Chapter 12: In Fading Blue

I've been back home watching from far away. I wonder where you are.
Did you look back as you crossed the moon? Do you wonder if I wonder 'bout you?

- Paul Johnson

Ekaitza could only truly relax once their convoy had crossed the border into the northern enclave of the Kingdom and the rebels around her had relaxed their grips on their weapons. They crossed by foot through the woods - they had been dropped off by one bus in Illéa, feigning deafness when they were stopped by border guards while Mouchard had given some spiel about a school for disabled adults, and they were picked up by another bus in the Kingdom, Devery Atiqtalaaq on board with a smile on her face and armfuls of fabric. "Good afternoon, Miss Jones!" No longer a lady - Ekaitza couldn't say that it was an unwelcome change, though she privately thought she would have much rather just been called Ekaiza. "Lovely to see you - I hope your journey was not unpleasant?"

Ekaitza's gaze had something of a glower to it as she looked up at the Northern Warden; her hair was wildly astrew, her face dirtied by their hike, her clothes dishevelled. "I've had worse." Ekaitza had found the escape rather relaxing, if she told the truth - it was the kind of wilderness she was used to, all plants and birds and tiny animals scampering in the undergrowth. Not like the radioactive sterility of the Wastelands, where you might spot one bird in the day if you were fortunate, where you only ever heard the wolves over the horizon and spotted lone coyotes scampering here and there. She stepped back to let her rebel companions board first - they had travelled further than she had - and then climbed onto the bus, indicating the garments in Warden Atiqtalaaq's arms as she did so. "I hope those aren't for me."

"Sorry to disappoint. There's going to be a reception for you in Yukon before we continue on to Baffins - you weren't quite an Elite, but it's looking like you might be the last northerner eliminated before the Elite, so let's make an impression." Atiqtalaaq threw a few pieces of cloth at Ekaitza. "I hope I hit the right notes - you can change down the back, I'll make sure the lads keep their eyes facing forward."

Ekaitza shrugged. It didn't bother her much if they didn't. Nonetheless, she slipped down the aisle as Atiqtalaaq began to run through the next stage of their travel - first they would attend a reception in Yukon, smile for the cameras, film a few short bits and a post-elimination interview for the Report. Then, on to Whites to sign for her new land, accept her Selection money, run through protocol for the next few months - she would have to return to the Court in Exile for Demetri's wedding and coronation, but until then, it seemed her time would be rather free. Nor did she seem obliged to enter into the service of the rebellion, as she had theorised at dinner with Cor and Saran one night. She seemed to be - quite truly - free to live her life.

Well. Once they got through the next few hours.

She hoped that once they got eliminated, Saran and Yue might pay her a visit in the very far north, or at least send a letter her way. She had only known them for a few weeks, but Ekaitza Jones was not a girl in the habit of making friends, and thought it wisest not to let the few she had slip away because of circumstance - and anyway, who was to say Ekaitza would have to go back up to Baffins? Land was land. Maybe she and her grandfather could make their life somewhere kinder.

Atiqtalaaq had chosen her clothes well - a soft pair of black leather trousers, like the kind Ekaitza might have worn hunting, only nice and new and pliable. A tight grey sweater that managed to cling and keep her relatively warm, with a funnel neck and sleeves slightly too long for her arms, so that she could fold it over her fingers. As she returned to the top of the bus, Devery tossed her a pair of high-heeled black boots, and Ekaitza sat down to put them on as she realised that they were already approaching the capital city of Yukon. Atiqtalaaq had gone all out for this celebration - there was bunting and flares lining the street from several miles out, and people leaning out of their houses to wave.

As the bus pulled up to the Hotel Luxe, Atiqtalaaq gestured for Ekaitza to stand. "First your grandfather. Then the families of the other northerners. Smile, hug, then move on. You can talk to them properly at the reception."

