The Winner's Curse

She shouldn’t have been tempted.

“The Herrani would say that the god of lies must love you, you see things so clearly.”

Isn’t that what stories do, make real things fake, and fake things real?

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

“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.”

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.”

“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.”

If anyone was a strategist, it was her father. He was strategizing that very moment, using flattery to get what he wanted.

“I went to the market with Jess more than a week ago. I went to an auction.” Enai’s expression grew wary. “Oh, Enai,” Kestrel said. “I’ve made a mistake.”

Arin wasn’t sure which god he had offended. The god of laughter, maybe. One with an idle, cruel spirit who looked at Arin’s unprecedented streak of good behavior, smiled, and said it couldn’t last forever.

But in the eyes of Valorian society, music was a pleasure to be taken, not made, and it didn’t occur to many that the making and the taking could be the same.

Arin smiled. It was a true smile, which let her know that all the others he had given her were not. “Thank you,” he said.

Everything in war hinges on what you know of your adversary’s skills and assets.

“I suppose neither of us is the person we were believed we would become.”

“Do you think I care how you won?” her father said softly. “You won. Your methods don’t matter.”

Why didn’t he come to her? She could make him. If she sent an order, he would obey. But she didn’t want his obedience. She wanted him to want to see her.

“I will tell you something you can trust is true.” Arin’s eyes held hers. “We are not friends.” Kestrel swallowed. “You’re right,” she whispered. “We’re not.”

Kestrel felt a flicker of instinctive curiosity. Then she reminded herself bitterly that this was what curiosity had bought her: fifty keystones for a singer who refused to sing, a friend who wasn’t her friend, someone who was hers and yet would never be hers.

“An honor suicide? All Valorian children are taught how, when we come of age. My father showed me where to stab.”
“No. You wouldn’t. You play a game to its end.”

“She’s mine. My prize. Payment for services rendered. A spoil of war.” Arin shrugged. “Call her what you like. Call her my slave.”

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.

You must sort out your lies and your truths or even you won’t know which is which.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

“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?”

Rain on silver bowls. Lilies in snow. Gray eyes.

“You are also not unattractive.”

The beginning of the siege probably meant Arin’s death. But it also meant that Kestrel was alive.

Then Arin’s feet were moving along the wall, racing to face the sea, and although he couldn’t have said that he knew what had happened, he knew that something had changed, and in his mind there was only one person who could change his world.

“You, I understand. You, I know how to read.” Kestrel wasn’t so sure of that. “I think that will be acceptable,” she said, and wanted to turn away from how much she wanted this condition.

“You don’t, Kestrel, even though the god of lies loves you.”