The Winner's Curse

by Marie Rutkoski

  Kestrel turned to face Arin.

  His eyes were dazed with anger, his hands clenched.

  “Arin,” she began, concerned, but his gaze flicked away and settled on some point across the room. “Your friends are here,” he said.

  She followed his line of sight to see Jess and Ronan laughing at something Benix had said.

  “Dismiss me,” Arin said.

  “What?” she said, though in fact he was the only escort in the room. The slaves who threaded through the crowd were servers, and Irex’s.

  “Join your friends. I don’t want to stay here anymore. Send me to the kitchens.”

  She took a breath, then nodded. He spun on his heel and was gone.

  She felt instantly alone. She hadn’t expected this. But when she asked herself what she had expected, she had a foolish image of her and Arin sitting on a bench together.

  Kestrel looked up at the glass roof, a pyramid of purple sky. She saw the sharp cut of the moon, and remembered Enai saying that it was best to recognize the things one cannot change.

  She crossed the room to greet her friends.

  * * *

  Kestrel ate little at dinner and drank less, though Ronan, who sat to her right, was attentive toward her plate and cup. She was glad when the last course was served and everyone moved into the adjoining ballroom, for she had begun to feel trapped at the table, and Ronan’s talk had a pattern that was too easy to predict. She preferred listening to music. Even in a crowd, she would take a quiet pleasure in whatever the flutist played for the dance. She thought that Arin would, too, if he were here.

  “Kestrel.” Ronan touched her long earring to make it swing. “You are dreaming. What holds your mind so?”

  “Nothing,” she told him, and was relieved when Benix strode toward them to claim Ronan’s assistance.

  “The Raul twins,” Benix said pleadingly, casting his eyes in the direction of the identical sisters. “One won’t dance without the other, Ronan, so if you wouldn’t mind…”

  Ronan looked irritated.

  “What?” said Benix. When he glanced between Ronan and Kestrel he waved a dismissive hand. “We are old friends, we three. Kestrel can spare you for one dance.”

  Kestrel certainly could. But she pretended to be cross in a way that indicated both that she didn’t mind and that she did, a little, when the truth of the matter was that she didn’t care at all. She told the boys she would find Jess and a corner in which they would gossip.

  “Only one dance,” Ronan told Benix, and they crossed the room to the twins. The dance began, but Kestrel didn’t seek Jess. She found a chair in the shadows and sat listening, eyes closed, to the flute.

  “Lady Kestrel?” said an anxious voice.

  Kestrel opened her eyes to see a girl dressed in a Herrani serving uniform. “Yes?”

  “Will you please follow me? There is a problem with your escort.”

  Kestrel stood. “What’s wrong?”

  “He has stolen something.”

  Kestrel rushed from the room, wishing the girl would move more quickly down the villa’s halls. There must be some mistake. Arin was intelligent, far too canny to do something so dangerous. He must know what happened to Herrani thieves.

  The girl led Kestrel into the library. Several men were gathered there: two senators, who held Arin by his arms, and Irex, whose expression when he saw Kestrel was gloating, as if he had just drawn a high tile in Bite and Sting. “Lady Kestrel,” he said, “what exactly did you bring into my house?”

  Kestrel looked at Arin, who refused to return her gaze. “He wouldn’t steal.” She heard something desperate in her voice.

  Irex must have, too. He smiled.

  “We saw him,” said one of the senators. “He was slipping that inside his shirt.” He nodded at a book that had fallen to the floor.

  No. The accusation couldn’t be true. No slave would risk a flogging for theft, not for a book. Kestrel steadied herself. “May I?” she asked Irex, nodding at the fallen book.

  He swept a hand to indicate permission.

  Kestrel stooped to retrieve the book, and Arin’s eyes flashed to hers.

  Her heart failed. His face was twisted with misery.

