Chapter 22: With Infinite Possibility


Once in a while, we should look into each others eyes.
Otherwise, we might feel lost. I'm so glad that you are here.

- Rinko Kawauchi


"Pa's not driving you too crazy, then?"

If there was one thing Eden appreciated, it was how Demetri never quite put a foot outside of charming. Every so often he said something that could have been construed as slightly cruel, slightly thoughtless, slightly dismissive of the woman who had raised him, and yet there was always that wryly amused note to lighten it slightly, make it seem rueful and affectionate rather than unfriendly. It was so consistent, that Eden had to wonder what was true. Did he see Pa as a mother figure, as both he and the old widow had claimed at the interview? Or was she just one of many rebels through hands he had passed during his time in captivity – and there it was, captivity, the trace of her mother's voice whispering softly in the corner of her mind.

In any case, it made it a little more difficult to read the man at her side as they moved through the crowds at the festival, eyes of passer-bys flicking in their direction as they passed, but it also made it a little more fun to spar with him, to consider the best reply. It was something that Eden understood, in a way that she understood very little in the Wastelands, something familiar, even if it was familiar mostly because she was utterly, totally tired of it. "Oh," she said, "I give as good as I get. I'd say we're about equal."

"Well," Demetri replied. "Her sanity has been in question for a while. Did she ever tell you what she did at the Paloma front?"

Eden quirked a smile. Pa had fought? "No?"

"Oh," he said, "that's a story for her to tell, I think. Couldn't take it away from her."

She pretended to pout. "Oh, that's cruel."

"Maybe a little. But a woman deserves to keep her secrets."

"And a man?"

"Depends on the secrets."

They crossed another bridge, the strictures of this one twined with ivy that had been dusted with some much pink and purple powder that it looked almost alien. Demetri had given her his arm, like Arjun or Milo or Uriah or any of the other Angeles boys might when they were on one of their staged dates, and pretending not to notice the photographers trailing them at a respectful distance. The only difference this time around was that she was wearing flats. Heels, she had been told, were not really rebellious. Rebels needed to be able to run. And there were no photographers here, only citizens of the so-called-true kingdom, who seemed equal parts delighted to see their king and fascinated to see him strolling with one of his Selected. She wondered if they would take this as an indication of his favour.

She wondered if she should.

She thought again of the box that she had found under the floorboards in Pa's farmhouse. A part of her ached to ask Demetri about it. A bigger part of her cautioned against it. It was too risky, and Eden could not afford to take risks. She was a cockroach, descended from cockroaches, she thought wryly – survival was all, and one did not typically survive by being curious. Here in the Kingdom, she had learned, one survived by making oneself useful, not by causing trouble. And such questions would cause trouble, she mused, that was inevitable. She couldn't imagine the King of Dust would be too happy to realise that the scion of the Crown's favoured mouthpiece had found a collection of his private letters.

She and Demetri passed Wren, one of the announcers from the rebel Report who moonlighted as Enyakatho's camerawoman when resources were low. Her mouth matched her bright blue hair – the stain glowed slightly as she gave Eden a wide grin, lifting one hand to wave with an enthusiasm that suggested liquor. After her run-in with the rebels earlier, it was gratifying to be on the receiving end of such an affectionate gesture from one of their comrades. It reminded Eden that not all of her work had been in vain. Wren had been exceedingly suspicious of her during her first few weeks with Pa, and had shown her nothing but kindness in the weeks since. She had turned a few opinions, she told herself, and one at a time was all you could really try to do when your world had become as large as unwieldy as Eden's had.

"Lahela," Wren said, but the name was not dripping with condescension as it had been when Mikhail had said it. It sounded affectionate, the same way it did when Enyakatho said Harjo or Wesick. "Your Highness."

She gave Demetri a salute, which was waved away just as quickly by the monarch. "Please don't tell me Wick still finds that funny," he said, looking mildly pained – and yet, Eden thought, it was so obviously in jest, still that tone of levity permeating his words, as though he could never be seen to care too much but he also could not be seen to take himself too seriously. It was a thin line to walk. She knew he could give a speech when he wanted to – she had studied his performances on the Report while she was working with Enyakatho, to get an idea of what they were working towards – but it seemed as though the rebellion had accorded their leader a very narrow character indeed: blithely charming, charismatic when he wanted to be, rousing when he needed to be. She wondered if he had ever found himself asking the General, what's my motivation.

She said, "your Majesty," and Wren and Demetri both looked at her. Over their shoulder, she could see that Farid, the other Voice of the Rebellion, was just within sight on the other end of the bridge, waiting near the park gates with a camera mounted on his shoulder. They were clearly headed to film the festival, but for now, they were filming Eden, and so… "Your Majesty," Eden said again, with a slight smile. "Your Highness is for princes, not kings. Sorry."

Wren looked delighted to be informed that Wick had been wrong about something. "You don't say?"

"I do," Eden said, "say."

"Knew you would come in useful at some point," Demetri murmured, and both girls laughed, Selected and rebel.

"It was worth keeping you, Lahela," Wren teased, and then added, looking rather sly, "your Majesty, are you not partaking of the festivities?"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"You're here, but you're lacking colour." Wren tapped her index finger on her lip, a little of the blue spreading onto her nail as she did so, and Demetri smiled.

"I'm surprised you're offering, Wren," he said, at the same time that Eden said, "darling, you're more than welcome to try."

They glanced at each other. Demetri smiled wryly. Eden returned the gesture, almost against her will, the kind of coy smile that one might share with a co-conspirator. Wren rolled her eyes even as the red light on Farid's camera blinked and flashed and suggested that they had been caught in their silent exchange.

"You know," she said, leaning back onto the railing of the bridge. "Enyakatho was complaining earlier that we've had about twelve hours of Selection coverage over the past twelve weeks… and absolutely no romance to be shown for our trouble." She cocked an eyebrow, and Demetri laughed.

Eden said, "you're goading him, Wren."

Wren said, "should I not?"

"Oh," Eden replied. "Please do. It is enormously amusing."

The king rolled his eyes and Wren laughed as she bid them a good festival, and walked off the bridge, towards her waiting companion. The dark green lights of the bridge matched Demetri's eyes nearly perfectly, and made his hair appear a peculiar verdigris colour, like a celebrity from Angeles. He had a strange way of looking at you that made it feel like he could see your bones. "Eden."

