“
Arin said, “If I win, I will ask a question, and you will answer.”
She felt a nervous flutter. “I could lie. People lie.”
“I’m willing to risk it.”
“If those are your stakes, then I assume my prize would be the same.”
“If you win.”
She still could not quite agree. “Questions and answers are highly irregular stakes in Bite and Sting,” she said irritably.
“Whereas matches make the perfect ante, and are so exciting to win and lose.”
“Fine.” Kestrel tossed the box to the carpet, where it landed with a muffled sound.
Arin didn’t look satisfied or amused or anything at all. He simply drew his hand. She did the same. They played in intent concentration, and Kestrel was determined to win.
She didn’t.
“I want to know,” Arin said, “why you are not already a soldier.”
Kestrel couldn’t have said what she had thought he would ask, but this was not it, and the question recalled years of arguments she would rather forget. She was curt. “I’m seventeen. I’m not yet required by law to enlist or marry.”
He settled back in his chair, toying with one of his winning pieces. He tapped a thin side against the table, spun the tile in his fingers, and tapped another side. “That’s not a full answer.”
“I don’t think we specified how short or long these answers should be. Let’s play again.”
“If you win, will you be satisfied with the kind of answer you have given me?”
Slowly, she said, “The military is my father’s life. Not mine. I’m not even a skilled fighter.”
“Really?” His surprise seemed genuine.
“Oh, I pass muster. I can defend myself as well as most Valorians, but I’m not good at combat. I know what it’s like to be good at something.”
Arin glanced again at the piano.
“There is also my music,” Kestrel acknowledged. “A piano is not very portable. I could hardly take it with me if I were sent into battle.”
“Playing music is for slaves,” Arin said. “Like cooking or cleaning.”
Kestrel heard anger in his words, buried like bedrock under the careless ripple of his voice. “It wasn’t always like that.”
Arin was silent, and even though Kestrel had initially tried to answer his question in the briefest of ways, she felt compelled to explain the final reason behind her resistance to the general. “Also…I don’t want to kill.” Arin frowned at this, so Kestrel laughed to make light of the conversation. “I drive my father mad. Yet don’t all daughters? So we’ve made a truce. I have agreed that, in the spring, I will either enlist or marry.”
He stopped spinning the tile in his fingers. “You’ll marry, then.”
“Yes. But at least I will have six months of peace first.”
Arin dropped the tile to the table. “Let’s play again.”
This time Kestrel won, and wasn’t prepared for how her blood buzzed with triumph.
”
”