Chapter 29: The Flowers Are Scattered


Silandeli sobusik'obubi;
Apho igazi lenu lithe lathontsela khona kolimila intyatyambo.

You are the follower of a bad winter;
Wherever your blood falls will blossom a flower.

- JJR Jolobe


The Saharan Federation rose up below them, a gorgeous set of spires and spikes spilling out so much further than the horizon permitted them to glimpse; it sprawled out before them, soaked in golden light. There were big cities in Illéa, but nothing, nothing like this. More than three hundred million people lived in the metropolis of below… and Èkó was considered one of the Federation's smaller cities. They would not stop here; they were going to Maṣr, where Mansa Inkosi Enhle held his court, where they had an invitation for safe refuge. And yet Atiena found herself utterly hypnotised by the urban sprawl below.

Atiena had never thought much about this part of the world before. She hadn't allowed herself. She knew this was where her roots were, her family's roots – Killmonger's, Lethal's, as well as her birth parents'. And yet it was utterly foreign, and yet it was utterly beautiful.

They came low over the city, low enough to cast a shadow across some of the enormous bee-hive shaped iQukwane houses which made up a residential area on the north side of the city; Atiena trusted Demetri's reflexes, but even so, she could not help but wince a little at just how rapidly the sky dropped away from them as they skirted its edge.

Maṣr was smaller than Èkó, but more culturally important, and by smaller, Atiena thought ruefully, that meant it was half the population of Illéa, rather than time and a half. The first inkling that they were drawing near to their destination was, as Liara pointed out, the pyramids, visible at the southwest edge of the Tipersis nome. The smaller ones belonged to the ancient world, about one hundred and fifty metres tall; the larger ones had been constructed on the instructions of Enhle's great-grandfather some hundred and ten years prior, and were four or five times as large, threatening to utterly blot out any blue, casting enormous black shadows like ink across the whole of the Tipersis quarter. They were paler than Atiena had expected them to be, more tawny than yellow in colour, and not quite as pointed, but rather blunt at the top. She wondered who was buried within; she wondered whether they had held their own Selections, fought their own wars, been betrayed in their own times.

Now they were crossing into the Rhakotis nome, where they would, as far as Demetri had explained, be granted their temporary living quarters in advance of the official royal reception in the palace. Nomes were districts, Liara had explained briefly, vital to the operation of such enormous cities, each controlled by a governor known as a nomarch, appointed by the mansa who was, as far as Atiena understood it, something like a sultan or a prince. There were a half dozen mansas or so in the Federation, each claiming roughly equal power depending on the size and importance of their territory, and each taking a seat on the Federation's ruling council. It was, Eden had agreed with her Angeles compatriot, quite the complicated and delicately balanced system of governance; tyrants and good kings broke bread as friends and made decisions as though their minds were one, but, it was rapidly becoming clear even to Atiena, who utterly lacked political acumen, that it was fully expected for each mansa to pursue his own agenda at times.

Thus, the invitation of Mansa Inkosi Enhle to the King of Dust.

Uzohola was gazing out the window with the expression of one who has glimpsed the gates of heaven, but does not yet want to believe that they are dead. She had been born in the Federation, Atiena knew, and wondered if, when you had roots somewhere, some part of you never felt whole when you were away from it. She felt that way about her family. Did Uzohola feel that soulache now, as they came low over the pyramids and banked north and west towards Rhakotis? Did this play on her heartstrings, as her family's absence played on Atiena's?

But the Ndlovukazis weren't from this territory. Uzokuwa had told Atiena that they were from Bàmako, in the mansadom of Manden, the largest of large cities, nearly eight hundred and fifty million people strong, landlocked and central and green, greener than people knew the Federation could be. Their family had been from even farther south than the Federation, originally, and the twins' first languages had been those ancestral tongues. Now, of course, Uzokuwa had said with a shrug, they spoke eleven or twelve each.

Such was the nature of the Federation, six hundred peoples brought together as six, six brought together as one. Uzokuwa had always sounded a little wistful when he spoke of it.

Uzokuwa. Atiena still, automatically, did not hate him when she thought of him.

That would have to change.

"I'm going to need everyone to brace." Atiena was bracing herself as she said it, against the frame of the entry into the cockpit where Demetri was wrestling with the controls as though they were a wild tiger. This plane was a jackhammer, Atiena thought, a brute instrument of broad clumsy strokes, and landing, that was a job that called for a scalpel. Hence – bracing.