"Demetri," she mimicked.

Setting his hand very gently on her waist, in that gentlemanly way that he had, Demetri bowed his head and pressed a kiss into Eden's cheek. It was measured, as all things Demetri did were measured, and yet even so, something leapt in Eden's throat, as one's heart might leap at a particularly deep bass line. Like choreography, she thought, like picking up on a melody by ear, and she knew that Farid would have caught it all.

That was why she was here, she thought. Playing a role, as she always had, as she always was. In the lion's den now, trying to pluck out thorns. The Report was a part of that, if a lesser part of it here than it was in most Selections, but still an integral part. Once Demetri's people began the purge that always followed the vanquishing, once bodies started dropping. Collaborators will be hanged, but they couldn't, they wouldn't, hang their queen.

And yet, even as she thought it, she couldn't deny that she didn't mind it all that much. And even as Demetri straightened again, she looked at him, and raised her eyebrow, and was acutely aware that all the people passing them on the bridge were not hiding the fact that they were watching, and acutely aware that Farid's camera was fixed on them, and acutely aware of the fact that Demetri still had his hand on her waist, and that was why she looked at Demetri through her eyelashes and said, "I believe she commented on your lack of colour." She paused. "Your Highness."

Demetri smiled and Eden reached up on her toes to kiss him very gently on the mouth. Her body curved into his almost automatically, as though they had known each other for a thousand days and done this a million times. His hand steadied her, and she could not say what it was about this man that felt so – so – so solid, solid and reliable. The kiss was not maladroit, and it was not prolonged – she didn't dare, knowing that she was breaking the rules of the Selection by initiating like this and yet not particularly caring.

When she pulled away, even under the green light, it was apparent that Demetri's mouth was stained orange. His lips curled upwards. "I think we should get Wren to goad me more often," he said.

Eden smiled, and took his arm again.


The same day that the Layeni festival began, the Selection of Prince Mordred began in earnest. As much as such a term as earnest might be used, for even amongst the courtiers, there remained the whispers that he was doing only that which was required of him to maintain the legacy of his crown. Such a fate was to be pitied, was the general consensus, but it was the burden of he who called himself king. Such was the Selection into which Mordred found himself not only entering, but entering a score of women – not only those who fell within the Crown's jurisdiction, but further those who could claim, one way or another, heritage in the provinces which had been claimed by the rebel Kingdom in Exile.

Most of them, in the interviews that followed their Selection, referred to themselves as refugees. Most of them, in the interviews that followed, referred to the so-called King Demetri as a monster.

Truth be told, Mordred wasn't sure he considered the imposter a monster. Certainly, it was not his brother who wore the crown in exile, was not his brother that spurred all of those orphans under the wheel of war, was not his brother that recurrently flashed up on interrupted Report broadcasts to call Mordred a bastard prince and a liar who had no right to the throne – but.

But.

It was nonetheless a man.

And one could question a hundred times over the morality of a man, or of a man's principles, but there was no denying that one fact. This man breathed, just as Mordred did. His heart beat, no less than once every two seconds. He must eat, and sleep, and bleed. No doubt he had people who loved him, for everyone must. He had people who thought of him during the day, and thought of him in the moments before sleep, and thought of him in the moments before death, just as his General had. In his own moments before sleep, Mordred could not but think of the imposter king's words, in that first broadcast, even while his own foster father died at the foot of Trajan's throne – I know, as surely as I know my own name, how dearly you all crave peace.

Liars, the lot of them. Liara, lost among them.

Mordred tried not to think about it too much but he knew, with a certain sort of absoluteness, that he thought of her during the day, and in the moments before sleep, and that he would think of her in the moments before death, if ever his killer allowed him such a moment in which to reflect. Liara Lee had always been the closest thing to a princess the Illéan military had, the daughter of the army's favourite son, but she was the only person that Mordred could consider calling a friend. Not even a particularly close friend – of that class, he named only one. Liara. Friend. She had played with Mordred and Demetri when they were children - any kind of respect or fear that the ordinary person held for their king had been eroded by years of exposure to them in all the awkward aspects of childhood and adolescence. Liara had grown up in the same poisonous environment as Mordred had, had experienced the same thorny vacuum left behind after Demetri's abduction and murder, had been shaped by the same forces that had made Mordred…

Well.

There was no use debating that unduly.

That morning, the Selection began, and the Selected were arranged before him, in ballgowns of rich colours and expensive fabrics. They were beautiful girls, of that he was sure, and any one of them would make a wonderful queen. Here and there, he could spot a face that suggested they were ill at ease in the line-up arraigned by the Queen Regent – a furrowed brow, a set jaw, eyes darting hither-and-thither. For the most part, he thought, reclining in the throne that had been his father's, they looked rather pleased to be there in the first place.

Of course, he thought, to be a Selected was to have a one-in-thirty-five chance of becoming the queen, once all was said and done. Even amongst those in rebel provinces, that must have been seen to be quite the windfall. After all, the rebellion had been fighting this war for some fifteen years, and made almost negligible advances into true Illéa. Mordred had to imagine, even for a girl whose family was vested in deepest exile, those were attractive odds.

Even as the girls looked up at him, they remained under the watchful eye of Mordred's counsellors, who were fanned out in a crescent half-moon shape following the curve of the chamber's northern wall. The Queen Regent had elected, as she always did, to sit among them, shoulder-to-shoulder with Mordred's Minister for Finance and Minister for Education, old men and women with salt and pepper at the temples dressed in neat suits of muted colours. Now, Ysabel leaned forward in her seat, as though it were humanly possible to focus closer on what the next Selected girl had to say as she stepped forward to state her name, caste, and province. If Mordred was telling the whole truth, he had started to block them all out sometime after Dominica. There was only so much irrelevant information one man could be expected to absorb at a given time, he thought.

"Amelia Mwangi. Third Caste. Refugee from occupied Zuni." The last girl was just introducing herself, and Mordred made sure to address her in that same pattern he had adopted for addressing all loyal members of the establishment.

