Chapter Nine: If He's Going To Stay
Why don't you ask him who's the latest on his throne?
Don't say that you love me, just tell me that you want me.
- Lindsey Buckingham
"...nononono, that's not all, and then he asked me if I'd ever heard of this poet, Nizar Qabbani?" Yue's eyes darted about the group, looking like she was very much expecting them to respond wait, you didn't know who Nizar Qabbani was? What kind of an idiot are you? She had been smiling when Saran and the others came out of the safehouse to meet her, and she had not stopped smiling since. It was so lovely to see, and yet Saran could not quell the slight heaviness in her heart as she realised that Demetri had taken the time to chat and laugh with the other northern girl, despite carefully avoiding everyone else up until now. Was there something special about Yue, something bright that drew the eye, something more attractive than the others?
Did Saran care? It hadn't been her idea to join. It had been her grandfather's. Did she really want Demetri to pay attention to her?
Or was it just the fact that she didn't know why he wasn't paying attention to her?
She thought that was probably it. That had to be it. She hoped that was it. Yue was an absolute sweetheart - the last thing Saran wanted was for some idle chatter about books and poetry to drive a wedge between her and the first burgeoning friendship she had found in this strange Selection. Saran had never wanted to marry the king, but it wasn't the nicest feeling to realise that the king clearly didn't want to marry you.
"Nizar Qabbani?" Saran's nose wrinkled as she thought carefully, distracting herself from the vague stirring feelings of inadequacy with the question of literature. "Did he write Elegy for a Woman of No Importance?" Maybe it had been some sort of a veiled insult. She didn't want to think that Demetri was the type to do so, but the truth was, she had no idea what kind of man the King of Dust was. Maybe he was cruel. Maybe he was thoughtless. When she died, no face turned pale, no lips trembled; no eyes followed the coffin to the end of the road...
Maybe he just genuinely liked the poetry, and didn't know how an overprotective Saran would try her damnedest to interpret it. She almost laughed at the idea. She was definitelyreading too much into this.
"I don't know." Yue sighed. "Maybe he did? I've never heard of him before. Oh, I'm sure I came across as such an idiot."
"Did you behave like yourself?" Ekaitza's voice was sharp and blunt, and cut through all else. Like a brick through a delicate crystal window, Saran thought amusedly. Ekaitza did not stand on ceremony. It was refreshing, sometimes, and immensely aggravating, other times. Today, she was tending towards the former, but moments like this hinted at the latter.
"...I think so?" Yue's shoulder hunched forward a little bit as the quartet of girls following the dirt path down into the ruins of the town. Quite bizarrely, Saran thought, a thin finger of smoke was rising from one of the destroyed chimneys, which lay at a forty degree angle to the ground, so that the smoke came out horizontally and had to be swiftly redirected upwards by the window. Other than that, there were no signs of life - she had rather hoped to see some of the rebels. One rebel in particular? She almost smiled to herself. Behave yourself, she thought. Don't forget why you're here. "Are you going to tell me that was a mistake?"
Ekaitza shrugged and pinched her fingers very close together. "Just a little one." They passed what might have once been a bakery, a clay oven collapsed into a larger pile of bricks, a bread-shaped sign half-hidden beneath burned rafters. The entire place was a ghost town, like they were walking through the skeleton of a village. This cobblestoned street had been its spine - the collapsed spire of a cathedral, here, a cross that had once touched the sky and now barely rose beyond even Saran's shoulder, had been its heart. "But yeah. A mistake."
"Ekaitza!" Saran didn't try to hold back how she felt - she clearly sounded scandalised. "Yue, being yourself is never a mistake."
"Well," Ekaitza began, but was cut off by the other northern girl very quickly.
"Never," Saran said again, quite firmly. Was she channeling Naran right now? She thought she was. Her twin always knew exactly the right thing to say - when to stand and fight, when to gracefully concede defeat. Saran was perhaps a little too quick to jump to the graceful concession stage. Maybe having a pseudo little sister like this was going to be good for her, she thought, looking at Yue. "Unless you're Ekaitza, of course. I think we could rather do with her being someone else for a little while."
Saran was glad to see Ekaitza's mouth twitch at this pronouncement. It was, Saran was sure, very tough to insult the younger Baffin girl, but friends were few and far between in the Wastelands, and she didn't want to risk any of them by presuming a closeness that wasn't yet there. They were, after all, all in competition with one another, for a very great prize indeed - and Yue had apparently just made a very important play. Or maybe she hadn't. In this Selection, everything seemed very murky and complicated indeed. So far, Yue and Ekaitza were, on the other hand, blessedly simple.
"You know what?" Ekaitza said. "Altai might be right." She shrugged. "I'm just saying. If the prince wanted a nice, sweet girl like Yue here... I don't know why he included us two." She gestured to Corvina and herself. "And if he wanted girls like us, well, I'm sure there are plenty of rebel girls that fit the bill he could have married in the last fifteen years. If you ask me, I'm not exactly sure this king of ours knows what he's looking for."
"Keep your voice down." Saran's eyes darted about, searching for minders or watchers or guards in the shadows.
Yue was shaking her head. "Matters of the heart," she said softly. "Aren't just a..." She paused. "A calculation of preferences and types. Maybe he doesn't know what he's looking for. I don't think that's a bad thing."
"Maybe," Ekaitza said. "Or maybe they're just keeping us here for propaganda purposes, and he's picked his favourite on day one, and they're just spinning their wheels to keep this looking like a proper Selection."
It wouldn't have been a day out with Ekaitza Jones, Saran thought amusedly, without at least one very dark conspiracy theory spouted in the first ten minutes. She was a constant fount of them - Saran's personal favourite was the idea that the crown prince had been killed and his corpse preserved in the permafrost of the northern provinces so that they could recover DNA from his form should his replacement's claim be tested ("that's why establishing the Kingdom in Exile in the north was so important, my grandda reckons, that's why they sent Devery up there to take control so quick").
"Just you wait," Ekaitza added. "Bet you more than anything it'll be one of the Angeles girls."
"There's only one Angeles girl," Saran reminded her.