Ekaitza nodded and steeled herself. The crowds outside were thick, and waving, and screaming. There were flashes of cameras, calls of questions she couldn't quite hear. Some of the rebels in their familiar grey khaki were holding back the throng, to form a narrow passage at the edge of which Ekaitza could see the familiar silhouette of her grandfather, hunched over his cane. Beside him was another elderly fellow, a man with a much straighter spine and imposing presence, with a slender teenage girl at his side that reminded Ekaitza so strongly of Saran Altai that she knew there was no doubt this was her twin sister - Naran, wasn't that her name? On the other side of Ekaitza's grandfather was a polished, perfect couple with stony expressions - an elegant woman with long dark hair and a light dusting of freckles, like Yue's, and a dignified man with dark eyes and dark hair, starting to bald. The Yukimuras - Ekaitza distantly remembered Cor saying something about their prominent positions on the northern council. She wasn't sure what. She hadn't really paid attention.

Atiqtalaaq put her hand on Ekaitza's shoulder. "Okay?" The door to the bus was slid open and Ekaitza hastily pushed her hair back off her face. "Go."

Ekaitza stepped down off a bus and instantly felt that dropping sensation in the pit of her stomach - like the world had fallen out beneath her. Men and women pushed and shouted on either side of her, but it sounded so distant, like they were calling to her through glass. Her heart felt like it was beating very hard, and very slowly. It was a kind of animal instinct, she thought, like that of a wolf - something is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong.

Turn your head.

She turned her head to the right and caught sight of a young man forcing his way through the crowd. He was shouting something. Everything seemed to be moving very slowly as he pulled something from his jacket and pointed it at Ekaitza and shouted, "the liar's whore!"

And then he pulled the trigger.

"The answer's no."

A fugitive king so rarely had an office or a desk to call his own, but Demetri seemed so perfectly comfortable you could be excused for believing that he had sat behind this desk to issue notices and decrees for the past twenty years. He was languid in his chair, natural in a way that he was rarely seen being - at ease and utterly unencumbered by public perception.

And with that comfort came honesty.

"No?" She smiled.

"I will not permit you to leave my Selection." He leaned back, and rubbed at his eye, looking stressed. "I will not permit you to leave for Angeles." There was no point. The General had been caught in rendez-vous with their spy inside the court. The General had been killed. What were the odds their spy had not?

"Demetri." Vardi Tayna's voice never approached plaintive with her king - it never had. She was not someone who begged, or pleaded, not easily. Even when she had to ask for something, it was always with the tone of one who fully expected the question to be a mere formality to being given precisely what she wanted.

"I need you here."

"The rebellion needs me." Even now, ensconced in the quiet warmth of a borrowed office, with Malone keeping a watchful eye in the window, she sounded a little unpleased that he hadn't agreed instantly.

"Wick was exaggerating." Demetri shot her a look from behind his hand. "And what do you care for the rebellion?" Uzohola's father had been a Saharan ambassador who had smuggled arms to the rebellion when it was still in its nascence, had fed its flame with what money and information he could smuggle out from the capital, had sacrificed his children and his life to the cause. Wick had joined the rebellion out of gratitude, out of desperation, out of righteous anger, after the General had freed him from death row and a future in the ground. But Vardi Tayna had never truly bitten onto the cause of revolution like the others had. She was a good spy, and an even better friend, and it was the latter that kept her tied here, tethered to the insurgency like the wild dog the General had often insisted she was. And Demetri knew that those ties were weakening, loosening - the General was dead, and just like that Vardi Tayna had lost a reason to stay.

Demetri could not allow her to lose another.

"No. You must stay in the Selection." Enyakatho had insisted that Demetri use a fountain pen for official letters, no matter how slow and cumbersome it was proving, so as he spoke he carefully dipped the nib in its inkwell and frowned at the document in front of him. "And I would like to say, Vardi Tayna, my love, how strange I find your sudden passion for the revolution."

Vardi Tayna laughed. "You ask me that after fifteen years in its service?"

"Years?" Demetri's voice was sardonic. Vardi Tayna's early years with the rebellion were pockmarked by long periods of total absence. That was why the General had always called her kra-chok, little sparrow, for sparrows were bound to return home no matter how high or far they flew. "An aggregate fifteen months would be a very generous estimate."

"Not all of us are born with revolution in our blood, Demusha." Vardi Tayna leaned forward to put her arms on the table and rest her head on her arms, tilting her eyes upwards to look at Demetri through eyelashes. "Well then. As you say. I owe the revolution some hours."

