Chapter 20: Just To Be Seen
You taught me the courage of stars before you left, how light carries on endlessly, even after death
With shortness of breath, you explained the infinite, how rare and beautiful it is to even exist
- Ryan O'Neal
Over the weeks in the Selection, Atiena's hair had grown out into a natural style, a short crown of corkscrew curls, no longer cropped close in the pseudo-militarial style as she had worn it in Tammins. She was grateful that Uzohola had left her a silk wrap in which to wear her hair at night before the co-ordinator had departed Layeni, grateful for the gift and grateful also for the thought behind it, though she couldn't quite admit to herself whence that second sentiment stemmed.
In any case, she still wasn't quite used to how feminine her new hair made her, softer and younger than her twenty hardened years. Raphael's wife, Agares, wanted to put decorations into it for the Layeni festival, which was due to begin in four days, and Atiena wasn't quite sure she would have the heart to turn the sweet woman down. She couldn't shake the impression that there was something underlying the watchmaker's enthusiasm in helping the girls with the Selection, in making them look nice and arranging for them to spend time in the town with ordinary citizens and so on. More and more, Atiena was beginning to wonder if the different safehouses were themselves in competition – if Agares and Raphael were trying to prove something with their girls, by giving them the best chance.
Maybe she was being cynical. Maybe she had been too long parted from ordinary human kindness. Maybe she saw selfishness lurking where there was none.
On the other hand, maybe she was right.
She couldn't discount that possibility, after all.
And the other surprise, with her new, longer hair, was that she actually had to dedicate time to it, hours set aside to wash it. She remembered so little about her mother, the mother that had belonged to Atiena's before Atiena had belonged to Killmonger and the Morrises, but she remembered that when she was a child her mother had braided her hair, carefully, with deft fingers, tight cornrows along her scalp to keep it neat, as befitted a Four. She could not even recall the name that her mother had given her, but she remembered liking that the style exposed the heart-shaped shape of her face, made her look like more like her older brother, more sophisticated and older.
She remembered seeing his braids sway gently in the wind when Ysabel had ordered him hung from the walls of Tammins Fort. In that regard, her mother had been lucky. She had hidden Atiena in the closet (quiet now, not even a peep, we're going to play a game) and then she had been shot in the head. These were the truths that Atiena knew, so engrained in her psyche that she did not remember how she knew them.
For that reason, when Agares suggested braiding her hair, as Uzohola sometimes wore hers, Atiena had shot it down immediately. She was not a sentimental person, but there was no use in bringing up the past when they didn't need to.
Besides, she liked the way that the light filtered golden through her hair when the sun was sinking.
It was the first touch of vanity she had allowed herself in all of these fifteen years. The Selection was making her soft, clearly, Atiena thought with amusement. What would Maria say, if she saw her now?
This all flitted through her mind as she went through the routine that had rapidly become familiar during their long hours at Raphael's house, a little different from that of the delicate Yue or the refined Liara. After unwrapping her hair, and pulling open the curtains to see the sky was not yet light, Atiena set about her usual morning workout as quietly as she could, knowing now which floorboards creaked and how loud the sink was when she ran it to wash her face. She knew it wasn't much compared to the hardscrabble life on the run which was most familiar to the Morrises, but it was something to stop her from growing too soft. She had asked Raphael about finding her time on a range and a gun with which to keep her sharpshooting skills slick, and the Smetisko woman had promised to look into it, but Atiena did not have high hopes. The rebellion barely trusted the girls expected to marry the king to meet him for longer than ten minute bursts. She highly doubted they would trust her with a rifle.
But it didn't hurt to try.
She was in the courtyard, going through her usual exercises, when the dog that Täj called Vovve came out as usual as though to herd her into the house for breakfast. The wiry collie was probably Atiena's favourite part of this whole safehouse business, if only because he reminded her so strongly of her own hound, Midnight, left behind in Tammins – not so much in appearance, but in the slightly wounded way he approached the world, wary until he got to know you and then very desperate for love.
Atiena had heard that animals took after their masters, and didn't want to think too much about that at all.
So far, so routine, but this time Vovve had brought a friend with him – Atiena was extremely surprised to recognise King Demetri himself, dressed not in his usual fisherman's jumper but in a lightly padded shooting jacket and canvas trousers. "Lady Atiena," he said. In this light, his hair seemed spun from gold. "I am sorry to intrude."
Atiena rose quite unhurriedly, brushing dirt from her knees and refusing to look apologetic for her current harried appearance or the sweat dripping off her back. He had walked in on her, not the other way around. She imagined Yue would have rather died of embarrassment if the king had seen her in only a sports bra and leggings. "Not intruding at all, Your Majesty."
There was a brief pause. She thought he was making an assessment about her. She couldn't remember if this was the first time they had spoken. She wondered if he was figuring out how to charm her best. It reminded her of how her adoptive brother, Daniel, looked at a lock when he wanted to pick it. Whatever he was thinking, it was apparent he had decided to drop the small talk. "Raphael mentioned you wanted access to a shooting range. I must admit it's been some time since I sharpened my own skills – I don't suppose you'd accompany me?"
Atiena cocked an eyebrow. "A date, sir?"
Demetri's eyes were a very dark green in the early morning light. "If you want it to be."
"And if I don't?"
"Would you have a reason not to?"
"Humour me," Atiena said, and was rewarded with a twitch of Demetri's mouth in response that suggested he was fighting the urge to smile, not out of amusement, but out of obligation.
"What would you like it to be?"
An audition, Atiena thought. The Morrises could only do so much in Tammins, as a single small militia. Here, where the action was, where she could make a difference – it had been her main reason for coming south in the first place. However, she only shrugged. "I suppose I can live with a date," she agreed, and fought back the little voice in her head that said this will be your first date since Veronica.
Demetri nodded. "I'm glad to hear that," he said, "though of course if you change your mind at any point, we can renegotiate." He glanced at his watch. "I'll let you change and get some breakfast – would you meet me at the crossroads in about a half hour? I need to get some things for Uzokuwa in town."
Atiena nodded, and could not help but think, as she watched him turn and walk away, that she might for the first time in this Selection not be sure of exactly what she could expect from the coming day.
But she did as he had told, though of course all he had told her to do was common bloody sense, she thought grimly, returning to the room she shared with Liara to dress quickly. The other girl's bed was vacant; no doubt she had already begun to prepare breakfast in the kitchen, according to routine, allowing Agares to finish up on that day's work – not repairing clocks, as usual, but preparing new dresses for the girls to wear to the Layeni Festival. Liara had been so touched by the gesture, and by the expense that their hosts were going to on their behalf, that she had gone to each of the girls separately to try and think of some gift they could give them in return. Liara had an odd need to be useful, Atiena thought, like she was desperate to shake the impression of a privileged Angeles brat. Truth be told, despite Atiena's settled hatred of the black widow Ysabel, she rather found herself liking Liara.
