Yes, the good ones.”

  Kestrel wondered how much could be heard through the tiny barred window of the iron door.

  “Otherwise,” the auctioneer continued, “I leave the final transaction in the hands of my assistant. She’s in the pit now, trying to unload twins.” He rolled his eyes at the difficulty of keeping family together. “Well”—he shrugged—“someone might want a matched set.”

  Two Valorians entered the waiting room, a husband and wife. The auctioneer smiled, asked if they would mind taking a seat, and said he would be with them shortly. Jess whispered in Kestrel’s ear, saying that the couple settling into the low chairs in a far corner were friends of her parents. Did Kestrel mind if she went to greet them?

  “No,” said Kestrel, “I don’t.” She couldn’t blame Jess for feeling uncomfortable with the gritty details of purchasing people, even if the fact of it shaped every hour of her life, from the moment a slave drew her morning bath to when another unbraided her hair for bed.

  After Jess had joined the husband and wife, Kestrel looked meaningfully at the auctioneer. He nodded. He pulled a thick key from his pocket, went to unlock the door, and stepped inside. “You,” Kestrel heard him say in Herrani. “Time to leave.”

  There was a rustle and the auctioneer returned. The slave walked behind.

  He lifted his gaze to meet Kestrel’s. His eyes were a clear, cool gray.

  They startled her. Yet she should have expected to see this color in a Herrani, and Kestrel thought it must be the livid bruise on his cheek that made the expression in his eyes so uncanny. Still, she grew uncomfortable under his gaze. Then his lashes fell. He looked at the ground, letting long hair obscure his face. One side was still swollen from the fight, or beating.

  He seemed perfectly indifferent to anything around him. Kestrel didn’t exist, or the auctioneer, or even himself.

  The auctioneer locked the iron door. “Now.” He clasped his hands together in a single clap. “The small matter of payment.”

  She handed the auctioneer her purse. “I have twenty-four keystones.”

  The auctioneer paused, uncertain. “Twenty-four is not fifty, my lady.”

  “I will send my steward with the rest later today.”

  “Ah, but what if he loses his way?”

  “I am General Trajan’s daughter.”

  He smiled. “I know.”

  “The full amount is no difficulty for us,” Kestrel continued. “I simply chose not to carry fifty keystones with me today. My word is good.”

  “I’m sure.” He didn’t mention that Kestrel could return at another time to collect her purchase and pay in full, and Kestrel said nothing of the rage she had seen in his face when the slave defied him, or of her suspicion that the auctioneer would take revenge. The likelihood of it rose with every moment the slave remained here.

  Kestrel watched the auctioneer think. He could insist she return later, risk offending her, and lose the entire sum. Or he could pocket not even half of fifty keystones now and perhaps never obtain the rest.

  But he was clever. “May I escort you home with your purchase? I would like to see Smith settled in safely. Your steward can take care of the cost then.”

  She glanced at the slave. He had blinked at his name, but didn’t lift his face. “Fine,” she told the auctioneer.

  She crossed the waiting room to Jess and asked the husband and wife if they would escort the girl home.

  “Of course,” said the husband—Senator Nicon, Kestrel remembered. “But what of you?”

  She nodded at the two men over her shoulder. “They will come with me.”

  Jess knew a Herrani auctioneer and a rebellious slave were not the ideal escort. Kestrel knew it, too, but a flash of resentment at her situation—at the situation she had created—made her sick with all the rules that governed her world.

  Jess said, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  The couple raised eyebrows, yet clearly decided that the situation was none of their business except as a piece of gossip to spread.

  Kestrel left the slave market, the auctioneer and Smith trailing behind her.

  She walked quickly through the neighborhoods that separated this dingy part of town from the Garden District. The cross-hatching of streets was ordered, right-angled, Valorian-designed. She knew the way, yet had the odd sense of being lost. Today, everything seemed foreign. When she passed through the Warriors’ Quarter, whose dense barracks she had run through as a child, she imagined soldiers rising against her.

  Though of course any of these armed men and women would die to protect her, and expected her to become one of their own. Kestrel had only to obey her father’s wishes and enlist.

  When the streets began to change, to twist in irrational directions and bend like water, Kestrel was relieved. Trees leafed into a green canopy overhead. She could hear fountains behind high stone walls.

  She came to a massive iron door. One of her father’s guards peered through its window and swung the door open.

  Kestrel said nothing to him or the other guards, and they said nothing to her. She led the way across the grounds. The auctioneer and slave followed.

