Chapter Two: The Shape We're In

Load the car and write the note, seize your bag and grab your coat
Tell the ones that need to know: we are headed north

- Robert Crawford

The compound, all dozen low grey buildings of it, squatted in a small hollow in the hills, with mountains rising on every side. To the north, looking down at what had once been a Sonage village, the house that Demetri's parents and their parents and probably their parents as well had called a winter home - arches and spires gave way to gloomy windows framed by thick dark curtains that they knew from experience were nailed in place over the glass. The winding path up to it was framed on either side by what the rebels called hanging trees, chestnuts and willows with twitching branches casting questionable shadows, and opened up out onto a small gravel foreyard where Demetri was easily spotted, with his arms folded and only a few drops of blood on the toe of his shoe belying that his escape from the broadcasting center had not been entirely smooth. He smiled as he saw the five approach. He had always had the easiest, bright smile of the lot. Uzohola had said that he could single-handedly light up the night with that expression, so natural and contagious did it seem.

It was a good thing that he was the one they were putting on the throne.

"You took your time," Demetri said, as the truck disgorged the five rebels. They had traveled deep into the Wastelands by foot, the thought of the Report seeming to dog at their footsteps like a malevolent specter as they had traveled through the night. They had headed for the shore, watched the sun rise over the waver of the far-away green waves at the precipice of the horizon, kicked sand here and there and waited for their boat with their shoulders set against any intrusion of grief whenever the General's absence seemed particularly apparent. Uzohola had slipped off her shoes to stand in water shin-deep, dark eyes fixed on the dawn, a rainbow of light splitting into spectra as it struck the frayed ends of her wild hair. Wick and Thiago had huddled by the rocky shore, Wick scanning the waves for their boat and Thiago's gaze fixed towards back the way that they had come, though in the desolation that stretched behind them it was clear that anyone trying to follow them could be spotted from several miles away. Vardi Tayna had taken a seat on a rock under the dunes, arms around her knees, the memory of the General etched into the line of her eyes, and after a few minutes of milling aimlessly at the edge of the beach, Täj had joined her, his coat collar turned up against the light ocean breeze coming off the Pacific, still chain-smoking like his life depended on it. Eventually, the Solangean fisherman had appeared on the edge of the world, his little wooden boat flung back-and-forth haphazardly by the waves, and it was only when they were back on the water and leaving the land behind that Thiago had stretched out and put his coat over his face to block the harsh glare of the sun and said, quite determinedly, "sleep now. Rest will be a foreign concept once this Selection begins." They had slept on the boat, and slept in the truck, all except Täj, who seemed to have an unlimited supply of cigarettes in his collar and under his cuff.

"Yeah," Thiago said now. "We took our time."

They did not bow to their new king. How strange that would be, Uzohola had to think, how strange to bow to the boy you had known since you were both gap-toothed with skinned knees and big, childish eyes. Instead, Uzohola kissed him on the cheek - "I think you need to shave, Dimi", she said, and he replied with a smile, "stubble is very fashionable in Angeles these days, darling, haven't you heard?" - and Wick clapped him on the shoulder - "you did great in the broadcast, we'll make a king of you yet" - and Thiago shook his hand and for a moment the two men seemed to communicate something silent with their eyes about what had happened on the Report - "not your fault, Wesick, not your fault at all, this was how he would have wanted it" - and then it was Vardi Tayna's turn to step forward so that the exiled king could put his arms around her and she could put her face into his shoulder and say "well, that's that".

"To lose one father is a tragedy," Demetri said softly.

"To lose a second," Vardi Tayna added. "Gross carelessness." She withdrew, and put a hand on Demetri's cheek, covering the little wound that had appeared so incongruous on their illicit broadcast. The General's golden ring glittered on her middle finger. "Well, he was sick of us anyway. Probably glad to get away from all of this."

That was the way of the rebellion. No time to mourn. No chance to grieve. Contort your sorrow into anger and use it.

"I'll give him this," Demetri replied. "It's great motivation." He accorded Täj only a firm nod in greeting - no more was needed - and, without speaking, the entire group moved into the great house to discuss what was on everyone's minds.

