The Winner's Curse (16 page)

But she wanted to get close to Irex, close enough to speak without anyone overhearing. She would need every knife she had once she was within arm’s reach of him.

Irex cocked his head. He was either mystified that Kestrel wasn’t taking the only sensible strategy or disappointed that she was doing little at all. He had probably expected more of a fight. Kestrel had taken great pains never to reveal her very ordinary skills at weapons, and society assumed that the general’s daughter must be an excellent fighter.

He hung back, showing no interest in emptying more sheaths. He didn’t advance, which was a problem—if Kestrel couldn’t lure him to her, she would have to come to him.

The shouts were incoherent now. They swelled to something like a roaring silence.

Kestrel’s father would say that she should stand her ground. Instead she pulled her two calf daggers and sped forward. A blade spun from her hand and went wide—a terrible throw, but one that distracted Irex from the second, which might have struck him had he not ducked and launched a Needle of his own.

She skidded on the dry grass to avoid the knife. Her side hit the earth just as the Needle punched into the ground next to her leg. Her mind iced over, sealed itself shut.

He was quick, too quick. She hadn’t even seen his hand move.

Then Irex’s boot kicked her ribs. Kestrel gasped in pain. She forced herself to her feet and swept an arm knife out of its sheath. She sliced the air in front of her, but Irex danced back, knocked the blade out of her hand, and rolled to claim it as his own.

Her chest heaved. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. She fleetingly imagined her father closing his eyes in dismay.
Never arm your opponent,
he always said.

But she had what she wanted. She and Irex were in the circle’s center now, too far from the shouting audience for their conversation to be overheard.

“Irex.” Her voice was thin and weak. “We need to talk.”

He kicked in her knee. She felt something grind and give just before she crumpled to the ground. The force of her fall drove the kneecap back in place. She cried out.

The shock was too great for pain. Then it came: a spasm that tunneled from her leg into her brain.

It wasn’t fear that forced Kestrel to her feet. She was stupid with pain and didn’t have room to feel anything else. She didn’t know how she managed to get up, only that she did, and Irex let her.

“I never liked you,” he hissed. “So superior.”

Kestrel’s vision was whitening. She had the odd impression that it was snowing, but as the whiteness ate its way toward Irex’s face she realized there was no snow. She was about to faint.

Irex slapped her face.

That stung her to life. She heard a gasp, and wasn’t sure if it came from the crowd or her own throat. Kestrel had to speak now, and quickly, or the duel was going to end with Irex crushing her well before he finished things off with a Needle. It was hard to find the air for words. She drew a dagger. It helped, a little, to feel its solidity against her palm. “You are the father of Faris’s baby.”

He faltered. “What?”

Kestrel prayed she wasn’t wrong. “You slept with Senator Tiran’s wife. You fathered her child.”

Irex brought his guard back up, the dagger fire-bright in the setting sun. But he bit the inside of his cheek, making his face go lopsidedly lean, and that slight trace of worry made her think that maybe she would survive this duel. He said, “What makes you say that?”

“Strike a blow easy for me to block and I’ll tell you.”

He did, and the sound of her blade pushing his back made Kestrel stronger. “You have the same eyes,” she said. “The baby has the trick of a dimple in his left cheek, as you do. Faris looked pale as we took our places to fight, and I notice that she is at the front of the crowd. I don’t think she’s worried about
me
.”

Slowly, he said, “Your knowing a secret like that doesn’t make me feel less inclined to kill you.”

She took a shuddery breath, glad that she was right, glad that he hesitated even as the crowd continued to shout. “You won’t kill me,” she said, “because I have told Jess and Ronan. If I die, they will tell everyone else.”

“No one would believe them. Society will think they mourn you and seek to damage me.”

“Will society think that when they begin to compare the boy’s face to yours? Will Senator Tiran?” Limping, she circled him, and he allowed it, though he drew a second Needle and held them both ready. He shifted his feet swiftly while she tried not to stumble. “If Ronan has any difficulty starting a scandal, he’ll feed it with money. I have given him five hundred gold pieces, and he will bribe friends to swear that the rumor is true, that they witnessed you in bed with Faris, that you keep a lock of the boy’s hair close to your heart. They will say anything, true or not. Few people are as rich as you. Ronan has many friends—like poor Hanan—who would gladly take gold to ruin the reputation of someone no one really likes.”

