Chapter Three: The Theory Now Goes

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.

- Robert Frost

If there was one thing you learned when you joined the rebellion, it was just how much Thiago loved to clean. Well, maybe he didn't love to clean - but he really did love a place to be clean, which was why when the inner circle arrived at the first of two dozen safe houses that had been prepared for the Selection, Thiago was standing outside with a sweeping brush in either hand and a cloth mask over his mouth to shield him from dust. "Get to it," Thiago said. There was no hello, no how are you, no how's your week been.

It was four days since the Selection had been announced. They were due to broadcast their second rebel Report in one week, announcing the girls that had been Selected to compete for Demetri's hand. And for the past four days, Thiago and his network of whisperers and watchers had been alive and as active as they had ever been, finding out all that could be found out about the girls that had been chosen. They did not even pretend that the Selected would be chosen by random lottery, as was traditional. What was the point in such a blatant mistruth?

The first of the safe houses was a stately house in a ghost town that the rebels were painstakingly repairing, half-fixed house with doors hanging open, burned-down shops with merchandise placed carefully back on the shelves, repaved roads without person or vehicle to be seen for miles. The building in question was set a little apart from the others, with only desert and scrubland stretching out behind it. It had clearly once belonged to a wealthy family, but some years before the war, it had been divided into apartments to be sublet to the lower castes, and its outside face was pockmarked with stairs and extraneous doors and balconies rusted through after years of neglect. Vardi Tayna was sitting on the sill of a window that had been caved in, tiny shards of jagged glass still sticking out from the sides like a malevolent smile. By her attire, it was clear that she had been cleaning at Thiago's behest for most of the day already, but she still had enough energy to smile and wave at the others as they arrived, and mouth get out of here while you can.

But it was too late, so while Demetri went upstairs to inspect the room that was to serve as his royal chambers, such as they were - "don't tell him," Vardi Tayna said to Wick, quite conspiratorially, "but there's still a nest of spiders in the wardrobe" - the others were equipped with brooms and cloths and bleach and dispatched to the first and second floors, which were to belong to the inner circle. Other rebels had been and gone, earlier in the day, to repair and clean the higher floors that would be given over to the Selected girls, so the space felt very large and very empty as Wick and Vardi Tayna set about cleaning what had clearly once been a treasured music room, a grand piano in the corner the last vestige of grandeur to remain uncorrupted in the cavernous space. After a few hours, Demetri reappeared, and sat at the piano, and began to tap out a light sonata while the other two worked - "four days a king," Wick remarked darkly, "and he treats us like the help" - and the hours melted by quite industriously.

Then, from upstairs, there was a scream, and even as Wick jumped up from his seat to respond to it, he saw that Vardi Tayna was half-way up the stairs with Thiago at her heels. Wick had seen what happened to people who made the mistake of messing with Uzohola Ndlovukazi. If Thiago went to follow Vardi Tayna upstairs, Wick was sure that it was only with the vague intention of pulling her off the remains of whatever poor fool had tried it this time. But before they could reach the landing, Uzohola had appeared at the railing overlooking the vestibule, her shoulders bare, holding her t-shirt up over her chest to protect her modesty, no apparent fear in her eyes. "There's hot water," she declared, and then she disappeared again, for the race upstairs was changed from panic to desperation, and Wick didn't hold back from joining in.

By the time he reached the second floor, Uzohola had barricaded the bathroom, and even Demetri didn't seem immune from a kind of amused frustration as he hammered at the door and said, through the wood, "Ndlovukazi, I swear on my dead father, if you use it all up..."

Uzohola's shout was muffled by running water."I need to do my hair, Dimi!"

Vardi Tayna looked at Täj, who had appeared quite silently at the back of the group. She said, with barely restrained glee, "I think there's another bathroom downstairs," and those two were gone before Thiago could protest to the empty air that if anyone was going to have a shower for the first time in what felt like years, it should probably be the young man they had just crowned their king. Demetri laughed and put a hand on Thiago's shoulder and said, "Wesick, I think they need it more than I do," a sentence that was answered in turn with a punch on the arm from Wick.

"Not all of us piss perfume like you, your Highness."

Demetri laughed. "Right, while those three are causing a draught, I'll get started on food."

"First hot meal in three weeks." Thiago shook his head. "I cannot wait."

Wick looked mournfully at the closed door, under which thick clouds of steam had started to seep into the hallway outside. "And this is with only six of us in the building. God help me, I might not survive this Selection."

Demetri's smile felt like coming home. "You and me both, Harjo."

