Chapter 26: Magnus Sterlingshire

Katniss's POV

I hear the latch click as I lift it while admitting myself into my – our…. mansion (the adjustment to using different pronouns is only just starting to ebb in how… wonderfully jarring it sounds). A warmth fills me as I take in all that we have, hanging my bow and quiver on the hook in the foyer before I absently crouch down to scratch Buttercup behind the ears.

"Peeta?" I call out. "Dandelion, I'm home!"

'Dandelion' is my pet name for him – really my version of Peeta always calling me 'sweetheart.' And yet, the first floor is silent in answering to my affectionate beckoned call. I stride from the foyer and into the broad space of our open-air kitchen. The granite island is still and deserted, the large ovens quiet, though an empty baking tray just off the sink tells me that someone has been there since I left our bed early this morning. Frowning bemusedly, I mount the stairs and ascend at a leisurely pace, pushing back the ajar door to our bedroom. Empty here too, the bed neatly made. I press on through our room to the adjacent powder room. Quiet here, as well. I cross back to the second floor landing.

"Peeta? Honey?"

Maybe he went over to Haymitch's. Or down into Town to lend a hand at the Bakery for the afternoon. His family business has been erected once more; construction was completed the autumn before we got married, and Peeta has been so happy to get his hands back in dough again.

From the stair railing, I can look down and just see into the living room. No one on the sofa, and the TV looks dark.

So why does it sound like it's on…?

That's when I realize and look up: the attic pull-down ladder has been left hanging, rising up into the trapdoor beyond which we mostly place storage. Though one half of the space Peeta has left aside for…. I should have known. Smiling softly, shaking my head, I grip onto the ladder and begin to climb. I emerge daintily through the trapdoor and sweep my gaze about.

"Peeta?"

And there I see him: my loving husband of just over six months, stationed faithfully at his easel. He turns his head when he catches sight of me, the late morning sunlight making his blonde eyelashes sparkle like homespun gold. Lifting his hand, he presses something in it, and the sound I was hearing abruptly pauses. It seems to have been coming from the beat-up TV set – a classic District 3 make – in the corner, and I seem to recall seeing a set just like that in Haymitch's attic, the morning after Peeta came home and we first decided to embark on the book project. The Victors' Lexicon, Peeta has taken to calling it.

"Howdy, Katty girl. Out in the woods for a while, I see."

"Hey," I murmur softly. Gliding over to him, I sultrily swing a leg across his middle and straddle his lap. Taking his face in my hands and tilting it back, I kiss him deeply, darting my tongue out to part his lips and obtain entrance. I feel him moan underneath me, and I smile, pleased at the effect that I have on him. When we Toasted the bread only a handful of months ago, I swore to be a good wife, true and especially more affectionate than I normally am comfortable with.

When we finally break apart, my lashes fluttering so his eyes as blue as a summer sky can peer into my grey ones, Peeta is grinning dopily. Lifting his head, his mouth captures mine again, chastely, and I hold it, purring. "Hmmmm…"

"Hi," I whisper once he releases me.

"Hello yourself," he chuckles. I remain in his lap, shifting a little to peer over my shoulder at the old TV set, complete with antenna and frozen on an image of a golden-haired demigod bellowing while holding a samurai sword aloft. "What's all this?"

"Oh, you know…. the Book. I thought I'd get a jumpstart on sketching the next entry."

"Mmm-hmmm," I nod and then languidly rise off of him, crossing over to the TV to get a better look. "And who are we on now?"

"Magnus Sterlingshire. District 2. The Twenty-Sixth."

"We're only a third of the way through? I thought for sure we'd be up to Beetee's year by this point!" I call back, gaze not wavering from the utterly fierce Victor who apparently won over half a century ago.

"Well, you know Haymitch: we have to confer with him about his memories, and there's only a couple ideal times to do that, you know, when he's not drunk. In this case, he was only loose acquaintances with Magnus, so trying to pull enough material out of him was like trying to pull teeth. I've been needing to consult the tape for the rest." His hands cast about and close on a small stack of papers, which he holds out to me. "This is the start to my notes. Feel free to start transposing, if you want. The Book's over there on that stool." He points absently behind him.

I retrieve the Book of Victors and begin flipping through the pages we've already done. A full fifty go by before I arrive at a blank spread. Preceding that have been lifelike pictures awash in color, artistically and masterfully rendered as only Peeta can do, while on the opposite page, a brief bio of the Victor and summarized record of the Games is written in my neat script. Though, I will always maintain that Peeta has the better handwriting of the two of us.

I turn back to my love, watching in fascination as he consults the model of this Magnus Sterlingshire frozen on the screen and makes some final brushstrokes with the lead pencil and a stick of charcoal. "The sketch is just about done, then it's on to the painting," he tells me.