The vestibule inside the front door opened up into a high-vaulted, immense room that might once have been a ballroom. Long tendrils of thorns strangled the broad marble columns here and there that had once held up the intricately designed ceiling. After years of neglect huge segments of the roof had collapsed in, exposing the ivy-strewn space to the pale blue sky above. The herringbone tiles were thoroughly littered with fallen chunks of concrete, torn and abandoned books, rotting wood that might have once held up a balcony or a stage. The entire space was a strange and awful wreck, the thoroughly mutilated corpse of a stately home. And yet, in the centre of the room was an old round table pulled in from some other less-destroyed room, scuffmarks in the dust marking the path it had taken across the cavernous space.

"It's not quite the throne room in Angeles," Demetri said. There was that smile of his again.

"It'll have to do," was Thiago's response.

They pulled up old wooden chairs, and as they did so, a few of the rebels who had accompanied Demetri drifted down to meet them, grim-faced and weary-looking. They had Bertram Givre with them, his skin stretched thin over brittle bones, his age more apparent now than ever, and he was helped into his chair by two of Demetri's bodyguards, between Thiago and the stone-faced Northern Warden. There was the Ambassador to the United Sultanates, if you could call a fugitive chased so far your ambassador, and here were the military commanders who spent their days and nights repelling the black widow queen's forces and eking out what new territory they could for their chosen kingdom. They had not set a place for the General, nor left one empty, as might have been traditional. When you were in the business of making kings and crafting kingdoms, you could not afford to be sentimental.

Thiago's eyes darted around the table, and he could not help but laugh. Here was the new Council for the Kingdom in Exile - dark-eyed teenagers in dusty hoodies, young adults with bruises on their faces and holes in their shoes, a few hardened rebels made near-feral by their time in the Wastelands, a single old man who might once have been Minister in old King Maxon's time some hundreds of years hence. And uniting them all, the one they called Demetri, his seat still empty, closest to the door, for the King in Exile was over at a half-rotten table in the corner, filling a glass of bourbon for himself. He put the ice in methodically. Thiago thought it likely he was the only one to see how the king-to-be's hands shook as he did so.

When he turned, Demetri smiled to see the set-up of the cabinet, and set a jovial hand on the back of Täj's chair as he passed. "The finest Round Table there ever was - Arthur must be green in his grave."

Vardi Tayna, still without title or command, but nonetheless occupying the space between Uzohola and Wick, like a thorn that wouldn't be dislodged, remarked darkly, "that'd be the decomposition, I imagine."

Demetri chuckled. He took his seat, then, and there was the slightest shuffle as papers were produced and notes aligned and the five of the inner circle settled back in their chairs to hear of what had been planned for their new kingdom while they had been lighting fires in their old one. The Northern Warden had been pronounced such because of how quickly and surely she had conquered those coldest provinces, and ensured that all who remained within the borders of Whites and Yukon had pledged their earnest allegiance to the Kingdom of Exile, and the lost king at its head. She didn't have much to say - the more remote regions were the easiest to hold, particularly while the Crown's forces were still focused on retaining control of provinces closer to the capital, but they were so far removed from the southern heartland of the rebellion that it was often easy to forget that the Kingdom in Exile had taken root so solidly across so much land. They had set up schools, Devery Atiqtalaaq reported. Täj's pen moved across the page like it was independent of him, recording it all. They had set up schools, and they had restored electricity to nearly seventy percent of the territory. They had to work quickly before winter arrived to wreak havoc, but she was confident that, with the money funnelled from south to north through raids in the wealthier provinces, that this could be accomplished. In the rebel heartlands to the north and south, the Selection was proving to be a very popular prospect. Of course, anything Devery Atiqtalaaq promised the northerners would prove popular. It was a quality that the rebels had to appreciate and fear in equal measure - for it was all well and good to have a popular commander who could sway those she conquered to the reign of their new king, but, Bertram Givre was fond of reminding the others, a popular commander could easily a usurper make. It wouldn't take much for Atiqtalaaq to decide that she preferred being queen to her people over being a mere warden for the faraway rule of a young king.

