The Winner's Curse

by Marie Rutkoski

  “I think you are.”

  Arin’s fingers curled against the door. He shoved it open.

  He led her to the dressing room, opened the wardrobe, and riffled through her clothes. He pulled out a black tunic, leggings, and jacket and thrust them at Kestrel.

  Coolly she said, “This is a ceremonial fighting uniform. Do you expect me to fight a duel on the docks?”

  “You’re too noticeable.” There was something strange about his voice. “In the dark. You … you look like an open flame.” He found another black tunic and tore it between his hands. “Here. Wrap this around your hair.”

  Kestrel stood still, the black cloth limp in her arms as she remembered the last time she had worn such clothes.

  “Get dressed,” said Arin.

  “Get out.”

  He shook his head. “I won’t look.”

  “That’s right. You won’t, because you are going to get out.”

  “I can’t leave you alone.”

  “Don’t be absurd. What am I going to do, take back the city single-handedly from the comfort of my dressing room?”

  Arin dragged a hand through his hair. “You might kill yourself.”

  Bitterly, she said, “I should think it was clear from the way I let you and your friend push me around that I want to stay alive.”

  “You might change your mind.”

  “And do what, exactly?”

  “You could hang yourself with your dagger belt.”

  “So take it away.”

  “You’ll use clothes. The leggings.”

  “Hanging is an undignified way to die.”

  “You’ll break the mirror to your dressing table and cut yourself.” Again Arin’s voice seemed foreign. “Kestrel, I won’t look.”

  She realized why his words sounded rough. She had switched, at some point, to speaking in Valorian, and he had followed her. It was his accent that she heard.

  “I promise,” he said.

  “Your promises are worth nothing.” Kestrel turned and began to undress.

  28

  He took her horse.

  Kestrel saw the logic. Her carriage had been abandoned on the road and the stables were largely empty, since many horses had gone with her father. Javelin was the best of those that remained. In war, property goes to those who can seize and keep it, so the stallion was Arin’s. But it hurt.

  He studied her warily as he saddled Javelin. The stables rang with noise: the sounds of other Herrani readying horses to ride, the beasts whickering as they smelled human tension, the thumps of wood under hooves and feet. Yet Arin was silent, and watched Kestrel. The first thing he had done after entering the stables was grab a set of reins, slice the leather with a knife, bind Kestrel’s hands, and place her under guard. It didn’t matter that she was powerless. He watched her as if she weren’t.

  Or maybe he was just contemplating how hard it would be to bring a captive on horseback into the city and down to the harbor. This would have given Kestrel some satisfaction if she hadn’t been very aware of what he should do.

  Knock her unconscious, if he wanted to keep his prize. Kill her, if he had changed his mind. Imprison her, if she was too much trouble either way.

  She saw his solutions as well as he must.

  Someone called Arin’s name. He and Kestrel turned to see a Herrani woman leaning against the stable door, sides heaving. Her face was damp with sweat. She looked familiar, and Kestrel realized why at the same time she understood why the woman was here.

  She was one of the governor’s slaves. She had come as a messenger, with news of what had happened at the ball after Kestrel and Arin had left.

  Arin strode toward the woman. Kestrel tried to do the same, but was hauled back by her guard. Arin glanced at Kestrel, and she didn’t like that look. It was the expression of someone who had just gained leverage.

  As if he needed any more.

  “In private,” he said to the woman. “Then tell Cheat, if you haven’t already.”

  Arin and the governor’s slave stepped out of the stables. The doors slammed shut behind them.

  When he returned, he was alone.

  “Are my friends dead?” Kestrel demanded. “Tell me.”

  “I will tell you after I have set you on that horse and you haven’t fought me, and after I am seated behind you and you don’t have any clever ideas to shove me off or throw us both. I’ll tell you when we’ve made it to the harbor.” He came close. She didn’t say anything, and he must have decided that she agreed, or maybe he didn’t want to hear her voice any more than she wanted to speak, because he didn’t wait for an answer. He lifted Kestrel onto Javelin, then settled behind her in a swift, fluid movement. Kestrel felt the lines of his body fit along hers.