"Thank you, Lady Amelia." The first thing that he had learned when he became the crown prince was that speaking in an official capacity was a simple matter of following the same formula each time, like the simplest of mathematical equations. "Ladies, I thank you all for your applications, for your presence here in the palace, and for your committed dedication to our nation." Keep them on your side. "You have all proven yourselves as most loyal citizens to this kingdom, and most thoughtful friends to our family." Personalise it. "Indeed, I feel certain that I shall find my queen from amongst your number. If I fail to do so, surely the deficiency shall fall on my shoulders rather than on your own. There can be no finer Daughters of Illéa than those I glimpse before me." Sympathise. "Some of you have been forced to separate from your families. Some of you no longer have families from which to separate." He wasn't sure if he was keeping the boredom from his voice. "I hope you know that the royal family still stands behind our lost Daughters of Illéa, and the families that their disappearances have left bereft." Reassure them. "However, our Selection must continue unabated. We must not allow these rebels to infringe upon our ordinary conduct as citizens – and rulers – of Illéa." Commit. "I anticipate coming to know each and every one of you in an individual capacity over the coming months. Until then, please, make yourselves at home in the quarters which have been assigned to you."

Mordred waited until the girls had all dipped low into a deep courtesy and begun to retreat through the gold-leaf double doors at the end of the roof before he indicated to his advisors that they were to hold one girl back for further discussion. The co-ordinator, Vandervell, a thin woman in her mid-fifties with unnaturally dark hair, immediately dove into the ranks of the Selected girl to extract the individual that Mordred had identified.

The result was that, when all other girls had filed out of the room, and when Mordred had dismissed his advisors with a careless flick of his hand, his own mother looked particularly concerned at this abrupt change of plans, the cavernous throne room was left empty but for Mordred Dunin and Opal McIntyre.

She was short, a much shorter girl than Mordred had expected, barely above five foot, and squinted a little as though she needed glasses. She had a face shaped like a diamond, but her features were rather soft – prominent cheekbones, plump lips, broad eyes. Her skin and her eyes and her hair were all a rich brown; she had a prominent beauty mark beside her nose. The only way by which the Crown's spy had identified her, Mordred thought, and the strings of his heart stirred slightly in pity for the young woman, for he knew that she had asked to leave the Selection in order to mourn the lover who had been captured in a Crown raid, only to be captured herself in the raid that had followed. She would represent Hansport in the Crown Selection that was to follow. Mordred had no doubt that Vivian Lahela would already have recounted the coup in that evening's Axiom – Selected in Exile Comes to Her Senses.

Nonetheless, he waited for Ysabel to shut the door to the throne room behind her, and waited to hear the lock click, and waited for Opal McIntyre to turn those rich brown eyes upon the throne with some degree of trepidation within before he spoke, his voice a little lower than it had been while he addressed the whole group. "I did promise I would get you back. The lost Daughters of Illéa."

"Congratulations," she said, and then, a moment later, "thank you. I suppose."

"You're very welcome," he replied. "I suppose."

She would have been warned, he supposed, to watch her words and to watch her conduct, lest her punishment be meted out on the man in the palace's oubliette, beneath the castle, in chains within the prison. Mordred couldn't find it in his heart to be too sympathetic. She had turned to the rebellion of her own volition. She had betrayed the crown, and sworn fealty to a liar. If she was kept in line by the fear of what might happen to one dear to her heart, well. She was just that much closer to mirroring Mordred himself.

She was clearly expecting an interrogation, as Mordred stood from the throne and descended slowly down the steps, pausing a few steps from the base. She had a decent poker face, he thought, and a clear determination not to be gotten the better of. And so, with an exhale, he sank down to sit on the step and said, "I promise we aren't going to kill you."

"You'll forgive me," Opal said stiffly. "If your promise doesn't mean much."

"I forgive you," he replied. "Did they treat you well?" It was the question he had been waiting to ask, all of these long days and weeks and months, ever since he had found the note on his bed and found General Lee's face quite so hollow. Are they treating you well? He wasn't even sure anymore what he would consider well. At this point, he would accept the bare minimum. Accept, but not condone, he thought grimly, for the day was coming when everyone involved in this horrific, bastardised Selection would face that fate which was due to them. "Were they kind to you? I assure you, whatever you say shall remain between the two of us."

That seemed to take her aback. He didn't think she had been expecting a question like that, nor so genuinely delivered. And he had asked it quite genuinely. She had no physical signs of injury, but for that sustained in the raid that had brought her back to Angeles – the slightest graze on her temple, a bruise on her knuckles where she had tried to punch one of Set's deputies as they bordered the van. Mordred respected her for as much.

"Very well," Opal replied, rather archly. "They treated us like queens."

Mordred's lip curled. "As they ought." He was playing the game. He couldn't trust that they weren't playing the same game in the Kingdom in Exile. He couldn't even trust that they were playing by the same rules – not after what had happened.

Mordred remembered the General as well. That was the part that all others seemed to forget. Just as his older brother had trusted the old man as a kind of uncle, as a Set to Set's own Set, so too had Mordred been raised at the foot of the old man who had become, in the Crown's own words, the very first traitor of Illéa. The man who had stolen Mordred's own brother from him. The man who had caused Demetri's death in so direct a manner as to constitute murder.

Mordred had slit this man's throat with his own hands before he had even achieved his twenty-first birthday. Sometimes, when he woke abruptly from sleep, he could still feel the blood on his hands.


None of the women here want to marry you. They want to marry the king. They want to marry Demetri Dunin.

For some reason, Vardi Tayna's voice came to him at the very worst moments. Demetri couldn't name what self-destructive part of himself was responsible for that particular defect, but it was a persistent part, that reared its head at the worst possible moments – like when he sent another letter to Yue Yukimura and wondered if she would like him less when she understood him better, or when he caught the way that Saran Altai watched Wick when she thought he wasn't looking or right now, when he washed the colour from his mouth. He wasn't sure why the worst parts of him spoke with Vardi Tayna's voice, but the answer could not be a good one.

They want to marry the heir to Illéa. They want to marry the crown. They couldn't give a shit about you, demusha.

God, Vardi Tayna was a moron sometimes, but sometimes she had her finger exactly on the pulse. And speaking of the devil herself, here she came now, down the hill towards the woollen mills. She was wearing the apricot sweater she had been wearing when the rebels had liberated Clermont. She had been hit by debris, he remembered, and in his mind rose the image of Tayna with her head bleeding and one eye nearly swollen shut, her sclera stained near-black with pooled blood, impatiently pulling off her sweater to avoid getting it stained. It was important for one's own dignity to keep a few nice things, the General had always told them. It had been part of the reason he had always polished his boots, even on their longest escapes through the Wasteland, when it was inevitable that they would be scuffed and dirtied within thirty seconds of touching the ground again. Dignity, he had always told them, and Vardi Tayna had always said, what good is dignity if you're dead?