"There's plenty of them. Lahela, Lee, Vermudez... it's a state of mind, is Angeles, not a matter of geography. We're north, Rouen is south, they're Angeles. They'll pick one of them to make the Crown look foolish and then take the rest of us out back behind the safehouse and put us down like Old Yeller."
"Are you ever not a cynical bastard, Jones?" Corvina Rouen had found, borrowed or stolen a pair of dark shades, but her faint amusement was apparent even with her eyes hidden behind them. "You rather seem to delight in visions of gloom and doom."
"You're not," Ekaitza replied. "Entirely incorrect. More exciting than the alternative, don't you think?" She clapped Yue on her shoulder. Saran thought she saw the smaller girl's teeth rattle. "No offense meant, little Yukimura. At least you got to make a first impression - good or bad, it's more than the rest of us. I'm sure you positively charmed the crown off him."
Corvina's smile was wicked. "Oh," the Sonage girl said, the world reflected very distortedly in the lens of her sunglasses. "Let us hope not."
From the window of Lissa Dove's room in the safehouse, she could see Corvina Rouen's little group walking downslope towards the ruins of the town that lay in the valley below. They were a small group of girls, all dark haired, three northern, with a single southern girl as their pseudo-queen, Rouen relishing her influence over the others. Or, at least, that was all that Lissa could see when she looked at them. Little Yue, so desperate to be included, to win approval, to move herself closer to the crystalline dream of a happy life. Elegant Saran, good-natured to a fault, focused and thoughtful, every inch a composed Four. Those two were already favourites to win the Selection. Was that why Rouen was making it her business to get her hooks into them so early on?
Ekaitza Jones reminded Lissa strongly of one of the Outsiders. She was a blunt, slightly rough girl, missing one finger on her left hand where she claimed to have tussled with a wolf and a tooth where she had got into a fight in a parking lot outside of a bar in Baffin - Lissa found one much easier to believe than the other. Lissa had gathered that Ekaitza and her grandfather had done some smuggling work for Pandora, guiding weapons pilfered from Crown and rebel stocks alike through the taiga and the northern wastes and across the water, where they were easily spirited away into the Russian Federation or even further north into Greenland and Iceland. That was probably why Rouen had found it so easy to recruit Ekaitza as her persistent shadow. They had both tithed in to Pandora in some small way - Lissa had heard that Rouen waitressed, and functionally managed, a few of the money-laundering facilities Illéa still insisted on calling restaurants.
Lissa had never liked Pandora very much. They were bullies and thugs who maintained a thin veneer of professionalism simply by virtue of some small degree of competence - and that clearly went to shit as soon as they came close to a complication, as the fiasco two nights ago had shown. Lissa's little family had never trusted them much. Lissa's little family never trusted anyone but each other.
She didn't care what Rouen had said. It had been the Pandora operatives that had fucked up. It had been some members of the shadowy mafia with which Corvina was enmeshed that wanted to sneak into the Wastelands and pass information to the supposed waitress. One of Lissa's old friends, a guy who had been in her gang shortly before he had joined the rebels, had agreed to pass the co-ordinates of the proposed meeting place to the Pandora goons who wanted to meet with Corvina.
Amidst it all, something had gone very, very wrong. Thiago had known what was happening. He had got ahead of them, and he had sabotaged it all. And now Lissa was sitting on her bed, jumping at every sound outside, ready for the Court in Exile to drag her outside for an interrogation, and a quick death.
(So far, there hadn't been much that was ominous outside her door; she had heard Soledad and Marjorie whispering quietly in the corridor, Soledad saying "there's been three more eliminations, Jori, they announced them earlier" and Marjorie replying, "I absolutely owe you one, Sol" and Soledad laughing and whispering, "and I managed to keep you in the loop without giving you a heart attack, you're very welcome")
Lissa had worried that her old friend would be killed, but she had glimpsed Huck earlier that day, looking pale and slightly scared, but still very much alive. He had caught her eye, and smiled, and nodded, and Lissa had given him a wide, encouraging smile in response. It was nice to know that the Outsiders seemed to have come out of this a little better off than Pandora had, for once.
Even a girl as bubbly and hopeful as the former Eight, who had named herself for a character in a children's book, who had tried to set up her own circus as a child, who had literally gathered an enormous group of orphans around her and said I will protect you if the wider world will not, would find it hard to stay positive, given the situation.
And yet, Lissa Dove managed. She always did.
Atiena Morris had known that it was likely the rebels would be searching their rooms, that the rebels would not wish to risk even the slimmest opportunity for secrets or deceit, but it still came as a surprise as she returned to her room that evening and found Thiago, the king's spymaster, sitting on her bed and turning a white envelope over in his hands. Atiena did not recognise it, but her stomach sank as she realised what it likely contained.
"You know," he said, quite conversationally. "We don't get postal service out here."
Atiena's hands curled into fists at her side. She kept her composure. "Yes. I had noticed."
"How did you expect to get this letter to Tammins, Lady Atiena? To Mr Morris?"
Atiena shrugged. "Hadn't really got that far." Truth be told, it had been more of a confessional experience - spilling out her thoughts and feelings onto the page, now that she was trapped here in the desert, so far from all that she had ever known and trusted, trying to get it down onto paper before it had slipped from her memory like so much mist. Usually the Selected were permitted to send a few letters home, and she had found it unlikely that a rebel Selection would be willing to facilitate open communication, but writing it down, even if its fate was to remain unsent, had helped her to collect and organise her thoughts. She had addressed it to the man she had only ever known as Killmonger, and the information contained within had been curated as he had taught her when she was young. If you're putting something down in writing, assume that it'll be read. If you're putting something down in writing, assume it'll be read in precisely the wrong way. If you're putting something down in writing, assume the queen will read it out at your execution.
In other words, don't put anything down in writing.
But she was so far away from her family. It was late in the evening. Dusk stained the sky. Lethal would be moving out into the city, aiming for some weapons cache, sabotaging some Crown installation, infiltrating the Tammins communication hub so that Daniel could interfere with it remotely. Their comms would be alive with chatter as Maria and Daniel positioned themselves and busied themselves and readied to provide Lethal and Killmonger with the kind of unspoken support the Morrises excelled in. They rarely needed to speak, so well did they know each other, but, well, Atiena was so far away right now that she would have been glad to speak to them. She had never thought of herself as codependent, but she wasn't afraid to admit that she missed her family.