Floating over to him, I loop my arms around his middle from behind and kiss him on the cheek, resting my face against his. "So what do we know about this guy?"

"Magnus Sterlingshire, District 2. Went into the Games at 18. It's said he was the first Two Career to have it be a requirement that tributes out of there be the oldest possible – remember that 16-year-old who went in during the Quell and ended up only getting 3rd? Hippolyta Anderson, the Headmistress at their Institute, apparently declared that only 18-year-olds could be deployed at the Reaping from that point on – before then, it had mostly been an unofficial guideline."

A memory strikes me. "There's no way Clove was 18, when she went in with us."

"Either that, or she was really short."

I stifle a giggle. "Uh-uh. There's no way she was older than us. Probably 15 at the most, and that's being generous."

My husband just shrugs. "There were probably exceptions, if talent was high enough." His hand holding the charcoal stills. "You went and fought Clove at the Feast to save me…. real or not real?"

Craning my neck around, I kiss him deeply. "Real," I whisper against his lips. "And I would do it again."

He pulls me back in for another peck, and I indulge him, my breath hitching at how his eyes are shining when we break apart. "Thank you." There is a moment where we just gaze, smiling, into each other's eyes, before Peeta clears his throat. "Anyway, Magnus took down five tributes just by himself at the Cornucopia, out of the thirteen total deaths at the Bloodbath. He was head of a five-man team in the Career pack; they brought on the large girl from 7 that year."

I run the loose strands of his blonde hair through my fingers. "What happened?"

"Don't know; I haven't watched that far ahead yet. Bloodbath was just ending when you came up."

Pulling the spare stool up beside him, the Victors' Book open on my lap, I quickly jot down the preliminary notes Peeta profiled on Magnus before nodding at my husband to resume the tape.

We watch the Careers hunt for the remaining half a dozen survivors across the alternatively jagged and rolling landscape of an Asian steppe, over a period of two and a half weeks. On the nineteenth day, the quintet of Careers go into melee a tad early, leaving Magnus and the girl from 7 as the only survivors, though the latter is badly injured.

Magnus gives her a sporting chance and tells her to run. District 7 staggers away, too trustingly, and she's barely gone a hundred yards before Magnus grins bloodily as he rears a javelin back and hurls it, getting his erstwhile ally right through the neck. She goes down like a broken robot.

Later that same day, Magnus finally encounters the boy from 4, his last opponent, at the crest of a small hill. There is a furious last fight under overcast skies and Magnus dismembers the other boy completely before driving the samurai sword through his heart. I take notes in shorthand throughout all of this, summarizing the whole thing.

I let out a low whistle when the footage ends. "Wow." I slowly get up and move forward to eject the videotape from the player.

"I think he may have been Cato's grandfather."

I nearly drop and break the tape on the floor, whirling around in open-mouthed shock to face my husband. "What?! Why do you say that?"

"There was quite a resemblance. Didn't you notice?"

No, in fact, I hadn't noticed, and now that I think about it, maybe I just hadn't wanted to. I shudder at the thought of our last adversary in Peeta's and my first Games, now dead these last several years.

"It was gnawing at me, so I called up the District 2 – excuse me…. Ryker's Justice Building and asked them to send me some census records. Well, the people over there couldn't give it to me because of security reasons, so they hired out Enobaria Gabbro to go through them."

I bristle at the thought of the last living Career, who tried to kill us in the clock arena. "What, so Enobaria is helping us now?"

"Just on District 2 stuff. There's plenty more where that came from, sweetheart. Anyway, Baria did some digging, and sure enough, Cato was born to a Mercutio and Helena Sterlingshire just before the Fifty-Sixth."

I lift an eyebrow. "Magnus would have been a young grandfather, then – not even 50!"

"Yeah, but I guess Mercutio was only 29 himself when he had his first baby… so Magnus must have had him with some girl soon after coming home from his arena."

I stare at the sketch of Magnus that Peeta is just starting to color in, and I can't help but have my eyes fill with tears.

"Do you… do you think he was alive? And in the Control Central watching Cato when the mutts… got him?"

Peeta sighs heavily. "Enobaria says that Magnus wasn't on the mentoring beat that year, though he desperately wanted to be, to coach his grandson. My guess is he was probably watching from home in their Victors' Village when… when it all ended." A pause. "He's gone now, though. Baria got her hands on a copy of the death certificate. They say he was in the Nut fighting to evacuate others when it collapsed."

I drift over to the portrait of Magnus and softly touch a pair of fingers to a section of unpainted canvas, right below where Peeta's drawn his lip curled into a sneer.

"Well… maybe he and Cato are together somewhere."

"Yeah," Peeta breathes solemnly, taking a light brushstroke to the easel. "Maybe."