Breakfast that morning was typical: strips of cold salmon and quarters of hard-boiled eggs, an array of breads, some soft cheese, a bowl of yogurt and another bowl of mixed seeds and spices, baozi for Vardi Tayna and a pot of oolong tea for the pale rebel and a pot of coffee for Atiena and Raphael to share. The house always seemed so alive with creaking floorboards and shifting foundations and people in every room, that Atiena found it hard to miss the busy nature of Tammins, though the absence of the other Morrises throbbed in her chest like an open wound.
"Old Deacon says the river has frozen over," Raphael said, as she took her usual position at the head of the table. Her wife sat next to her, wearing a tawny headscarf and bandages on her fingers where she had pricked them sewing during the night. Atiena wasn't sure why these little indications of domesticity touched her so much, but she had to look away. "Just in time for the Festival."
Yue, though a former world champion in ice skating, did not look too happy to hear this news, but no one could ask her why before Agares called, "Sahtein!" as she always did.
"Sahtein," the others echoed, which Atiena had grown to understood meant something along the lines of bon appetit in Arabic, and they all dug in. The pale rebel was absent, which meant Liara had a whole pot of oolong to contend with on her own; Vardi Tayna was wolfing down baozi like she thought the world was due to end in a minute-and-a-half. Yue picked carefully at her food, while Raphael looked around the table and said, "well, what are we up to today?"
Yue said, "Saran is bringing some of the orphans to pick berries on the far side of town, and invited me." Northern girls, Atiena thought, sticking together. She didn't quite fit into the established social strata of the Selection, at once a rebel and a midlander from occupied Illeá without the two seeming to co-exist peacefully. Maybe she and Liz or she and Nina could have forged some sort of bond through familiarity, like this, but Liz and Nina had both been assigned elsewhere. "If that's alright, Raphael?"
Raphael waved off the request. "More than fine, Yue, you don't need to worry."
Atiena jumped in then, before anyone else could answer. "The king has invited me to go shooting with him."
That silenced the general chatter in the room – out of the corner of her eye, she could tell that Liara had set down her fork, and Yue's eyes had gone large. Vardi Tayna's gaze flicked this way and that, taking in the tableau. Atiena hadn't realised it was that much of a surprise, but then, she supposed it was the first date the king had arranged in their time in Layeni.
"Well," Raphael said crisply. "That's lovely."
What was that tension in her voice? Atiena could not place it, but then, it was an open secret that Raphael had broken with the rebellion and the division had not been entirely healed, even if she had welcomed the Selection into her home. Maybe it was the drawing of this martial element into what ought to have been a romantic event that irked her?
Agares jumped in quickly to break the ice that had rapidly formed over the atmosphere. "Well, just make sure you are careful not to stand in the wrong place, Atiena. Our king has terrible aim at the best of times, if I remember correctly."
"You do," Vardi Tayna said with dark delight.
"I'll come back in one piece," Atiena reassured Agares, and that seemed to be that, although the breakfast that resumed was much more sombre than it had been before.
Rather to her surprise, Demetri was on time – or rather, early, waiting for her at the crossroads with a paperback book in his hands. He tucked it into his pocket and smiled as he saw Atiena approach.
"Good book?" she asked, wondering how close she could come to engaging in small talk and still feel like herself.
"A friend recommended it," Demetri replied. "I'm liking it so far, but I'm not sure how they'll finagle a happy ending out of it."
"Are you sure it'll have a happy ending?"
"It would be… uncharacteristic if it did not."
They headed down the familiar track to the encampment, where the soldiers milled about in what amounted to leisure time for their kind – camo and tank tops and jeans, cleaning guns and repairing engines, playing drinking games around a stone circle that contained fire once the night drew down. The girls technically had a curfew that meant they were only here briefly during the day to speak to Uzokuwa or Uzohola or Wick, but from the room that Atiena shared with Liara, she could sometimes glimpse the glow of fires across the rooftops, and sometimes, when they had something to celebrate, could hear the music. But this morning there seemed to be few revels in motion, everyone still moving about rather languidly as though only half-awake.
"Now," Demetri said, as they skirted some of the tents that had been set up outside the prefabs that served as temporary communication hubs. "I wasn't sure what you were expecting when you said shooting range, so…. well, it's nothing fancy."
Atiena smiled. "You'd have to work hard to disappoint me, your Majesty."
"Well, let's just wait until you see what's waiting for you." They rounded the corner and Atiena could not hold back a laugh as she saw the beer bottles lined up on the low stone wall, about five hundred metres away. And there were a lot of bottles. "I am assured," Demetri said wryly. "That the rebels were delighted to hear that you needed targets."
"I don't suppose there's any left for us?"
"You intend to shoot under the influence, Lady Atiena?"
She shrugged. "Bit of Dutch courage to steady my hand. Wouldn't hurt."
Demetri smiled. "Let me see what I can do." He reached down and picked up the rifle that had been left out for Atiena – a Berkut 3, if she had to guess, a powerful semi-automatic more suited to hunting game than to sniping people. She wondered if maybe that was intended to lower the threat she might pose to the king, or if maybe the rebels here were so attached to their firearms as an adjunct of themselves that Demetri had faced some trouble trying to find someone willing to loan them a gun.
"Russian?" she said.
"Russian," he confirmed, and handed her a box of magazines. "SP for big game, anything over five hundred pounds, FMJ for anything below."
Atiena cast an assessing eye over the beer bottles. "I'm going to guess," she said. "That these are… below." There was a note of dry humour in her voice that she made no effort to hide.
"One way to find out." Demetri shot in a bladed stance with his right side facing the target, Atiena noted, less tactical and more competitive, though she thought that was likely because he wanted to hit the bottles precisely rather than just smash a few rounds through a threat. He pulled the trigger and just like that – the noise was like a second gunshot – the bottle exploded with such overwhelming force that the ricocheting pieces smashed two of the bottles next to it. The ejected cartridge spun through the air, spent, and landed at Atiena's feet.
Atiena could not resist the gleeful note in her voice as she said, "nice shot, sir. Agares warned me to expect much worse."
Demetri said, "I think we're standing too close. I never hit them first time."
She thought that he was probably just being humble.
They stepped back another few hundred metres, and this time, Atiena adopted the athletic stance that Killmonger preferred, mourning the loss of her aperture sights as she did so. Semi-automatic meant she could pull off a few shots without stopping to reload – twenty or thirty, depending on the rifle, though the Berkut felt steady enough she thought it trended higher. "Your Majesty," she said. "You don't mind if I outshine you, do you?"
"It would be very rude to do so on a date," Demetri said, rather sarcastically, and Atiena took that to be permission, because she began to fire, fast and focused. One, two, three, four…. She could almost imagine Killmonger standing over here, instructing her, "aim on the inhale, fire on the exhale, aim, fire, inhale, exhale, well done, Atiena!", as she swept her muzzle left to right, very methodically, glass shattering and raining out in all directions, five, six, seven, eight. This was why they usually used cans in Tammins, she thought ruefully, but it was very much in the character of these rebels to prefer the flashier, deadlier variants, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
She lowered her gun, and smiled to see that she had demolished the line. Demetri let out a low, appreciative whistle, and Atiena heard someone call from behind her, "all that drinking for nothing? Morale will be at an all time low."
