Marie Rutkoski - The Winner's Curse

“Tunnel under the wall,” Arin told his soldiers. “Dig underground until you reach those towers. Then empty them from the bottom.”

It took only a few days before the Valorians realized why the towers seemed to sink. Arin heard the general bark an order. Shovels drove into the ground around the towers. When they broke through to the tunnels, soldiers dropped down inside.

“Seal the tunnels!” Arin shouted.

He was obeyed. The Valorians didn’t manage to enter the city that way. It was closed off to them, just as it was to the Herrani left to die in the tunnels.

The towers mounted. Arin had only a small arsenal of cannonballs and black powder, but he used most of it to explode the towers.

The Valorians pulled catapults forward. They shot fire into the city.

It began to burn.

A snowfall hissed down onto the fire, helped put it out. It was three weeks since Kestrel had left, and Arin—exhausted, sooty with smoke—remembered how confidently he had assured her that the Herrani could withstand a year of siege.

As if all that was necessary was a good stock of grain and water.

He used the last supply of cannon artillery to destroy the catapults. After that, the Herrani had only the wall and what they could throw off it to protect themselves.

There was a lull in enemy activity. Arin thought the snow had dampened their determination, or that the general was plotting his next move. But when something burst against the mountainside wall and it trembled like a living thing, Arin realized the lull had been part of the plot.

Rangers were blasting through the wall.

Herrani poured boiling water and tar down onto the Rangers. They screamed. They fell. But General Trajan had heard, as well as Arin, the sound of his success. He brought his troops, which Arin now realized had been positioned for this moment, around the city. Soon they would bring the brunt of their power to bear against the weakened wall. They’d ram through chunks of stone. They’d punch at the crumbling façade until a hole appeared and widened. They’d drag the hole open with grappling hooks cranked by siege engines. They would enter the city.

It would be a massacre.

Arin had taken position on the mountainside wall. He didn’t see a ship enter the harbor.

But he saw a hawk—a small one, a kestrel—swoop over the city and dive toward the general.

The man pulled a tube from its leg and opened it. He went still.

He disappeared into the ranks of soldiers.

The Valorian army stopped its assault.

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.

Another hawk was perched on the seaside battlements. It eyed him—head cocked, beak sharp, talons tight on stone. Snow laced its feathers.

The message it bore was short.

Arin,

Let me in.

Kestrel

Kestrel watched the gate heave open. Arin stepped through, and it slammed behind him so that the closed wall was to his back as the sea was to hers. He started toward her. Then his eyes flashed, as her father’s had when she’d met him moments before, to her forehead. Arin’s face whitened.

Across her brows was a glittering line of gold dust and myrrh oil. It was the Valorian sign of an engaged woman.

She forced herself to smile. “You don’t trust me enough to let me inside the city, Arin? Well, I understand.”

“What did you do?”

The brokenness of his voice broke Kestrel. Yet she held the pieces of herself together.

“But Ronan…” Arin trailed off. “How, Kestrel? Who? ”

“Congratulate me. I am to marry the heir to the empire.”

She saw him believe it. She saw betrayal wash across his features, then understanding. She saw his thoughts.

Hadn’t she pulled away from his embrace, escaped across his roof, and nearly drawn a weapon on him?

Who was he, to her?

And Kestrel liked to win. Wasn’t the someday role of empress a tempting stake? Power might persuade where Ronan hadn’t.

Arin’s belief was cruel. Yet she said nothing to change it. If he knew the true conditions of the emperor’s offer, he would never accept it.

“As pleasant as it would be to discuss the details of my upcoming wedding,” she said, “more important matters are at hand. The emperor has a message for you.”

Arin’s eyes had darkened. His tone was biting. “Message?”

“Freedom, for you and your people. He appoints you governor. You are, of course, to swear loyalty to the emperor, receive his emissaries, and answer to him. But unless a matter doesn’t directly concern the empire, you may govern your people as you see fit.” Kestrel handed him a sheet of paper. “A list of Herran’s expected taxes and tributes, to be paid for the honor of being part of the empire.”

Arin crumpled it in his fist. “This is a trick.”

“Surrender now, and accept his generous proposal, or surrender soon, when my father breaks down your wall, and see the end of the Herrani people. It could be a trick, but you will choose it.”

“Why would the emperor do this?”

Kestrel hesitated. “Why?”

“If real, it is a generous offer. And it makes no sense.”

“I advise you not to question the emperor’s wisdom. If you see a good opportunity, take it.” Kestrel swept a hand to indicate her finery: the white furs, the gold, the jewels. “ I certainly did.”

There was an awful tension in Arin, one that reminded Kestrel of his childhood violin. He had been strung too hard for far too long. When he finally spoke, his reply came in a low growl. “I agree.”

“Then give orders to open the gate. My father will enter and escort all Valorians in your city back to the capital.”

“I agree,” Arin said, “under one condition. You mentioned emissaries. There will be one emissary from the empire. It will be you.”

“Me?”

“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. How she would seize any chance to see him, even with the purpose of enforcing the emperor’s will.

Since she could not turn away from her own wanting, she turned away from him.

“Please don’t do this,” he said. “Kestrel, you don’t know. You don’t understand.”

“I see things quite clearly.” She began to walk to meet her father, in whose eyes she had, at last, done something to make him proud.

“You don’t,” Arin said.

She pretended not to hear him. She watched the white sky dissolve into snow and shiver apart over the leaden sea. She felt icy sparks on her skin. The snow fell on her, it fell on him, but Kestrel knew that no single flake could ever touch them both.

She didn’t look back when he spoke again.

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

The idea for this novel came to me while sitting with my friend Vasiliki Skreta on a dark blue gym mat in the children’s playroom of our apartment building. Vasiliki is an economist, and we were discussing auctions. She mentioned the concept of the “winner’s curse.” Quite simply, it describes how the winner of an auction has also lost, because he or she has won by paying more than what the majority of bidders have decided the item is worth. Of course, no one knows what something might be worth in the future. The winner’s curse (at least, in economic theory) is about the very moment of winning, not its aftermath.