The Winner's Curse(95)

The story billowed through Kestrel, a fierce wind that smarted the eyes and bled tears down her cheeks.

“Oh, now,” Enai said. “I thought the story was encouraging.”

“Encouraging? The seamstress dies.”

“That’s a grim interpretation. Let’s say instead that she chose. The god let her choose, and she did. You, Kestrel, haven’t made your choice.”

“I have. Don’t you know that I have? By now the emperor has sent his messenger hawks to my father. War has already begun. It is too late.”

“Is it?”



Kestrel woke. Her body was dim with hunger and shaken by dreams, but she got to her feet with a purpose. She dressed. Slaves came to her, their faces a map of the empire, of the northern tundra and southern isles, the Herran peninsula. She ignored that their number showed the emperor’s respect for her. She ignored that the ceiling of her room was so high that she couldn’t discern the color of the paint. She prepared herself to meet the emperor.

Kestrel was taken to a state room and left alone with the man who ruled half the world.

He was thinner than the statues of him, his silver hair cropped in the military style. He smiled. An emperor’s smile is a gold-and-diamond thing, a fortress, a sword held out hilt first—at least when the smile is the kind he offered her then. “Have you come to claim your reward, Lady Kestrel? The attack on Herran began two days ago, while you slept.”

“I’m here to ask you to stop the attack.”

“Stop—?” The lines on his face sank deep. “Why would I do that?”

“Your Imperial Majesty, have you ever heard of the Winner’s Curse?”





40



“The empire suffers from it,” Kestrel said. “It can no longer afford to keep what it has won. Our territories have grown too large. The barbarians know this. It is why they dare attack.”

The emperor waved a dismissive hand. “They are mice nibbling at the grain.”

“You know it, too. That is why you attack them, to make it seem as if the empire’s resources are bottomless, our military unmatched, when really we are stretched as thin as old cloth. Holes have begun to appear.”

The emperor’s smile showed its sharp edge. “Careful, Kestrel.”

“If you won’t hear the truth, it’s only a matter of time before the empire falls apart. The Herrani never should have been able to rise against us.”

“That problem will be solved. As we speak, your father is crushing the rebellion. The city walls will fall.” The emperor relaxed in his throne. “General Trajan isn’t leading a war, but an extermination.”

Kestrel saw every vulnerable part of Arin’s body, his face disappearing in a welter of blood.

Arin had let her go.

He might as well have cut his own throat.

Fear rose, thick as bile. She swallowed it. She took her thoughts and arranged them like gaming tiles.

She would play, and she would win.

“Have you considered the cost of another Herran war?” she asked the emperor.

“It will be less than losing the territory.”

“So long as the city walls hold, the Herrani can live through a long siege that will bleed your treasury.”

The emperor’s mouth pinched. “There is no other option.”

“What if you could keep the territory without a war?”

He must have heard, as Kestrel did, her father’s voice coming out of her mouth. That cadence of calculated certainty. The emperor’s posture didn’t change, and neither did his expression. But a finger lifted off the throne and tapped once against its marble, the way it might against a bell to hear the sound of its ring.

Kestrel said, “Give the Herrani their independence.”

That finger slashed through the air to point at the door. “Leave.”

“Please hear me out—”

“Your father’s service to the empire will mean nothing to me—your service will mean nothing—if you speak another insolent, insane word.”

“Herran would still be yours! You can keep the territory, so long as you let them govern it. Give them citizenship, yet make its leader swear an oath of fealty to you. Tax the people. Take their goods. Take their crops. They want their freedom, their lives, and their homes. The rest is negotiable.”

The emperor was silent.

“Our governor is dead anyway,” Kestrel said. “Let the Herrani supply a new one.”

Still he said nothing.

“The new governor would, of course, answer to you,” she added.

“And you think the Herrani would agree to this?”

Kestrel thought of the two keys Arin had set on her palm. A limited freedom. Yet better than none. “Yes.”