The Winner's Curse

by Marie Rutkoski

  “I can’t just give her to you,” Arin said. “Cheat will decide what happens to the survivors.”

  “Ah, but you seem to be entitled to special privileges. If you can claim one girl, why not two?”

  His mouth twisted in what looked like disgust. “I’ll arrange for you to see her as soon as I can. Will you trust my word?”

  “I have little choice. Now, to the purpose. You told Cheat that you went to the ball to collect information from the harbormaster’s slave. You will share that information with me.”

  “That’s not why I went to the ball.”

  “What?”

  “There is no information. I lied.”

  Kestrel raised one brow. “How very surprising. Didn’t you just make a promise and ask me to trust your word? Really, Arin. You must sort out your lies and your truths or even you won’t know which is which.”

  Silence. Had she wounded him? She hoped so.

  “Your plan to seize the ships is solid enough,” she said, “but you’ll need to finesse a few important details.” She told him what she had in mind. She wondered if Arin knew that accepting her help would increase his people’s suspicion that they were lovers, that he was collaborating with a Valorian who didn’t necessarily have their best interests at heart. She wondered if he knew that if he achieved his objective tonight, the winning would be undermined by the way he had won it.

  Arin probably did. He must know that there was no such thing as a clear win.

  But Kestrel doubted that he would guess that Captain Wensan had taught her how to sail. Even if Arin somehow knew that she could, she thought his mind was too occupied to notice that a fishing boat was her best chance of escape to the capital.

  When she saw the opportunity to flee, she would take it. She would bring the hounds of the empire howling down on this city.

  29

  Arin had worked on the harbor before. He’d been sold out of the quarry into another forge, and when his second blacksmith master had died, Arin was part of the goods divided by the heirs. His name was still listed as Smith, but he had hidden the skills of that trade from his new owners and was sold at a loss to the shipyards. He had never sailed, yet he knew a Herrani ship when he saw it. He had dry-docked them along with other slaves, had hauled on ropes to tip the massive things onto their sides at low tide. Then he had waded in the mud to scrape the hardened sea life off the hull, shards of barnacles flaking around him, cutting skin, hatching thin red lines. He remembered the taste of sweat in his mouth, water oozing up his calves, and everything quick, so quick, so that the slaves could drag on the pulleys and flip the boat again and clean its other side before the tide rose.

  Then the Valorians would take their stolen ship and sail away.

  As he rowed the launch toward Wensan’s ship, which was Herrani-made and studded with Valorian cannon, Arin remembered the exhaustion of that work, but also how it had corded his muscles until the ache in his arms became stone. He was grateful to the Valorians for having made him strong. If he was strong enough, he might live through this night. If he lived, he could reclaim the shreds of who he had been, and explain himself to Kestrel in a way she would understand.

  She sat silent next to him in the launch. The other Herrani at the oars watched as she lifted her bound hands to tug at the black cloth covering her hair. It was an awkward business. It was also necessary, since a new twist in the plan called for Kestrel to be seen and recognized.

  The Herrani watched her struggle. They watched Arin drop an oar in its lock to offer a hand. She flinched hard enough that her shifted weight shook the boat. It was only a slight tremor along wood, but they all felt it.

  Shame ate into his gut.

  Kestrel pulled the cloth from her head. Even though clouds swelled in the sky, swallowing the moon and deepening the dark around them, Kestrel’s hair and pale skin seemed to glow. It looked like she was lit from within.

  It wasn’t something Arin could bear to see. He returned to the oars and rowed.

  Arin knew, far better than any of the ten Herrani in the launch, that Kestrel could be devious. That he shouldn’t trust her plan any more than he should have fallen for her ploys at Bite and Sting, or followed her blindly into the trap she had set and sprung for him the morning of the duel.

  Her plan to seize the ship was sound. Their best option. Still, he kept examining it like he might a horse’s hoof, tapping the surface for a flaw, a dangerous split.

  He couldn’t see it. He thought that there must be one, then realized that the flaw he sensed lay inside him. Tonight had cracked Arin open. It had brought the battle inside him to a boiling war.