But for now, she seemed content to act as governor and report back to Demetri. After her report, it was time for Bertram Givre to, very slowly and laboriously, deliver a breakdown of the finances, if you could call them that. What they had pilfered, stolen and reaved from the regions they had savaged during some onslaught or other, what munitions remained in the stores, what food they had managed to distribute to those refugee camps on which they relied for new blood. It was a delicate balance, Bertram always said - make them feel that Angeles has forsaken them, but do not allow them to starve. A hungry man will go to war for bread, but a starving man can't exactly shoot straight. It was the kind of callous clear-thinking that the leadership kept Bertram around to provide, for he had held some government position or another for as long as anyone could remember, in the time of Trajan and the time of Trajan's father, and the time of Trajan's grandfather as well for all anyone knew. If the General had been the most prominent defection from the central forces, then Bertram had been the only defection from the royal court.

Demetri himself excepted, of course.

Then it was time for discussion of attacks and strategies and land ceded and land won, and Thiago had his words to put in, and Wick could contribute here and there with plans for ensuring that towns were not merely taken but were swallowed whole into the open maws of the Kingdom in Exile, which was proving to be a hungry beast indeed. Progress had stalled along their western fronts, a few of the field combatants were saying now, for Angeles was realising what they were up against and determined to let them advance no further into the heart of the nation. It would fall to a slow war of attrition if they weren't careful, and Illéa had a lot more men to throw onto and under the battlefield than the Lost King did. That was where Thiago and the other inner circle came over - getting past those fronts, disappearing into the nation, and striking true.

Which, of course, led to Vardi Tayna. She had been in the palace in Angeles only forty hours early, and smuggled out what amounted to a fistful of information from the double agent that they kept embedded in the royal court, unknown even to the queen herself. In the past, she had reported exclusively to the General and to Thiago, who would go to the rebel leadership with whatever she had filched which was worth discussing. Now, she said what little she had to say - "Vardi Tayna," Bertram Givre said, rather aghast, "this isn't intelligence, this is just gossip" - and again Täj's pen seemed to devour it all, almost quicker than she could speak.

Throughout it all, there was the unmistakeable impression that the entire room was just impatient, waiting to talk about that which was on everyone's mind, waiting to hear what, exactly, Demetri had planned for this Selection.

And yet, when it came time to discuss it, Demetri just smiled and nodded and thanked everyone for their time. That in itself wasn't much of a surprise - Uzohola wasn't sure just how much of this had been his idea, or how much of it he would be controlling - and neither was the fact that as his lieutenants and advisors and Administers went to stand, the Lost King gestured that his inner circle should remain where they were, so that they might tell him of their bad deeds in Illéa on that most need-to-know basis. Although he was not counted among their number, they did not doubt that Bertram Givre would not hesitated to have remained where he was if he desired to listen in, but today he gestured for Devery Atiqtalaaq to help him from his chair and out of the room. Gradually, men and women filtered from the room until it was only six remaining once again, and the General's absence was again like the phantom pain of a missing limb, undeniable and overpowering.

Demetri stretched out his arms as though to embrace the huge room. "Well? What do you think?"

"You're holding the Selection here?" Uzohola's eyes flitted about the thoroughly wrecked space.

"The visible parts of it. Givre was talking about producing our own Report here once a week. Pre-record it, smuggle it out to a broadcast centre when we can, distribute to loyal families, air it in our settled lands and overseas if we can manage it..." Demetri dropped his arms. "Let the world see what we can accomplish."

"And the invisible parts of it?"

Wick answered that question. "Keep it moving. Can't risk settling in some compound that they could bomb from the air... a Selection on the run, isn't that the plan?"

"Sounds kind of romantic," Uzohola said, amused, "when you put it like that."

Demetri winked at his old friend. "That's certainly the general atmosphere we're going for, Uzo. It is a Selection." He looked at Thiago, who had risen with the others but had not left, and paced now along what might have been the edge of the dance floor, dearly lost in thought. "It'll be a lot of work for you and your spies, Wesick."