But even despite how much she missed them, she had been careful to keep her words vague. Killmonger would understand what she wanted to say, because he would understand what she had not written - what she had not felt safe to say, what she had not yet seen. The Morrises communicated best in the empty spaces between sound.
And yet, even though her letter could not possibly incriminate her in any way, Thiago's eyes were like scalpels on her.
"Hmm." Thiago turned the letter over in his hands. "Did one of the others promise to deliver it for you? In return for favours?"
Favours?
"No." Atiena didn't trust herself to say anything more.
"Were you planning on giving it to one of the eliminated Selected, to courier it back?"
"No."
"Had you arranged for one of your family to come into the Wastelands to collect it?"
"No."
The corner of Thiago's mouth curled, like a piece of burning paper. "So you just... wrote it. Just... because?"
Atiena shrugged. "Just because."
"You don't say much. You don't tell them much. The Selection is underway. Haven't met the king. Give my love to Mama and the twins." Had he memorised it? "Don't you want to tell your family how you are?"
"You want me to tell them more?"
"I'm just wondering why you didn't." Thiago paused, shrugged, and flicked the letter down onto the ground. Atiena watched it flutter down, landing on the edge of the carpet. "You want to talk to your family?"
"Talk to them?"
Thiago shrugged. He was not wearing the purple coat that he usually did, a sort of gaudy garment that seemed to purposefully flout the expectation of a spymaster's discretion. He was dressed rather casually, like he had just come from a meeting, like he had spent the last few days in a situation room with nothing but caffeine and smuggled information for company - black braces and a dishevelled shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbow. He didn't look like the sort of man who got stressed easily, and yet there was a weariness etched in the lines of his body, like if he wasn't vigilant he might cave in on himself. Atiena had seen that look on Killmonger's face more than once.
"Talk to them. Send them a letter. Let them know that you're okay."
Atiena paused. "Are you offering this to everyone?"
Thiago shook his head. "Of course I'm not."
"Well," she had said earlier. "I guess I'm special."
"Well," she said now. "I guess I'm special."
"I guess you are."
"Can I ask you why?"
She knew he would not tell her the truth. That wasn't the trade. That wasn't the craft.
Much like the Morris family, the truth would lie in the silence, in what was left unsaid.
Thiago Wesick said, "you can ask."
Atiena almost smiled. "Will you tell me?"
"Probably not." He stood, the bed creaking as his weight was lifted from it. "I'll be back here tomorrow morning. If you have a letter, I can arrange for it to be sent north. To your family. If you tell me where to find them."
She knew he would read whatever she had to say. She wouldn't have been surprised if Killmonger received a letter blackened with redactions, nothing left legibile or comprehensible. And yet, they would know she was alright. She would leave them what she
could in those empty spaces. They wouldn't worry. They would know.
She said, "what do you want in return?"
Everyone always wanted something. Veronica had taught her that, and Atiena had paid her back with a knife in the throat for it. No one ever cared for nothing.
Thiago did not answer her question directly. Instead, he simply said, "you know, the king speaks very highly of the Morrises."
Atiena found it hard to believe that he even knew who they were. There were a thousand small militias like them, all across the country - tiny bands of rebels that had not joined the Kingdom in Exile, but which persisted in resisting the Crown in whatever myriad of petty ways they could. The only way Atiena's family stood out, truly, was that they tended to be a little more competent than the rest.
"Does he?"
Thiago shrugged. "He has a soft spot for... families brought together. Forged by serendipity. Bound by choice rather than blood."
"Oh," Atiena said. "There was blood."
Thiago stepped over the letter on the ground and walked over to the door. The rebels had been told to keep their distance from the Selected, and yet Thiago clapped Atiena firmly on the shoulder before he left.
"There always is."
By the time Marjorie Vermudez found herself writing the first line of her planned exposé for the thirtieth time, she decided that it was probably around time to get some fresh air, and some new information. Though they had been at the safehouse for only a handful of days, she had already amassed a mass of notes that were proving more unwieldy to hide than she had first predicted - the best hiding places were also the most obvious, and though the Selected girls had not discussed the matter, it seemed a common consensus that the rebels were probably searching their rooms any moment that they were not physically there to see and stop them. Marjorie had resorted to writing her notes in her own shorthand, in the tiniest script she could possibly manage, so small that she was sure she would need a magnifying glass to read it back, onto a single A4 piece of paper that she had then slipped into the cavity created when she pried the mirror of her vanity table away from its frame, and then carefully forced it back into place, so there was no hint that it had ever been moved away.
In any case, she would rely on her own memory for the most part. Marjorie never forgot a detail.
Laughter had risen up to her window, and Marjorie glanced outside to see that a few of the rebels were standing outside the picket fence with a broken down car and tinkering with the engine quite lazily. Was this what amounted to free time for the citizens of the Kingdom in Exile? A few of them were cleaning guns and brewing tea and patching clothes - though Marjorie could not quite make out what they were saying, she could tell that it had a friendly lilt to it, more gossip and idle talk than anything tactical. Was this their social space, their time for relaxation? Had all Uzokuwa's talk of Diadembeen a mere smokescreen to give the Selected girls a rosier view of the world they were now entering?
Marjorie decided she had nothing better to do than find out - indeed, it was probably her duty. The king had not elected to select her for a date, and was not making himself available for conversations at any other time, so Marjorie decided she was probably as well off to get talking to others around them. Demetri had grown up among these people. That was the story the Selected had been given. These were not only his citizens, but his friends. Maybe they could offer some insight. Marjorie didn't argue with herself much beyond that, but quickly slipped on her shoes, pulled on a cardigan, and headed down the stairs to the little arid patch of dust outside the door that the girls had taken to referring to as, only slightly ironically, the orchard.
Maybe not so ironic anymore. Elizabeth Taylor, the blonde girl from Midston, was kneeling by the fence, her fingertips stained with soil, as she tended the dirt. Was she planting something? She offered Marjorie a friendly smile and a tiny wave as the Clermont Selected passed. Marjorie couldn't say she had made friends in this Selection, but there were a few girls more prone to cordiality than others. You could rely on Eden or Sol for a polite nod and a kind word here and there; you could rely on Opal or Nina for a glower and a shrug in your general direction. "Evening, Jo, you doing okay?"
