Page 46 of The Winner's Curse
“My grounds. Tomorrow, two hours from sunset. That will give me time to gather the death-price.”
This gave Kestrel pause. But she nodded, and finally turned to Arin.
He looked nauseated. He sagged in the senators’ grip. It seemed they weren’t restraining him, but holding him up.
“You can let go,” Kestrel told the senators, and when they did, she ordered Arin to follow her. As they left the library, Arin said, “Kestrel—”
“Not a word. Don’t speak until we are in the carriage.”
They walked swiftly down the halls—Arin’s halls—and when Kestrel stole sidelong looks at him he still seemed stunned and dizzy. Kestrel had been seasick before, at the beginning of her sailing lessons, and she wondered if this was how Arin felt, surrounded by his home—like when the eyes can pinpoint the horizon but the stomach cannot.
Their silence broke when the carriage door closed them in.
“You are mad.” Arin’s voice was furious, desperate. “It was my book. My doing. You had no right to interfere. Did you think I couldn’t bear the punishment for being caught?”
“Arin.” Fear trembled through her as she finally realized what she had done. She strove to sound calm. “A duel is simply a ritual.”
“It’s not yours to fight.”
“You know you cannot. Irex would never accept, and if you drew a blade on him, every Valorian in the vicinity would cut you down. Irex won’t kill me.”
He gave her a cynical look. “Do you deny that he is the superior fighter?”
“So he will draw first blood. He will be satisfied, and we will both walk away with honor.”
“He said something about a death-price.”
That was the law’s penalty for a duel to the death. The victor paid a high sum to the dead duelist’s family. Kestrel dismissed this. “It will cost Irex more than gold to kill General Trajan’s daughter.”
Arin dropped his face into his hands. He began to swear, to recite every insult against the Valorians the Herrani had invented, to curse them by every god.
“Really, Arin.”
His hands fell away. “You, too. What a stupid thing for you to do. Why did you do that? Why would you do such a stupid thing?”
She thought of his claim that Enai could never have loved her, or if she had, it was a forced love.
“You might not think of me as your friend,” Kestrel told Arin, “but I think of you as mine.”
20
Kestrel slept easily that night. She hadn’t known, before she claimed Arin’s friendship, that this was what she felt. He had fallen silent in the carriage and looked strange, like someone who has drunk wine when he expected water. But he didn’t deny her words, and she knew him well enough to believe that he would if he wished.
A friend. The thought calmed her. It explained many things.
When she closed her eyes, she remembered something her father had often told her as a child, and would say to soldiers the night before a battle: “Nothing in dreams can hurt you.”
Sleep settled on her like velvet.
Then the dawn came, clear and cold. Kestrel’s peace had vanished. She pulled on a dressing gown and hunted through a wardrobe for her ceremonial fighting garb. Her father ordered a new set every year, and this year’s was buried behind dresses. But they were there: black leggings, tunic, and stiff jacket. A worm of misgiving ate through her as she looked at the clothes. She left them where they were for the moment.
It wasn’t that she feared the duel, Kestrel thought as she shut the wardrobe door. She didn’t balk at first blood, which could be no worse than she had received in training sessions. She didn’t dread losing to Irex. Defeat at a duel brought no shame in the eyes of society.
But Kestrel’s reasons for fighting might.
Does society talk about him? Enai had asked. Kestrel pressed a palm against the wardrobe door, then rested her forehead against her fingers. Society would talk about Arin now, if they hadn’t before. She imagined news of the duel spreading among Irex’s guests, who must have been shocked and enthralled by the details. A mistress to fight on behalf of her thieving slave? Had it ever been done?
Obviously not.
