The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1)(72)

“Damned lucky. A tangle of bushes kept you from going over the cliff, you were practically buried under a pile of rocks, and still you didn’t break anything.”

“I feel as if I broke everything.”

Cheat had an odd expression on his face.

Arin said, “You were lucky, too.”

“To get knocked on my backside and miss the battle? I don’t think so.” But Cheat shrugged, sat on the edge of the bed, patted Arin’s bruised shoulder, and chuckled when Arin swore. “There’s always next time. Tell me what happened after you were fished out from under the rocks.”

“The plan worked. The Valorian officers in the front and rear were cut off from each other by the landslide, which wiped out a good amount of their middle ranks. They surrendered. I think we managed to make sure no messengers escaped out the Valorian side of the pass. I sent the wounded to the governor’s palace. Might as well turn that place into the hospital it’s become.”

“Our wounded, you mean.”

Arin propped himself up on one elbow. “Both sides. I took prisoners.”

“Arin, Arin. We don’t need any more Valorian pets. We’re already up to our eyeballs in aristocrats. At least their letters sow misinformation in the capital. And they provide some entertainment.”

“What would you have had me do, kill them all?”

Cheat opened his hands as if the answer lay on his palms.

“That’s shortsighted,” Arin said, too weary to care about giving offense. “And beneath us.”

Cheat’s silence gained a hard edge.

“Look at it this way,” Arin said more carefully. “One day we might be in a position to trade prisoners. This wasn’t the last battle. Some of us might be captured during the next.”

Cheat stood. “We can discuss this later. Who am I to keep our hero from his rest?”

“Please stop calling me that.”

Cheat tsked. “People will love you for this,” he said.

But he didn’t sound as if that was a good thing.

*

The possibility of a future no longer felt frail to the Herrani. Before the battle, they had largely continued living where they had been slaves if they didn’t have original homes to return to. Now empty Valorian houses were sized up. Cheat’s permission was sought to move into one place or another, but sometimes people’s eyes slid to Arin before they spoke. Then Cheat invariably said no.

Arin worked to construct their fighters into a proper army. He made a list of people who had distinguished themselves during the battle and suggested that they be made officers. The titles he wrote were the same as those used by the Herrani military before the conquest.

Cheat frowned at the list. “I suppose you want to bring the monarchy back, too.”

“The royal family is dead,” Arin said slowly.

“So what are you, the next best thing?”

“I never said that. And that has nothing to do with naming officers.”

“Oh no? Look at this list. Half of them are former blue bloods, like you.”

“Half of them aren’t.” Arin sighed. “It’s just a list, Cheat. You decide.”

Cheat gave him a measuring look, then scratched out some names and wrote in others. He signed with a flourish.

Arin said they should begin taking land outside the city, capturing farms and bringing in grain and other foodstuffs to prepare for a siege. “The Ethyra estate would be a good first choice.”

“Fine, fine.” Cheat waved a hand.

Arin hesitated, then offered him a small but full and heavy satchel. “You might find these books interesting. They’re on Valorian wars and history.”

“I’m too old for the schoolroom,” Cheat said, and left Arin with his hand outstretched.

*

Kestrel began to hate her rooms. She wondered what kind of family Irex had had, that a lock workable only from the outside had been added to a suite so sumptuous that it must have belonged to his mother. The lock was Valorian brass, intricate and solid. Kestrel knew it intimately by now, since she’d spent enough time testing it to see if it could be picked or forced.

If she had to choose which aspect of the suite she despised most, it would have been a hard call between the lock and the garden, though these days she nursed a particular grudge against the curtains.

She hid behind them to watch Arin leave the house, and return—very often on her horse. Despite the way he had looked after the battle, his injuries weren’t serious. His limp lessened, the bandage on his neck disappeared, and the raging bruises muted into ugly greens and violets.

Several days passed without any words between him and her, and that set Kestrel on edge.

It was hard to rub out the memory of his smile—exhausted, sweet.

And then that waterfall of relief.

Kestrel sent him a letter. Jess was likely to recover, she wrote. She asked to visit Ronan, who was being held in the city prison.

Arin’s reply was a curt note: No.

She decided not to press the issue. Her request had been due to a sense of obligation. She dreaded seeing Ronan—even if he agreed to speak with her. Even if he did not loathe her now. Kestrel knew that to look upon Ronan would be to come face-to-face with her failure. She had done everything wrong … including not being able to love him.