Marjorie nodded, and smiled. "Been worse, Liz. How about you?"
Liz gestured. "Making myself useful. Thought some chuparosa might brighten this place up a bit."She stood, and brushed her hands on her trousers, seemingly heedless of the brown prints they left on the fabric. "Here's hoping we're around to see them bloom." There was no malice in her voice - she was simply stating a plain truth.
"Here's hoping," Marjorie echoed.
They weren't the only Selected out at this hour; Lissa Dove, the delicate blonde waif from Likely, was sprawled on the dirt on the other side of the fence, and was helping a small rebel with blue hair to work through a large pile of clothes that had to be repaired. Lissa's needle flashed argent in the bright sunshine, despite the later hour; it was winking brightly as she stitched neatly and quickly, much more efficiently and tidily than Marjorie would ever have thought the former Eight was capable of being. But then, she thought, girls like Lissa probably got used to self-sufficiency. They had to look out for themselves. They had to make do with what they had.
There was a reason the rebel girls in the Selection were finding it a little easier to adapt than the others.
"Little pearl!" called one of the rebels bent over the engine, his sleeves rolled to his elbow. It was Field Marshal Uzokuwa himself, a new bruise blossoming over one eye, a new cut curling his lip, some scratches running up along his arm. He was standing with a boy Marjorie could only describe as pretty, with dirty blond hair touching his shoulders and a heart-shaped face with a small scar running from the corner of his left eye to the point of his cheekbone; the two had been conferring quietly about the state of the car. "You've survived this long."
"I have," Marjorie agreed. She had been under the impression that the rebels were discouraged from interacting with the Selected, but it seemed likely that Uzokuwa outranked such policies. "So far."
"You're doing better than the rest," the younger man said.
Uzokuwa nodded and walked around the car to peer more closely at some aspect of the vehicle's inner workings - it was all utterly foreign to Marjorie. "Can't underestimate how well you've done to stay this long. Lady Marjorie, Theo Malone. Theodore, Marjorie."
The two exchanged greetings. Uzokuwa pointed out a few other rebels and named a few further names - Farid, Anzu, Wren, Phineas, Mikhail. Marjorie made a silent note of each one: Farid, an olive-skinned man with piercing hazel eyes and a soothing voice rivalled only by the caramel tones of the blue-haired Wren. Anzu, a tall, thin woman with a shaved head and massive burns on the left side of her face. Phineas and Mikhail, bleach-blonde twins roughly as tall and broad as a barge, distinguished only by Phineas' missing forearm, Mikhail's eyepatch. Each one bore the marks of a short lifetime in the Wastelands. Marjorie wondered how long it would take before the Selected were indelibly scarred in such a way.
Marjorie didn't want to judge. She wanted to understand.
But she didn't want to be too obvious in her questions, so instead she just stood by the car, and handed Uzokuwa and Theo various tools as they asked for them, and did her best to follow their conversation and try to subtly steer it when she felt that it would be appropriate. They were not, to her disappointment, discussing much of importance - there was some sporting event occurring in Swendway that a handful of the rebels seemed to be following with detached interest. "Uzohola owes me a box of cigars if the Federation wins," Uzokuwa confided in Marjorie. He meant the Saharan Federation - he always did. "Such an unpatriotic girl, that one, can you believe - pass me the torque wrench, little pearl?"
Marjorie pulled one from the set. "This?"
"That's a socket wrench, grab the one with the blue handle.. yep, thanks, darling. So Germany was up six points before France played that last match..."
To her disappointment, Lissa and Wren's conversations were little more interesting, for Lissa was talking about the friends she had left behind in Likely, nothing Marjorie hadn't heard before. Here and there, Wren chimed in with some information about the life that she had left behind in Honduragua to join the rebellion, but as far as Marjorie could tell, the two were chiefly comparing orphanage experiences, which, though intriguing, didn't have much to do with why Marjorie was here - and in any case, was exceedingly difficult to listen in on subtly.
Her decision to focus on the conversation between Anzu, Theo and Uzokuwa paid off when the burned woman said, quite casually, "at least the Goidelic Union lost early on. I promised Demetri my .38 if they won."
Marjorie strained to remain casual, but she was sure that any curiosity on her part could be easily written off as normal Selection prying as she asked, "Demetri follows soccer?"
"Only because Täj does," Uzokuwa said, with a slight laugh.
"The king and Täj are close?" Marjorie wasn't sure she had seen any sign of this. Then again, she had barely seen any sign of Demetri himself.
Anzu laughed. "Careful, Uzo, she's going to try to cozy up to the pale dog to get closer to the king if you keep talking like that."
"If she manages that," Uzokuwa said. "She deserves to be queen."
"That Morris girl was getting very chatty with him earlier." Theo spun a screwdriver in his hand and pried some component out of the engine.
"By chatty," Anzu said. "Do you mean he said two stray words about impending doom and then fucked off to brood?"
The group laughed, but there was no cruelty in it. It reminded Marjorie of how she imagined siblings would laugh amongst one another, knowing that no insult could sting too badly, so much history did they share, so much trust had they vested in one another. Indeed, Uzokuwa proved as much as he continued, "if it wasn't for the Selection, I'd tell that boy to go for it. God knows he deserves a bit of happiness."
"Even with the Selection," Anzu said, a playful smile tugging at her lips. "I'd tell him to go for it." She winked at Marjorie. "You girls are utterly wasted on our Demetri, I think."
"Don't," Uzokuwa chided Anzu lightly. "You'll drive them all off."
Marjorie blinked. "Demetri isn't...?"
Anzu laughed. "God, no," she said with a smile. "Just... thoroughly oblivious."
"Putting it lightly," Theo murmured.
