"There are three Trials that every Gold Tag takes a month before the reaping to decide who receives the honor of volunteering," I say.

It hurts to talk. My mouth is still one big ache from where they pulled four of my teeth and knocked out two more. I don't dare show any sign of pain though. The Speaker is watching me closely.

"The first ordeal is the Trial of Strength. Each Gold Tag wears a tracking device and is dumped out in the wilderness around Two. The Gold Tags have two weeks to make it back to the threshold of the Institute. They are given nothing but the red uniforms on their back. Those who don't make it are picked up and disqualified."

The Speaker narrows his eyes. "And no one ever perishes on this little…camping trip?"

I nod. "There are usually one or two. They're burned in the Pit and laid to rest in the tribute vaults beneath the Institute."

"How very civilized," says the Speaker. "I'm sure it's some small comfort to them. Go on."

I bow my head. "The next ordeal is the Trial of Spirit. It's considered a taboo to talk about your individual trials at the Institute so no one is entirely sure what happens or even if it's identical for each Gold Tag. It's meant to break our spirits, that's all I know. The Institute works hard to find our insecurities and phobias and burn them out of us through training. This is a test to see if any of them are left. Usually about half of the remaining Gold Tags make it through the Trial of Spirit. I'm sorry, but that's all I know."

The Speaker nods. "And the last?"

"The Trial of Blood." I swallow. "That one's pretty straightforward. The Gold Tag is left alone in the Pit. Sometimes there are weapons, sometimes not. Someone else is led into the Pit. Someone the Gold Tag is supposed to kill. Usually a criminal of some sort. Some of them are brought in from other districts. But sometimes it's not. There are rumors in the Institute of Gold Tags having to kill old women or children. Family members of traitors. In special cases your Trial of Blood is someone you know. Those are the ones that usually break. Or refuse. If you refuse you'll never go into the Peacekeepers. Because killing the person in the Pit is a standing order. That's all I know. That's all I've heard.

"Those who make it through all three Trials are ranked and scored by the Headmistress and her staff. No one knows who the tributes will be until the Choosing Feast the night before the reaping. Boudicca announces both tributes in front of the entire Institute in the Great Hall."

I stop talking. Rub my tongue around my sore gums. "Please," I whisper as I bow my head. "That's truly all I know. Please…"

The Speaker nods at Otho the Unspoken. "She speaks the truth, Great Otho. There are no lies on her today."

Otho gives me a leering smile and barks a short series of grunts.

"Yes, Great One. She has become much more docile. Like a wild mare, once her spirit is broken." He turns to me and gestures to the bowl lying on the floor. "Go ahead, Enobaria. You earned it."

I don't hesitate. I fall to my knees in front of the bowl and start shoveling cold, stringy dog meat into my mouth. Grease runs down my chin and onto my fingers and I lick them clean. There are strings of roasted onions and radishes too. I've never tasted anything so delicious in my life. I wash it all down with a skin of sour wine. It smells like piss and tastes worse, but the burst of fire in my belly is enough to wash away some of the pain in my mouth, my half-healed fingers and my ribs, my lacerated back.

Otho the Unspoken watches the spectacle with an amused look. The Speaker paces in front of me, fingering his sword. He has at least three. Beautiful weapons, each with the distinctive look of District 2 craftsmanship. Two broken fingers my first week here taught me not to voice questions about where the Reavers got District 2 weapons.

I'm gnawing at a particularly tough piece of meat when the Speaker squats down and gives me his boyish little grin. "That boy you came here with. Declan, wasn't it? He was wearing a gold tag. He was one of this year's contenders, wasn't he?"

I don't answer with more than a glare. I couldn't even if I wanted to. The meat is really tough. The temptation to spit it in his face passes quickly. I've learned the price of defiance.

The Speaker must see it on my face and laughs. "Good girl. You know, it's sort of ironic, isn't it? The boy who was supposed to take the Trials was the one who was begging you to kill him to save your friends. He was the one who would've been told to murder someone in cold blood for the honor of stepping onto the reaping stage, but you were the one who drew the blade across his neck. Seems to me like you would have been a better choice. Poor, brave Declan didn't have it in him, did he?"

Again, I don't answer. Instead I lick the bowl clean of grease. I try not to pay attention to his words because hearing Declan's name on this man's lips is a greater pain than any they've inflicted on me.

And they've been inventive.