But she had always heeded him. She had always kept that sweater clean. The General had stolen it from a Labrador department store for her fifteenth birthday. Demetri was not surprised to see her wearing it now.

Vardi Tayna walked over to Täj, and he put his arm around her. It was so automatic that he did not even break off his conversation with Atiena as he did so, and Vardi Tayna barely seemed to notice the weight on her shoulders as she accepted a tumbler of whiskey from Wick and said something dirty-minded to him about the mix of purple and ochre and amber on his mouth. It was like they had simply gravitated near one another, like they just preferred to be beside each other when there was no compelling reason to be otherwise. Tonight of all nights, Demetri could not say why that simple gesture irritated him so much, and so he tried to quell it as quickly as it arose. They were his comrades – they were his friends – they were his family.

And yet.

They were smoking metzliaxitia, he could tell that much from sixty feet away, and made no effort to hide it as he approached. Atiena appeared braver for their date – or audition – together four days ago, and gave him a wave as he approached. With her ai-katean disassembled and the blossoms scattered throughout her hair, through which lamplight filtered like a halo, she looked more ethereal than Demetri had ever thought the warrior woman from Tammins could ever look. There were more than a few soldiers looking at her admiringly, he noted, and could not entirely blame them.

"You're all being very insular," he said, and heard the General's voice in his as he did so, for this was precisely his usual accusation during the festival when he would find the inner circle camping out by the river with drinks and a determination to avoid the revelries. Here, however, there were a few soldiers on guard duty studiously pretending not to have had anything to drink – he would have to speak to Uzokuwa about that, he thought – and two of the Selected, Atiena and Elizabeth, and two of the inner circle, Täj and Wick, and there was Uzokuwa himself, which was almost enough to make Demetri laugh. Three of the Selected, he reminded himself, because Vardi Tayna was looking at him, silver lips almost as bright as her eyes were dark, as he said, "you're being rude."

"Yes," Wick said, "yes, we are – drink?"

"Don't mind if I do."

He took a seat next to Elizabeth Tucker, and tried to avoid thinking of Givre's instructions as he did so. Wick handed him a glass of amber liquid, and then one of the silver bowls filled with barva berries, which Demetri waved away. Wick settled back on his heels and said, "no colour?"

"No colour," Demetri confirmed. "You're wearing enough for all of us."

Wick grinned, streaks of amber barva on his teeth. "It's a festival, Dimi. Life is for living."

Elizabeth Tucker seemed to be hiding a green-lipped grin at that. Demetri thought it likely it was the Dimi that had produced such a reaction. The guards had created a little stone hearth to keep themselves warm during their shift, and the light from the dancing fire seemed to paint her hair an even deeper, richer scarlet, like her hair itself was aflame.

"Are all those girls going to be expecting chains from you by the end of the night?" Demetri enquired, feigning curiosity, and Wick rolled his eyes and flicked a berry at him. It struck Demetri just above the eyebrow, leaving a tiny starburst mark of umber, and Demetri laughed. "You could just say yes, you know."

He glanced at his watch. The fireworks would be starting in forty minutes or so. He wasn't sure he wanted to see how drunk Wick would get after that, or how much havoc he might wreak. Layeni was such a lovely little town, Demetri thought, it was almost a shame the rebels occasionally had to arrive.

"Somewhere to be, your Majesty?"

Elizabeth Tucker seemed a little braver than most, Demetri thought, and he thought she probably had right to be. Her father had participated in the Pongotown massacre under Lord Set's command, and had drank himself to death shortly afterwards; her mother had been put to death at Queen Ysabel's orders for providing medical aid to rebels given refuge on the Tucker family farm. Both sides of the war, Demetri thought, same bloody, tragic result. Looking at Elizabeth Tucker, at her pale heart-shaped face and her long red hair, you would never suspect it, unless you saw the way she held her jaw, or the way her eyes caught you like a net.

"If only I could say nowhere, Lady Elizabeth," was Demetri's reply, and she raised an eyebrow as he flicked his sleeve back over his watch – an eighteenth birthday present from Raphael, who had met Agares for the first time in going to buy it – and met her gaze with a blithe smile. "Are you enjoying the festival?"

She paused. "Now I am."

Shit. Wyatt. Demetri had let it slip his mind. What had they been thinking, moving the girl with the recently dead fiancé to Layeni right before the festival devoted to romance? "I'm sorry," he said, and dropped his voice low, so that Wick, who was saying something to Uzokuwa about Wicks outnumbering Demetris at the orphanage, could not hear him. "That was… enormously tactless."

Elizabeth Tucker smiled. She really was a very pretty girl. "I appreciate the apology."

"Anytime," Demetri said wryly, hoping to make her laugh, and she did – she looked down as she did so, but that was still something. "Are you cold?"

She was holding a cup of barva wine between her hands like she was hoping that it would warm her as a cup of tea might, and Demetri abruptly realised that she was probably cold, despite the weak fire that Uzokuwa's men had produced. With the sun sunk and gone behind the clocktower, the chill had crept in quickly, and almost unnoticed. The rebels and Vardi Tayna were wearing warmer clothes and Atiena – well, Demetri wouldn't have been surprised if Atiena Morris could just decide not to be cold, and to make it so. He considered telling Wick to hand over his jacket, partly just to get back at the propagandist for all of this your highness nonsense.

"No," she lied, and then, glancing at Demetri briefly, back-pedalled. "Maybe."

He chuckled, and thinking again of the liberation of Clermont, pulled off his sweater to offer to her – "I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't think to wear a jacket – something about making me seem softer, more relatable?" – and she accepted it with a cautious half-smile. This was what the rebellion was about, Demetri thought ruefully, moving from trying to keep blood off your few belongings to trying to keep those around you warm. Vardi Tayna had seen what he was doing, and doing a bad job of hiding her smile.

"Don't apologise," Elizabeth Tucker said.

"I did say anytime," he replied simply, and she gave that same half-smile again.

"Well," she said, "I did say I appreciated it."

She pulled it on, and managed to make it look almost chic, pulling the sleeves over her hand, the hem falling to mid-thigh so that only a tiny strip of fabric remained visible beneath the jumper. Demetri hadn't paid attention to what she was wearing until that moment, but he recognised Raphael's taste in fashion now as he saw the pale floral design. It was sweeter than he could say, he thought, that even despite her obvious resentment for the rebellion that she had gone out of her way to clothe not only those Selected in her care, but the newly arrived girl from the bunker.