How casually they all spoke about their supposed king. Was this a sign that Demetri wasn't the true crown prince, abducted from the palace, only a commoner artificially elevated to a hollow position of responsibility that the rebels were not inclined to respect? Or was it merely an indication that the rebels had grown up in the same tight-knit pack as the king, and treated them as one would a little brother who had achieved unexpected, but not necessarily undeserved, success? Even Uzokuwa and Anzu didn't seem quite as casual with him as Uzohola and Wick sometimes seemed; rumours had flashed about the Selected regarding the precise relationship between the king and the co-ordinator, after a half-dozen of the girls had seen the way that the two spoke, and hugged, and stood close together. It had been Ekaitza Jones who had disabused the rest of them, quite thoroughly, of any idea along those lines - "don't any of you have siblings? Or are you all so sex-starved here in the middle of nowhere that you're imagining tension anywhere and everywhere?"
She had a wonderfully blunt way of cutting everyone down to size.
"Oblivious," Marjorie echoed, but neither Anzu nor Theo seemed inclined to elaborate further as Uzokuwa returned to the engine, so Marjorie elected to chance a question of her own. "Have you guys always been close to his Majesty?"
Theo looked at Uzokuwa for permission to answer this question, but it was Anzu who shook her head. The burned side of her face didn't seem capable of moving much, so her smile was very uneven. "Nah," she said lightly. "We get moved around a lot; you tend to bond the most with your unit. For Demetri, that's -"
"The inner circle?" Marjorie offered. Over by the fence, Liz had stood up, satisfied with her handiwork, and she and Lissa were on their way back into the safehouse, chatting quietly together.
Uzokuwa nodded. "Got it in one." He threw something to Theo, and changed the subject seamlessly. "How come you're always hanging around these days, Malone? Got your eye on someone in the Selection?"
Theo laughed, but it was not a comfortable laugh. "I think not," he said, slightly awkwardly. "I'm just waiting on some cars."
"Who'd you lend them to? Vardi Tayna? Because you know you're never getting it back if that's the case, she's probably driven it into some canyon..."
Marjorie raised an eyebrow. Vardi Tayna? The Selected girl from Dominica?
"Even worse," Theo said ruefully. "Täj."
Uzokuwa and Anzu winced. "Yeah," Uzokuwa said. "You can probably write that one off."
"And Demetri."
Over by the fence, Farid barked out a short laugh. "Demetri? For his date?"
Theo nodded, and held up a hand, shaking his head. "I know, you don't need to say..."
"Just Demetri, and his date? Who's his date?" Mikhail seemed like the sort to be perpetually behind the rest of the conversation. "That Liara girl? She's very..."
"She's Lady Liara, actually," Farid corrected him archly.
"Vardi Tayna," Wren said, and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. They were very dark, in contrast to the vivid light blue of her crew-cut hair. There was no chiming in of She's Lady Vardi, actually. The group seemed united in their familiarity towards the girl from Dominica.
Theo groaned. "Guys, seriously..."
Phineas laughed. "You might want to give it a good clean when you get it back, that's all I'm saying."
"Hold your tongue," Uzokuwa warned. "He may be our king... but even so, there's a limit to what I'll let you say about my friend." That prompted a laugh, as Theo turned and held a hand over his eyes to peer in the direction of the wastes.
"Nearly on time." There was, indeed, a plume of dust rising on the horizon. "This is most unlike them."
Marjorie was still trying to absorb everything the group had flung about so casually as the car drew up beside the band of rebels and the man they called Täj slid out, his face drawn and weary.
"Evening," Anzu called, and was dismissed with a wave in her direction from Täj as he went around to the trunk of the car to pull out a khaki duffel bag and a revolver that he slipped into a holster on his belt. "Solemn bastard."
Uzokuwa shot Anzu a look of reprimand. He spoke softly, but Marjorie could still hear the words he exchanged with the burned woman. "He does a hard job, Zu."
Anzu looked suitably chastened. "Yeah."
Täj walked over to the orchard, and dropped his duffel bag on the ground by the gate. Theo said, sounding like he was trying to be cheerful, "you kept it in one piece." The pale man responded with a shrug and a nod. Marjorie had never seen him go this long without smoking before. They may have only been at the safehouse for a scatter of days, but Täj, when he was around, always seemed to be outside with a cigarette, looking vaguely apocalyptic. To be fair, he still looked like that now.
The other car was on the horizon now, and Marjorie realised quite abruptly that she was on the cusp of meeting the king himself. It was too late to run back into the safehouse to get changed, or make herself more presentable - it was meet him now, or leave it up to fate as to when she would get that chance again.
Marjorie Vermudez was never one to run from a story, and right now the star of her story was driving towards her.
So she stayed where she was.
The car screeched to a halt next to the one Täj had parked, and Theo winced ("knew I forgot to oil something"), and Demetri himself appeared at the door of the vehicle. Marjorie recoiled briefly at the sight of his injuries, but her fascination could not be deterred for long - she itched to ask a long array of questions, starting with what happened to your face and ending with no, seriously, what the fuck happened to your face? She didn't know how she managed to resist the urge, as Lady Vardi stepped out of the car as well. She was a pretty, if unremarkable girl, with very dark and somewhat fox-like eyes, thick black hair brushing her collarbones with a set of blunt bangs, a short red tartan skirt and a short-sleeved black blouse that left her slender arms very bare. Marjorie couldn't say she knew the girl well - indeed, the closest Marjorie had come to her was the music that drifted across the hallway from her room at all hours of the day and night. She could see now that Vardi Tayna was not a tall girl; Demetri positively dwarfed her as he came around the car to shut the door behind her, and she shot him a playful look.
"Evening, lovebirds," Phineas called, quite delightedly. Vardi Tayna rolled her eyes in clear exasperation, but she did not protest as Demetri bent to brush his lips across her cheek. It was an oddly intimate gesture; Marjorie had to fight the urge to look away and give them some privacy. She could see she was not the only one; Täj had averted his gaze, as one might from the sun.
Marjorie was just close enough to catch the slightest hint of what they were saying to one another. "Thanks for keeping me in my place," Demetri said, and Vardi Tayna replied, quite softly, "oh, any time, Demusha, any time at all."
She did not acknowledge Marjorie as she walked past her - Marjorie mentally counted her as one of the unfriendly Selected girls - but Demetri offered the Clermont girl a wide smile as he walked over to inspect Uzokuwa's handiwork. "Lady Marjorie. A delight."