After they dragged me back to the village, after the stream and Pat and the nightlock, they took me to a tiny hut, empty but for a wooden x-frame. They laughed as they bound me to the frame, the leather cords biting deep into my wrists and ankles. Around my neck they put a leather noose, cleverly tied so that it tightens if I struggle. There's just enough room for my head to sag as I sleep. But I don't get much of that anyway.

They left me there for three days. To starve, to grieve, to go mad with dehydration. I cried several times after, for Dec and Maura and poor Pat, but after that first night there was no water left for the tears.

They brought me back before Otho and the Speaker after the third night. By then two men had to hold me steady as we walked into the longhouse. They tied me to one of the support posts and put a bowl of water just out of reach. Then they started asking me questions about 2. The population. The villages. The Institute. The mayor. Even the weather, how hot does it get in summer, how cold in winter?

I shut my mouth and bit my lip but I couldn't stop staring at that bowl of water, and when they finally let two of the dogs lap it up in front of me I broke. I answered the last question, told them how many Victors there are living in 2 (thirteen). The news of Ahenobarbus's death put a smile on quite a few faces. One of the Reavers kicked the bowl in my direction and I gulped it down, burying my face in the hard packed ground to slurp up the mud from where some of it spilled.

After that, the floodgates fell. The Speaker held a waterskin above the bowl and gave me another swallow for every tidbit about the Victors. Even Boudicca's age. Even about how fat Tiberius is. I told them that our youngest Victor is two years out of the arena, that the fifties were a bad decade for Careers in general. I told them the location of the Victors Village.

The Speaker let me drink until I could drink no more. Then they took the first tooth. For lying about the location of the Victors Village. He had known. He had seen the lie.

I took advanced interrogation classes in the Institute as preparation for my future career in the Peacekeepers. I learned to read liar's signs, the blinking, the twitch of a jaw, the shifting of weight that marks a lie. But I never learned how to hide them. I never practiced. No need. Too lazy. Hiding liar's signs was a game for future tributes. Not me.

Stupid, stupid, stupid Baria.

The tip of the sword touches my chin as the Speaker lifts up my head. "If you're done taking advantage of Great Otho's hospitality, he has a few more questions."

"Yes," I whisper. I pull myself to my feet. "Anything the Great Otho wants. I'll tell you everything, just please, please don't hurt me again."

There's a sadistic gleam in Otho's eyes and I know there will be some sort of pain in the near future. Otho's moods are as vast as his belly and as quick to change as a summer storm.

"Great Otho would like to know," says the Speaker in his drawling voice, "about the main military facility in District Two."

"The mountain fortress," I say. "Yes, I – I know a little. We took a field trip there every year. The cadets, I mean. I've been inside."

Otho grunts and makes a few gestures with his hands.

"How big is the fortress?" asks the Speaker. "A rough estimate?"

"There are thirty-nine levels, from the lowest storehouses to the observation platforms near the summit. There are rumors of levels even lower, but I don't know anything about that."

"I see. Are there nuclear weapons within the facility?"

"They said there are, but those facilities were never on the tour."

"Air support?"

"A hovercraft landing platform is built about halfway up on the southwest side. There are three hangers for the military-grade hovercrafts and one for luxury and medical crafts."

How many military-grade hovercrafts per hanger?"

I have to pause to think for a moment. "At least thirty. Possibly more in a pinch."

Otho grunts something to the Speaker, who nods. "Yes, Chief Otho, Enobaria, sweet, how many people can the mountain fortress support? Both martially trained Peacekeepers and support staff?"

I bow my head and make my gambit. "About two thousand, Great Otho."

"Liar." The Speaker sounds amused.

I bite my lip. "Maybe another five hundred. In a pinch. That's all I know, I swear, that's what they told us on the tours."

"Liar," says the Speaker again. "I can see your shoulders tense, your eyes shift, and biting your lip is as good as screaming it out loud. You know what this means, Enobaria. I didn't want to keep doing this, but you must be punished."

"Please," I beg. "Please! I told you everything! I told you about the Victors, about the Village, the Trials, the fortress, I told you the truth, all of it, you know that!"

"And you thought to lure us into a false sense of security so you could try another lie? I'm so disappointed, Enobaria. Three weeks you've been with us and still you're playing these childish games." The Speaker clicks his tongue. Otho claps his hands. Reavers slink out of the shadows from where they've been watching. In half a moment I'm surrounded and forced to my knees.

"Take one from the back. I want her to still be able to talk when it's over.