  She considered the closed, leather-bound book in her hands. She recognized the title: it was a volume of Herrani poetry, a common one. There was a copy in her library as well. Kestrel held the book, not understanding, not seeing anything worth the risk of theft—at least not here, from Irex’s library, when her own could easily serve Arin’s purposes.

  A suspicion whispered in her mind. She recalled Arin’s odd question in the carriage. Where are we going? His tone had been incredulous. Yet he had known their destination. Now Kestrel wondered if he had recognized something in the passing landscape that she hadn’t, and if his question had been less a question than the automatic words of someone sickened by a sudden understanding.

  She opened the book.

  “Don’t,” said Arin. “Please.”

  But she had already seen the inscription.

  For Arin, it read, from Amma and Etta, with love.

  This was Arin’s home. This house had been his, this library his, this book his, dedicated to him by his parents, some ten years ago.

  Kestrel breathed slowly. Her fingers rested on the page, just below the black line of writing. She lifted her gaze to meet Irex’s smirk.

  Her mind chilled. She assessed the situation as her father would a battle. She knew her objective. She knew her opponent’s. She understood what she could afford to lose, and what she could not.

  Kestrel closed the book, set it on a table, and turned her back to Arin. “Lord Irex,” she said, her voice warm. “It is but a book.”

  “It is my book,” Irex said.

  There was a choked sound behind her. Without looking, Kestrel said in Herrani, “Do you wish to be removed from the room?”

  Arin’s answer was low. “No.”

  “Then be silent.” She smiled at Irex. In their language, she said, “This is clearly not a case of theft. Who would dare steal from you? I’m certain he meant only to look at it. You can’t blame him for being curious about the luxuries your house holds.”

  “He shouldn’t have even been inside the library, let alone touching its contents. Besides, there were witnesses. A judge will rule in my favor. This is my property, so I will decide the number of lashes.”

  “Yes, your property. Let us not forget that we are also discussing my property.”

  “He will be returned to you.”

  “So the law says, but in what condition? I am not eager to see him damaged. He holds more value than a book in a language no one has any interest in reading.”

  Irex’s dark eyes flicked to look behind Kestrel, then returned to her. They grew sly. “You take a decided interest in your slave’s well-being. I wonder to what lengths you will go to prevent a punishment that is rightfully mine to give.” He rested a hand on her arm. “Perhaps we can settle the matter between us.”

  Kestrel heard Arin inhale as he understood Irex’s suggestion. She was angry, suddenly, at the way her mind snagged on the sound of that sharp breath. She was angry at herself, for feeling vulnerable because Arin was vulnerable, and at Irex for his knowing smile. “Yes.” Kestrel decided to twist Irex’s words into something else. “This is between us, and fate.”

  Having uttered the formal words of a challenge to a duel, Kestrel stepped back from Irex’s touch, drew her dagger, and held it sideways at the level of her chest like a line drawn between him and her.

  “Kestrel,” Irex said. “That isn’t what I had in mind when I said we might solve the matter.”

  “I think we’ll enjoy this method more.”

  “A challenge.” He tsked. “I’ll let you take it back. Just this once.”

  “I cannot take it back.”

  At that, Irex drew his dagger and imitated Kestrel’s gesture. They stood still, then sheathed their blades.

  “I’ll even let you choo
se the weapons,” Irex said.

  “Needles. Now it is to you to choose the time and place.”

  “My grounds. Tomorrow, two hours from sunset. That will give me time to gather the death-price.”

  This gave Kestrel pause. But she nodded, and finally turned to Arin.

  He looked nauseated. He sagged in the senators’ grip. It seemed they weren’t restraining him, but holding him up.

  “You can let go,” Kestrel told the senators, and when they did, she ordered Arin to follow her. As they left the library, Arin said, “Kestrel—”

  “Not a word. Don’t speak until we are in the carriage.”

  They walked swiftly down the halls—Arin’s halls—and when Kestrel stole sidelong looks at him he still seemed stunned and dizzy. Kestrel had been seasick before, at the beginning of her sailing lessons, and she wondered if this was how Arin felt, surrounded by his home—like when the eyes can pinpoint the horizon but the stomach cannot.