She turned to see the familiar silhouette of Wickanninish Harjo approaching them, carrying a crate, the gorgeous Uzohola trailing behind him with a rifle lying on either shoulder.
"You might just have to drink more," Demetri said.
Wick grinned at Atiena. "You're a good shot, Morris. I mean, I'd heard you were good..."
"But that was magical," Uzohola added, and Atiena had to look at her shoes to try and hide the blush that flared in her cheeks.
"We come, bearing more targets." Wick set down the crate and looked into it. Uzohola reached over to take Atiena's rifle, and hand her a handgun instead. "Like this." He pulled out what seemed to be a memorial plate, bearing the face of the bastard prince, Mordred. "Ready?" He cocked back his arm, and flung it like a frisbee; Atiena tracked it low over the ground and then snapped up her arms and fired off a single shot. The ceramic plate shattered into a thousand pieces, and Uzohola and Wick whooped appreciatively.
"This one's for you, Demetri, darling." Uzohola flung another plate, and Demetri mimicked Atiena, tracking low and then firing in a single fluid motion. Atiena was starting to suspect that Agares had exaggerated his poor aim, for the plate similarly exploded. He passed his gun to Uzohola, and threw a beer bottle for Atiena, who hit it with negligible focus, and then Wick threw something – Atiena thought it might have been a book of propaganda – for Uzohola, and the group groaned in collective disappointment as her shot only winged the book and spent it spinning, shedding pages, rather than shredding it as it should have.
"More practise needed," Uzohola conceded good-naturedly, and stooped to hurl something into the air. "Atiena, make me proud..."
This time, Atiena shot one-handed, and the group cheered as she managed to fire not one but two perfect holes into the beer can that Uzohola had thrown, one on the way up and one on the way down.
"I can do one better," Demetri said firmly, and Atiena said, "you're going to have to prove it, Demetri," and he did not protest the use of his first name, only indicated that Atiena should speak less and throw more and she was all too glad to comply, immediately and gleefully.
It was almost like Atiena was back home in Tammins, shooting with the rest of the Morrises, except there was always some sense of hierarchy at home, that she had to provide a good example for the younger kids, had to make Killmonger proud. With Demetri and his friends, though, she could just shoot and shout and throw things and watch things shatter into a million glowing fragments in the afternoon sun.
Sometimes they left the window lit, so that Cor and Khione could see one another in their respective cells. Khione was usually shackled; her wounds were beginning to heal now, very gradually, and Thiago had let her out long enough to wash the blood from her hair and change into spare clothes loaned from a rebel, but even so, with every glance at the black eye that the king's brute forces had given her little sister, Cor felt the knot of rage twist a little tighter in her gut. They would regret this. They didn't know it yet, but they would regret this, more than they regretted anything else they had ever done.
Launching a rebellion would seem a picnic compared to what she would do to them.
They could not communicate well – Cor had tried tapping out Morse code on the window, but Khione could not reach the mirror on her side to do the same, so short the chain they had accorded her. Instead, she had managed to mouth some information to her sister in the few minutes they were accorded together, highly conscious of the fact that they were undoubtedly being observed by some concealed camera. Cor had been able to get the gist.
Decimated, was the word Khione had used.
Cor wasn't sure how that could be so, but she had a sinking feeling of realisation in the pit of her stomach that inculcating such extreme loyalty in the Pandora foot soldiers may have come back to bite. Would they risk action if they knew that there was a risk that they would kill her? Not only her, but the others – Khione, Knox Harlen and Kan Justus, at the very minimum, had been caught in some way. Cor wondered how many fatalities the Kingdom in Exile had sustained, trying to take just Knox down. She wondered how Demetri planned to defend that to his people.
What really worried Cor, more than about the fates she knew, was those she did not. And what really worried her was that Khione hadn't seen what had happened to Vida Cox, Cor's loyal third in command, madame of the brothels who paid tithe to Pandora. No one had heard from her, no one knew what had happened, and the idea that sweet, kind, maternal Vida might not even be in an underground cell, might be under the ground in a much more permanent way, might be lying in the soil in some bastardly unmarked grave….
Cor shut her eyes, and took a deep breath before the anger could swell again. No. She had faith in her family. This was… a challenge. But the Rouens were not strangers to challenges.
Any minute now, she thought narrowly, her lieutenant Zenith would be kicking open the door to her cell and asking her who in the Inner Circle she wanted to flay first.
And Cor would reply, "let's get creative with it."
So she could afford to wait. The tides might move slowly, she thought narrowly, but they were inevitable. And she kept that thought to the forefront of her mind as there was a rap on the door and she sat up on the thin cot they had given her to see Thiago step into the room.
Food, she thought darkly, because she was no good to them starved to death. It had crossed her mind to refuse food, just to see what they would do, how far they would go, how much they cared about keeping her alive, but she knew that she needed to be strong for whatever came next.
She didn't have to be friendly, though, and in fact the thought could not have been farther from her mind. She was no longer in the Selection; she no longer had to put on a facade of civility. Yue, she thought, Saran, the poor dears, still caught in Demetri's web. Whenever she got out of her, she would have to go back for them. And that was that, a concrete decision, and one more thing to add to the list whenever it all came together. Get out, skin the king alive, get Yue and Saran out.
She almost laughed at how easy she made it sound in her head.
"Something funny?" Thiago said mildly.
"Something funny," Cor confirmed, moving to wrap her arms around her knees and watch him intently as he set the food down on the small desk in the corner. He had given her paper as well, but she wasn't sure who he expected her to write to. Maybe they were expecting her to compose her confession. She thought of what they had said to her, when they had first trapped her down here, so far from the sun: liars and killers, in the service of liars and killers. No doubt when this was all over, they would march her out onto the Report and cut off her head as Mordred had done to the General, and they would call that justice.
Well, she thought, they wouldn't get the chance. But that was probably the plan.
"You know what I think is funny?" He was chatty today. Sometimes the spymaster just dropped in her meals, and sometimes he talked. Today was clearly a talking day. Thiago said, "you came to us."
Cor set her jaw, and thought about getting creative with what was going to com enext.
"So I don't understand you being angry. Did you expect us to just… let you participate in the Selection? We would have been fools to let you slip away."
Cor said, very darkly, "your foolishness is not in question."
"Well," Thiago said. "I won't argue. But I'm not the one trapped like a rat." He paused. "Actually, rats are harder to catch."
Cor said, her tongue dripping venom, "hilarious."
Thiago shrugged and threw her an apple – she caught it in one hand without looking – and said, "just remember. For every day that you are down here, the lives of a thousand ordinary people improve. I know you think us evil but…." He shrugged. "I'll take those odds."
Cor said, "I was born an Eight in a system that was designed to choke me before I ever saw the sun. For every day that I am down here, a thousand Eights just like me go a little bit hungrier, go to sleep a little bit colder, hurt a little bit longer. Would you take those odds?"
"You create a supply of pain and then you feign surprise that there's demand." Thiago's voice was low. "What do you think I was born, Corvina?"
Cor met his dark eyes without hesitation. "Are you asking me for solidarity?"