I try to scream but my breath is closed out by the huge, hairy hands that grip my throat and jaw and force my mouth open. A slender and smooth-cheeked young man who I've identified as what passes for a healer here takes an iron set of pliers and guides it into my mouth. I feel it close around a lower molar. The metal is cold as ice. It tightens and there's a twist and then the young man is tossing my tooth at the Speaker's feet. Then the pain comes, raw and blinding. The men release me and I tumble to the hard-packed floor of the longhouse, coughing and choking and spitting up gobs of dark blood and saliva as laughs ring around me.

"I think we should give Enobaria time to think about what she did," says the Speaker. Otho grunts something that sounds like an affirmative and waves his hand to several of his men. They help him off his throne and he stumbles out of the longhouse, followed as usual by his young serving girls and his mutt-spawn wolf. No doubt they're going to the Cage to watch a dogfight or something similar.

Someone kneels down beside me. A cool cloth wipes the blood from my face.

"Here, drink this."

A skin of wine is pressed to my lips and I drink. It's good wine, bright and sweet, but it's soured by the iron taste of blood. I take a swallow, spit the mess out, then drink deep. The Speaker is watching me, his dark eyes flickering in the light of the fire.

"I'm sorry I had to hurt you, Enobaria. But this is serious business, for us. We're fighting for our lives, our very existence. We need good information from you, the right information. Believe me, I don't like hurting you. I'd much rather we be allies. Even…friends."

I know exactly what he's doing. It's a classic indoctrination technique, making the prisoner believe that she might have a friend in one of her captors, a possible ally and confidant. The Speaker isn't even too bad. His eyes are soft, his hands gentle, even the scar across his face looks less ugly as he talks about how all he wants are for the children to grow up whole and healthy and without the fear getting their tongues ripped out before being shipped to the Capitol.

He's good, I'll give him that. But I've seen better.

Still, as he wipes more blood from my chin, I don't pull away.

"Someday I'd like to show you more of us, Enobaria. We're wanderers, and there are such wonders out here. I think you'd really like it here. You're brave, resourceful. Quite bright too, although you work hard to hide that. And a damn good fighter, of course. You're practically half a Reaver already."

He stands, wipes his hands off on the towel. "So if you have any questions about us, you're free to ask. You know that, right?"

It's a lie and we both know it, because I know there are some questions that I can't ask without a painful answer, like where certain swords came from. Still, I spit out a bit more blood and manage a question, the only one I ever ask in seriousness.

"Who are you, Speaker?" I say through the swollenness and aching pain. "Where did you come from?"

The Speaker turns and gives me a half-smile. "My name is Jace," he says. "I was a simple fisherman from District Four, a second mate on one of the big crab trawlers. I had a wife, a pretty little thing named Rosie. I loved Rosie very much. But then a Capitol liaison took a liking to her. She refused him, as she was already a woman wed. So the Capitol man decided to arrange an 'accident' on the next fishing trip. I only found out because I had a friend in Four's administration. Rosie and I made a run for it, deep into the wilderness. She died of a snakebite two weeks in. The Reavers found me three weeks after that."

I watch him closely. Nothing in his face betrays him. No liar's signs. It is, for all intents and purposes, the truth.

Except that when I asked three days ago, he was from the Capitol, and fled after his debts were called in. And a week ago he was a simple district worker who fell in love with a Victor and had to run after he got her pregnant. And the week before that, he was born a Reaver, the son of a chief and the last survivor of a Capitol raid. And all of those read as truthful as his story today.

The Speaker's face is impassive but his eyes are laughing at me. "Have you figured out the truth, Enobaria?"

"Not yet," I say. "Someday."

He laughs at this. "When Tigellinus retires, perhaps."

He calls in a couple of men to take me back to the hut that serves as my cell. The Speaker is teasing one of the pups with a groosling bone when it hits me.

"How did you know that?"

"Know what, Enobaria?" he asks without looking at me.

"What you said about Tigellinus?"

He turns his head, amused. "You told me about him, remember? Boudicca's second-in-command at your Institute, no wife but his work, universally hated by the cadets, and so on and so forth."

"But I never told you that," I say in a soft voice. "'When Tigellinus retires' is a joke among the cadets. It means something is likely to never happen. And I never told you about that. I had no reason too."

The Speaker makes a scoffing noise, but it all clicks into place. And then the pain through my body is replaced by the white-hot burn of rage and betrayal.

"You're a Two!" I spit. "No, you're more than that, you're one of us! You were at the Institute, you, you snake! You traitor!"

