Chapter 4

From the palace window, Peeta has an excellent view of the gardens. He observes the comings and goings of servants, notes the patrols that regularly comb the distant areas of the grounds for stragglers and amuses himself by plucking each memory of his time in this gilded cage. The one about the stolen bread is his favorite; goaded as he was to indulge in thievery by the same woman who now preaches the values and laws of her predecessors.

And she is a woman. No longer the seventeen year old he helped ascend to victory in the arena, Katniss Everdeen has since become a military general, a religious figure and a symbol of renewal for a planet long starved for attention. She has murdered at least two people to ascend to the throne, each death propelling her vision higher than the last.

"Do you think I've changed?" She lets herself in through a panel hidden behind the wardrobe, one of the many secret passageways they weren't supposed to know about as desert youths housed in plush comfort before being thrown to the wolves. She stands taller now and so she has to stoop to escape the cobwebs. There is a spider in her hair that she plucks out with gentle fingers only to crush in the palm of her gloved fist. "I'm sure I must have."

What joy Peeta expected to find at seeing her again wars with confusion. "You're older," he notes, though it doesn't offer much by way of answer. Of course she's older; he's been dead ten years. "Also better at addressing crowds."

Her laugh is still the same: a mere accident of a sound with a foothold in derision and surprise each. "Not hardly. I'm better at pretend games, that's all." She brushes the gloved hand through her hair, arranging it behind the ear. It's the one that bled so profusely when she was wounded in the arena. Peeta has read the reports and knows it's been repaired since. The Tleilaxu are masters of biotechnology. No wonder the Regent feels indebted to them.

The sudden urge to ask her questions seizes Peeta by force. He has the beginnings of a lifetime in her shadow, but he has missed almost eleven years of being at her side. Is it enough to love the person she used to be?

"Gratitude for allowing me to remain in the palace. I did not think—"

"Nor should you." Katniss cuts him short. "My ministers wish you gone and there are profound concerns about your loyalty." A palm stops the wave of protest already rising from the ghola's chest. "Your intentions are not your own. You must know this if you know anything about the Tleilaxu. No gift of theirs is freely given."

"So I am to wait while you pass judgment on my intentions?" The bed is silk and sheer canopy. Stretched upon the sheets, Peeta feels like a slave in tales of old; one ensnared by the very woman he once loved. It should be an epic poem, in song and dance, with flames and dancers aplenty. Instead, all he has is the blue-in-blue of the Regent's measuring glare.

She has not moved to approach him and she does not attempt it now. Perhaps she is disgusted by him. Peeta expects the treatment but not the raw hurt it brings. "I have made my ruling. You will remain in the palace, under lock and key until my advisors are satisfied that you are no threat."

"Guilty until proven innocent, then, is it?" His impudence is served with a roguish smile. So, too, was the flirtation they once exchanged in the open air of the arena. "How can I convince your advisors when they have decided I am culpable already? They will second-guess my every breath." And, with Reverend Mother Johanna Mason at their helm, they will proclaim him traitor and abomination, viper in the empire's bosom. They will know who to call on for his execution.

"Gale has agreed to be your shadow for the coming weeks." Katniss is wise to wait for surprise to pass before continuing. "I have decoys and soldiers to defend me, now, and his skills are fallen to disuse. Persuade him and my council will have no choice but to grant you amnesty."

It's as impossible a thing as airlifting himself out of this life and into the one he abandoned ten years ago. Peeta gnaws the inside of his cheek to force down the curse he wishes to let loose. "Then you, too, want me dead."

For the first time since slipping into his cell, Katniss has the temerity to appear shamed. Under the vision of that strong, military woman beckons a scared little girl on a cold, dark night. "No. Never." When she takes Peeta's hand, her grip shocks him with its chill. More than an ear was lost, then, in the arena, and for whatever reason, his old friend has chosen to replace the lost limb with a mechanical one. Hence the glove. "I rule in my sister's name. She's the one who fits the Sisterhood's bizarre prophecies and hollow calculations, and she's the one who will suffer if I fall out of favor. Do you understand? I can't create dissidents in my own stronghold."

He understands that much has changed for the girl who defied a tyrant, yet for all the power she wields, she is still a pawn at the mercy of others.

"We should have left when we had the chance," Peeta offers in exchange. "When they pulled our names in the reaping…"

Her expression shutters at that. Her hand releases Peeta's. "Stay alive. For both our sakes."