  Their silence broke when the carriage door closed them in.

  “You are mad.” Arin’s voice was furious, desperate. “It was my book. My doing. You had no right to interfere. Did you think I couldn’t bear the punishment for being caught?”

  “Arin.” Fear trembled through her as she finally realized what she had done. She strove to sound calm. “A duel is simply a ritual.”

  “It’s not yours to fight.”

  “You know you cannot. Irex would never accept, and if you drew a blade on him, every Valorian in the vicinity would cut you down. Irex won’t kill me.”

  He gave her a cynical look. “Do you deny that he is the superior fighter?”

  “So he will draw first blood. He will be satisfied, and we will both walk away with honor.”

  “He said something about a death-price.”

  That was the law’s penalty for a duel to the death. The victor paid a high sum to the dead duelist’s family. Kestrel dismissed this. “It will cost Irex more than gold to kill General Trajan’s daughter.”

  Arin dropped his face into his hands. He began to swear, to recite every insult against the Valorians the Herrani had invented, to curse them by every god.

  “Really, Arin.”

  His hands fell away. “You, too. What a stupid thing for you to do. Why did you do that? Why would you do such a stupid thing?”

  She thought of his claim that Enai could never have loved her, or if she had, it was a forced love.

  “You might not think of me as your friend,” Kestrel told Arin, “but I think of you as mine.”

  20

  Kestrel slept easily that night. She hadn’t known, before she claimed Arin’s friendship, that this was what she felt. He had fallen silent in the carriage and looked strange, like someone who has drunk wine when he expected water. But he didn’t deny her words, and she knew him well enough to believe that he would if he wished.

  A friend. The thought calmed her. It explained many things.

  When she closed her eyes, she remembered something her father had often told her as a child, and would say to soldiers the night before a battle: “Nothing in dreams can hurt you.”

  Sleep settled on her like velvet.

  Then the dawn came, clear and cold. Kestrel’s peace had vanished. She pulled on a dressing gown and hunted through a wardrobe for her ceremonial fighting garb. Her father ordered a new set every year, and this year’s was buried behind dresses. But they were there: black leggings, tunic, and stiff jacket. A worm of misgiving ate through her as she looked at the clothes. She left them where they were for the moment.

  It wasn’t that she feared the duel, Kestrel thought as she shut the wardrobe door. She didn’t balk at first blood, which could be no worse than she had received in training sessions. She didn’t dread losing to Irex. Defeat at a duel brought no shame in the eyes of society.

  But Kestrel’s reasons for fighting might.

  Does society talk about him? Enai had asked. Kestrel pressed a palm against the wardrobe door, then rested her forehead against her fingers. Society would talk about Arin now, if they hadn’t before. She imagined news of the duel spreading among Irex’s guests, who must have been shocked and enthralled by the details. A mistress to fight on behalf of her thieving slave? Had it ever been done?

  Obviously not.

  She could expect an audience at the duel. What would she tell them? That she sought to protect a friend?

  Her easy sleep had been a lie. Nothing was easy about this.

  Kestrel straightened. The challenge to duel had been issued, received, and witnessed. There was no dishonor in losing, but there was in cowering.

  She pulled on a simple dress, intending to visit the barracks, where she hoped to confirm that her father wouldn’t return from his training session before the next day. Kestrel knew she couldn’t keep the duel a secret. Even her father couldn’t fail to hear the gossip this would stir. Still, she would prefer for him to arrive after the fact.

  When she opened the outermost door to her suite, she found a slave in the hallway, her arms drooping under the weight of a small chest.

  “Lady Kestrel,” she said. “This just arrived from Lord Irex.”

  Kestrel accepted it, but her hands had gone limp with the realization of what the box must hold. Her fingers could not close.

  The chest dropped to the hallway’s marble floor, spilling its contents. Gold pieces spun and rolled, ringing like small bells.