  His closeness was a shock. Kestrel decided, however, to agree to the bargain. She didn’t signal Javelin to rear. She didn’t drive her head back into Arin’s jaw. She decided to behave. She focused on what mattered.

  That kiss had meant nothing. Nothing. What remained was the hand she had drawn, and how she would play it.

  The horses burst from the stables.

  * * *

  Kestrel felt Arin breathe as soon as they sighted the harbor, and knew it was from relief, since all of the boats she had seen that morning were still there. Kestrel was disappointed, though not surprised, since she knew from her time learning how to sail that crews considered their ships to be islands. Sailors on board wouldn’t consider a threat on land to be a threat to them, and loyalty to their mates on shore would keep them anchored as long as they could safely wait. As for the fishermen who owned the smaller boats, most had homes on shore and would be there, in the thick of black powder smoke and fire and the bodies Javelin had sidestepped as they had ridden through the city. Any fishermen who had been sleeping on their boats weren’t likely to risk sailing to the capital during the height of green storm season, and Kestrel had seen clouds gathering in the night as they’d ridden to the harbor. Small ships were particularly vulnerable.

  As Kestrel considered them a tiny idea flickered.

  The ships could not be burned. Especially not the fishing boats. She might need one of them later.

  Arin dismounted and lifted Kestrel off Javelin. She winced. She pretended it wasn’t because of the touch of his hands but the sting when her cut feet, stuffed into fighting boots, reached the ground.

  “Tell me,” she said to Arin. “Tell me what happened at the ball.”

  His face was lit with firelight. The burning barracks of the city guard, though not close to the docks, had collapsed into an inferno. The sky around it had an ashy orange halo. “Ronan is fine,” Arin said.

  Kestrel’s breath hitched—his phrasing of words could mean only one thing. “Jess.”

  “She’s alive.” Arin reached for Kestrel’s bound hands.

  She jerked away.

  Arin paused, then glanced at the Herrani circling them, well within hearing. They regarded her with open hatred and him with suspicion. He grabbed her wrists and tightened the knots. “She’s sick,” he said curtly. “She drank some of the poisoned wine.”

  The words trembled through Kestrel, and as much as she told herself not to show anything to anyone, especially not to Arin, never him, she couldn’t help that her voice sounded stricken. “Will she live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jess is not dead, Kestrel told herself. She will not die. “And Benix?”

  Arin shook his head.

  Kestrel remembered Benix turning away from her at the ball. The way he had lowered his eyes. But she also remembered his belly laugh, and knew she could have teased him into admitting his wrong. She could have told him that she understood how fragile one felt when stepping out of line and into society’s glare. She could have, if death hadn’t robbed the chance to mend their friendship.

  She would not cry. Not again. “What of Captain Wensan?”

  Arin frowned. “No more questions. You’re strategizing now. You’re no longer askin
g after friends, but stalling me or seeking an advantage I can’t see. He was no one to you.”

  Kestrel opened her mouth, then closed it. She had her answer—and no desire to correct him or show anything more of herself.

  “I don’t have time to give you a list of the living and the dead, even if I had one,” said Arin. He cast a quick glance at the armed Herrani, then flicked his hand in an order for them to follow. Those who hadn’t already dismounted their horses did so now and moved toward the small building near the centermost docks, the one that housed the harbormaster. As they drew closer, Kestrel saw a new group of Herrani dressed in the clothes of dock slaves. They encircled the building. The only Valorians in sight lay dead on the ground.

  “The harbormaster?” Arin asked a man who seemed to be this new group’s leader.

  “Inside,” the Herrani said, “under guard.” His gaze fell on Kestrel. “Tell me that’s not who I think it is.”