"You can pay them off in the Selection." Demetri's mouth twitched. "You know, the rebellion can be served in ways other than... lies and secrets and bloodshed."

"The Kingdom, perhaps. But the rebellion?" Vardi Tayna shook her head. "Cannot be served but by slaughter. You know that."

"Allow me my blissful ignorance." Demetri's pen traced across the paper, slower and less sure than Täj's would have been. "There will be a time the rebellion is done and the Kingdom must stand alone. And you must learn to live in the Kingdom, in peace-time, when that is the case. When there is no more fighting."

Vardi Tayna's lip curled."Sounds boring."

"I imagine it will be."

She pushed herself back into an upright position. "You know, Täj and I were talking..."

"You're not meant to be talking to Täj."

She gestured widely with her cigarette, ash flying everywhere. "Before the Selection,you zealous all-controlling autocrat." Demetri slashed out a signature and shook his head as Vardi Tayna continued, "we were just saying, when this is all over, and we have you safely installed in Angeles as our beloved monarch and you and your lovely wife are raising your heir and your spare... Täj and I will have to launch our own insurgency against you, just to keep things exciting."

Demetri had to set down the pen, because he was worried his laugh would make his writing unsteady. "Just to relieve the monotony?"

"To keep you on your toes, darling." Vardi Tayna's smile was wicked. "Give you something to talk about on that bloody Report of yours."

"You always were a very thoughtful friend, Vee, thank you."

"Of course, Demusha. The least we could do." She turned in her chair and frowned at the worm-wooded door that divided the office from the narrow set of stairs without, which seemed to be experiencing a quite constant stream of traffic up and down as the Finance Administer on the top floor processed reports from all around the kingdom - both of them. "Could have sworn I heard Uzo."

"She did say she'd drop by," Demetri said distractedly, and stabbed Vardi Tayna in the hand with a pen as she reached to snatch a paper off the desk. "For the king's eyes only, runt."

With a yelp, Vardi Tayna withdrew her hand, a mutinous expression brewing on her features as she made a face at Demetri. Like they were children again."I'm to be your queen, aren't I?"

Demetri's voice was very arch indeed."Are you? I wasn't informed."

"I should hope you're not forcing me to continue in the Selection if I have no hope of winning. What terrible treatment of an old friend that would be."

"When I have I ever treated you well, Vardi Tayna?"

"True. You were always a miserable bastard." Vardi Tayna made another move for a report and nearly toppled the chair she had been sitting in as she danced back out of pen-stabbing reach, paper in hand, smile on her face. "And much slower than me."

Demetri rolled his eyes. "Do you get along so poorly with Yue Yukimura that you'll pester me all day rather than return to Raphael's?"

"I miss talking to you, if that's what you mean." Vardi Tayna said it very simply. Demetri knew it had to be hard on her, to be so forcibly separated from her friends - though in all the commotion of the escape from the safe-house, he was sure that she had probably found the time to speak to most of the inner circle at some point or another. Nonetheless, it had to grate on one who found it so hard to make friends, and so easy to lose them once again.

"I'm sure I'd be touched if I thought you had a heart."

Vardi Tayna was scanning the report, as Demetri leaned back in his chair and checked his watch. Was this to be the rest of his life? Reading reports, signing legislature, penning letters to foreign nations begging for recognition and aid? It seemed such a paltry and miserable existence that he half-thought he would have to agree to Täj and Vardi Tayna's daft counter-rebellion idea, if only to break up his days. Some more excitement was soon to come his way, because Vardi Tayna was saying, a tone of dark delight in her voice, "the bastard prince is to have a Selection as well?"Vardi Tayna threw Demetri an incredulous look.

"So it seems. Those poor girls."

"Well, now you know the reason you must release me from this Selection. I intend to join Mordred's." Vardi Tayna's eyes glittered with faint glee as she forced a crease into the letter, her browned hands moving surely even as she looked at Demetri. "He's such a handsome fellow, don't you think?"

"Say that when Täj is here."

She laughed. She had made the report into a paper airplane, and she launched it at Demetri's head, just as the door swung open to admit Uzohola and Wick; the former's eyebrows rose as she let out a laugh - "I thought we'd be interrupting some date," the co-ordinator said with a slight smile. "But it's just you two being antisocial, holed up here away from nice, normal people."