  Of course he was certain that something was wrong.

  Impossible. It was impossible to love a Valorian and also love his people.

  Arin was the flaw.

  * * *

  Kestrel watched the other four launches slip along the inky water. Two drew alongside Wensan’s ship and paused by the hull ladder, hidden by the dark and the angle of the hull as it sloped inward from the broad main deck to the ship’s narrow section at the waterline. To see those launches, sailors on the main deck would have to hang over the sides.

  The sailors raised no cry of alarm.

  Two more launches approached the next largest ship, a two-master with one row of cannons, a clear second player to Wensan’s three-masted ship with double gun decks.

  The Herrani glanced at Arin. He nodded, and they began to row with no interest in stealth, only speed. Oars rattled in their locks, dunked and splashed and swept in the water. When the launch reached Wensan’s ship, sailors were already ringing the rail, looking far below at them. Their faces were blurs in the dark.

  Kestrel stood. “Riot in the city!” she called to sailors, stating what they could no doubt see for themselves beyond the harbor and the city walls. “Bring us aboard!”

  “You’re none of ours,” a voice floated down from the main deck.

  “I’m a friend of Captain Wensan’s: Kestrel, General Trajan’s daughter. The captain sent me along with your crew for my protection.”

  “Where’s the captain?”

  “I don’t know. We were separated in the city.”

  “Who’s there with you?”

  “Terex,” called Arin, careful to roll the r. One by one, the Herrani in the launch shouted names given by the harbormaster of the ship’s missing sailors. They said them quickly, some swallowing syllables, but each gave a passable version of the pronunciations Kestrel had drilled into them when they had first left shore.

  The sailor spoke again: “What’s the code of the call?”

  “I am,” Kestrel said with all the confidence she didn’t feel. “My name: Kestrel.”

  A pause. A few sharp seconds during which Kestrel hoped she was right, hoped she was wrong, and hated herself for what she was doing.

  A clank. A metallic unwinding.

  Hooked pulleys were being lowered from the main deck. There was an eager clatter as Herrani attached them to the launch.

  Arin, however, did not move. He stared at Kestrel. Perhaps he hadn’t been convinced that she had known the password. Or perhaps he couldn’t believe she would betray her own kind.

  Kestrel looked at him as if looking through a window. What he thought didn’t matter. Not anymore.

  The roped pulleys creaked. The launch was lifted dripping out of the water. It jerked and swayed as sailors on board hauled on the ropes. Then it began to climb.

  Kestrel couldn’t see the hull ladder along the stern or the Herrani in the other launches on the water below. They were vague, night-colored shadows. But she noticed a ripple of movement up the hull. Herrani were scaling the ladder.

  It wasn’t too late for her to cry warning to the sailors on board.

  She could choose not to betray them. She didn’t understand how her father could do this again and again: make decisions that fed lives into the jaws of a higher purpose.

  Yet would it be worth it, if Kestrel secured an escape ro
ute to alert the capital?

  That, she supposed, might depend on how many Valorians died on Wensan’s ship.

  Kestrel’s cool calculation appalled her. This was part of what had made her resist the military: the fact that she could make decisions like this, that she did have a mind for strategy, that people could so easily become pieces in a game she was determined to win.

  The launch swayed higher.

  Kestrel pressed her lips shut.

  Arin glanced at the black cloth that had covered her hair, then at her. He must have considered gagging Kestrel with it, now that she had completed her role in the plan. That’s what she would have done in his place. But he didn’t, which made her feel worse than if he had. It was pure hypocrisy for him not to live up to a ruthlessness she now knew him to be capable of.

  As was she.

  The launch drew level with the main deck. Kestrel had just enough time to register the shock on the sailors’ faces before the Herrani in the launch leaped onto the deck, weapons raised. The small boat rocked wildly, empty save for Kestrel.

  Arin ducked the slice of a sailor’s knife, beat it away with his own, and punched the man’s throat. The sailor staggered back. Arin hooked the legs out from under him at the same moment he delivered another blow. The sailor was down.