Uzohola was clearly tempted to stay in the bathroom for the rest of the night, but after about twenty minutes she appeared at the door of the shared kitchen on the first floor, clad in the thin camisole and football shorts that she usually slept in, her hair put up into a silk wrap that she had stolen from some stately home in Fennley months ago. Vardi Tayna and Täj didn't seem to have found a second bathroom, so they had decamped to the kitchen, where Täj had his head tipped back, fair hair hanging into the sink. Vardi Tayna stood above him, wielding with some recklessness a metal cup filled with hot water, and she was rinsing his hair, rivulets of water running across his forehead and down the individual white-gold strands like a baptism. Demetri had set up a little portable stove on one of the counters, and the aroma of cooking meat and mixed spices was hanging low over the kitchen, covering them like a blanket. Wick and Thiago were straightening a broken table and collecting chairs with enough legs to hold weight, and someone had left an old mp3 player on the shelf above the doorway, playing tinny, cheerful tunes: "left the house this morning, bells ringing filled the air, wearin' the cross of my calling, and on wheels of fire I come rollin' down here..."

There was something familiar about it all, Uzohola thought. Years ago, when they were still only fourteen or fifteen and the idea of crowning any sort of king seemed a silly fantasy, the prospect of Demetri being that king seemed laughable, these kind of scenes had been commonplace - the inner circle would descend on a ruined house in a newly devastated town from which to run their operations, and someone would cook, and the General might produce a bottle of rum pilfered from the officer's stores, and if Thiago was in a good mood he would start shuffling a pack of cards, and they'd sit about the room and hurl insults at one another until the night had tired of being night, and they moved on to the next ruined town, the next building's carcass, the next job. The General would always throw the empty bottle at the wall before they left - "if it smashes," he would remark darkly, "very bad luck".

It almost always smashed. "Maybe you shouldn't try not throwing it so hard," Vardi Tayna had said once, and then had to sprint laughing out of the room as the next bottle the General threw was aimed in the vague vicinity of her head.

And just like that, it hit Uzohola for the first time, like being punched in the mouth, that the General was gone, and they would never see him again, and they would never hear him tell another grim war story with some darkly funny punchline. He would never again stay on guard outside the compound with his rifle leaning against his arms, always telling the others to get some sleep while he took the first and last watch. He would never again slide into the passenger seat of a rebel truck and tutor Uzohola in mastering what little amounted to evasive driving techniques in the Wastelands ("drive over it!"), never again commandeer the kitchen to strew flour about and make dumplings in anticipation of Vardi Tayna's return from a particularly long mission embedded in the heart of the capital, never again trace out a map in the sand and tell the others, quite solemnly, "now, this is not exactly drawn out to scale...". Uzohola knew that the General had been a killer. He had orchestrated the bombing of hospitals, had arranged for the derailment of trains, had ordered the destruction of entire towns. And he had taught all he knew of killing to Uzohola, and to the others. But he had been a kind of father, not the doting kind, but a constant and reassuring presence, a reminder that if she fell there would be someone to catch her, someone to pull her up and keep her running, someone to patch her up and remind her not to let it happen again.

But for an instant, she could almost imagine that he was there, slouching in a seat by the window and pouring out glasses of mekhong, naming each one in turn: "Uzo, Thiago, kra-chok, Täj, Wick, a very small one for the kingling..."

Demetri would put up a token protest, but even he had never succeeded in staying annoyed at the General's jibes for any length of time. He was a peacemaker, was their Demetri. He was a peacemaker, because the rebellion told him to be one.

He looked over at Uzohola now, and gave her a soft smile. "I know, I know. I'm not doing it right." He gestured to the simmering pan in front of him, a poor approximation of the flavourful Saharan stews Uzohola's father had taken to cooking in the Wastelands, where rabbits were plentiful and spices long-lived.

Uzohola laughed. "It smells great, your Highness."

Demetri rolled his eyes. "Oh, not this with you too."

But again, he couldn't seem to stay annoyed for longer than a few moments. The kitchen was cozy - Wick and Thiago had hammered planks over the broken windows and stuffed rags into the holes in the wall, so the warmth from the stove and the running tap had no avenue to escape into the night sky, and instead filled the room. Uzohola felt abruptly bone-weary, like she had not slept in many years. She could not remember the last time she had spent the night in a bed, rather than sleeping on the ground in the Wastelands or curled up in the back of some car.

Maybe this Selection would have some perks after all.

Vardi Tayna had produced a very sharp pair of scissors, and was very carefully cutting Täj's hair, frayed locks falling into the sink, the other rebel's eyes closed as though she had put him to sleep with the quiet rhythm of it all. She must have caught Demetri looking over, for the spy smiled at the king and said, "don't suppose you fancy a restyling before your next appearance on the Report, Highness?"

"Letting you near me with a blade," was Demetri's reply. "I'm not a total idiot, Vardi Tayna."

She made a face that suggested she doubted very much the veracity of this statement, and he laughed and went to serve up the dinner.