Every so often, Demetri was reminded anew why it was important to fight this fight.

Uzokuwa and his men were trying to start a song, to Täj's stubbornly silent amusement, and Demetri watched Vardi Tayna almost sleepily turn her head into the pale man's shoulder with a casual ease that suggested they had been constructed at the same time specifically to fit together. Demetri thought again, none of the women here want to marry you. They want to marry the king. They want to marry Demetri Dunin.

The only thing he could use to repel such words were the General's last words, spoken over his very last words, broadcast even as the bastard prince Mordred had butchered Klahan in the name of law. What wrong I have done, I have done in the name of my nation, which is as dear to me as my own liver. The General had always been a stoic, but in those brief moments of vulnerability that he had permitted Demetri to glimpse, it had been apparent just how dear he had held the whole nation of Illéa to his own poor broken heart. Your kingdom has been denied to you by means of deceit; your king has been denied to you by means of arsenic. In a hundred years, maybe you will call us heroes. Some of us, perhaps, martyrs.

He said, "I don't suppose you know this one?" to Elizabeth Tucker, as Uzokuwa started off the song with a roar from somewhere very deep in his chest I left my girl in An-ge-les! And the reply from the rebels, similarly shouted rather than sang – how cruel, how cruel, how cruel!

"I don't," Elizabeth Tucker said ruefully, and sipped at her wine again. A tiny trickle of green had escaped one corner of her lips, to trickle towards her chin. "They weren't exactly on the radio in Midston." Enqaben' yase An-ge-les! The singer's girl was in the castle at Angeles, Demetri thought, and wondered for the thousandth time who had written this song, and why you never heard what happened to the girl at the end of it all. Wick was beating out a rudimentary beat on his makeshift seat, but this was a marching song, and it needed no true rhythm other than one's heart.

"Trust me," Demetri said, "you are missing absolutely nothing." These were the kinds that Uzokuwa preferred, sounding like they should be roared across a battlefield right before the clash, and he could see why you might prefer it when it came to drinking, but he had personally always preferred the laments – the ones that you would sing the night before the clash, to bid goodbye to those you might never say again, to say how dear the hope was to your heart that you might meet again someday at that same fire to sing the same songs. Poor girl, poor girl, poor girl!

"Oh," Elizabeth Tucker said, "I think you're being harsh." So let's return to An-ge-les! Uzokuwa had a voice powerful enough to reverberate in your ribs when you heard it. "Although..." She tilted her head as she conceded the point. "Might not be suitable for tonight, I suppose. I'll refrain from judgement until the song is over. Could go badly for this couple. I can't imagine many rebel songs have happy endings." Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

That made him think of Yue, and that made him smile. "Horrifically few, I'm afraid," he agreed, "and even if they did, I think Uzokuwa would refuse to sing them on principle." The final call, one for blood – ki a pa ọba t'An-ge-les! Without speaking the languages of the Federation, Demetri could translate the verse automatically: and kill the king of Angeles. And the reply – gu-ul, gu-ul, gu-ul! Victory, victory, victory.

"I don't think," he said, thoughtfully. "That I've ever heard one end happily."

"Makes them realistic," Elizabeth Tucker said. "Don't you think?"


She did not tilt her head. She did not lean in. She left the bridge rather wondering if she should have. She left the bridge rather wondering if she would get the chance again. She left the bridge rather wondering if she should be wondering these things.

Liara Lee was beginning to suspect there was something in those berries.

Täj had been called away by one of the rebels, one of the small lads in black that had been assigned to guard the festival, and Liara had gone back into the square to look for the other girls. She had not found them, but she had spotted Raphael and Agares, sitting on the balcony of one of the houses which overlooked the clock tower, and been waved up to join them, the Smetiskos' friends rather cooing over the Selected girl like she was an exotic animal. They were all the kinds of people Liara would have once thought of as provincial, and yet time in Layeni had made her rather appreciative of them – of the slightly guttural accent of the wastes, of their rather insistent way of providing drink as she settled herself into the half-broken wicker chair nearest the railing, of the way that every spare bit of space was occupied by an overgrowing plant or a rusting bicycle or nets to be repaired. Raphael refilled her cup, and they drank, and Liara abruptly realised that now would be the perfect time to give Raphael the gift that she and Yue and Atiena had got for her to say thank you, if only the lovely dress Agares had made her had pockets.

Instead, Liara said, "Raphael, we never thanked you properly for what you did for us. For taking us in. I know you'll just say that Demetri asked you and you were happy to help, but... it's more than that. You and Agares have been wonderful to us. All of us."

Raphael laughed. "Honestly, Liara, I grew up with seven siblings. Having you all in the house... it's a comfort, truly, it is. A touch of familiarity. Agares and I want to have a big family someday, but... you know. After the war is over. I think we were hoping you Selected would be good practice for teenagers, but there's been remarkably little drama. Disappointingly little."

Liara had to agree. In all of the stories of Selections she had heard before, there had always been some catty element, some behind-the-scenes bitching, some competitiveness. In this strange rebel Selection, she knew jealousies rose and tempers were tested, but, watching the other girls dancing in the square down below, she could honestly believe that each wanted a happy ending for the others, whatever shape that might take. "I apologise there wasn't more scandal," she said, and Raphael laughed again. "Seven siblings, though?" She wasn't sure she could imagine it. She had been raised an only child and, after Demetri's disappearance, so had Mordred; their homes had always felt slightly empty, palatial as they were with so few to inhabit the enormous rooms. As a child, Liara had always wanted a sister, maybe even two, but seven? "That's... impressive."

"Six sisters, and one very outnumbered little brother: Uriel, Samael, Michael, Eremiel, Zadkiel, Kafziel, Gabriel..." Raphael shook her head and smiled sadly. Her eyes appeared to be focused on something, or somewhere, very far away and out of reach. It was the same look that Liz had worn, looking at the proposal. It was the same look Ysabel had worn, looking at Demetri's portrait. Liara wondered if she ever had that expression in her eyes, without realising. There was something awful, visceral, gut-wrenching about it. "They've all left me now, of course."