"I'm trying," Demetri said, sounding quite unkingly. "To be productive."

Vardi Tayna shrugged. "I'm not."

Wick dropped into the chair Vardi Tayna had just vacated. "Any luck?"

"None. He won't agree."

Demetri set his jaw, ready for another argument, and for a second Wick seemed inclined to provide it, until Uzohola set a hand on his arm and sent him a quelling look which had the propagandist raising his hands in surrender and shaking his head. "As his Esteemed Excellence commands."

Uzohola moved past Wick to put her arms around Demetri's neck and press a kiss to his forehead as he pushed his papers aside, all the better to focus on his friends. "How's it going?"

"It's been better." Demetri spun his pen between his fingers. "Or did you mean the Selection?"

"Which is bothering you more?"

Wick had left the door open behind him; Täj had drifted in through it, rather like a ghost, and taken up a position leaning against the wall, between a bookshelf and the window. Demetri said, "Theo, can you give us a moment?" and, looking a little surprised, Malone did as he was commanded, casting somewhat curious glances at the group as he did so. Demetri could not help but notice that the mechanic looked so tired that it seemed like he had two black eyes; he made a mental note to ask the rebel what was keeping him so sleepless at night. It was not like Demetri to have initially missed such a sign of distress on one of his companions - this whole situation had clearly distracted and stressed him much more than he had wanted to admit.

"That is a question without an answer, Uzohola, my darling."

She withdrew, and took up a position perched on the corner of the desk; Vardi Tayna had collapsed onto the window seat that Theo had just vacated, her legs akimbo, smoke drifting lazily from the still-lit cigarette in her hand. She silently passed it to Täj for a drag, as Demetri stretched his arms out for the first time in hours and realised that it was the first time in weeks that the inner circle had been assembled like this, all together again - well, nearly. The General's absence was still conspicuous, and there was a clear empty space by the door where Thiago ought to have been pacing. But it was, Demetri thought, the closest they had come to normalcy in - what had it been, a month? More? It hadn't felt that way. Hell, he had only met a quarter of the girls from which he was expected to pick a wife.

"I'm sure this isn't a coincidence," he said, steepling his fingers and looking over them at his oldest friends, assembled like the world's motliest council of advisors. "That you should all decide to pay a visit on the same dreary Monday evening - so, have you all come to offer your input on the girls?"He thought it likely that they had heard he was speaking to Vardi Tayna, and had taken the opportunity to see her as well. Their group had been incomplete for so long. "Or has there been some terrible calamity of which I must be informed?"

"Damn," Wick said lazily. "You didn't hear?" Uzohola kicked him and he receded it quickly. "Nothing, nothing."

Uzohola said, "I'm just here because one of our hosts informed me that we had a truant Selected on our hands." She shot Vardi Tayna a dark look. "But of course, all the Selected know the rules, and would never run away to try and barge into the king's office, demanding an audience to say she wanted to leave his Selection because she was bored."

"Never," Vardi Tayna agreed, adopting a tone of mock horror.

"She sounds like a bitch," Täj said mildly.

"I can confirm," Wick said. "She is a bitch."

"You know who's not a bitch?" Vardi Tayna still had that faint note of delight colouring her voice, and Demetri groaned.

"Don't. I won't have you prejudicing me about the Selection."

"I was going to say something nice!"

"You don't know the meaning of the word."Demetri squinted at her suspiciously. "Okay, kra-chok. You get one chance."

She folded her arms. "All the girls staying with me at Raphael's are absolutely delightful." She managed to make it sound like a challenge, like she had somehow defeated him by issuing such a compliment.

Demetri muttered, "I can think of one exception," and Vardi Tayna seemed on the verge of searching for something to throw at him. Just like when they were but children - some things, it seemed, never changed.

Before she could, they were treated to a rare second sentence in a conversation from Täj - most unlike him to be so chatty, Demetri thought, and made another mental note to ask him if everything was okay, for him to be so outspoken - as he said, "Atiena's a good sort." Vardi Tayna rolled her eyes. Täj added, "Thiago's taken an interest in her."