Irex’s arms slackened. He looked slightly ill.

Kestrel pressed her advantage. “You slept with Faris so that she would encourage her husband to help you gain a seat in the Senate. Maybe you did it for other reasons, too, but this is the one we care about. You
should
care, because if Tiran suspects you, he won’t just withhold his help. He’ll turn the Senate against you.”

She saw the fight drain out of him.

“Even though this duel has broken no rules, it’s not been clean,” she said. “You began a brawl. Society will murmur its disapproval even before Ronan and Jess destroy your reputation.”

“Society will disapprove of me?” Irex sneered. “
Your
reputation is not so lily white. Slave-lover.”

Kestrel wobbled on her feet. It took her a moment to speak, and when she did, she wasn’t sure that what she said was true. “Whatever people say about me, my father will be your enemy.”

Irex’s face was still sharp with hate, but he said, “Very well. You can live.” His voice became hesitant. “Did you tell the general about Faris?”

Kestrel thought of her letter to her father. It had been simple.
I have challenged Lord Irex to a duel,
it had said.
It will take place on his grounds today, two hours before sunset. Please come
. “No. That would have defeated my purpose.”

Irex gave Kestrel a look, one that she had seen before on the faces of her opponents in Bite and Sting. “Purpose?” he said warily.

Kestrel felt triumph surge through her, stronger even than the pain in her knee. “I want my father to believe that I’ve legitimately won this duel. You are about to lose. You’ll throw the match, and give me a clear victory.” She smiled. “I want first blood, Irex. My father is watching. Make this look good.”

22

After the duel, the general had to help Kestrel onto her horse, which only went a few steps before she swayed in the saddle. Her right knee throbbed. It felt as if some knot inside had slipped and was unraveling, pressing hot coils against the inner wall of her skin.

Her father halted Javelin. “We can borrow a carriage.”

“No.” What point was there in having defeated Irex if she couldn’t keep her seat on a horse? Kestrel hadn’t realized she had such pride. Maybe she didn’t want her father’s military life, but it seemed she wanted his approval as much as she had as a girl.

The general looked as if he might argue, then said only, “That was a decisive win.” He mounted his horse and set the pace.

It was slow, yet Kestrel grimaced with every jolt of the stallion’s hooves. She was glad when night dyed the sky. She felt her face thinning with pain, but reminded herself that not even her father could see through the dark. He couldn’t see her dread.

She kept expecting his question: why had she challenged Irex to a duel?

But he didn’t ask, and soon it became impossible for her to think of anything other than staying on her horse. She bit her lip. By the time they reached home, her mouth tasted of blood.

She wasn’t aware of passing through the gate. The house simply appeared, bright and sort of trembling at the edges. She vaguely heard her father say something to someone else, and then his hands were at her waist, lifting her off Javelin as if she were a child.

He set Kestrel on her feet. Her knee buckled. She felt a sound choke her throat, and blacked out.

*   *   *

When Kestrel opened her eyes, she was lying in her bed. Someone had built a fire, which sent ripples of orange light over the ceiling. An oil lamp burned on the night table, casting her father’s face into extremes of shadow and bone. He had drawn a chair close and perhaps had been sleeping in it, but his eyes were alert.

“Your knee needs to be tapped,” he said.

She looked at it. Someone—her father?—had cut away the right legging at her thigh, and below the sheared black cloth her knee was swollen to twice its normal size. It felt tight and hot.

“I don’t know what that means,” Kestrel said, “but it doesn’t sound very nice.”

“Irex dislocated your kneecap. It slipped back into place, but the blow must have torn your muscle. Your knee’s filling with blood. That’s what’s causing you so much pain: the swelling.” He hesitated. “I have some experience with this kind of wound, on the battlefield. I can drain it. You’ll feel better. But I would have to use a knife.”

