Marie Rutkoski - The Winner's Curse

“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.”

The emperor shook his head.

“I haven’t mentioned the best part about a swift end to the Herran revolution,” she said. “Right now, the east thinks you have retreated. The barbarians congratulate themselves. They have heard, through spies or captured messenger hawks, of the difficulty that mires you in Herran.” These were guesses, but they became belief when she saw the emperor’s face. Kestrel pressed on. “The barbarians know that a siege against city walls well built will take time, so they pull back from the front lines where we fought them and return to their queen to share the good news. They leave a few token battalions to occupy land they think they won’t have to defend. But if you were to send our forces back , and catch the barbarians by surprise…”

“I see.” The emperor folded his hands and set the peaked knuckles against his chin. “But you overlook that Herran is a colony . The homes the Herrani want back belong to my senators.”

“The barbarians have gold. Enrich the disappointed senators with plunder from the east.”

“Even then. What you propose would not be popular.”

“You are the emperor. What do you care for public opinion?”

His brows lifted. “A comment like that makes me wonder whether you’re naïve or attempting to manipulate me.” He studied her. “You are too clever to be naïve.”

Kestrel knew better than to speak.

“You are the daughter of the most fabled general in Valorian history.”

She didn’t see what shape the emperor’s thoughts were forming.

“You are also not unattractive.”

Her eyes flew to his.

He said, “I have a son.”

Yes, she knew, though what the heir to the empire had to do with—

“An imperial wedding,” he said. “One that would make the military love me. One that would distract the senators and their families, so that their chief point of concern is how to receive an invitation. I like your plans for Herran and the east, Kestrel, but I’ll like them even more if you marry my son.”

One didn’t stammer before an emperor. Kestrel drew her breath and held it until she could speak calmly. “Perhaps your son would prefer someone else.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“We’ve never even met.”

“So?”

The emperor’s face became narrow with something Kestrel recognized as cruelty at the same moment she remembered that her father had always respected him. He said, “Is there some reason you do not seize the chance to become my daughter? Some reason that you argue so ardently for the Herrani? Rumors race around the capital, and I am not the only one to have heard of your duel with Lord Irex.

“No, Kestrel, a face of innocence will not work. We have already agreed that you are too intelligent for innocence. You may be glad that I don’t require it in a daughter-in-law. I do, however, require a choice. Agree to marry my son, and I will lift the siege, send our forces back east, and cope with the political consequences. Refuse, and there will be a second Herran war, and different consequences.

“Choose.”

When Arin saw the vast Valorian fleet muscle into the harbor, he was relieved. When they destroyed the few ships taken on Firstwinter night, he was relieved, even as flaming wood scattered the water and the tindered wrecks sank.

The Herrani found courage in what they thought was Arin’s fearlessness. He couldn’t imagine their reaction if they knew that he had invited the war, and that the look on his face was joy.

He had felt more than seen the green storm that had ripped up the coast two days after Kestrel had left. The storm had barreled inside him, scoured out everything until he was a hollow space howling with the knowledge of what he had done, with the image of a small fishing boat tipped over, pushed under. He imagined a mouth filled with seawater, the way Kestrel would fight it. Her limbs loosening, then lost in a maze of waves.

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

So the Herrani thought his face held the mad delight of a warrior at the sight of battle. He let them believe it. You are the god of lies, Kestrel had said. He looked at his people and smiled, and the smile was a lie—but like writing in a mirror, whose reflection is the inverse of a truth.

After she had left, Arin ordered that the piers in the harbor be destroyed.

But when the Valorians arrived, they dropped anchor as close to shore as possible and sent engineers in small boats. Docks were swiftly rebuilt under guard, and the Herrani could do little but watch and wait behind the walls. Arin had set cannons along the battlements, but the harbor was out of range. Opening the gates and sending people to disrupt the reconstruction of the piers was suicide, so the Herrani watched the sun set and rise on the Valorian forces come ashore to unload siege engines. They hauled cannon. They wheeled kegs of black powder. They ranged horses and infantry. And they had somehow already sent soldiers around the city to the side that faced the mountains. Arin had reports of the insignias stitched on their jackets and knew that they represented the Rangers, an elite brigade who served as scouts and were skilled at subterfuge. They quickly melted into the rocks and bare trees.

A month before, Arin had ordered the digging of a trough around the city. When the days before the green storm had brought warm winds that made the winter ground soggy, the Herrani jammed debris into the muddy trough—furniture, chopped trees, broken bottles. The ground had frozen again.

Arin watched a man step to the edge of the deep, littered rut. His face was obscured by a helmet, but Arin would have known, even without the imperial flag painted across the man’s armor, who it was. He had seen the general’s measured step before, the weight of the way he moved.

General Trajan inspected the trough. He glanced at the horses being unloaded from ships. Arin saw him see the difficulty of bringing his army across the trough—the disorder, the broken horse legs, glass wedged into hooves and stabbing through boots. He went to speak with a knot of engineers.

Planks of wood appeared. Foundations were laid. In a week, the Valorians crossed their makeshift bridges and came within reach of the wall.

They kept a wary distance after the Herrani lobbed flaming clumps of pitch taken from the shipyards and balled around paper and wood. There were casualties. A Valorian supply wagon was struck and burned. But other soldiers stepped forward to fill the gaps in ranks, and the remaining wagons were pulled to the rear lines.

The engineers began to build three mounds.

“Kill them,” Arin told his best archers—few that they were, having only an innate knack for bows and crossbows and the little practice that seizing the countryside had brought.

The god of war favored them. The engineers dropped.

Yet soldiers took over the work. The mounds of earth and rock continued to rise, and were reinforced by wood from the disassembled bridges. They began to form towers. Arin knew it was a matter of time before the towers reached the height of the wall, bridges were made to span the gap, and the Valorians crossed over.