"The pleasure is all mine," Marjorie replied.
Theo hissed, "your Majesty."
"Your Majesty," Marjorie added smoothly. "It's lovely to meet you."
Vardi Tayna passed Täj on her way back into the safehouse. They did not look at one another. The dark haired girl disappeared into the building, and shut the door firmly behind her.
"And you. You must accept my apologies that we did not meet sooner - Uzo, I think you need to tighten this a little more..." He pointed at something in the engine that Marjorie could not hope in any world to name. "...Lady Marjorie, how have you been finding the experience so far?"
"Quite lovely, thank you."
Demetri nodded, quite distractedly. "We must arrange some date," he added. "Sometime soon, I don't want you to feel neglected in the Selection... Theo, you ready to go?"
"So soon?" Marjorie asked boldly, opening her eyes wide and inquisitive.
Demetri lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. "Most unfortunately. Much preparation to be done for the next Report, Lady Marjorie... At least it should hopefully provide you all some excitement, some break from routine."
Marjorie paused, nodded, and smiled. "I look forward to it very much."
Demetri returned the expression. "And I look forward to seeing you there. We'll talk soon about doing something, just you and I... Malone, come on."
Theo had become distracted by some movement in the window, but Demetri's words seemed to snap him out of it. "Of course, your Eminence," he added, seeming for a moment to have forgotten Marjorie's presence, and caught the keys as Demetri tossed them in his direction. Demetri offered Marjorie a polite incline of his head and a quick "it was an absolute delight, Lady Marjorie" and she quickly replied "oh, likewise", and then the king was gone once more.
Always on the move.
Was she ever going to get some answers?
Marjorie glanced over towards the safehouse, looking to see what had distracted Theo so. Her eye was drawn by movement in the orchard. Täj was digging up the seedlings that Liz had planted, his gestures slow and methodical. He looked tired. The pale man was even paler than usual. Wren answered a question that Marjorie had not asked. "Chuparosa grows red."
"So what if it does?"
Farid gestured towards the clear blue sky, unmarred by cloud cover, or indeed anything beneath which the rebels could hide. "Red's too bright." Like Liz earlier, there was no anger there, only a resignation and an acceptance that this was the way things were. "They'll see it."
"They?"
"The bastard king. The wretched queen. The Crown."
Marjorie understood. "So," she said softly. "No flowers?"
Wren's voice was sad. "No flowers," she agreed.
Mordred was in the rose garden when his uncle came to tell him the rebels were in the midst airing another Report. Set's face was stony, his voice grim. "You don't have to watch it, if you don't want to."
Mordred set his jaw. "Why wouldn't I want to?"
The queen was watching it in one of the numerous drawing rooms that populated the third floor of the palace, perched on the edge of a low soft couch, the folds of her dress gathered about her knees and ankles, hands knotted in the material at her lap as she focused icily on the screen in front of her. After escorting his nephew in, Set went to the couch to place what he probably intended to be a soothing hand on her shoulder; nonetheless, she remained obviously stressed and impatient as the seal of the rebellion flashed up on the screen, set into a dark red background, a flourish playing over it that was not quite the Illéan national anthem, but close enough to make it clear what they were aping.
Mordred stayed by the door, and folded his arms, already making a mental note to call his Council together at first opportunity to respond to whatever lies the rebels intended to spread tonight.
No longer was the rebel Selection set in slightly shadowy studios, the imposter claiming his brother's name illuminated by artificial bleached-white light, the broadcast hijacked and redirected to force the signal into the living rooms of loyal citizens. No, the Kingdom in Exile had found themselves a gorgeous open vestibule of some ancient manor, and rather than hold their Report on an empty soundstage as the palace did, their Report was taking place in the wood-pannelled, marble-tiled foyer, with the Selected ladies lining the broad staircase and the balcony of the landing overhead, each resplendent in vividly coloured dresses, no two girls clad in precisely the same colour. Like butterflies caught in a glass jar, Mordred thought darkly, jewel-toned birds in a caged aviary. He could not hold himself back from scanning their ranks as the camera panned quickly across them, and Set said what the three were all thinking: "there's so few."
Ysabel's voice was snapping ice. "I wonder what they're doing with the girls they eliminate."
Mordred thought he knew what his mother would suggest, if she was in charge of the Selection in Exile. Dead girls whispered no secrets. The Wastelands had a lot of empty space in which to hide the bodies. None of the rebels were strangers to murder.
And yet, as the camera came down to focus on the imposter they were calling Demetri, Mordred found himself staring at his rival and wondering if this strange, subversive man had cold enough blood to do what Ysabel would. He thought the real Demetri had always seemed too sweet a child to resort to such measure - but then, soft-hearted Demmy would probably have baulked at becoming the figurehead of an insurgency responsible for massacres and the bombings of hospitals.
But then, you never knew people. Vivian Lahela probably would have said the same of Eden, once upon a time.
The man who was not Demetri smiled into the camera, a practisedly natural expression. "Good evening, Illéa. Thank you for joining us."
"How is this being broadcast?" Mordred asked his uncle, his brow creasing as he watched the imposter walk across the foyer to take a seat beside Wickaninnish Harjo, the popular propaganda hero of the rebellion. He'd become famous for doling out soup and bread to refugees and pulling children out of rubble after a building had collapsed and handing out blankets to doe-eyed orphans in a bomb shelter - Mordred thought it was probably more important to ask who had driven those refugees from their homes, who had collapsed that building, who had made those children orphans. "I didn't hear about any hijacked communications hub..."
Set shook his head. "They're broadcasting in their own capacity to occupied territories and friendly nations."
Ysabel said, very softly, "we're the only ones in Angeles who are receiving the signal."
So it was unlikely they had much to say - otherwise, they would be trying to disseminate more widely, more urgently. Mordred turned back to the screen just as Harjo greeted the imposter and said, "Twenty down, your Majesty, fifteen to go - looking to set records, are we?"