"I'm saying I managed to see the sun without ever running a brothel, or stealing from widows, or breaking a poor man's knees because the cards came up badly."
"No," Cor said, "you just murder people and recruit orphans into a hopeless crusade in the name of divine right. I see why you claim the high ground."
Thiago just said, quite softly, "let me know when you're ready to see the sun again," and shut the door behind him as he left.
Cor was tempted to smash the food he had given her against the wall, but the thought of any fit of temper being captured on the concealed cameras hidden throughout the war galled her like an open wound. Instead, she lay back against the cot, and thought again of her last exchange with Demetri:
"You're no better than Ysabel."
"It's starting to look that way."
Well, she thought, she had always planned to take Ysabel's head. She was sure she could find the energy to take two.
Three, if you counted Thiago's.
Pa Klahan would not have admitted it to anyone that asked, but she rather liked having the Axiom girl to stay with her. Eden could tell that she did, though the two usually found themselves in companionable silence rather than idle chatter. Pa reminded Eden greatly of what she had expected the General to be – somehow sardonic without saying anything, exceedingly practical and pragmatic, somehow plain in all she did as though she could not envisage a world in which one could do otherwise. She wondered which of those features she had imparted into the little Demetri with which she had been entrusted, all those years ago, whether beneath his charming facade he was as straight-forward as his foster mother, whether he muttered under his breath when something irritated him, whether he put his hands on his hips when he was making a sharp proclamation like Pa's frequent utterances of khn ngò when she thought Eden had fucked something up or kracxk when she was feeling fond of her. Eden had grown to learn these meant idiot and little sparrow respectively, and had grown in turn to wear them both with some degree of fondness and pride, to the degree that where she was not credited on propaganda under her true name, she was listed as Klahan Ngó. That was become more and more seldom, however, as she gradually proved her worth to Enyakatho, little by little.
Her interview with Pa Klahan had been a huge hit, not just in the Wastes but among immigrant populations in Illea where her open nostalgia for what had once been had struck a powerful chord among those who mourned the days of King Trajan. Eden was sure her mother must have seen it, and sometimes, when she could not stop herself, she wondered what her mother had thought of it. Had she thought it too syrupy, too heavy handed, lacking in artistic merit? Had she thought of her daughter when she watched it? Or maybe she had refused to allow it on the screen. Eden had no doubt the Axiom would have denounced the film. Maybe her old friend, Brooks, had been the one to write the article that called her a traitor for the thousandth time. Or maybe they were busily pretending she did not exist.
When these thoughts occurred to her, Eden did her best not to think about it. Such thoughts were useless unless she could use them as fuel.
And so, when these thoughts occurred to her today, she took her camera and she headed out to the village to work on the photo project she was working on. On her last visit, she had talked a few old women into letting her create their portraits, and taken pictures of stray dogs in the street fighting over scraps, and captured an argument between merchants, both bearing the sharp Ⴟ brand that marked them as thieves from the Russian Federation. She had not begun this little project with any true aim, but now that she was beginning to make herself useful on the propaganda side – Enyakatho, the director of the Report, had arrived at Pa's farm last night to discuss the newspaper they were setting up for the Kingdom, and what tone they wanted to strike – she thought that it might make a nice retrospective, if this all ended someday. A look at the ordinary life of the citizen in the Kingdom of Exile, far away from the familiar images of war and destruction that rebel and Crown alike loved to fill the airwaves with from dusk until dawn. Simple images of an ordinary life, ticking under it all, the heart that kept the rest of the body moving.
Usually, when she wanted to go to the village, Eden had to have soldiers guarding her, and that meant she rarely got to go to the village, because the soldiers hated her, even now, even after she had spent weeks dedicating herself to the rebellion. She could not quite blame them. After all, they had spent years and decades doing the same. But today, Pa needed to go to market ("that fishmonger doesn't know what's coming," she had muttered darkly, for she was engaged in a feud with the unfortunate man holding the stall next to her), so she had hitched up the trailer to the truck and Eden had clambered into the back of the cab, where live chickens were rustling and squawking incessantly. It was a short trip into the village, made shorter by the fact that Eden was lulled easily into a doze by the gentle rocking of the vehicle, and when they arrived Pa waved away any attempt on Eden's part to help her set up ("haven't you your own work, girl?").
So Eden wandered. Market day was the busiest time of the week for the little village, and even then, the crowds were small; many in this part of the Wasteland had little English, so she communicated with her hands and her camera what she was asking of them as she moved between them. She thought of the number of times she had ignored similar requests from black-suited photographers at black-tie events she had been expected to attend in Angeles, and felt a sudden pang in her heart that she could not label as homesickness or regret, but something different and entirely more bitter.
The Anchorites always came into town for market day, and Eden rather delighted in taking photos of them – they were such a secretive group, practically unknown within Illea and yet accepted in the Kingdom in Exile as a kind of conscientious objector, neither rebel nor Crown but a pacifist middle ground that refused to recognise either as sovereign. After all, as Eden had heard several times by now, they had been here long before there was an Illea to fight over. She didn't think that was quite true, but she didn't see the point of disabusing them of their historical notions.
The Anchorite women always had two names, and you had to say them together whenever you said them, so the woman who ran the jewellery stall was Beyaz Inci, both names together, never just Beyaz and never just Inci, and the woman over at the stall that sold forged documents was always Kuru Chernila, both names together, never just Kuru and never just Chernila. They wore rather drab colours, accented with a single bright point of colour in the cloth that they wore over their mouths while they travelled. The men, on the other hand, always had one name, short, like Kün or Täj or Rëz, and they dressed much like the other civilian men, but for the white lily they pinned to their collar when they came to town, to mark them as standing between the two worlds which existed in the Kingdom. Man and woman alike often smoked a pipe packed with metzliaxitia, the acrid scent of which hung low over the market as children darted and called and played between stalls. Eden had always heard they were a reclusive people, but that just meant that they had never heard of the Axiom and had little reason to hate her as others did – or at least, they pretended not to. Most of the younger members of the community had good English in that guttural accent of the Wastes, and agreed cheerfully to requests for photos, posing as any teenagers in Angeles might have: arms wrapped around each other, pulling faces, sticking out one leg dramatically in an exaggeratedly sultry position. And that, Eden thought wryly, was just the boys. They would crowd around her afterwards to watch as she flicked through the results on the camera's little monitor, and invariably pronounce them ados, which Pa had translated as "acceptable" but which they pronounced with great relish and excitement.
That had been another thing Eden was pushing for, to include in their new newspaper some piece of the Anchorite language to try and draw them into the fold, to make them more amenable to being a minority within the Kingdom in Exile rather than a minority without. After all, she thought, one of the king's Inner Circle belonged to their community, and many of their men had been drafted forcibly into one of the two sides – it was not a question of if, but when, and how painfully they would be assimilated when it came to it. Eden thought it was preferable that assimilation took the form of open arms rather than a cracking whip. So she had begun to gingerly pick up what she could from the market, and this time when she showed the children the photos she had taken of them – a little Anchorite girl and her even littler brother, carrying bags of seed larger than they were – she pre-empted their responses by declaring the results "ados!" and was quietly rather delighted when they nodded vigorously and confirmed that they were, indeed, ados.
