The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1)(84)

“It dried. The cloth smoothed once more. The god left.

“The seamstress, meanwhile, grew anxious. She hadn’t heard from her best and worst customer for days. It didn’t seem possible that she could have escaped him so lightly. One didn’t defy the gods, and never this god. A fissure of thought began in the seamstress’s mind. A suspicion. It widened into an earthquake that shattered her, for she suddenly saw, as the god had, the surest way to bring her to despair.

“She rushed to the neighboring town and the nurse’s house. Her hand trembled against the door, for death was what she would find behind it.

“It flung open. The boy clambered into her arms, chiding her for being so long away this time, asking why she had to work so hard. The seamstress caught at him, held him until he complained. When she fluttered fingers over his face, certain that death had crept under his skin somehow and would burst forth in an hour, or a minute, if not now, she saw that the boy’s forehead had been marked.

“Marked by the sign of the god’s protection. His favor. It was a gift without price.

“The seamstress returned to her shop and waited. Her hands, for once, were not busy. They were calm strangers. They waited, too, but the god didn’t come. So the seamstress did something frightening. She whispered his name.

“He came, and was silent. He wore nothing she had made, but his own clothes. They were impressively cut, an assured fit. Yet the seamstress didn’t know how she had ever missed their threadbare state. The fabric had rubbed down to thin clouds.

“‘I wish to thank you,’ she said.

“‘I do not deserve thanks,’ said the god.

“‘Nevertheless, I want to give it.’

“The god did not reply. Her hands did not move.

“He said, ‘Then weave me the cloth of yourself.’

“The seamstress set her hands in his. She kissed him, and the god stole her away.”

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?”