"Thiago?" Demetri.

"Just Thiago?" Uzohola.

"Täj fancies her," Vardi Tayna said and Täj looked at her, and laughed, and she just shrugged and held back a grin. Some inside joke between those two? Demetri had given up trying to understand them sometimes. They had spent too long together as children, and started to go slightly odd as a result. Her bad influence on him, he had decided long ago, rather than the other way around - for the most part. She seemed quite immune to his paranoid tendencies, although she had clearly picked up his smoking habit. Maybe she thought it was stylish. Vardi Tayna had done far stupider things before for the sake of the impression she made, but doing idiotic things was not entirely out of character for the girl. Täj tended to be a little bit stupider when she was around.

Atiena would be better for him.

"Täj needs to be reminded that the Selected are off limits," Wick said, rather smugly.

Demetri frowned. "What does that mean?"

Uzohola brushed the whole thing off and changed the conversation quickly. "And Liara?" It wasn't clear who she was talking to, but Demetri took the initiative to answer first.

"Fine, I suppose." He glanced around to gauge their reactions.

"She didn't seem too pleased during your last date," Uzohola warned. Demetri almost winced. Well, that had been destined to go poorly. The girl had come fifteen years too late in search of a boy who was long gone - thrown under the wheels of war.

"Or after," Vardi Tayna added. That, too, Demetri could have predicted.

"You treated her like a nuisance," Wick pointed out.

"She is a nuisance," Uzohola said bluntly. "I can't believe Givre let her in, he had to know how much more difficult it would make things for us..."

"It's working out fine," Demetri said. "Täj?"

Täj looked away from Vardi Tayna and nodded. No more chattiness from him - Demetri knew it was an odd thing to be relieved about, but routine - habit - normalcy had been sorely lacking from this Selection so far, and he found himself rather craving it at this point. A nod and a look was all that Täj needed to communicate with Demetri, so the king inclined his head in acknowledgement and turned back to Uzohola and said, "that seems to be all in hand." He cast a quelling glance around the room, his dark green eyes serious. "I need to arrange dates with... seven of the remaining girls, did you say?"

"Nine," Uzohola said.

"Basically all of them," Wick added.

"I don't see the point." Vardi Tayna shrugged. "High command is just going to decimate them again - what's the point in getting attached?"Täj passed the cigarette back to her, but she seemed rather determined to just use it to emphasise her speaking points.

"Enyakatho needs footage," Wick pointed out. "You know the people at home want to see the Selected in action. Rafa said that there's a town festival coming up in Layeni, you can see a few of the girls there, take them out to events - Saran, Dove, Yukimura."

"And we never celebrated your birthday properly," Uzohola added. "Paloma is planning on reopening one of its skyscrapers next month - we could do a real party on the rooftop for the girls at the Biulu compound, you know, Opal and Elizabeth and... well, you've already met Nina and Soledad."

"I have," Demetri agreed ruefully. Lady Soledad had chewed him out for exactly what they were planning now: orchestrating dates and meetings one after another, treating the girls like objects to be inspected on an assembly line and those that were found lacking marked defective, one after another. What other choice did he have? It was a Selection under the strangest and most restrictive of circumstances - he was rarely ever within fifty miles of the girls, so how else could he be expected to get to know them?

Wick said, quite distractedly, picking at a hole in his jeans, "Eden Lahela needs your attention as well, she's doing some project with Farid?"

Vardi Tayna smiled. "She's doing what?"

"Some propaganda piece - she's the scion of the Axiom, after all, I'm surprised it took this long." Uzohola shook her head and shrugged. "She offered to help the crew on some filming they were doing near Mrs Klahan's farm, said their script needed rewriting, and Farid let her run with it. Wren sent a message, just there, to say that she suspected there had been something of a coup. If Demetri and high command give the go-ahead, Enyakatho plans to build the next Report around it."

Demetri cocked his head. "Sounds like an interesting girl."

Vardi Tayna rolled her eyes. "That's why she's doing it. To make you think that."

"So it's working. And now I know that she's interesting and she's effective." Demetri smiled at Vardi Tayna over his steepled hands. "You should try being interesting if you want to make it into my Elite, Vee."