Acceptable. Eden thought the word had to be a little stronger than that, once you put it into context.
She promised the children's mother copies of the photo on the next market day, and carefully marked down a few details of their life to include whenever she managed to find place for her collection. And then she moved on, to the next person, to the next photo.
One of her photos that day came from an interview with a young, grieving widow – if you could really call it favourite, Eden supposed. The woman's husband had been killed in action two weeks and buried in secret. That detail – burial – surprised Eden, because everyone knew that rebels burned their dead. But the young woman's portrait came out wonderfully, at once steely and vulnerable, her eyes all a-sheen with unshed tears and yet her jaw absolutely set, and looking at it, Eden knew that she had found the image for the front page of their propaganda paper. If traditional Selections looked for Daughters of Illea, then this, she thought, was the ideal Daughter in Exile, the quintessential Daughter of the Rebellion. No great beauty, and she exuded independence and grief and strength in equal measure.
This, Eden thought, is what she would have to be if she wanted to win this Selection.
"King Demetri says he'll look after us," the young woman said, as Eden scrawled her caption, "there's me and there's the four kids and I know he'll pay well given the love that he bore our Herry but… what good is money? What good is food? I asked him to give me the bitch queen's head and he promised me he would not fail me."
Eden said, "I have faith that he will not. Our king does not make hollow promises."
The widow reached to clasp Eden's hands, her hands tough and calloused compared to Eden's. "Lady Lahela," she said, quite seriously. "You will make a wonderful queen for our kingdom."
Eden said, quite impulsively, and yet feeling that she was saying precisely the right thing, "let there be no Queen in Exile until you have Ysabel's head in your hands."
The vicious smile that earned her from the young widow confirmed she had spoken true.
When she returned to the truck, Pa was just finished packing everything back into the trailer, and gestured that Eden should join her in the front of the cab, now that she had sold off the lamb that had occupied the passenger's seat on their trip there. In its place was a new kitten the colour of treacle, no bigger than Eden's fist, that Pa said was to be their new mouser. "You'll have to take it," she said, "Demetri always looked after the cats when he lived with us, and they don't seem to like me very much."
"You got me a cat?"
"Demetri got the farm a cat." Pa rolled her eyes. "Khn ngò! Idiot!"
Eden settled into the seat with the kitten placed carefully on her lap, batting at the camera strap with curiosity. She had been bitten by a dog as a child, and was still skittish around them as a result, but she had always been rather fond of cats; she had looked after Fatimah's cat after she had defected to the Kingdom, right up until she returned from the Kingdom with missing limbs and a haunted look behind her eyes. And it was, Eden thought, a gift from the king. Apparently. She wondered if he had realised she might be lonely, on her own at Pa's, surrounded by men and women who wanted her dead. Colaboracionistas serán ahorcad, she thought grimly, collaborationists will be hanged. Well, even if the cat was unlikely to protect her, it was at least some small sign of Demetri's favour, and that might provide some defence.
Pa said, "oh, did you hear? You've made the Elite. Enyakatho will probably want to interview you this evening. I'm going to make stroganoff."
Eden kept a tight control of her facial expressions. Pa made it so casual. "I didn't hear," she said. "That's good news."
"Excellent news, kracxk." Pa was still wearing her hair in the twin Dutch braids Eden had taught her during her first week on the farm. They swung, all salt and pepper, as the older woman turned to look at the Selected girl. "I'll be taking credit, of course. First I made a king, now I've made a queen."
Eden bit down on a smile. "Don't I get any kudos, Pa?"
Pa shrugged. "Does an artist give kudos to the clay he works with?" She looked at Eden, and looked like she was considering saying something, but had decided against it. The kitten moved, warm and soft, in Eden's lap.
"What are you thinking, Pa?"
"Oh," the older woman said. "Just that you're rather Demetri's type. It's no surprise he likes you."
"Is this something he's told you?" Eden asked. "Or something you've divined?"
Pa just reached for the radio, and Eden had to laugh at the older woman's habits as she settled herself back against the seat and watched the wastes blur past outside the window. Later that evening, after dinner and after the nameless kitten had been introduced to its new little nest in the barn, Eden went up to the little room Pa had given her and wondered, not for the first time, if maybe this had been the room that Demetri had lived in as a younger boy, when he had first been abducted. She had intended to prepare the photos from earlier that day, put them into order and write up a full account of their subject's story, but the little kitten had followed her up into the room and kept trying to dip its paws into the stop bath and the developer so that Eden had to keep stopping her work to pick it up and put it back on her bed.
Maybe she wasn't cut out to be a wife and mother to the rebellion, she thought wryly, and was distracted from this thought again as the kitten became very interested in something under the bed and mewling loudly. She had to reach under the frame to try and reach it, worried it might have caught itself on a nail or something sticking out of the wall, but as her hands passed over the floorboards, she abruptly realised that one of them was very loose.
Very loose indeed. So loose, that she could pry it up, just enough to slip her hands inside and pull out the little wooden box within, kitten and photography and interview forgotten. She pulled it loose, and looked at it - just an ordinary teak box, the kind the Anchorites used to collect money at their market stalls. It was probably nothing, she thought, probably some forgotten savings box belonging to one of the room's previous residents, some trivial collection of knick-knacks assembled by one of the Klahans' children, maybe some love letters or correspondence saved away by a member of the family.
But that list, Eden thought, was very short, for Pa and the General had very little reason to hide anything in the floorboards in their own home, and in this room specifically, and Vardi Tayna had not spent very much time on the farm.
So that really only left one possibility.
Eden hesitated for only a moment before she set the box onto her bedside locker, unopened. She would finish preparing the photos, she decided, and maybe open it later.
Yes, maybe see what lay within later.
Liz could not say she liked the orphanage anymore than she had liked the bunker. With Opal and Nina so abruptly gone and Sol stubbornly still waiting on her meeting with Demetri, Liz had been moved up to Layeni as well, the distance between the girls dwindling as their numbers did. She hadn't known Saran Altai very well when they were in the old safehouse, but she seemed glad to have some company and came out to greet Liz with a hug on the steps of the building when she arrived.
"Wasn't sure if I'd see you again," Liz said, and Saran could only nod and agree.
"It seemed touch and go there for a while."
They walked inside. The orphanage reminded Liz oddly of a converted church, all high vaulted open spaces and windows with coloured glass set into their panes. Saran introduced a few of the kids as they passed, all of them seeming quite fond of the short Northern girl, and Liz noted with amusement that there was more than one Demetri and Wick among them. It seemed the heroes of the Kingdom in Exile were being honoured, even if it was only with the names of orphans here and there.
Their room was small, what Liz's little niece Paisley would have called cozy, all homemade patch quilts and thick cotton curtains. One side of the room clearly belonged to Saran: framed photos of her friends and family decorated the bedside locker, and a tapestry with an intricate Mongolian design, bearing the marks of neat folding, covered the wall without a window. The other side of the room was utterly stripped bare, with just a duvet sitting folded at the end of the bed. Liz didn't have many things with her – what clothes she retained after so long on the run with the Selection, a scrapbook containing photos of her family and the last art pieces her nephew and niece had gifted her, the letter that had confirmed her fiancé's death. Had that really only been a year ago? She found it impossible to believe so little time had passed. She still thought of herself as half-a-widow.