"Set records?" It was all scripted, and the imposter was playing his part perfectly - green eyes slightly wide, the tiniest smile curling his lips. Mordred was sure that Wesick was feeding back to him how his past Reports had been received, and that his public image was being ever-so-subtly tweaked at every moment, to convince those who had not yet been swayed, to keep those who had been already persuaded safely on side. The popular view in Angeles was that the imposter came across as a little too polished, a little too cold, a little too rehearsed - like Queen Ysabelwas the common refrain, although Mordred was sure that last detail had been safely kept from his mother by the machinations of his dear uncle. Certainly he was sure he would have heard about it if it had weaseled its way into the royal sphere. "What on earth could you mean, Wick?"
"Well, sir, I rather think we're on track for one of the fastest Selections in history if you keep up this pace." Wick's eyes gleamed under the studio lights of the foyer. "Twenty girls eliminated in just two weeks! Tell me, are you very picky, or do you already have someone in mind, maybe?"
The ghost of a smile. "Wouldn't that rather ruin the fun, Wick?"
"Fun - not convinced you know the meaning of the word, my dear Demetri." Wick shot a look into the camera. "Absolute workaholic, this one."
The imposter forced a laugh. Was it Mordred's imagination, or was he moving a little more stiffly than usual? Their spies near the border had suggested that the supposed king had been caught up in an explosion nearly two weeks ago, but the man on the television screen seemed absolutely unblemished, without even the spectre of tiredness to mark his face. Mordred almost envied him.
Wick was reclining into his seat, transparently loving this whole exchange. He was dressed much more casually than his companion, almost laughably so - a plain blue short-sleeved t-shirt and dark denim jeans, a little worn at the knees, like he had been pulled off some distant recovery effort and rushed to this pseudo-palace for the exclusive duty of performing this interview. Wick's image as a man of the people was much more concrete in the minds of the Illéan people - it was important to be consistent. It might have mattered more in an official broadcast; the rebel's knock-off had always come across as a little more personable and informal, more a t-shirt and trainers affair than the tuxedo and tie business of the palace's Report. Wick Harjo could only ever have appeared on the Selection in Exile. "So, are you telling me you've managed to tear yourself away from governance long enough to get to know these lovely ladies?"
"Not as often as I would like, and not as well as I would like," the imposter replied. "But whatever time we have spent together has been an absolute pleasure and honour. Truly, Illéa is right to be proud of its Daughters."
"Those of you who have been following at home will have seen some of the interviews we've aired with some of the Selected. Each of the ladies come across wonderfully - it must be difficult for any one to make her mark and differentiate herself from the rest."
"You'd have to ask them, Wick. All I can say that each one has seemed to me an intelligent, capable and kind young woman, who would make an excellent queen and a most wonderful wife." The imposter had crossed his legs and got very comfortable in his chair - this was the most relaxed Mordred had ever seen him, albeit blatantly rehearsedly so. Mordred wondered if that was why Wick had been chosen to take up the interviewer role that had been previously inhabited by two otherwise unremarkable rebels: Inzhu Änuran, now going by Wren, a worker from one of Honduragua's busiest steel factories and Farid Abboud, a truck driver who had defected from Carolina. Wick was known, and liked, by the populace - and clearly, he was known, and liked, by the false King of Ashes as well. "And each has made their mark in their own unique way."
"Well, you can't just say that and not elaborate." Wick raised one eyebrow and leaned in towards the imposter, and the camera, quite conspiratorially. "Otherwise, it just across as something you say to make it seem like you've got to know them."
A ripple of laughter went through the girls assembled on the stairs and landing. The girls on the bottom step were the only ones whose faces Mordred could make out clearly - one dressed in dark moss green, nearly the same colour as the imposter's eyes, the other the deep blue of the ocean once the sun had set.
The girl on the left was lean and pale blonde, with downturned gray eyes and a strong jaw that made her look stubborn. Elizabeth Tucker's family had a reputation not for rebelling but for abetting - they had always patched up, fed, and hidden soldiers from either side who stumbled onto their little farm in quiet Midston. Mordred could well understand how they had decided to do so, and how they had gotten away with it for so long, with one look at the quiet strength that seemed to exude from the Tucker girl.
The girl on the right was tiny, with deep brown skin and glasses that seemed huge on her small face, her brown hair pulled back into an elaborate updo that mirrored a style that had been originally popularised by the late Queen Jael. Opal McIntyre's family had been lighthouse keepers for as long as anyone in Hansport could remember - they had been poor before and after the rebellion, their status little improved by the occupation of their province by the Kingdom in Exile. Her thick brows were dark, furrowed slashes in the warm light of the foyer, and even though she was surely aware of the eyes of the nation upon her, her fake smile was undercut by the gloomy look in her eyes as she looked at the false king through lowered lashes.
"An excellent point," the imposter conceded. "Well, it might take a little too long to go through all fifteen of them -"
"Well, maybe you could tell us about five."
"- but we probably have time for five, yes, if you want to insist." The gold chain at the imposter's throat flashed - a golden box, with its lid open and a red star, each point an arrow, rising out of it -as he straightened himself in his seat and glanced around at the assembled girls. "Well, and where to begin? Well, Lady Opal rather seems a seventy year old man trapped in a much younger skin... grumpy, oh yes very, but also very wise. Sage, I would say. She could put me in my place, let me tell you. Lady Elizabeth is never afraid to tell you to shut it if she thinks that you're running your mouth on something you don't know much about, so be careful you don't mix up a John Deere with a Massey Ferguson when she's around. A very capable debate partner."
Tucker laughed softly in the background, and half-turned to acknowledge the smiles of the girls behind her. Someone had garnered a reputation.
"Lady Eden reminds me very much of a very dear friend of mine," the imposter continued. "She'll tell you she's a realist, but really it's just pessimism, through and through. You've never met someone so practical, so pragmatic. Always asking, what's the use?"
Wick laughed. "A healthy attitude in the Wastelands, one might say."
"I have no doubt Lady Eden would fit in wherever she went. She's an adaptable sort."
"Well, Majesty, that's three, and I might pick the next two... you know, it's amazing, but some of these girls already have thriving fanbases that are just clamoring for more information about them. The beautiful Lady Nina was a miner, wasn't she?"
Lady Nina was no great beauty - a tall, malnourished girl with a freckled and slightly gaunt face from hunger, her eyes the most piercing shade of blue and sunken under a pair of unkempt eyebrows knotted in focus; she seemed to stare right through the screen as the cameras fixed upon her. She was dressed in a charcoal gray dress that left her muscular arms bare.
