The Winner's Curse

27

They marched her to the house. Kestrel said nothing as rocks and twigs cut into her bare feet. When the auctioneer pushed her into the entryway, she left bloody footprints on the tile.

But she was distracted from this by another sight. Harman, her steward, floated facedown in the fountain, blond hair rippling like sea grass.

The general’s slaves crowded the hallway beyond the fountain, shouting questions at the armed men, whose answers were a jumble of phrases like We’ve seized the city, The governor’s dead, and, over and over, You’re free.

“Where’s the housekeeper?” said the auctioneer.

There was a shuffling among the slaves. It wasn’t so much that the Valorian housekeeper was thrust forward as that the slaves stepped away to reveal her.

The auctioneer seized the woman’s shoulders, backed her up against the wall, pressed a broad arm across her chest, and drew a knife.

She began to sob.

“Stop,” Kestrel said. She turned toward the slaves. “Stop this. She was good to you.”

They didn’t move.

“Good to you?” the auctioneer said to them. “Was she good to you when she made you clean the privies? When she beat you for breaking a plate?”

“She wouldn’t have hurt anyone.” Kestrel’s voice rode high with the fear she could no longer contain. It made her say the wrong thing. “I wouldn’t have allowed it.”

“You don’t give orders anymore,” the auctioneer said, and cut the woman’s throat.

She sagged against the wall’s painted flowers, choking on her blood, pressing hands to her throat as if she could hold everything inside. The auctioneer didn’t step away. He let her blood splash him until she slid to the floor.

“But she didn’t do anything.” Kestrel couldn’t stop herself, even though she knew that it was stupid, utterly stupid, for her to speak. “She only did what I paid her to do.”

“Kestrel.” Arin’s voice was sharp.

The auctioneer turned to face her. He raised his knife again. Kestrel had just enough time to remember the sound of a hammer against anvil, to think of all the weapons Arin had forged, and to realize that if he had wanted to make more on the side it wouldn’t have been hard.

The auctioneer advanced on her.

Not hard at all.

“No,” said Arin. “She’s mine.”

The man paused. “What?”

Arin strolled toward them, stepping in the housekeeper’s blood. He stood next to the auctioneer, his stance loose and careless. “She’s mine. My prize. Payment for services rendered. A spoil of war.” Arin shrugged. “Call her what you like. Call her my slave.”

Shame poured into Kestrel, as poisonous as anything her friends must have drunk at the ball.

Slowly, the auctioneer said, “I’m a little worried about you, Arin. I think you’ve lost clarity on the situation.”

“Is there something wrong with treating her the way she treated me?”

“No, but—”

“The Valorian army will return. She’s the general’s daughter. She’s too valuable to waste.”

The auctioneer sheathed his knife, but Kestrel couldn’t sheathe her dread. This sudden alternative to death didn’t seem like a better one.

“Just remember what happened to your parents,” the auctioneer told Arin. “Remember what Valorian soldiers did to your sister.”

Arin’s gaze cut to Kestrel. “I do.”

“Really? Where were you during the assault on the estate? I expected to find my second-in-command here. Instead, you were at a party.”

“Because I learned that a slave to the harbormaster would be there. He gave me valuable information. We still have to deal with the merchant ships, Cheat. Send me. Let me do this for you.” The need to please this man was clear on Arin’s face.

Cheat saw it, too. He sighed. “Take some fighters. You’ll find more at the docks. Seize all the ships or burn them. If even one leaves to alert the empire that we’ve taken the city, this is going to be a very short-lived revolution.”

“I’ll take care of it. They won’t leave the harbor.”

“Some might already have. The sailors on board will have heard the explosions.”

“All the more reason for them to wait until their shipmates on shore return.”

Cheat acknowledged this with a grimace of guarded optimism. “Go. I’ll mop up what’s left at the governor’s house.”

Kestrel thought of her friends. She stared at the blood on the floor. She wasn’t watching or listening as Arin strode toward her. Then the auctioneer said, “Her hands.”

She glanced up. Arin’s gaze flicked toward her fists. “Of course,” he said to the auctioneer, and Kestrel understood that they had just discussed the best way to threaten her.

Her arm went limp when Arin gripped it. She remembered the auctioneer in the pit, in the full heat of summer. This lad can sing, he had said. She remembered the man’s boot on her hand. The fact that the whole city knew her weakness for music. As Arin pulled her from the room, Kestrel thought about how this might be what hurt the most.

That they had used something she loved against her.

She had sworn to herself not to speak to Arin, but then he said, “You’re coming with me to the harbor.”

This surprised her into saying, “To do what? Why not lock me up in the barracks? It would be a perfect prison for your prize.”

He continued to walk her down the halls of her home. “Unless Cheat changes his mind about you.”

Kestrel imagined the auctioneer unlocking her cell door. “I suppose I’m no good to you dead.”

“I would never let that happen.”

“What a touching concern for Valorian life. As if you hadn’t let your leader kill that woman. As if you’re not responsible for the death of my friends.”

They stopped before the door to Kestrel’s suite. Arin faced her. “I will let every single Valorian in this city die if it means that you don’t.”

“Like Jess?” Her eyes swam with sudden, unshed tears. “Ronan?”

Arin looked away. The skin above his eye was beginning to blacken from where she had kicked him. “I spent ten years as a slave. I couldn’t be one anymore. What did you imagine, tonight, in the carriage? That it would be fine for me to always be afraid to touch you?”

“That has nothing to do with anything. I am not a fool. You sold yourself to me with the intention of betrayal.”

“But I didn’t know you. I didn’t know how you—”

“You’re right. You don’t know me. You’re a stranger.”

He flattened a palm against the door.

“What about the Valorian children?” she demanded. “What have you done with them? Have they been poisoned, too?”

“No. Kestrel, no, of course not. They will be cared for. In comfort. By their nurses. This was always part of the plan. Do you think we’re monsters?”

“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.