"Left...?" Sudden realisation. "Oh." A whole family wiped out. She thought of the family photo she had seen in the kitchen, all the tall blonde girls and the little boy with the deep green eyes. Liara had to wonder if maybe that was the unspoken reason that Raphael had left the rebellion, had left the fighting to people like Wick and Täj and Thiago, people with less to lose when the earth was ripped out from underneath them. "I'm so sorry to hear that."

"Such is the rebellion." Raphael glanced at Liara. "You understand how it must be. You left your family. Those you loved."

Liara twisted her hands together, beneath the table. She had indeed, and missed them little, if truth be told. She knew her mother would worry – Naomi would not have it in her to be as wrathful as the commander usually was – but that she would have denounced her daughter a hundred times over by now, a thousand times if they had let her. Her father would be refuting the salacious allegations that he had ever had a daughter. Such was the way of the court in Angeles.

Even the people you cared for the most were apparently capable of ordering you murdered.

"Yes," she agreed, softly. "Those I loved."

She put it in the past tense, just in case Raphael's suspicions would be aroused, and the lie settled in the pit of her stomach like she had swallowed a rock. The woman had been kinder to her than Liara had any right to expect her to be, but she was still a rebel, still a citizen of the Kingdom in Exile. There was no point in arousing suspicion when you could avoid doing so. Raphael's eyes still sharpened any time Liara mentioned sending a letter home – she imagined she would have been picked up on any mention of love, present tense, and maybe Liara had been away from Angeles too long, for the decision rankled but she was able to move on from it smoothly again.

"Such," she said, "is the rebellion."

Raphael said, "I'll drink to that." Her lips were a bright red, an incredible scarlet, the same colour as Agares'. Raphael and Liara touched their cups to one another, and Raphael said, "I heard a rumour our king was skulking about these parts. I don't suppose you've seen him?"

Liara blinked. Demetri was here? "No… no, I haven't."

Raphael nodded quietly and set down her drink. Agares said, almost worriedly, "I thought I saw you talking to him?"

"Oh," Liara said, "no, I was just… that was Täj."

She didn't like the way the smile that followed from both women seemed knowing. But instead of accusing her, or making any jokes, Raphael just said, quite thoughtfully, "what a strange, odious fucker that boy is" and Agares nearly choked on her drink.

"Rafa."

"I say it from a place of love," Raphael added, with a laugh. "God help me, what that little liar sees in him, I will never know."

"Love is not logical," her wife said, a soft reminder, and Raphael responded with a brilliant smile towards the woman she loved, her whole face utterly transformed by the expression, so openly and unconcernedly infatuated that Liara felt like she was intruding on a private moment just by witnessing it. "If it was, why would I still be with you?

"Allah 'aelam," Raphael replied wryly. "God knows."

Liara bit back the question that rose, knowing that it would not look good – that it would betray some side of her she did not want to even admit existed, some feeling buried deep down that she could not risking exposing to the light of the day. Instead, she said, "you've known Tayna a very long time?"

Raphael nodded. "I guarded her when she first came in." On seeing Liara's expression, she continued – "that girl's never spent longer than ten seconds out of a viper's nest. The General called it protective custody. She was running from something she would have run back towards, given enough time and enough doubt." She took a sip of her drink, creating little gold lines zig-zagging across the red of her mouth.

Running from something she would have run back towards, given enough time… Liara hated to admit that she could relate, at least a little. She picked her tone carefully with her next words. "Sort of seems the easy choice," she said, as casually as she could manage, examining the cup in front of her. You are a Selected, she reminded herself. These were the natural sort of questions to ask. Sussing out the competition. "For the Selection. She was Klahan's protegee, right? And she's known Demetri all these years..."

Raphael nodded. "Right." She reached forward and tapped the table, a gesture Liara had come to understand was Wasteland shorthand for I shouldn't be saying this. "But don't forget. So have you."

Knowing someone in childhood, Liara thought, the kind of blessed childhood accorded to those in the palace, free of burden and stress and worry, and knowing someone in adolescence, the kind of adolescence where you were expected to provide blood and marrow to form the foundations of a new nation… those were two very different types of knowing. "I don't think it's quite the same thing."

Raphael was sympathetic. "I know you won't believe me." She tilted her head and looked at Liara, and somehow Liara could tell that the older woman was telling her the entire truth. "But you have the same chance as any other girl here. Maybe even more." That was very hard to believe, Liara thought, when Demetri had accorded her fifteen minutes in the first few days and studiously avoided her ever since.

"I'm pretty sure," Liara said, "that they're just keeping me around to embarrass the Crown. That's not why I came here."

Agares said, without any malice in her voice, "why did you come here, then?"

Liara thought of the letter from Mordred, sewn into the lining of her coat, back at the safe house, the letter he had given her all those months ago on the rooftop of the palace when he had asked her not to leave, and yet she had known that she could not stay. She thought of the note she had left him, on his pillow, like a coward who could not face the reality of what she was doing: I'll find you the truth. She thought of her father, returning home night after night, to say that another thirty-odd lives had been lost on the front-lines, and all because the rebels had managed to find a princely look-alike. She thought of the way Täj's pale green eyes had of looking straight through her, and she thought of the first time she had seen Demetri in fifteen years and all the injuries that had marred the face she had wondered about for years on years, and she thought of her Demetri, as she had known him, little and serious and sweet-natured.

"Love," Liara said. "Is not logical."


Of all the members of Corvina Rouen's family, of all the members of the Pandora crime family to escape, the only one who had managed to hide from Thiago Wesick's apparently all-encompassing grip was Viridia Cox, who had barricaded herself into a brothel near the border with Fennley and readied herself and the girls within for a war, if it came to a war. After all, from Vida's point of view, Demetri's spymaster had come for her lover, for her comrades, for the only girls Vida had considered daughters. Goddammit, she had warned Cor against this whole Selection business – and look what had happened! Knox, taken; Kanon, vanished; Khione, beaten within an inch of her light and disappeared away with the rebels. And all others, scattered to the wind. Vida wanted to have faith in that old maxim, honour among thieves, but she wasn't sure, in this new landscape, that she could. No thief would choose honour when the alternative was a profit, she thought, and, besides, once Thiago Wesick had taken her legs out from under her, Cor was no longer Corvina Rouen, scion of a criminal network, but simply Cor the Selected out of favour, Cor the girl, Cor who had lost.

That made people scatter. That made people lose faith. That made people lose hope.