  She was home. But the footfalls behind her on the flagstone path reminded Kestrel that this had not always been her home. This estate, and the entire Garden District, had been made by the Herrani, who had called it by another name when it had been theirs.

  She stepped onto the lawn. So did the men, their footsteps now hushed by grass.
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  A yellow bird trilled and swooped through the trees. Kestrel listened until the song dwindled. She continued toward the villa.

  The sound of her sandals on the marble floor of the entryway echoed gently against walls painted with leaping creatures, flowers, and gods she didn’t know. Her footfalls blurred into the whisper of water bubbling up from a shallow pool set into the floor.

  “A beautiful home,” said the auctioneer.

  She glanced at him sharply, though she heard nothing bitter in his voice. She searched him for some sign that he recognized the house, that he had visited it—as an honored guest, friend, or even family member—before the Herran War. But that was a foolish notion. The villas in the Garden District had belonged to aristocratic Herrani, and if the auctioneer had been one of those, he wouldn’t have ended up in his line of work. He would have become a house slave, perhaps a tutor for Valorian children. If the auctioneer did know her house, it was because he had delivered slaves here for her father.

  She hesitated to look at Smith. When she did, he refused to look back.

  The housekeeper came toward her down the long hall that stretched beyond the fountain. Kestrel sent her away again with the order to fetch the steward and ask him to return with twenty-six keystones. When the steward arrived, his blond brows were drawn together and the hands holding a small coffer were tight. Harman’s hands became tighter still when he noticed the auctioneer and slave.

  Kestrel opened the coffer and counted money into the auctioneer’s outstretched hand. He pocketed the silver, then emptied her purse, which he had carried with him. With a slight bow, he returned the flat bag to her. “Such a pleasure to have your business.” He turned to go.

  She said, “There had better not be a fresh mark on him.”

  The auctioneer’s eyes flicked to the slave and traced his rags, his dirty, scarred arms. “You’re welcome to inspect, my lady,” the auctioneer drawled.

  Kestrel frowned, unsettled by the idea of inspecting any person, let alone this person. But before she could form a response, the auctioneer had left.

  “How much?” Harman demanded. “How much, total, did this cost?”

  She told him.

  He drew in a long breath. “Your father—”

  “I will tell my father.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do with him?”

  Kestrel looked at the slave. He hadn’t moved, but remained standing on the same black tile as if still on the auction block. He had ignored the entire conversation, tuning out the Valorian he probably didn’t fully understand. His eyes were raised, resting on a painted nightingale that graced a far wall. “This is Smith,” Kestrel told the steward.

  Harman’s anxiety eased somewhat. “A blacksmith?” Slaves were sometimes named by masters for their work. “We could use that. I’ll send him to the forge.”

  “Wait. I’m not sure that’s where I want him.” She spoke to Smith in Herrani: “Do you sing?”

  He looked at her then, and Kestrel saw the same expression she had seen earlier in the waiting room. His gray eyes were icy. “No.”

  Smith had answered in her language, and his accent was light.

  He turned away. Dark hair fell forward. It curtained his profile.

  Kestrel’s nails bit into her palms. “See to it that he has a bath,” she told Harman in a voice she hoped was brisk rather than frustrated. “Give him appropriate clothes.”

  She started to walk down the hallway, then stopped. The words flashed out of her mouth: “And cut his hair.”

  Kestrel felt the chill of Smith’s gaze on her back as she retreated. It was easy, now, to name that expression in his eyes.

  Contempt.

  3

  Kestrel didn’t know what to say.

  Her father, fresh from a bath after a hot day of training soldiers, watered his wine. The third course was served: small hens stuffed with spiced raisins and crushed almonds. It tasted dry to her.

  “Did you practice?” he asked.

  “No.”

  His large hands paused in their movements.

  “I will,” she said. “Later.” She drank from her cup, then ran a thumb over its surface. The glass was smoky green and finely blown. It had come with the house. “How are the new recruits?”

  “Wet behind the ears, but not a bad lot.” He shrugged. “We need them.”

  Kestrel nodded. The Valorians had always faced barbarian invasions on the fringes of their territories, and as the empire had grown in the past five years, attacks became more frequent. They didn’t threaten the Herran peninsula, but General Trajan often trained battalions that would be sent to the empire’s outer reaches.

  He prodded a glazed carrot with his fork. Kestrel looked at the silver utensil, its tines shining sharply in the candlelight. It was a Herrani invention, one that had been absorbed into her culture so long ago it was easy to forget Valorians had ever eaten with their fingers.