She wasn't sure when this had become her job. Demetri had turned Uzohola away when she had gone to speak to him, maybe six hundred miles ago, and Täj was still in that half-exhaustion of shock, pretending to sleep at the back of the cabin with his head on Liara's lap. How he thought anyone found it believable that he could sleep in all this crashing noise and movement – in another life, Atiena might have laughed. That left the other girls – Eden, staring straight forward, her mouth a straight red slash against a frozen mask of utter serenity, her body utterly still; Yue, her hands knotted in her skirts, fearful eyes fixed on the city below them, rising up towards them now with a sickening urgency as they approached their destination; Liz, bracing before she had been told to do so, looking as though she had left some part of herself in Layeni, looking as though she wanted to be anywhere other than here.

That left Atiena, but even if it hadn't, she rather thought the duty would have fallen to her nonetheless. Demetri had said as much, shortly after they had left Illéa behind: starting to think you're the only one I can rely on, Morris. To fight with me.

I'm not a royalist, your Majesty. They had both recognised that contradiction, but it had not seemed like time to laugh, as they might have done in Layeni, ten hours earlier. I don't fight for any king. I fight for the people.

Exactly. He had smiled, very sadly. I can rely on that.

The ground was approaching so very quickly.

"Brace?" Liz said it almost dully. "Against what?"

Atiena slid down onto the ground next to the girls, and reached for one of the straps inserted in the middle of the floor. What a bare-bones machine this was. She had seen the husk of one such aircraft before in Tammins. It had been used for smuggling drugs from the Emirates. She wondered what the rebellion was doing with a cartel plane. "Get creative, Tucker."

She handed the strap to Yue, and was in the process of grabbing her own, as the sky melded into concrete and abruptly they were low, very low, and then before she could, the plane's wheels hit the tarmac and the whole aircraft lurched low and then bounced high again, Yue's head knocking into Atiena's shoulder with a violent force. Abruptly, the image occurred to Atiena, unbidden, of the landing gear ripping away from the aircraft's body on first touch to the ground.

"Hold on..."

God, she hoped Demetri knew what he was doing.

The wind had wormed its way into metal elements on the plane; something deep within the machine was shrieking.

Another crash down to the ground – did this thing have absolutely zero suspension? They were going to die! – and Demetri seemed to have hit the brakes so suddenly that the girls were all wrenched forward, as though some cosmic hand had wrapped its hand around their spines and pulled them, very roughly, back towards the sky. Atiena flung her arm across Liz like a seatbelt, and Täj put his hand between Liara's skull and the metal wall of the plane so that her hand bounced off flesh rather than steel when it rocked back, and Yue grabbed Eden's hand so tightly her nail brought up little silver crescents in the other girl's flesh…

They bounced again, a little more gently, if a movement so rough could ever be called gentle, and the plane shrieked. The strap was biting a long, red wound into her palm, but Atiena could not have loosened her grip even if she wanted to. Another bounce, another great shudder which knocked shoulder against shoulder, that had Liz looking a little green in the face, that ripped a small sound from Yue's lungs...

And then they were racing across the tarmac, wheels on the ground, the whole thing still shrieking and yet quieter now. Still slowing rapidly, quicker than they should have been, still lurching left and right with a sickening lack of control, and yet now they were on the ground and that, at least, Atiena could deal with a little better. On the ground. Alive. And slowing down…..

They had arrived in the Saharan Federation.

As they came to a stop, Atiena jumped back to her feet, lurching slightly as the plane shifted. Demetri had told her there should be some folding airstairs on the right-hand side of the plane; not the same stairs they had boarded on the back, what he had called the ventral airstairs, originally designed for parachuting in flight. No, Atiena imagined they wanted to descend onto the runway with a modicum of dignity – she flung open the door and wrestled briefly with the latch for the stairs, sighing in something like relief as it uncaught, and rapidly folded out onto the ground.

There were attendants there to catch it. Atiena didn't know why it surprised her to be greeted, but it did. They had epaulettes on their shoulders, and wore white gloves like chauffeurs. They smiled at her as she retreated back into the plane, where the others were slowly beginning to stand and gather themselves.

Demetri emerged from the cockpit. Did he ever look dishevelled? Atiena almost hated him for it. But for the slight muss of his hair – and really, that could have been by design – he could have just returned from the Layeni picnic, after a long day eating berries in the sun. The girls in the plane all looked like they had been pulled through some version of hell: hair matted, clothes stained with dirt and blood, open wounds on their hands and faces, cleaned as best they could in the tiny cracked sink of the lone washroom on-board. They looked, Atiena thought, like refugees.

Eden's legs threatened to buckle as she took her first few steps – Demetri caught her around the waist and held her until she had taken two deep breaths and steadied herself resolutely, half-craning from the king as she collected herself.

"Please," Demetri said pleasantly, a barely-there edge of urgency in his voice, "be careful on the stairs."