The Speaker arranges his features into a mask of vague disdain, but it's not enough to hide brief glimpse of panic and anger I saw before that. His fingers twitch around the hilt of his sword.

"That's where you got those weapons!" I'm shouting now. "You didn't get them in a raid, you didn't kidnap more cadets other than my friends, you brought them with you from the damned Institute. How could I be so stupid, so blind, you're a fucking Two! A traitorous, son of a mutt, Snow-damned-"

The blow smashes across my cheek. Hard, filled with the anger the Speaker doesn't even bother to hide from his face. I spit out another piece of tooth.

"I'm a Reaver, Enobaria," he says in a furious hiss. "A Reaver, and if you ever forget that I'll be sure my little pet here writes the lesson on your face. Permanently." The tip of the sword runs across my face, and I feel tiny beads of blood drip down. "I'll let you keep your tongue because you need to answer questions. But there are other things you don't need. Your nose. An ear. Eyes."

He turns away and goes back to petting the pup. "Don't forget again. Now get her out of here."

Usually the Speaker supervises the men who restrain me, but I suspect he's barely keeping himself from killing me. The feeling is mutual. Blood is pounding through my temples.

The man who leads me out of the longhouse into the village is middle aged and fat and reeks of wine. I can hear it sloshing around in the skin around his belt. His free hand gropes my breast as he pushes me towards my tiny prison.

"Pretty girl don't make trouble," he growls. Then he smiles. The alcohol on his breath is overwhelming. "No make trouble or Yamo teach you lesson." He gives my breast a firm squeeze.

Over the past three weeks, I've received many such gropes and grabs, but nothing more than that. I assume the Speaker has forbidden it. Maybe they want to sell me as a concubine to some chief when this is done. Still, I bow my head and stumble along. "Yes, great Yamo," I whisper. "I'll be good. Please don't hurt me, please."

This seems to please Yamo immensely. He pushes me into my prison hut and follows. I stand there, cowed, as Yamo takes a swallow of wine.

"Please," I say as I stare at the skin. "Please, just a bit? I'm so thirsty. Please, have mercy."

Yamo looks to the skin, then to me. "You want drink?" he asks. He brings to the skin to my lips, then pulls it away at the last moment. "None for you! All for Yamo!" he bellows as he takes another huge swig. The purple liquid dribbles down his chin.

"Yes," I say. "Yes, all for Yamo. A little for Baria? Please?"

Yamo gives me a pitying look, then relents. "Oh yes. One drink for Baria." Again, he brings the wineskin to my lips, and again he pulls it away. He laughs uproariously at my gullibility and drinks again.

"None for girl. Baria our prisoner. Must behave first!" He twists one of my many braids around his finger. "Yamo like pretty prisoner."

"Not my hair!" I sob. "Please, no, don't touch my hair." I slap his hand away. This angers Yamo, who scowls.

"My hair!" he shouts. "Yamo keep hair!"

In a flash he has a knife out. It slices through the braid, with falls to the ground. I let sobs shake my body. "Okay, you have my hair, no more, please no more!"

"Yamo take more! Yamo take all!"

In less than a minute, my hair is shorn brutally short and twenty long ropes of hair are on the ground. Yamo picks one up and laughs. "Present for Yamo!" he says as he tucks it into his pocket. Then he drinks. And drinks again.

By the time he ties me to the x-frame, his hands are fumbling and shaking. Yamo manages to stoop down and tie my ankles securely. My wrists are more of a challenge, he's not a tall man. But eventually I'm secured again and he steps back to admire his handiwork.

"You no escape from Yamo!"

"No," I say. "I'm so helpless, so helpless, I can't do anything. Please, Yamo, a drink, just one drink."

Yamo takes his skin and splashes some wine in my face. It stings my eyes.

"There! You drink!"

He laughs and leaves the tent, one braid of my hair in his pocket, the rest on the ground. I'm left sobbing and shivering, bound hand and foot, helpless and alone.

As soon as he's gone, I start to laugh.

"Oh, Yamo, you poor drunk son of a mutt. You forgot something."

The noose that's supposed to go around my neck is lying three feet away.

It takes an hour to wriggle the leather binding a foot down the frame. But finally I can twist my neck and press my face against my wrist.

"You're not the only one who can lie, Speaker," I whisper.

The pain in my mouth from my pulled and broken teeth is blinding. And inconsequential. I'm not going to let pain stop me. I'm not going to let anything stop me ever again.

My remaining teeth close around the leather binding my wrist and I begin to chew.