And where people had lost hope, the remnants of the Gildas association would come preying.

And so Vida boarded up the brothel.

It simply didn't bear thinking about.

A lot of girls in Pandora's brothels had been in a Gildas house before that. They all emerged the same way, if they ever emerged again - branded with the sigil, , and usually worse for the wear, with hollow eyes. A girl who came out with only a few scars, enough to still be considered pretty, was counted lucky. Girls emerged from the Gildas houses with missing eyes, with flesh gouged from their limbs, with fingers lost. And they were, all too often, mere girls. It made Vida's stomach roil to see them. It made her blood boil when they asked her for work, simply because they knew little else.

She always tried to turn them away. Sometimes Cor asked them to do other work – to be thieves, to carry information from here to there, to smuggle things across the border. And yet, Vida always saw in their eyes the traces of the horrors-that-had-been and the horrors-that-would-be-again.

So, when Artur Gildas came knocking at the brothel late in the evening, Vida felt very well justified indeed in firing a revolver through the door, and hoping against hope that she had hit something vital.

Of course, she had not. She was half-convinced that Gildas had signed some unholy pact with Satan himself to live this long in the life that he had lived. He was taller than Vida had expected him to be, narrow and dark-haired, with dark eyes and very sharp features. He was maybe ten or twenty years older than Vida herself, middle-aged and yet still comprised of all sharps and hollows, like a man that had been created from photo negatives and extrapolated therefrom.

He had said to her, when she came to the door, "have they sent her head to you yet?"

And Vida had replied, with all the ferocity of which she was capable, "whose head?"

Zenith had spoken of going against the rebellion, of trying to strike directly against Demetri, but Vida had always held him back. They were a rebellion within a rebellion, so to speak, that much was true, and yet – if they had Corvina, she had reminded him, and if Corvina was alive, then any action against Demetri amounted to an action directly against Cor's own safety. They had not yet been delivered her head, but that didn't mean they never would be.

So Vida said, "whose head?"

"Whose head? Haven't you a leader?"

"Me."

"Oh," Artur Gildas said, "well, then, you are fucked," and he pronounced each word as though it was its own phrase, like Well Then You Are Fucked.

"And if we aren't?" Vida had been chambering a second round in the revolver even as she spoke.

Artur Gildas had said, "Thiago Wesick was kind to you when he visited. The devastation could have been so much worse."

"Yes," Vida had said, "we feel enormously fortunate." The girls in the brothel had bristled to hear that she was even speaking to the man, was even entertaining the prospect of civil conversation with him. She had been, for a very brief moment, concerned that her revolver was partially for her own protection as well as the protection of her girls.

Gildas had said, "I just came by to see how bad the devastation was. To see how desperate Pandora was."

Vida had replied, "and have you seen?"

And Gildas had said, "oh, I have seen plenty."


Earlier in that night, when they were watching one of the contests in the square, Yue had asked Saran, quite without knowing why, "do you think it's obvious when you're in love?" She had said it after watching one of the Layeni townspeople put her arms around her husband, and watching the way the man looked down at his wife with an expression that somehow made it seem like he might be seeing her for the first time.

Saran had said, "I imagine it must be." She had smiled. "I can't say I'm an expert on the topic." Of course, Yue thought, that was true. For all Saran's emotional attunedness, her romantic history was as attenuated as Yue's own. She wasn't sure if that was the New Asian part of the equation, or maybe just some legacy of the north. "Tayna? Maybe you don't have a heart because someone stole it."

Vardi Tayna had said, "it's slow."

Yue had said, "something you have to realise?"

"I guess." She had reclined where she sat, perched on one of the wrought-iron tables scattered about the square. "Something about waking up with someone else and seeing them look like shit and not really caring." Vardi Tayna shrugged. "So I've been told."

Yue had thought, as she often thought, how strange it must be to fall in love twice over. She had always held such a refined sense of romance in her mind – of getting to know another person as well as she knew herself, of loving someone with the deep intensity that she read of in the old classics, of having that elemental companionship that she glimpsed in Raphael and Agares' relationship. Could a person do that twice? Where would you find the energy, the time, the space in your heart to do it again? How could you recover from the first time?

Maybe that sort of love didn't exist. She thought that, and then looked out on the square, and then dismissed that thought again. She could see that, or something like it, right here and now. Not like her own parents, who had engaged in a passionate and short-term affair that had ended, quite unfortunately for all involved, in an unplanned pregnancy and an unplanned child and an unplanned marriage, two incompatible people tied together for life by their own short-sightedness and their own ambition. Nothing like her own parents, Yue thought grimly, but truth be told she had seen very little in Layeni to remind her of her parents. Things seemed a little more elemental here.

Yue had thought, as she often thought, that whenever she was removed from the Selection, she could maybe find some kind of a life here. That image – of living in one of the little apartments sharing a cobbled courtyard with four or five other households, of walking to the bakery in the morning to buy just enough new warm bread for the day, of finding some simple job here which would allow her to buy her books and her painting supplies, of hewing out some small slice of the world that could be hers, just hers.

And then, she thought, there would be all the time in the world to realise, if there was something to realise, if she could find something that she wanted to realise.

That was nice. That was a nice image, and she held it within her, almost like a spark that might warm her, as the other girls went to dance – Saran taking charge of Eden, as she had taken charge of Liz, to ensure that she was not left adrift among the girls of Layeni who had been given the chance to forge tenuous friendships in the long weeks of the Selection without selections being made, and Atiena coaxing Täj out onto the cobbles without much success at all, and Vardi Tayna stretched out her arms and her legs and had said, to Yue, once they were by themselves, quite quietly, "oh. Demetri's by the river."

Yue had blinked at her in surprise. "He is?"

Vardi Tayna nodded. "By the Martyr's Needle." And then, clearly realising that Yue's thought processes had seized up slightly with the mention of the king, said, quite knowingly, "I think he's a bit lonely."

The spy had jumped down from the table and crossed the square to… well, Yue wasn't really sure what that girl got up to when she abruptly disappeared from a conversation. Maybe she didn't do anything, Yue thought ruefully, maybe it was a concentrated effort to seem mysterious.

Or maybe she could only put up with being around Yue for so long. That was also, she thought, slightly mournfully, a very realistic option.