"I am interesting."

"So is the bubonic plague."Demetri had found his list of the remaining Selected - only thirteen left and he had to refer to a list just to keep them all straight in his head. High command had assured him that there would be no more eliminations for the foreseeable future, but even so Demetri wasn't sure there would be enough time to get to know them all. He continued, "Raphael is treating the girls well?"

Vardi Tayna nodded. "As though they were her own flesh and blood."

Demetri sombered. "That's very good of her."

Wick said, once again to no one in particular, "she has mentioned having the king to dinner. To heal old divisions."

"She doesn't have to do that," Demetri said automatically.

"She wants to. She insists."

Uzohola said, quite softly, "she lost everyone, Dimi."

As though he needed a reminder.

Demetri shut his eyes and nodded, taking a deep breath. "I'll write, then - congratulate her on the wedding. Say I'll come around for tea some afternoon, to catch up, to meet Agares, when the girls are out."

"She'd appreciate that a lot," Vardi Tayna said. "As would Bruce."

"Feste is still alive?"

"And kicking."

Demetri smiled. "Miracles are possible after all, it would seem."

Uzohola checked her watch. "Speaking of. Veetee, I promised to have you back at the safehouse for dinner - we'll have to get going."

The rebel girl nodded. As Uzohola turned to hug Demetri and saw goodbye to Wick, Vardi Tayna pressed her cigarette into Täj's hand and said something to him that the king could not hear. She was nearly across the threshold before she paused.

"Oh." Vardi Tayna turned at the door and reached into her pocket. She withdrew a small, hardback book with a blue cover and threw it, quite gently, in Demetri's direction. "For you."

Demetri frowned. "For me?"

"For you. Not from me."

"From who?"

Vardi Tayna looked delighted to correct him. "Whom, darling, whom."

She winked at Demetri and waved goodbye to Wick, as Uzohola said, "well, boys, let's make sure we have a bottle of scotch with us the next time we meet. The Selection has made you all dreadfully boring."

"Lovely as always, Uzo." Wick rose from his chair as well, saying something about a football match he had promised to play with some of the children at the Layeni orphange, and the three of them left the room with brief goodbyes and a promise to see one another soon - though Demetri knew that Vardi Tayna was returning to the total exclusion of the Selection, until the next time a paltry excuse for a catch-up happened to arise.

The door shut behind them, and as Täj moved from the wall to the chair, Demetri opened the book to find a small note, torn from a sketchpad, between the cover and the first page, with a few sparse lines across its face -

Your Majesty -

Lady Vardi suggested that you might like this book so any blame regarding its unsuitability or critique of its quality should go to her entirely. If you enjoy it, however, I would be delighted to take credit, and also to hear what you thought.

I would like to thank you for your gifts, and tell you how much I have enjoyed reading them, and how striking a character I found Lin Daiyu, and how tragic and heartbreaking her fate - clearly you are still determined to sway me towards unhappy endings, but I'm afraid you will not find any in this particular book.

I would also like to say that Mrs Raphael Smetisko has been taking excellent care of us and speaks most highly of you.

Thank you very much,

Yue Yukimura

月雪村

The last few words were scrawled and sharp, almost as though she was worried she had written too much, gushed too excitedly, spoken in too forthright a manner. Demetri slipped the note from the book and put it into his pocket, quite carefully, so that he could re-read it later and compose an appropriate reply - though, he thought with a smile, he rather felt he should try to read the novel first, so he could speak to her about it. Or was it one he had read before? No - Vardi Tayna knew him better than that.

Vardi Tayna had helped to select the book? She was helping her supposed competition? That wasn't like her - another deviation from the usual. Demetri didn't like it at all.

Täj tapped some of the ash from his cigarette into the cup of cold coffee Demetri had been nursing since noon. "Honestly." His voice was still somewhat hoarse, despite how well rested he looked. "How are you?"

Demetri sighed. "I can't complain."

"You can. If you want to."

"I don't want to. It's nothing I can't handle." Demetri capped and uncapped his pen and then threw it down in some frustration. What was the point of being king when you felt so restricted, and useless, and unworthy? He wasn't sure why this had just crept up on him all of a sudden - maybe because he'd been on four so-called dates now, had met some of the Selected, had begun to see and understand that image they had begun to build up in their heads of who he was, of who he ought to be.