She sat down on the bed and looked at Saran. "Well? How is it here?"
"How was it where you were?"
"Boring. Monotonous." Liz shook her head. "Just… watching the Report and taking long walks. We saw Demetri once. At a funeral."
"It's not much better here," Saran conceded, and Liz sighed, because she hadn't really expected any different. "We see Demetri a little bit more, but… no individual time. The children keep me busy, but you don't need to spend time with them if you don't want to, I think Lissa and I just love kids…."
Liz thought of Hunter and Paisley and all the children she would never have with Wyatt. "I want to."
Saran smiled, and Liz thought it was easy to see why she had been drafted into the Selection with a smile like that. "Would you like to join Yue and I? We're going to pick berries with some of the Wicks and some of the Demetris at about noon."
Liz laughed. "How do you tell them all apart?"
"Hair colour," Saran said immediately, and laughed. "And after that, numbers. We might have to start watching the Report here, I don't think we've kept up..."
"Eden Lahela has had quite a few pieces aired," Liz said. "She's a precocious propagandist, it seems… She's not kicking about here, is she?"
"I haven't seen her," Saran confirmed, and Liz wondered yet again if that was a sign in their favour or in Eden's.
"And..." Liz raised an eyebrow. "Can I ask? What happened to Lissa?" It seemed so long ago that they had shared that initial brief odd bond together in the Wasteland safehouse, the eltowns, the rarely parted. Lissa was bubbly, and impulsive, and sometimes very, very odd, but she had been genuine in a way that Liz had not seen in the Selection until she had got to know Nina and Opal through hours and hours of laughing at the Report and gossiping about the various rebels and talking long walks around the compound together talking about noting in particular.
An unreadable expression flitted across Saran's face, and was gone again before Liz could even really register what it might mean. "Transfer," she said. "They're moving some of us around… counter-espionage, I think, is what Wick calls it."
Liz rolled her eyes. "This would be… brunette Wick?"
"Wick number one," Saran agreed and Liz groaned and threw herself back on the bed.
"Counter espionage," she repeated. "Dear god, sometimes I really miss the farm."
"Thiago." Administer Givre narrowed his eyes as he stepped into the spymaster's office and caught sight of the girl they all knew as Lady Marjorie cloistered in the corner with notebooks all around her. "I was given to understand this was to be a confidential meeting."
"This is my assistant." Thiago indicated Marjorie with a flick of his hand and she, unsure of the correct etiquette, just waved. "If she hears anything she shouldn't have, we can just kill her afterwards."
Marjorie still wasn't entirely able to tell when he was joking, and Givre still looked rather ill at ease as he moved to accept a seat at the desk. This was Marjorie's first time glimpsing the man known as Lord Bernard, defector from the court, up close. Officially Administer for Finance, she had been ensconced within the rebellion long enough to recognise that he was part of what they called high command – the actual decision makers behind the rebellion. Demetri wasn't just a figure head, Thiago had made that clear, he would not have settled for mere symbolic status, but in certain matters, apparently he was overruled.
"Certain matters" including, it seemed, the entirety of the Selection so far.
"Very well." Lord Bernard had thin skin stretched even thinner over brittle bones and leathery skin tanned by sun and age alike, a stubborn set to his features and deep-set acutely intelligent eyes beneath thick grey eyebrows. "What have you got for us?"
"Jori? The photos, por favor."
"Aquí tienes." Marjorie grabbed the little folio he had indicated and handed it over to him, her mind reeling. Over the past few days, Thiago had allowed her to help him write reports for high command, encrypt messages to the king, co-ordinate spies, but it had all been very harmless, useless information, so toothless that she had suspected he had just been trying to keep her busy enough that she did not venture into the tunnels or ask what happened to Cor, why she had left so abruptly. She had copied out weather reports, simple troop movements, the kind of stuff that she could have probably guessed at without access to any espionage or information whatsoever.
So why, why, why was she being allowed into a meeting of this degree of importance?
The thought rose in her mind that he might just be showing her favouritism because they were both Mexican, which almost made her laugh then and there.
Thiago shook the photos out into his hand – Polaroids, Marjorie saw, and again, did not know why the idea struck her as so funny. "Very well. The false king's Selection will be coming underway. We have gained some information that suggests our own Selection may be compromised by the same."
Givre's voice was laconic. "Are they going to steal our ratings?"
"They're going to steal our contestants." Marjorie's head jerked up as Thiago continued. "At 1600 two nights ago, our convoy was attacked en route to an established safe place in Sonage and heavy casualties sustained."
Givre groaned. "Don't tell me."
Thiago continued, unapologetic. "Obelisk has confirmed that Opal McIntyre has been taken." Obelisk, Marjorie knew by now, was the codename for the spy they had in the palace, some poor maid or guard pressed into risking their lives to pass information back to the Wastes. Apparently, Obelisk was sometimes a little difficult to deal with, all the moreso now that Vardi Tayna, their usual handler, was busy with other matters. "Taken," Thiago continued. "To the palace in Angeles."
A matching pair, Marjorie thought, leverage on leverage, and felt her stomach sink. She had not known Opal very well, but she doubted that anything good was waiting for her in the palace. Not after she had lived here, in the Kingdom in Exile, for so long.
"We suspect she will be forced into his Selection for propaganda purposes, but we're not sure how long she'll prove useful in that regard. Their story will be that Opal McIntyre saw the error of her ways and defected… they'll sell her as a reformed martyr, is my guess. In any case, she won't win the Selection, but they'll milk her for all the propaganda they can and keep her in check with that hostage of theirs."
"If so," Givre said. "Anything that happens to her after that is on Mordred's head. She defects to the Crown, and suffers an unhappy accident… it's the defection that looks bad."
Thiago raised an eyebrow. "Obelisk can ensure she does not get the chance to defect."
Marjorie thought her pen was going to break in her hand.
"I'll pass it up the chain. Is that all?"
"Not quite." Thiago set another photo on the table. "Naran Altai. Twin sister of Saran. Unlikely to be Selected, but her grandfather has submitted her application."
Givre shook his head. "Mr Altai may need a visit from the Warden," he said solemnly, "to remind him of the terms of his residence in the Kingdom in Exile. But… gently, Thiago. We cannot lose access to the Altai mines in Yukon."
"Gentle as a feather, Bernard." Thiago looked at Marjorie expectantly, and, with a start, she began to scrawl notes on the closest scrap of paper in her own familiar shorthand. Most of the papers she had been sorting through had been done in some sort of chickenscratch – she wasn't sure if they were encoded, or just in godawful handwriting. "Finally. We intercepted one of the messages moving north from the Selection."
"From the mole?" Givre leaned forward, the chair creaking in a facsimile of his voice.
"You'll know when I do. All I can say is… there was an interception."
"Very well. No news on that Dove girl? The Eight?"