All he can hear is: unlike the last time I put my trust in you.

What's he supposed to do, wonders Gale, defy the Regent and play into the hands of soothsayers? Or is his lot that of the fool who makes way for his rival, time and time again, like some mindless merry-go-round, the scenery flashing by, while he waits for someone to pry him from the spinning dais?

It's taken him years to recognize he'll never have a chance with Katniss, that she's made for bigger things than romance and sietch life, yet here is Peeta returned from the dead to turn her head again and make Gale seethe in the confines of his private chambers. He's promised to give Katniss his thoughts once he'd spoken with the prisoner—whom he won't call Peeta anywhere but in his mind, because he isn't, not really, and to endow him with that name is to admit defeat before the battle's been fought—but incentive is lacking.

A servant knocks and enters his room with a tray of city meats and cinnamon-scented desert brew. She is pretty and lightly tanned, her head ducked so Gale can't see if her eyes bear the traditional blue-in-blue of spice addiction.

"Thank you," he breathes, ill-arranged as he is on the edge of the bed.

The girl looks from the crysknife and whetstone in his hand to his eyes—hers are blue, but not yet fully tainted—and nods without speaking. She could be sixteen or so, her age impossible to determine beneath a shapeless, provincial garb and studied silence.

Gale toys with the desire to make her linger, perhaps to use her until his thoughts have arranged themselves into clear reasoning, but he can't see past her evident desire to be out of his chamber and so he lets her go. His fingers manipulate knife and stone with rhythmic precision until the doors have closed, then both are tossed to the bed. It's times like these that he misses the sietch more than he thought possible. Even if Katniss was more boyish then than she is now, at least Gale had other admirers and a head full of free thoughts to keep him company.

He picks at his dinner over memories of pretty girls with braided hair and boys who played rough—and one who didn't—the end result a wasteful exercise that neither settles his stomach nor helps pacify his mind. The capital does not invite its residents to calm; the palace walls have known far too much bloodshed for ghostly whispers to ever fade.

It's late in the day and the sun is crawling over the edge of horizon, leaving behind slivers of urgency Gale must take into account. The longer he waits, the higher the pressure on Katniss to come to a decision, and whatever she ordains will be done with no small amount of grief on her part. He owes her the duty of sincere counsel and friendship.

He owes her his family's life, not to mention his own.

Suffering through a few hours with the ghola is a small price to pay.

In a fit of desperation, Peeta throws himself at the door secreted behind the armoire. He pulls at it for an eternity that turns out to be eleven minutes by the counting of the clock ticking silently beside the bed, to little avail. His fingertips protest the treatment, but his head aches even worse. He has been locked in solitary for thirteen hours, with no food to eat and only the pitcher of evaporating water for company.

At least the room has an adjacent bath, so he has not been forced to relieve himself in the corner, like a prison inmate in some barbaric land. Still, loneliness and boredom have begun to grate upon his nerves. When Katniss said she would allow Gale to play interrogator, Peeta understood her to mean within minutes, maybe an hour. The wait makes anticipation that much harder to bear.

If found guilty of Tleilaxu treachery, Peeta expects he will be disposed of quickly and quietly, his remains returned to sender. Katniss won't risk making a spectacle of such worthy allies. No other alternative presents itself.

Peeta drifts into sleep by accident. He has no notion that he's dreaming until the palace window shows him a garden littered with the bodies of men, women and children all stabbed clean through with fire-tipped arrows. Some have been pierced mercifully, through the heart. Others were struck down while running from the slaughter. They are all unarmed and they are all, unmistakably, the spawn of the capital.

His awakening is brutal, but much appreciated. Less so is the surprise of blue-in-blue eyes as Gale perches above him. "Tell me," invites the loyal hound, "is thrashing in your sleep something you used to do before you died or is it more of a design flaw that cropped up when they remade you?"

The instinct is just as sharp, though Peeta expects it this time. He doesn't go for the throat, he merely scrambles backwards, putting some distance between them and focusing on his breathing. He was a decent tactician, once, under the right supervision. Gale is just another obstacle. "What do you want?"

"What do you think?" A shock of black hair obscures the other man's eyes, the length of it a symbol of wasted years and affectation. Peeta envisions lighting it on fire. "I've been told to figure you out."