  “She doesn’t matter. She’s under my authority, just as you are.” Arin shoved open the door, but not before Kestrel caught the defensive set to his mouth and the distaste on the other man’s face. And while Kestrel had already known that the rumors about her and Arin must have been as disturbing to his people as to hers, only now did that knowledge take a shape that felt like a weapon.

  Let the Herrani think she was Arin’s lover. It would only make them doubt the intentions and loyalty of the man Cheat had called his second-in-command.

  Kestrel followed Arin into the harbormaster’s house on the pier.

  It smelled of pitch and hemp, since the harbormaster sold goods as well as working as a kind of clerk, noting in his ledger which ships came and went, and were docked at each pier. The house was stocked with barrels of tar and coils of rope, and the shipyard smell was stronger than even that of the urine that stained the harbormaster’s pants.

  The Valorian was afraid. Although the last several hours had already shaken Kestrel’s sense of what she had believed, this man’s fear shook her yet again, for he was in his prime, he had trained as a soldier, his role on the docks was similar to that of a city guard. If he was afraid, what could that mean to the rule that a true Valorian never was?

  How could the Valorians have been so easily surprised, so easily taken?

  As she had been.

  It was Arin. Arin, who had been a spy in the general’s household. Arin, whose sharp mind had been whittling away at a secret plan, carving it with weapons made on the sly, with information she had let slip. Who had dismissed her concerns about the captain of the city guard’s suicide, which could not have been a suicide but a murderous step toward revolution. Arin had waved away the oddity of Senator Andrax selling black powder to the eastern barbarians, and of course Arin had, for he had known that it had not been sold, but stolen by Herrani slaves.

  Arin, who had set hooks into her heart and drawn her to him so that she wouldn’t see anything but his eyes.

  Arin was her enemy.

  Any enemy should be watched. Always identify your opponent’s assets and weaknesses, her father had said. Kestrel decided to be grateful for this moment, crammed into the harbormaster’s house with twenty-some Herrani, and fifty more waiting outside. This was a chance to see whether Arin was as good a leader as a spy and a player at Bite and Sting.

  And perhaps Kestrel could seize an opportunity to tip the odds in her favor.

  “I want names,” Arin told the harbormaster, “of all sailors ashore at the moment, and their ships.”

  The harbormaster gave them, voice trembling. Kestrel saw Arin rub his cheek, considering the man, surely thinking, as she thought, that any plan of Arin’s to take or burn the ships would require as many people as possible. No one should be left on shore to guard the harbormaster, who was now useless.

  Killing him was the obvious and quickest next step.

  Arin hit the man’s head with the side of his fist. It was a precise strike, aimed at the temple. The man slumped over his desk. His breath stirred the pages of his ledger.

  “We have two choices,” Arin told his people. “We’ve done well up to this point. We’ve taken the city. Its leadership has been removed or is under our power. Now we need time, as much as possible before the empire learns what’s happened. We have people guarding the mountain pass. The only other way to bring news to the empire is by sea. We take the ships, or we burn them. We must decide now.

  “Either way, our approach is the same. Storm clouds are blowing in from the south. When they cover the moon, we’ll row small launches in the darkness, hugging the bay’s curve until we can come around the boats and approach their sterns. Each prow is pointed toward the city and its light. We’ll be on the dark side of the open sea while the sailors gather at the bow, watching the city’s fire. If we hope to seize all the ships, we split into two teams. One will start with the biggest and deadliest: Captain Wensan’s. The other waits at the nearest largest ship. We take Wensan’s ship, then turn its cannons on the second one, which will be overrun by the second group. With those two ships, we can force the surrender of the next nearest and largest and continue to shrink the possibility for the merchants to fight back. The fishermen have no cannons, so they’ll be ours after the sea battle. We’ll sink any ship that tries to flee the bay. Then we will not only buy the time we need, we will also have the ships as our weapons against the empire, as well as any goods they have on board.”

  Apparently Arin wasn’t half as clever as Kestrel had thought, to discuss such a plan in front of her. Or he thought she could do no harm with the information. Maybe he didn’t care what she heard. Still, it was a decent plan … except for one thing.