"We can manage." Thiago almost smiled. "Sometimes I think all the other parts of the rebellion just slow us down. You get us the names, we'll get you the information. Don't worry about my little birds, your Highness."

Vardi Tayna's sharp smile served as excellent confirmation of Thiago's words, but the expression faded quickly as she looked at the new king with something stirring in her dark eyes. Grief, perhaps - it had been a rushed, busy few hours since the General's death, and she clearly had yet to process what exactly had befallen the man she held so dear. Or maybe it was anger, or frustration, for Demetri cut her off almost as soon as she began to speak, with an expression that suggested they had argued about this before. "Demetri, this Selection -"

"What about it?" Demetri's eyes were very hard.

"What's it for?"

Demetri made a face. "I thought you said you watched my broadcast."

Wick laughed. Even Uzohola couldn't hold back a smile. Täj had set down his pen, but now he was turning his lighter in his hand, so fast that it was just a blur of silver between his fingers.

"Is it to find you a wife?" Vardi Tayna's voice was steady, but brittle. "Or is it to find the kingdom a queen? Or is it..."

What the third option was going to be, they did not hear, because Thiago cut in. "It's a Selection, Vardi Tayna. It's either. It's both."

Demetri met the girl's eyes very steadily. "I don't know what you think you're asking, Tayna."

She curled her lip, but said nothing. Thiago had returned to his pacing when Vardi Tayna stood, reached into her pocket, and tossed an envelope on the table in front of Demetri as she walked towards the door. Demetri raised an eyebrow and turned to look at the dark-haired girl, but it was Täj who spoke.

"What's that?"

Uzohola thought they might have been the first words he had uttered in several days - his vocal chords sounded like they had almost rusted from disuse. He was not the verbose sort, their Täj. Uzohola hadn't heard him speak for several weeks after she had first encountered him in the Wastelands. There had always been someone else around to give voice to what needed to be said aloud, and they could always leave the quiet paranoiac to his chain-smoking and his suspicious glances and his chicken-scratch maps of the hinterlands that the General had always trusted more than any satellite-generated rival.

"My application form." Vardi Tayna threw the words over her shoulder. "For the Selection." She did not look back at them, but went out of the room and down the front steps and out of sight. Täj looked at the envelope she had dropped like it was an open wound, and Demetri sighed but seemed unable to hold back his smile as he picked it up and tucked it into his jacket.

"You know," he said, to no one in particular. "That's actually a bit of a relief. I was a little worried no one would want to join.

Thiago coughed out a bark of a laugh. "Congrats. Now you have an entirely different set of concerns."

He put a hand on Demetri's shoulder as he passed him, and then spymaster followed spy out of the building, the dead king's coat fluttering lightly in the wind that was lashing in the open doors and through the wounded ceiling. The four that remained watched them go in silence, until Demetri said, quite softly, "you'll stay, won't you? All of you. During the Selection."

He said it to them all, but he was looking at Täj, and was rewarded with a nod from the pale young man. The new king seemed very relieved indeed to have earned this assent.

"I'm glad," Demetri said. And then, yet again, he lit up the room with that smile. Whoever won this Selection, Uzohola thought, would be a very fortunate girl indeed. "After all, where would Arthur be without his Lancelot?"

"Alive," was Täj's reply.

I'm very sorry if this chapter seems a little bit like filler, but I wanted to try to explain the world and Selection more fully to help you all to create your characters. Please do let me know what you thought - I really loved reading all your reviews and PMs, thank you so so much! I really appreciate absolutely any and all feedback you can give me.

A few of you have asked about the unusual names of the rebels in this story. Most of them have been chosen to be accurate to the ethnicity and culture of the characters. So, for example, Wick is Native American, and his name comes from a Tla-o-qui-aht chief, while Uzohola has a Zulu name, Klahan has a Thai name, and so on. I hope this helps!

There are still loads of spots open in the Selection!

Thanks so much. I hope you enjoyed!

- Izar