Whatever their argument, Uzohola thought, whatever unspoken tension had led to that quiet fight a few days ago, when Vardi Tayna had flung her application at Demetri and entered the Selection without anyone's say-so, without telling any of the other rebels what she intended to do, they had clearly decided to set it aside and get on with what was important. If anyone else in the group was curious about what exactly had led to the fracture - Uzohola thought some had a better idea about it than others - than they similarly had pledged themselves to tactful silence. She doubted that they had spoken about it. The inner circle usually didn't need to put voice to these kind of unspoken consensuses. They knew each other better than that.

"Get it while it's hot," Demetri said, but the others needed no encouragement, and total silence fell on the kitchen while they dug into the food, Wick wolfing it down so quickly that he burned his tongue and throat. Not even that slowed him down. It was a companionable quiet. Uzohola knew she had to treasure it while it lasted. Täj barely touched his food - that, too, was almost reassuring in its predictability - but instead watched the sun fall through the lone crack between boards through which the light outside still poured into the kitchen and dried his hair with a towel. Thiago pulled files from his bag, and Vardi Tayna began to sort through the pile of myriad scrawled notes as Demetri said, "this is the Selected, then?"

"The first four," Thiago said. The file was thick enough to make the plates bounce when it hit the table. "Reports on their backgrounds, families, pressure points..."

Wick's smile was mischevious. "The first five, isn't it?" He handed Demetri a crumpled piece of paper. "Your Highness, this is my freelance report on the one they call Vardi Tayna. Dominica. Nasty piece of work, I advise you eliminate her on the first day..."

Demetri crumpled the paper into a ball without looking at it, and flicked it at Wick's head. He exchanged a slight smile with Vardi Tayna as he did so. "You're proving yourself an invaluable Administer for Social Matters, young Wickaninnish."

"I take my job very seriously," Wick replied with a grin.

"Clearly."

Then it was Thiago's turn to deliver the debrief of the girls the rebel high command had thus far approved, their family backgrounds, and photos were passed about - not the glossy, posed headshots that would appear on the Report once the Selected were all confirmed, but grainy surveillance images stolen and shot by Vardi Tayna over the past few weeks. Wick could not help but watch Demetri's face closely as each was shown to him in turn - here was a red-haired girl in what might have been a refugee camp, her green eyes big and bright, and here was a dark-skinned girl with twin braids on the arm of some Angeles celebrity, and here was a skinny, slightly dishevelled blonde who seemed to be staring straight into the lens, though Vardi Tayna made it her business to never be seen - and it did not escape Wick's notice that Täj was also watching Demetri's face very closely, as though attempting to divine the other boy's opinions from the minutest change in expression.

"Very good," was all Demetri said, each time, and put the photo back on the table, where it was taken up by Täj and Uzohola in turn, and Wick watched them as well to see what they made of each one. He wondered if they would each have their favourites. He thought it was inevitable that they would. Täj spun a picture between his fingertips - a photo taken at an ice rink, a skater captured mid-spin, dark hair flying - and caught Wick watching him, but said nothing.

Täj usually said nothing.

That night, they did not stay up late as they had done in years past, whiling away the hours of starlight with alcohol and old stories. And though they had prepared rooms for the Selected, and for themselves as well, Täj was the only one who retired to an actual bed for the night. Without speaking about it, the rest of the rebels ended up in what had once been the sitting room on the ground floor. Wick stretched out on one of the moth-bitten couches with his coat over his shoulders, asleep as soon as he was horizontal, and Uzohola curled up in a pile of blankets between two fallen bookshelves, like she was lying in a nest of torn pages of poetry. Thiago did not stay for the night, but was away for the business of gathering information on the rest of the Selected, and though Vardi Tayna probably should have departed with him, she and Demetri put their sleeping bags together in the corner of the room, where the rain would not reach them during the night. There was still a hole in the ceiling that had to be repaired, through which they could see the stars, and if any of the rebels had difficulty sleeping, Demetri's quiet recitation of their names - wurren, tarazed, nash - would have been as good a lullaby as any to send them to sleep quickly.

When the clocks struck midnight, no one was left awake to wish the lost crown prince a happy birthday.

They did not dream.

Hey, guys! Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed. Please let me know what you thought. I know it is a little shorter than the two that came before, my apologies! I just wanted to get the setting established for when the submitted girls all arrive, and the Selection begins in earnest.

This is hopefully the last filler chapter, as the next planned chapter will be the rebel Report announcing the Selected girls and the story should hopefully proceed from there. So, hopefully it gives you a good understanding of the characters. The deadline for submission of characters is next Sunday, but obviously if you get your characters in to me sooner, they can play a larger role in the next few chapters that I will be writing this week. Any characters that are accepted so far have been mentioned in this chapter in their photos!

Let me know if you have any questions. I would really love to hear your thoughts on this chapter. Thank you all so much for your support so far, it means so so much to me!

- Izar