"Maybe once upon a time. She's a rebel through and through, Wick. I admire her greatly. I think it was our co-ordinator, Uzohola, who said it best - much like a piece of coal, Lady Nina is rough around the edges, but a diamond lies beneath."
Mordred could almost see the imposter himself wincing at the triteness of the lines he was being expected to repeat. How much of this was actually him? If Mordred had to guess, he would have put it at somewhere between ten percent and absolutely zero. These were the observations of others, regurgitated to come across as details the false king himself had perceived - indeed, this might just have been the information that the girls supplied themselves in their submissions to the Selection. The imposter was saying nothing that a good background check wouldn't have turned up.
"And another one that has the world talking - Lady Soledad?"
Another unremarkable girl, with her dark hair loose about her shoulders, dressed in a pale silver dress whose trailing ends seemed to float on the air like it was less than material. She gave the camera a tiny curtsy and a polite wave as it panned across her and - there! - standing behind her, visible only in the blur of the background, a familiar pair of piercing dark eyes set into an elfen face, her dark hair pulled back severely to bare her hollow cheekbones, her scalpel-sharp jaw.Liara.
"Lady Soledad," the imposter was saying. "She tends to be quiet, but that's usually because she's listening rather than trying to speak over everyone else always. Living lie detector, that girl - I've never encountered anyone as passionate about the truth, and the pursuit of justice, in my life. And I count you among that number, Wick."
Wick laughed. "Well, there's a title evenI cannot be competitive with - the more people like that in the world, the better."
"Thank goodness you decided against joining my Selection, Wick. You might have been in trouble, with this sort of luminary company to compete against."
Wick shook his head, a mocking sorrow etching his face. "A wise man knows when to fold them, your Majesty - surely Lady Opal has treated you to that gem?"
"She tends not to rely on clichés as much as you do, Wickaninnish."
"And I'm sure she's all the better for it." Wick glanced at the notes in his hands, and shuffled them briefly. "Well, we're nearly running out of time. Your Majesty - thank you so much for joining us."
"My great pleasure."
"A final question that I have heard asked by absolutely everyone - with such a rapid elimination process, do you foresee that we will reach the Elite soon?"
The imposter shook his head, looking thoughtful. They had to use this opportunity to address all doubts, Mordred knew: the whispers that they had eliminated too many too quickly, the suspicion that those from Illéan provinces were at a sharp disadvantage to others, the rumours that the prince himself had barely interacted with the girls at all, but that these decisions were instead being made by the rebellion's high command to best suit the needs of the Kingdom in Exile. "No, Wick, I don't believe we shall. I think there are certain personality types that maybe simply don't get along very well, or people who don't click. In those sorts of situation, I don't see the point in wasting the time of the young ladies who have been kind enough to join the Selection. If I have retained a member of the Selection thus far, then it is because I honestly believe that, given the chance, I could love them wholly and honestly as my wife, and respect and trust them as the queen of our great kingdom. Now that I have narrowed them to that field - easier said than done! - I do indeed to take a little more time and get to know each one before I make any further decisions."
"Very well phrased indeed, sir."
Was it just Mordred's imagination, or did the imposter seem to dislike that honorific?
Wickaninnish Harjo was issuing some sort of sign-off as Ysabel muted the television and turned to face her son with a tired sigh. "Well, that was a lot of nothing."
"You sound surprised." Mordred was darkly amused. "Surely you knew how these Selection Reports usually go?"
"I had the audacity to hope they might include something interesting." Ysabel tossed the remote onto the couch next to her. "Have you spoken to Commander Lee?"
Mordred nodded. "Our mole has been talking."
"Singing like a bird," was how Set preferred to put it. "Your mother tells me you've authorised an airstrike on the safehouse identified?"
"Has she?" Mordred's voice was distant.
"Killing Illéan citizens." Set could not hide how troubled this prospect had made him.
"Killing defectors."
"That's not how our people will see that. That's not how I see it."
"Darling." Ysabel was cajoling. "Those girls chose their fates. They aren't innocent hostages. They're actively competing to become the queen of the regime that is massacring our soldiers, our loyal citizens."
"They're children," Set said shortly. "The oldest girl there is what, twenty two years old? And even she was still living with her parents before she disappeared. They're just girls."
"The Kingdom in Exile has always made use of child soldiers," was Mordred's reply. "Child spies. We've never let that stop us before."
And Ysabel's response was equally curt. "They're adults, Set, just as I was when I joined Trajan's Selection. Did you think of me as a little girl then?"
A vein jumped in Set's jaw. "I still don't like to think of them bombed in their beds."
"Do you believe I do?" Mordred shook his head. "We've invited the Kingdom in Exile to the table for peace talks. We've asked for ceasefires. We've fought for peace,while they have fought for power. I don't likeany part of this, Uncle. But I have no choice, and I have given the order." He met Set's gaze, and could not help his lip curling slightly. "And I am the king, after all."
"I had noticed," Set replied shortly. "I question not your judgment, so I'll thank you not to question my loyalty, Mordred. Only..." He sighed. "Just be ready for backlash. The Axiom and the Lahelas can only achieve so much. Fifteen beautiful young ladies killed in a single, targeted attack?"
"That's why the rebels are holding this Selection." Ysabel's voice was soft. "That propaganda." She glanced at the television screen, where the Report had frozen on a photograph of the whole array of the Selected, each dressed in vivid colours and smiling, a petrified beauty. Liara was wearing a deep, bright, blood red gown. "Easy targets. Vulnerable. And very sympathetic."
Set's voice conjured images of arsenic and self-immolation. "I imagine the imposter is half-hoping we do kill the lot of them."
This is... a very long chapter. My apologies if it's a little too dense! Hopefully it makes up for the delays in updates. Please let me know what you think.
In the interest of clarification, the last section, narrated by Mordred, takes place one week after the others.
Please do let me know what you thought - I absolutely adore reading your reviews, hearing your theories, and finding out which characters are your favourites or least favourites. I have been absolutely overwhelmed with gratitude for every single review so far.
Thanks so much. I hope you enjoyed!
- Izar