Marjorie could not tell for sure, but she thought it very likely – in fact she was almost sure – that Thiago was lying when he replied, "if there was news, I'd tell you the news."
"Very well." Their briefing complete, Givre stood and turned to offer Marjorie the slightest of bows, almost as though his skeleton wouldn't survive a deeper gesture. "Lady Marjorie. A delight to meet you, after reading about you for all these weeks."
She inclined her head. "Lord Bernard." She waited until he had left the room, knowing that Thiago's office was such a hotbed of activity that it was doubtful the door would stay shut for long, and then leaned forward and hissed, "que está pasando?"
What is going on?
"Un libro debería ser emocionante, no?" Thiago barely gave her a sideways glance as he swiped the photos back into their folder and the door burst open to admit another of his little birds from somewhere out in the rebellion, eager to tell him about news overheard in a bar regarding munition shipments from Swendway, due to arrive next week, and they returned to the oddly mundane business of espionage, Marjorie turning Thiago's words over in her mind even as she took notes, carefully marking down times and co-ordinates and numbers of guards.
A book should be exciting, right?
Atiena stayed with the rebels, not for the one or two hours that Demetri had forecast, but for the rest of the day, shooting until it was time for lunch and then accompanying Demetri to the garage to help repair an engine that was giving Uzokuwa some trouble. He was surprised to find what easy company she was, but a part of him thought that this was because she did not expect anything of him and he did not expect anything of her. They were not going to fall in love – she was already in love with the war, just as Raphael had once been. Demetri could relate to that and, he was surprised to find, he could relate to Atiena.
It was almost like having Raphael back in the fray.
They ate dinner together as well, and Atiena got her requested bottle of beer, and then another half dozen or so as the sky scorched a deeper and deeper navy as the hours slipped by, and then Wick produced some vodka and before Demetri could protest he had things to do in the morning, they were doing shots and Atiena was holding her own against Uzokuwa and Demetri was thinking, if they picked queens based on their ability to hold their liquor, he would have had to marry Atiena ten times over.
And really, he found himself thinking, once he was several drinks in, if he was being totally honest, if he was being honest with himself with himself as he so rarely was, they were looking for a queen for the rebellion, not a wife for Demetri, and with that in mind, Atiena was rapidly distinguishing herself as an excellent candidate. Most of the girls fell on one side of the line or other – he could think of one or two who straddled the threshold – but Atiena seemed like someone you could live a decent life with, even if you didn't love her.
Ah, but Uzohola was right. He was a romantic. And decent wasn't quite good.
They walked back to Raphael's together, having hit the sweet spot where Atiena was a little bit giggly but still able to walk in a straight line. "I had a good time," she said, as they reached the house, "this not-a-date of ours... I had a really good time."
"Me too," Demetri said, and was surprised to find that he fully meant it. "I'll see you soon, Atiena."
"I'll see you, Demetri." She was sober enough to wink at him, and tipsy enough to find that wink much funnier than it actually was, which in and of itself was amusing. "Get home safe!"
Home, Demetri thought ruefully, watching her stumble into Rafa's house. Wasn't that a thought.
Even vaguely tipsy as he was, he could not shake the impression, as he watched Atiena shut the door behind herself, that he was being watched from the windows above. And indeed, as he stepped back flickered his gaze upwards, he caught sight of a wraith moving in Täj's window. In the gloom of the night, Vardi Tayna's eyes looked like pools of gasoline, Demetri thought, gasoline in search of a match.
Liara said, "Demetri took Atiena on a date today."
They had walked a long way without talking, Täj keeping his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched as though leaning into the wind, Liara unsure of precisely how to attack this conversation. This was not an ordinary Selection, she thought, and ordinary considerations did not apply. And this was not, precisely, a conversation about the Selection, was it?
"Did he?" There was something about the curl of his mouth that reminded her of Ysabel, the way that she could smile with only her eyes, the way she could remain so cold and still-featured and yet let some wry fondness shine through. Täj didn't look like the kind of man that was ever fond of anything, except maybe of smoking, and as though prompted by her mere thought, he produced a cigarette from his pocket and a lighter from his sleeve and all the pale planes of his face were lit by the flicker of the little flame.
She thought, not for the first time, that he did not smell like a smoker, but like a sagebrush wildfire. Like he belonged to the wastes.
"Yes," Liara said, "he did."
Täj's tone was so studiously uninterested that she knew in her gut that it was an act. "Did he have a good time?"
"I didn't hear."
"Well," Täj said, his tone soft. "I hope he did."
She thought, not for the first time, that she might never have a hope of understanding the bond between them, Demetri and Täj, king and executioner, golden royal and pale rebel. Like shadows of each other, Liara thought, almost like Demetri and Mordred had been. And the anger flared up under her ribs, sudden and overwhelming, that Demetri had replaced his brother with this killer, like Mordred had never existed, never loved him, never mourned him.
The anger faded almost as quickly as it had flared as Täj looked at her. Those bled-out eyes of his seemed to understand her without speaking. "Are you jealous?"
Liara stopped and folded her arms, forcing Täj to stop as well, and look back at her. There was a night market on in the square below them, golden lights seeming to hang in the gloom like so many fireflies. The light framed Täj's silhouette and seemed to erode at his sharp edges, making him look very abruptly tired. "That seems an inappropriate question."
"This seems an inappropriate situation." He put his cigarette between his lips, and the tip glowed bright. Liara purposefully let the silence hang between them for a very long, tense moment. "You wanted tea, right?"
"Well," Liara said. "I wanted answers."
"You're in the wrong place for that."
"That's becoming clear."
That produced a smile from him, the first of the night, all sharp cuspids and crows feet. Then he just turned on his heel and kept walking, and Liara had to narrow her eyes and swear under her breath and go to catch up with him as he reached the crossroads and took, not the fork that headed out to the soldier's encampment where Uzohola would be sleeping, or the fork that snaked down into the square were Wick would be drinking, but the third option, the one that led a little out of town until path was replaced by wasteland underfoot, and they walked a little further, just far enough that the light pollution of the village behind them was lost to the night and the sky above them stretched, velvety black and studded deeply with stars, brighter than Liara had ever seen them in Angeles. They came down to the river that snaked through Layeni, the one that had frozen over closer to the centre of town. At this part, though, the surface was flowing but calm, and there was a small set of steps leading down to a salmon-fishing plinth that Täj and Liara could sit down on.
Täj said, "if you want answers, you should talk to Demetri."
"Demetri won't talk to me."
"That is his right. What sort of a friend would I be if I betrayed his trust?"
The river was illuminated by threads of moonlight, overcast by the canopy of heaven which seemed somewhat dark and oppressive tonight, as though the stars were wearing the twinkle of chloroform. Liara wasn't sure if it was the night, or the fact that she could hear Täj's breathing, so quiet was the silence that had fallen between them, but she just said, "I was his friend once."
Täj's voice was purposefully soft, but they were so close that she could almost feel it reverberate in her ribs. Liara always forgot how deep it was, so little did he speak in Raphael's house. "I know."
There were fish flashing in the river, darting up just briefly enough for their scales to glimmer under the stars and then disappear again. Liara said, "would it be easier for him if I left?"