"Don't flatter yourself. I hear they're giving the job away to just anyone."

Gale snorts, the corners of his mouth flickering into a smile. "Like any ticking time bomb." He give Peeta space enough to drag himself off the bed and splash water onto his face, neck and chest. The clock on the side table marks the hour; Peeta was asleep for four. That puts his captivity at seventeen hours so far. It's only the beginning.

Peeta claims a straight-backed chair for himself, putting up his foot on the edge of the bed and waiting, patiently, for interrogation. It's a strange position to be in; these rooms were once the height of luxury, made to house champions who excelled in the arena and the perverts who would use them for pleasure or profit. Now they are prison cells and guest accommodation, depending on the need. Peeta's black clothes stand out among the beige and terracotta tints, but he was never one for vanity and he won't start now.

Across from him, Gale might as well be a relic of man. His weapon alone gives him character; the rest is armor and leather, snaking scars writ into his arms and punctuated in dark ink. Peeta can't understand what Katniss might see in him.

"You'll want to rethink that," Gale warns softly. "You reach for my crysknife and you lose any chance of proving me wrong."

Peeta doesn't bother conceal the sneer or the laugh that follows it. "I don't care what you believe." And I wouldn't need a sabre to kill you. "You don't scare me. I know who I am."

"And who's that?" Arms that have been marked in war curl over Gale's chest, his back to the armoire. "Peeta Mellark, the baker's son? The unlikely gladiator? Or the assassin posing as friend, come to tip the balance of power in favor of the Bene Tleilax?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On which of them scares you more, Gale." There have been no introductions, but then none are needed. Hunting partner and best friend to an imperial Regent is enough to recommend any man. Peeta remembers watching them escape the desert sietch when they were children, longing to follow where they led but too fearful of his parents' wrath. They rode worms together and hunted wild game, bonding over snares and death like true predators. And when Peeta died, who but Gale was there to console Katniss for the loss of her pretend-lover?

No, not pretend. It was real. Peeta remembers that to be true.

"You're right about that." Gale's answer is an unexpected, jarring alarm. "One of you will try to take her away from me. Let's figure out which." The scrape of a chair on the rough, sanded floors is nails-on-a-chalkboard loud in the empty room. "Let's start with the Tleilaxu. What do they want?"

"Besides offering me to the Regent? I don't know. They don't answer my questions and I know better than to ask."

"So you're not curious? You don't wonder what made them openly defy the imperial decrees on cloning self-aware human beings?" Therein lies the difference; Face Dancers are tools made for hard labor and servitude, no better than robots in human form. Gholas are rumored to merit the higher purpose of personhood. Evidently, the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood regards this as sacrilege. Any antiquated religious order would.

And so it begins, each question layered upon the last, each more tendentious than the one preceding, until Peeta is on the verge of shouting and throwing his hands, and Gale is at the door, waving off the guards who have come in.

Once they are gone and the doors sealed shut once more, Gale tries a different tack: "What do you remember about the arena?"

"Everything. I remember the reaping, the naib of our sietch sending us off to bring honor to the tribe… A lot of nonsense." Peeta can't help the flicker of pleasure that blooms at seeing Gale's discomfort. Poor bastard actually believes in the primacy of the free men and women of the desert. He thinks that their methods and prophecies have meaning for the rest of the world. "I know what Katniss wore when we stepped into the arena and how she fought-"

"Do you remember how you died?"

It's a low blow, but Peeta faces it head on. "No. The Masters said I wouldn't. One minute Katniss was with me, trying to get the bandage around my shoulder and the next, I hear gunshots and she's gone. Guess it only," his vague gesture encompasses the prosthetic arm Katniss now uses in lieu of a real, biological replacement, "damaged her arm, not the rest."

Gale waits a beat before speaking. "That bullet only grazed her ear."

"What?" Peeta's mind strains to recall the moment when his partner and friend nearly lost her life for helping him. "No, I remember how it went. She was shot and then everything went dark, so I must have—I must have died."

That's how he's reflected back on the incident in the months since being restored to full awareness. It's the only account that makes any sense. But Gale is shaking his head, slowly, as if speaking to an idiot child. "We have footage. Katniss lost her arm much later, in an explosion. Don't you remember?"

Peeta forces himself to hold the other man's gaze. "No. I don't."