  “How will we seize Wensan’s ship?” a Herrani asked.

  “We’ll climb its hull ladder.”

  Kestrel laughed. “You’ll be picked off one at a time by Wensan’s crew as soon as they realize what’s happening.”

  The room went still. Spines stiffened. Arin, who had been facing the Herrani, turned to stare at Kestrel. The look he gave her prickled the air between them like static.

  “Then we’ll pretend we’re their Valorian sailors who have been on shore,” he said, “and ask for our launches to be winched up to the deck from the water.”

  “Pretend to be Valorian? That will be believable.”

  “It will be dark. They won’t see our faces, and we have the names of sailors on shore.”

  “And your accent?”

  Arin didn’t answer.

  “I suppose you hope that the wind will blow your accent away,” Kestrel said. “But maybe the sailors will still ask you for the code of the call. Maybe your little plan will be dead in the water, just like all of you.”

  There was silence.

  “The code of the call,” she repeated. “The password that any sane crew uses and shares with no one but themselves, in order to prevent people from attacking them as you so very foolishly hope to do.”

  “Kestrel, what are you doing?”

  “Giving you some advice.”

  He made an impatient noise. “You want me to burn the ships.”

  “Do I? Is that what I want?”

  “We’ll be weaker against the empire without them.”

  She shrugged. “Even with them, you won’t stand a chance.”

  Arin must have felt the mood in the room shift as Kestrel’s words exposed what everyone should have known: that the Herrani revolution was a hopeless endeavor, one that would be crushed once imperial forces marched, as planned, through the mountain pass to replace the regiments sent east. They would lay siege to the city and send messengers for more troops. This time, when the Herrani lost, they would not be enslaved. They would be put to death.

  “Start loading the launches with those barrels of pitch,” Arin told the Herrani. “We’ll use them to burn the ships.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Kestrel said. “Not when I know Wensan’s code of the call.”

  “You,” Arin said. “You know it.”

  “I do.�
�

  She didn’t. She had, however, a good guess. She had a limited range of possibilities—all the birds in “The Song of Death’s Feathers”—and the memory of the way Captain Wensan had looked at the kestrel plate. She would have bet gold on which code he would have chosen for the evening of the ball. Kestrel could read an expression as if looking through shifting water to see the grainy bottom, the silt rising or settling, the dart of a fish. She had seen Wensan making his decision like she could see the suspicion in Arin’s eyes now.

  Her certainty wavered.

  Arin. Didn’t Arin disprove her ability to read others? For she had thought him truthful in the carriage. She had thought that his lips had moved against hers as if in prayer. But she had been wrong.

  Arin tugged Kestrel out of the harbormaster’s house. The door slamming shut behind them, Arin marched her to the far end of an empty pier. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “I think you have had quite an intimate knowledge of my household. What’s delivered, what letters leave. Who comes, who goes. I think you know that Captain Wensan dined at our house the night before this one.”

  “He was your father’s friend,” Arin said slowly.

  “Whose ship brought my mother’s piano from the capital when I was a child. He was always kind to me. And now he’s dead. Isn’t he?”

  Arin didn’t deny it.

  The moonlight was dimming, but Kestrel knew that Arin could see the sorrow seep into her face.

  Let him see it. It served her purposes. “I know the password,” she said.

  “You would never reveal it.” Clouds blotted the moon, casting Arin’s features into shadow. “You’re taunting me. You want me to hate myself for what I’ve done. You will never forgive me, and you certainly won’t help me.”

  “You have something I want.”

  The cold dark seemed to pour around them.

  “I doubt it,” Arin said.

  “I want Jess. I will help you seize the ships, and you will give her to me.”

  The truth can deceive as well as a lie. Kestrel did want to barter for the chance to help Jess, or at least be by her side if death came. Yet Kestrel also counted on this truth to be so believable that Arin wouldn’t see that it disguised something else: that she needed at least one fishing boat to remain in the harbor.