Kestrel remembered him cutting her mother’s arm, blood weaving through his fingers as he tried to close the wound. He looked at her now, and she thought that he was seeing the same thing, or seeing Kestrel remember it, and that they were mirroring each other’s nightmare.

His gaze fell to his scarred hands. “I’ve sent for a doctor. You can wait until she comes, if you prefer.” His voice was flat, yet there was a small, sad note that probably only she would have heard. “I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t feel myself capable and if I didn’t think it would be better to do it now. But it’s your choice.”

His eyes met hers. Something in them made her think that he would never have let Irex kill her, that he would have pushed into the ring and planted a blade in Irex’s back if he had thought his daughter might die, that he would have thrown away his honor with hers.

Of course, Kestrel couldn’t be sure. Yet she nodded. He sent a slave for clean rags, which he eased under her knee. Then he went to the fire and held a small knife in the flames to sterilize it.

He returned to her side, the blackened knife in his hand. “I promise,” he said, but Kestrel didn’t know whether he meant to say that he promised this would help her, or that he knew what he was doing, or that he would have saved her from Irex if she had needed saving. He slid the knife in, and she fainted again.

*   *   *

He had been right. Kestrel felt better the moment she opened her eyes. Her knee was sore and wrapped in a bandage, but the fevered swelling was gone, and a great deal of pain with it.

Her father was standing, his back to her as he looked out the dark window.

“You’d better release me from our bargain,” she said. “The military won’t take me now, not with a bad knee.”

He turned and echoed her faint smile. “Don’t you wish that were so,” he said. “Painful though it is, this isn’t a serious wound. You’ll be on your feet soon, and walking normally before a month’s out. There’s no permanent damage. If you doubt me and think I’m blinded by my hope to see you become an officer, the doctor will tell you the same thing. She’s in the sitting room.”

Kestrel looked at the closed door of her bedroom and wondered why the doctor wasn’t in the room with them now.

“I want to ask you something,” her father said. “I’d prefer she didn’t hear.”

Suddenly it seemed as if Kestrel’s heart, not her knee, was sore. That it had been cut into, and bled.

“What kind of deal did you make with Irex?” her father asked.

“What?”

He gave her a level look. “The duel was going badly for you. Then Irex held back, and you two seemed to have quite an interesting conversation. When the fighting resumed, it was as if Irex was a different person. He shouldn’t have lost to you—not like that, anyway—unless you said something to make him.”

She didn’t know how to respond. When her father had asked his question she was so horribly grateful he wasn’t probing into her reasons for the duel that she missed some of his words.

“Kestrel, I just want to make sure that you haven’t given Irex some kind of power over you.”

“No.” She sighed, disappointed that her father had seen through her victory. “If anything, he’s in my power.”

“Ah. Good. Will you tell me how?”

“I know a secret.”

“
Very
good. No, don’t tell me what it is. I don’t want to know.”

Kestrel looked at the fire. She let the flames hypnotize her eyes.

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

Kestrel thought about the Herran War. She thought about the suffering her father had brought to this country, and how his actions had led to her becoming a mistress, and Arin a slave. “Do you really believe that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

*   *   *

Arin heard the door to the barracks creak. The sound brought him immediately to his feet, for only one person would come to his cell this late at night. Then he heard the first heavy footfall, and his hands slackened around the metal bars. The footsteps coming were not hers. They belonged to someone big. Solid, slow. Probably a man.

Torchlight pulsed toward Arin’s cell. When he saw who carried it, he pulled away from the bars. He saw a child’s nightmare come to life.

The general set the torch in a sconce. He stared, taking in Arin’s fresh bruises, his height, his features. The general’s frown deepened.

This man didn’t look like Kestrel. He was all mass and muscle. But Arin found her in the way her father lifted his chin, and his eyes held the same dangerous intelligence.

“Is she all right?” Arin said. When he received no response, he asked again in Valorian. And because he had already damned himself with a question he couldn’t bear not to ask, Arin said something he had sworn he would never say. “Sir.”