He would disappoint them. He knew he would.

He was not what they thought he was.

"I believe that," Täj said. "You're Demetri Dunin. Don't forget that." He shrugged. "And you can handle anything."

"Let's not exaggerate too much." Demetri took a deep breath, picked back up his pen, and began to make notes on his list of Selected girls - what the inner circle had just said, what he had perceived, what his gut said.

Täj tapped his cigarette against the lip of the cup. "None standing out?" he said, indicating the list sympathetically. Demetri almost smiled. Täj was a dear friend, and the only kind of brother he had ever known, but even Demetri knew that he was not the kind of guy to whom one should go for romantic advice.

Täj was an observant fellow, but he had one crippling blind spot.

"Some," Demetri admitted. "Some more than others. But I haven't met them all."

Täj smiled. "I'll rephrase - any standing out for the wrong reasons?"

Demetri shook his head. "Some," he said again. "Some more than others. But I don't know them very well yet."

"First impressions count for a lot."

Sometimes Demetri wondered how differently his life would be if first impressions were correct - if the inner circle had proven, all those years ago in the Wasteland, to be exactly what they seemed and nothing more, no deeper, just surface-level. If everything was simple, and everyone called each other by their real names, and they were all honest, all of the time, no plots and no intrigue. After a silence, Demetri added, "you know, Vardi Tayna came to see me today. To ask to be eliminated."

There was always something slightly frozen about Täj that the Wasteland never could thaw, but moments like these Demetri always thought he understood why the rebels called him the pale dog, when they thought he wasn't listening. For a moment, only his eyes seemed alive.

Finally, he said, "why would she do that?"

"I was hoping you'd know."

"She's planning something," Täj raised his cigarette to his lips once again. "Tayna is planning something."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"Do you know what it is?" It surprised Demetri a little that Täj did not. Vardi Tayna collected secrets like a magpie collected shiny objects, but Täj was so quiet, so watchful and so ever-present that not much escaped his notice. He was an observant one, their Täj, and always had been. Demetri wondered if his notebooks were already filled with the skeleton of Vardi Tayna's plot, and he was asking Demetri this now only in an attempt to put some conjectural flesh on its bones.

"Not yet." Demetri shook his head. "I imagine the first we hear of it will be when she needs us to bury the bodies with her."

Täj smiled. "Wouldn't have it any other way." He pulled Demetri's list towards him, and began to scan the names silently as Demetri stood from his desk and paced to the window and back in a vain attempt to stretch out his legs.

"Strange group left," Demetri said.

"Suits you just fine, then."

Demetri looked at his old friend. "Täj, this whole Liara situation..." He didn't need to say anymore. Täj saw, and he instantly understood. There were few people with whom Demetri shared such a silent connection.

"If you're worried, then you shouldn't be." Täj was right, in a way. They had got away with that first date, had tided the Angeles girl over for a little longer, assuaged her doubts a tiny bit. That was all they could do for now. And by all accounts, she was a nice enough girl.

Pretty, too.

"I need you to keep an eye on her."

Täj tapped his orbit as a silent gesture of stop worrying, you don't need to remind me. Demetri knew he shouldn't worry. If there was something to be seen, Täj would see it - more for Liara's sake than the rebellion's. Now that it was looking more likely than ever that a mole had made it into their ranks, Eden and Liara would be the first to come under scrutiny from the men on the ground, who might not realise just how cloistered and closely supervised the Selected girls had been. And in the meantime, Demetri thought, there was some traitor elsewhere among their number - someone feeding information to Ysabel about Demetri's movements, the location of the safehouse, plans for the Selection. The list of people who had access to all of that information was very short indeed, and Demetri knew that Thiago would ferret them out before long, but it nonetheless grated on him, to know that anyone around him could be accepting the coin of the woman who wanted him dead in return for his head on a stake. One of many reasons that the impromptu rendez-vous with the inner circle had been such a relief - it had been the first time in weeks that he had known for sure that none of the people in the room wanted him dead.

They could have cut his throat years ago if that was the case.