  Irex had sent the death-price. Kestrel didn’t need to count the coins to know that they numbered five hundred. She didn’t need to touch the gold to remember what she had won from Irex at Bite and Sting, and to think that he might become a better player someday, if he understood the psychology of intimidation enough to pay a death-price before a duel had begun.

  She stood motionless, washed by acid fear. Breathe, she told herself. Move. But she could only stare as the slave chased the errant coins and another girl came down the hall to help refill the chest.

  Kestrel’s foot moved forward. Then another step, and another, and she was ready to run from the sight of spilled gold until a memory sliced through her mindless panic. She saw Irex’s dimpled smile. She felt his hand gripping hers. She saw weapons on walls, him flipping a Bite and Sting tile, his boots crushing Lady Faris’s lawn, heel digging a divot of grass and dirt. She saw his eyes, so dark they were almost black.

  Kestrel knew what she had to do.

  She went downstairs to the library and wrote two letters. One was to her father, the other to Jess and Ronan. She folded them, stamped the wax seals with her seal ring, and put the writing materials away. She was holding the letters in one hand, the wax firm yet still warm against the skin, when she heard footsteps beating down the marble hall, coming closer.

  Arin stepped inside the library and shut the door. “You won’t do it,” he said. “You won’t duel him.”

  The sight of Arin shook her. She wouldn’t be able to think straight if he continued to speak like that, to look at her like that. “You do not give me orders,” Kestrel said. She moved to leave.

  He blocked her path. “I know about the delivery. He sent you a death-price.”

  “First my dress, and now this? Arin, one would think you are monitoring everything I send and receive. It is none of your business.”

  He seized her by the shoulders. “You are so small.”

  Kestrel knew what he was doing, and hated it, hated him for reminding her of her physical weakness, of the same failure that her father witnessed whenever he watched her fight with Rax. “Let go.”

  “Make me let you go.”

  She looked at Arin. Whatever he saw in her eyes loosened his hands. “Kestrel,” he said more quietly, “I have been whipped before. Lashes and death are different things.”

  “I won’t die.”

  “Let Irex set my punishment.”

  “You’re not listening to me.” She would have said more, but realized that his hands still rested on her shoulders. A thumb was pressing gently against her collarb
one.

  Kestrel caught her breath. Arin startled, as if out of sleep, and pulled away.

  He had no right, Kestrel thought. He had no right to confuse her. Not now, when she needed a clear mind.

  Everything had seemed so simple last night in the close dark of the carriage.

  “You are not allowed,” Kestrel said, “to touch me.”

  Arin’s smile was bitter. “I suppose that means we are no longer friends.”

  She said nothing.

  “Good,” he said, “then you can have no reason for fighting Irex.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand your godsforsaken Valorian honor? I don’t understand that your father would probably rather see you gutted than live with a daughter who turned away from a duel?”

  “You have very little faith in me, to think that Irex would win.”

  He raked a hand through his short hair. “Where is my honor in all this, Kestrel?”

  They locked eyes, and she recognized his expression. It was the same one she had seen across the Bite and Sting table. The same one she had seen in the pit, when the auctioneer had told Arin to sing.

  Refusal. A determination so cold it could blister the skin like metal in winter.

  She knew that he would stop her. Perhaps he would be cunning about it. Maybe he would go to the steward behind her back, tell him of the theft and challenge, and ask to be brought before the judge and Irex. If that plan didn’t suit Arin, he would find another.

  He was going to be a problem.

  “You’re right,” she told him.

  Arin blinked, then narrowed his eyes.

  “In fact,” she continued, “if you had let me explain, I would have told you that I had already decided to call off the duel.”

  “You have.”

  She showed him the two letters. The one addressed to her father was on top. She let the mere edge of the other letter show. “One is for my father, telling him what has happened. The other is for Irex, making my apologies and inviting him to collect his five hundred gold pieces whenever he likes.”