And then, because they were at a lover's festival, and this seemed like something that lovers did, and because she didn't know when she would get a chance, she went down by the river. She knew the Martyr's Needle from spending time with Saran and the children from the orphanage – it was not quite as slender as its name suggested, but it was a stone pillar placed in the centre of the river to measure its height during the flooding season, marked off in sections of old Wasteland measurements that Yue had never heard of and had no frame of reference for: three çev, eight eka, eleven kau. She had no idea how you could expect to measure anything with such units. No wonder everything in Layeni seemed the slightest bit off-kilter, minutely crooked, just enough to feel lived in.

And sure enough, there he was. Contrary to Vardi Tayna's assertion, he did not look lonely. Yue thought Demetri was very good at seeming comfortable in scenarios where no one else would be. Here, he just looked peaceful, the light of the festival glowing in the distance like a fire on the horizon but here, out here, just the quiet of the night. He looked more casual than she had expected him to. She hadn't ever expected to see the king in a t-shirt, but here he was. He didn't even look cold.

"Would I be interrupting?"

He turned his eyes on her, and there was a warmth in his eyes that suggested he was genuinely at least a little bit happy to see her. He was sitting on the little stone stage that Yue still had no name for, the one that jutted a few feet out into the canal to make loading and unloading boats a little easier, one foot skimming the surface of the ice. "I was actually hoping to see you."

That was another warmth, like the idea of a peaceful life in Layeni. Yue moved slightly closer, to him, moving not hesitantly but gently, because it was all so quiet and she did not want to shatter this moment. "VT wasn't very subtle."

"She never is."

He held his hand out to her, and she took it as she lowered herself down to sit next to him. That was strange, she thought, strange to find him three-dimensionally and real and existing beyond the page, though of course she had never mistaken him for anything else.

Demetri said, "did she tell you where I was?"

"She did."

"That's very sweet." He paused. "I think I was at risk of being melancholy. It's a good thing you're here."

"Happy to help," Yue said softly, and Demetri smiled. They had twined the Needle with little plastic lights shaped like butterflies, pale pinks and purples. Her mother would have called it tacky, but Yue had found she rather loved the way that Layeni people chose to decorate as they wanted, to celebrate the things they cared about with what they had. It was nice, and strange, to see Demetri doused in such soft lights.

She wasn't really sure how she was meant to speak to him in person. Using her tongue rather than her pen seemed somehow unwieldy, knowing that you let some unconsidered word out, could say something thoughtless or uncool and be utterly unable to take it back again, not the way you could slash a poorly considered word out on a page.

So, for a long moment, she didn't say anything, and neither did he. She could hear, very far away, the sound of the festival's revelries continuing, and indeed it sounded as though it was beginning to pick up a notch in anticipation of the fireworks to come – there was a brass band starting up in the square, and there were whoops and calls at some competition ongoing near the thirteenth bridge, and the general haze of laughter and chatter from the crowds. And it did sound very far away – they were sort of shielded here from the rest of the world, divorced from the rest of the festival ongoing, and adrift from the rest.

The light played across the frozen river as though exposing hidden arteries of sapphire and silver within, showing up like veins under pale skin. There was something strangely peaceful about a world that had been arrested into place like this – the water locked into rigid being, the bare bones of the skeletal trees totally unmoving, the air still and cold. Raphael had Yue a yukata of cotton because it was too expensive to find the silk for a kimono, but it really wasn't the season for it, Yue mused, and felt almost guilty for thinking so critically about a gift.

The river looked solid, Yue thought, and there was something strange about that, after a lifetime spent on the ice – carefully curated in a rink, leavened over and again by resurfacers, surrounded by concrete and steel rails – to see a canal like this. Like seeing a tiger out of its cage, she thought ruefully.

Demetri had glanced at her, and very obviously paused and very obviously focused and broke the silence almost reluctantly, as though he had been enjoying the silence as much as she had, but had something he wanted to get out. He spoke slightly hesitantly, and Yue thought she had never heard him sound hesitant before. "Konban Yue-chan ka… no, wa, wa totemo kirei... kireidesu. Did I say that right?"

"It was pretty close," she said, "it was pretty perfect," and thought of Vardi Tayna's words when she saw Demetri smile again. Something about waking up with someone else and seeing them look incredibly messy and not really caring. Did Demetri ever look messy? The idea of wanting to find the answer to that seemed somehow…. salacious.

"I've never been very good with languages," he said ruefully, and Yue thought of the little characters at the end of the letters he sent her, drawn out carefully, not exactly perfect and a little crooked, but mostly right. "Though I've always wanted to learn."

Yue couldn't imagine he had much spare time for such things when he was trying to set up a country. "Well," she said, "I can see that phrase coming in handy for diplomacy."

He laughed. "Any other suggestions?"

"I'm absolutely drawing a blank." She scuffed her shoe along the ice.

"Did I put you on the spot?"

"Yes." She smiled. "I'll let you know if I think of anything."

"If your suggestions are like your literary opinions," Demetri said thoughtfully, "I don't think I want to know."

Yue said, "you're wrong about Jegina's ending. You won't change my mind about that."

"Give me another few tries," Demetri said, and then he put his head on her shoulder, such a simple motion, and he made it seem so natural and so comfortable even as Yue felt her breath catch slightly and worry that he could hear or feel the slight leap of her heart as he did so. He yawned, and Yue wondered how long it had been since he slept. His hair was all streaked with pastel light from the Needle. "Are you enjoying the Master and Margarita?"

"It's not the kind of book I usually read," she said, "it's satire, right?"

"I think Bulgakov was trying to make a point about atheism." He shut his eyes. "Have you got to the ending yet?"

"Not yet. Should I be looking forward to it?"

"It's a nice ending," he said, "I promise you that much. Even if it takes a while to get there."

"And then they lived happily ever after?"

"Yeah," Demetri said softly, "something like that."


At first glance, "if I am dead, I have been killed", meant very little to the person reading it. After all, anyone was capable of making doomsday predictions about their own fate.

However, when the person who sent that letter was Lissa Dove, and when Lissa Dove was announced missing, and when Lissa Dove could not be found, well...

Ekaitza Jones started to pay a little more attention.

If was an if, she told herself, and Atsegina, if Atsegina was inclined to listen. Usually, Atsegina was not inclined to listen - not with so many patients to attend to in the morning - and so Ekaitza was left to think to herself that if was an if until it was an if no longer.

And when Lissa Dove was declared missing, that if began to resemble an if slightly less.