"Of course it would be."
She could not deny that this stung. She had not expected him to answer so quickly.
But Täj continued. "But why would you care about making things easier for him?"
"Because I… care about him."
"He doesn't seem to care about you."
There was a set to Täj's mouth as he said it, a solemnity that hadn't been there before. Liara wasn't sure why she trusted him. She only knew that she did – or at least, trusted him with these petty things, the ordinary fears of an ordinary girl in an ordinary Selection. Does he like me? Does he think I'm pretty? Do I have a chance? She measured each word as she said it.
"Seems," she repeated.
He turned his cigarette in his hand, and flicked ash into the river, but did not raised it to his lips. "Seems," he confirmed detachedly.
Liara watched him for a long moment, and wondered what had made him so inclined towards silence. She still thought he looked vaguely colourless, as though he had been bleached by long hours in the Wasteland like so many bones, his hair wheat-bleach rather than truly blonde and his eyes a pale scorpion-grass green, the moonlight making the lines of his face look somehow softer and the shadows under his eyes much darker. "Well," she said. "He seems to care about you."
He glanced at her. "You reckon?"
She could not resist the laugh at his reluctance to commit to any sentence, to weasel his way out of any confirmation, and Täj looked a little taken aback and a little gratified by her laugh. "I do," she said. "I do reckon."
Täj shrugged. "Rebellion forges tight bonds."
"Do you come from a rebel family?"
"No," Täj said simply, a little ruefully. "I do not."
Like pulling teeth, Liara thought.
She remembered realising how young the pale man was, how close in age to the Selected girls, and thinking that he might have even been younger than the King of Dust himself – or maybe, Demetri seemed older than his years. Even now, there was a sharpness and watchfulness to the way that Täj himself that Liara wasn't sure if she had just imagined the softness that had existed there only a moment before, but then he said, "I wasn't born into this. I chose it." And there it was again, that openness, that youth, that humanity that Liara rarely perceived in him, only in brief glances at the bandages under his sleeves or when he came back from a job with a bruised face.
"Do you ever regret it?"
"No." That was, Liara thought, the most decisive he had sounded all night. And he surprised her, when he returned the question. "Do you?"
She paused. Clouds curtained the stars; fish flashed argent in the water below; wind moved very gently through the grass. "What do you mean? Joining the Selection?"
"Leaving him behind. Mordred."
For a split second, she wondered if he knew more about her than he had been letting on, if she had not imagined the piercing nature of his gaze, if he had somehow managed to peer into her very mind.
"Leaving your family," Täj added. "Leaving Angeles."
"I try not to," she said, which was the closest to the truth she could allow herself to get. "Have you ever been there? Angeles?"
Something moved behind his eyes. Had she insulted him, to ask if he had visited the seat of his sworn enemy? Abruptly, Liara realised that she was sitting in the dead of the wastes in the dead of the night, and that he was the king's favourite killer and that she was the king's greatest threat in the Selection, but the expected thrum of adrenaline did not vibrate through her nerves. He would have to drown her, she thought, and he could have done that before they had talked at all.
"A long time ago."
"When this is all over," Liara said. "When…. when the rebellion takes the capital. You'll see it again, I suppose. It's probably changed a lot."
Täj said, "when Mordred is dead?"
He was needling at her, she could tell that he was, but she could sense no malice behind it. He was testing her, but not to provoke a reaction, not really.
She bit down on the words that rose like bile in her throat. "I suppose so."
Sometimes, as now, the sense of loss - of missing him, of wanting to talk to him, of wanting to tell him all that had happened since she left Angeles all those long weeks ago - it was like a living animal trapped in her chest.
"You know," Täj said. "You grew up with him. You're allowed to be… not happy at the idea of his death."
Liara smiled. "Not happy?"
"Unhappy, then." Täj rolled his eyes. "It's a miracle I speak English at all, at this point."
He offered Liara a cigarette, and after a moment's hesitation, she drew one. His hand cupping hers as he light it was much gentler than she had expected, and warmer as well. Looking at Täj, Liara had always thought he would be cold to the touch, like blood did not run in his veins.
She inhaled, and exhaled, quite smoothly and quite grateful that it was smoothly, for she would have been embarrassed to hack up a cough in front of the pale man. "Because you're an Anchorite?"
He sounded almost insulted. "Anchorites speak English."
She laughed. "Okay, then, because you've spent so long… out with the wolves?" She raised her eyebrow and exhaled again, the smoke dancing as charcoal wisps across the surface of the river. It was oddly sweet to the taste, she thought, which might go some way to explaining Täj's scent.
His voice was rueful. "That's one way to describe Vardi Tayna."
That brought up another question, one that Liara wasn't sure she wanted to ask, not when they seemed to have eke out some semblance of friendship here in the dark, smoking in secret like two rebellious teenagers, like she and Mordred had done when they were thirteen or fourteen and not entirely sure what they were rebelling against. She had always wondered if Demetri would have joined them, if he hadn't been taken, or if his more serious, sombre attitude would have precluded such frivolousness. Liara had always regretted that she and Mordred had drifted in later years; she had wondered, too, if that could have been avoided if Demetri had still been around to bind them together, or if maybe the only bond they had shared for all that time was their shared grief and sense of loss.
She wondered Täj and Vardi Tayna had snuck their first cigarettes together just the same, furtively, waiting for the General to catch them. She wondered if they had done other first things together, and then wondered why she was wondering, when the night was so dark and Täj was so quiet and still and warm beside her.
Instead she said, "do you remember, the first day at Raphael's, I asked you if Täj was your first name or your last name? And you said..."
"Most recent."
"Yeah." Liara cocked her head. "Will you tell me another one?"
She sensed, more than saw, that he had smiled again. "Another name?"
"Is that inappropriate?"
"It's… intimate."
Liara remembered Vardi Tayna being sconced for forgetting which name she was using and berating her lover for talking about some other girl. She wasn't sure she could see the intimacy in it, if they could be shed so easily, like skins from a snake. "Well," she said. "You don't have to tell me."
But when she risked a glance over at him, he was thoughtful. "I was Hector," he said finally. "For a while."
"Hector?" She couldn't imagine him as a Hector.
"It means to restrain."
"Why did you need that name?"
"There's comfort," he said, "in being someone else for a little while."
Liara could not help but wonder if that was why Demetri avoided her so carefully, accorded her so little time, doled in such tiny helpings. If he had revelled in being someone else, here, in this rebellion, and if her arrival had been the uncomfortable reality of his past catching up with him, a perennial invisble noose around his neck to match the scar that Täj wore on his throat.
Well, she thought, being a king was not meant to be a comfortable job. But the idea that it might be so simple, that he had not forgotten but wished not to remember, that he had enjoyed being someone other than the Demetri she had known… that hurt, but in a slow sting, like a papercut. She was the king's greatest threat in this Selection, she thought again, and reviled by his followers... all because she had known and loved him once.
She wondered if they were all so afraid of being known, of being loved.
She thought, not for the first time, that she didn't have to wonder when it came to Täj.
Somehow, she just knew.