  It was like that all over the deck. Herrani hammered at Valorians, many of whom had had no time to draw weapons. As the sailors dealt with the sudden threat they had brought aboard, they didn’t see the second one: more Herrani climbing onto the deck from the hull ladder. As Kestrel had planned, this second wave attacked the Valorians from the back. Trapped, the sailors quickly surrendered. Even though more sailors were pouring up from the decks below, they did so through narrow hatches, like mice emerging from tunnels. The Herrani attacked them one by one.

  Blood stained the planks. Many of the fallen sailors didn’t move. From the swaying launch, Kestrel could hear the man Arin had attacked first. He was clutching his throat. The noises he made were horrible, something between gasping and choking. And there was Arin, shouldering through the fray and landing blows that might not kill, but would still hurt and bruise and bleed.

  Kestrel had seen this in him on the day that she had bought him. A brutality. She had let herself forget it because his mind had been so finely tuned. Because his touch had been gentle. Yet this was what he had become.

  This was what he was.

  And what of her, orchestrating the fall of a Valorian ship into enemy hands? Kestrel couldn’t quite believe it. She couldn’t believe it had been so relatively easy. Valorians were never ambushed. They never surrendered. They were brave, they were fierce, they would rather die than be taken.

  Her launch swayed to a stop. She stood and faced the water far below. Earlier that night, when she had threatened to kill herself, she had said it without considering whether she could. Making the threat had been the right move. So she had made it.

  Then Cheat had set his boot on Kestrel’s fingers.

  There was no music after death.

  She had chosen to live.

  Now she stood in the launch, knowing that if she hit the water’s surface from this height, something was likely to break and she would sink quickly without the use of her bound hands.

  What would Kestrel’s father choose for her? An honorable death, or life as Arin’s prize? She closed her eyes, imagining the general’s face if he had seen her surrender to Cheat, if he could see her now.

  Could she really find a way to sail to the capital? Was it worth it to stay alive to see Jess, if only to watch her friend die?

  Kestrel listened to the slap of waves against the ship, the cries of struggle and death. She remembered how her heart, so tight, like a scroll, had opened when Arin kissed her. It had unfurled.

  If her heart were truly a scroll, she could burn it. It would become a tunnel of flame, a handful of ash. The secrets she had written inside herself would be gone. No one would know.

  Her father would choose the water for Kestrel if he knew.

  Yet she couldn’t. In the end, it wasn’t cunning that kept her from jumping, or determination. It was a glassy fear.

  She didn’t want to die. Arin was right. She played a game until its end.

  Suddenly, Kestrel heard his voice. She opened her eyes. He was shouting. He was shouting her name. He was barreling past people, driving a path between the mainmast and the railing alongside the launch. Kestrel saw the horror in him mirror what she had felt when facing the water.

  Kestrel gathered the strength in her legs and jumped onto the deck.

  Her feet hit the planks, the force of movement toppling her. But she had learned from fighting Rax how to protect her hands. She tucked them to her, pressed the hard knots of her bonds against her chest, fell shoulder first, and rolled.

  Arin hauled her to her feet. And even though he had seen her choice, must have seen it still blazing on her face, he shook her. He kept saying the words he had been shouting as he had neared the railing. “Don’t, Kestrel. Don’t.”

  His hands cradled her face.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  Arin’s hands fell. “Gods,” he said hoarsely.

  “Yes, it would be rather unfortunate for you, wouldn’t it, if you lost your little bargaining chip against the general? Never fear.” She smiled a brittle smile. “It turns out that I am a coward.”

  Arin shook his head. “It’s harder to live.”

  Yes. It was. Kestrel had known there would be no escape tonight, and probably not for some time to come.

  Her plan had worked brilliantly. Even now, the seized ship was turning its cannons on the two-master where more Herrani waited, ready to pounce on the sailors once they were distracted by the surprise of cannon fire. After that vessel fell into Arin’s hands, the others in the harbor would fall, too.

  It began to rain. A fine, icy spray. Kestrel didn’t shiver, though she knew she should, from apprehension if not from cold. She had chosen to live, and so should be afraid of what living in this new world would mean.

  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.

&n
bsp; 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.