  “I thought you were going to the market this afternoon with Jess,” he said. “Why didn’t she join us for dinner?”

  “She didn’t accompany me home.”

  He set down his fork. “Then who did?”

  “Father, I spent fifty keystones today.”

  He waved a hand to indicate that the sum was irrelevant. His voice was deceptively calm: “If you walked through the city alone, again—”

  “I didn’t.” She told him who had come home with her, and why.

  The general rubbed his brow and squeezed his eyes shut. “That was your escort?”

  “I don’t need an escort.”

  “You certainly wouldn’t, if you enlisted.”

  And there they were, pressing the sore spot of an old argument. “I will never be a soldier,” she said.

  “You’ve made that clear.”

  “If a woman can fight and die for the empire, why can’t a woman walk alone?”

  “That’s the point. A woman soldier has proved her strength, and so doesn’t need protection.”

  “Neither do I.”

  The general flattened his hands against the table. When a girl came to clear away the plates, he barked at her to leave.

  “You honestly don’t believe that Jess could offer me any protection,” Kestrel said.

  “Women who are not soldiers don’t walk alone. It’s custom.”

  “Our customs are absurd. Valorians take pride in being able to survive on little food if we must, but an evening meal is an insult if it’s not at least seven courses. I can fight well enough, but if I’m not a soldier it’s as if years of training don’t exist.”

  Her father gave her a level look. “Your military strength has never been in combat.”

  Which was another way of saying that she was a poor fighter.

  More gently, he said, “You’re a strategist.”

  Kestrel shrugged.

  Her father said, “Who suggested I draw the Dacran barbarians into the mountains when they attacked the empire’s eastern border?”

  All she had done then was point out the obvious. The barbarians’ overreliance on cavalry had been clear. So, too, had been the fact that the dry eastern mountains would starve horses of water. If anyone was a strategist, it was her father. He was strategizing that very moment, using flattery to get what he wanted.

  “Imagine how the empire would benefit if you truly worked with me,” he said, “and used that talent to secure its territories, instead of pulling apart the logic of customs that order our society.”

  “Our customs are lies.” Kestrel’s fingers clenched the fragile stem of her glass.

  Her father’s gaze fell to her tight hand. He reached for it. Quietly, firmly, he said, “These are not my rules. They are the empire’s. Fight for it, and have your independence. Don’t, and accept your constraints. Either way, you live by our laws.” He raised one finger. “And you don’t complain.”

  Then she wouldn’t say anything at all, Kestrel decided. She snatched her hand away and stood. She remembered how the slave had used
his silence as a weapon. He had been haggled over, pushed, led, peered at. He would be cleaned, shorn, dressed. Yet he had refused to give up everything.

  Kestrel knew strength when she encountered it.

  So did her father. His light brown eyes narrowed at her.

  She left the dining hall. She stalked down the northern wing of the villa until she reached a set of double doors. She threw them open and felt her way through the dark interior for a small silver box and an oil lamp. Her fingers were familiar with this ritual. It was no trouble to light the lamp blind. She could play blind, too, but didn’t want to risk missing a note. Not tonight, not when today she had done little but fumble and err.

  She skirted the piano in the center of the room, skimming a palm across its flat, polished surface. The instrument was one of the few things her family had brought from the capital. It had been her mother’s.

  Kestrel opened several glass doors that led into the garden. She breathed in the night, letting its air pool inside her lungs.

  But she smelled jasmine. She imagined its tiny flower blooming in the dark, each petal stiff and pointed and perfect. She thought again of the slave, and didn’t know why.

  She looked at her traitor of a hand, the one that had lifted to catch the eye of the auctioneer.

  Kestrel shook her head. She wouldn’t think about the slave anymore.

  She sat in front of the instrument’s row of black and white keys, nearly a hundred of them.

  This wasn’t the kind of practice her father had had in mind. He had meant her daily sessions with the captain of his guard. Well, she didn’t want to train at Needles, or anything else her father thought she should learn.

  Her fingers rested on the keys. She pressed slightly, not quite hard enough for the hammers inside to strike the loom of metallic cords.

  She took a deep breath and began to play.

  4

  She had forgotten him.

  Three days passed, and the lady of the house seemed entirely oblivious to the fact that she had purchased a slave to add to the general’s collection of forty-eight.

  The slave wasn’t sure he felt relieved.