For two reasons – Atiena was nearly blinded by the sun as she stepped out onto the staircase. It was so bright. Bright, but not as warm as she had expected, though of course it was approaching winter here too. She had to put her hand on the railing to descend the stairs; her legs shook more than she had been expecting.

Uzohola's cousin was waiting for them on the runway. There was something of a family resemblance between him and the twins, Atiena thought, though this man was not as dark skinned as Uzokuwa, wore his hair in long thin dreadlocks unlike Uzohola's afro, was leaner than Uzokuwa and taller than Uzohola.

He bowed deeply to Demetri, and smiled; his teeth were incredibly white against his dark skin. "Your Majesty. I am nomarch of Aswan, Uzokuhlenga Mzala, son of Uzahambile, cousin to this one." He indicated Uzohola with an incline of his head, and laughed. "The mansa sends his regards, and bids you rest tonight before your official reception tomorrow."

"The Ndlovukazis sure do like their uzos," Liz murmured. Atiena had to agree. She was going to struggle to remember more names, especially if other Saharan names were as long as Uzohola's family's.

"It's a generational thing." Liara was a general's daughter, but she had experienced a diplomat's upbringing; she spoke with some quiet assurance. "Uzokuwa, Uzohola and Uzokuhlenga belong to the same generation in the same family. If her aunt's name is Uzahambile, Uzohola's father's name probably began with uza."

It had. Atiena remembered Uzohola telling her. Uzanikela had been his name; her mother had been Okheli.

Both dead.

That seemed to be a common thread in the rebellion, to be sure.

"Cousin to Uzokuwa as well." Demetri's voice was so cold, it took Atiena a moment to realise that it had indeed been he who had spoken. "So you'll forgive me my…. apprehension."

Atiena cut her gaze to Uzohola, who was twisting her hands together agitatedly, who had put her eyes very fixedly on Demetri, who looked as if she could not believe her ears at how callous her old friend seemed in that moment. Atiena could tell what she was thinking – if Uzokuwa's cousin could not be trusted, could his sister?

It surprised Atiena to see Täj put a hand on Uzohola's shoulder and say something quietly to her which had her nod and smile softly, dropping her gaze down onto the tarmac as Uzokuhlenga nodded. She looked… crushed. Of course she did. Atiena could not even begin to sketch a scenario where Lethal or Daniel or Maria would betray her as Uzokuwa had betrayed Uzohola. She could not even fathom a world in which they would consider such a path for a fraction of a second. As surely as she knew her own name, Atiena knew that the Morrises would always have her back.

Was that how Uzohola had felt? Before?

"According to my family tree, indeed I am. I'll forgive you anything, sir – I'm sure you're all still very rattled after all that occurred in Layeni. If you would please follow me, I have organised some cars to bring you to Rhakotis."

By "cars", he meant the fleet of black SUVs and long limousines assembled on the runway behind him, manned by a fleet of identically suited attendants – grey suits, grey gloves, grey glasses. Next to the battered shell of a plane that they had arrived in on, with all the Selected and the Inner Circle dressed in the tattered, filthy remnants of their picnicking clothes… well, Atiena thought, if they hadn't realised they were in for a major culture shock here in the Federation, their epiphany was going to come sooner rather than later.


Khione Rouen had known the girl they called Corvina for almost as long as she had understood the concept of knowing someone. They had shared their name from the very first moment that either had borne it. They had been sisters in all but blood, so thoroughly so that Khione had never bothered to recall the family that had been before. This was what she had now. And it was enough – so much more than enough.

And that meant that, even as they moved through the woodlands of Sonage, with Ekaitza Jones the bloodhound leading them unerringly through miles and miles of identical terrain with nothing other than the weeds and the stars to guide her, the two of them could bat thoughts back and forth, barely finishing a sentence before it was understood, critiqued, and reflected back again. Like this, they were Kyo and Cor, twin souls. Cor was the schemer, Kyo the support, and she was perfectly happy for it to be so.

"Thiago," Kyo confirmed, as their jeep bounced over a sand dune and Jones ground gears like they had personally offended her.

"Personally? Doesn't seem his –"

"Him alone..."

"Could be a way to..."

"Not if he knows about –"

"Good point, good point."

Kyo wasn't sure where they were going. Cor had spoken to Jones, in those first long moments after their freeing, when she was still adjusting to the light outside the hotel and being able to walk under her own power – although the long hours chained to a chair had taken a toll on her ability to move further than a few yards before resting. So she had been grateful for the fact that Jones had hotwired a military vehicle prior to coming to get them. Even Cor, who had wanted to search the rest of the makeshift hotel prison before leaving, had realised that time was of the essence, and so just three minutes after Khione had been relieved of her handcuffs, they were gone across the fields, leaving the rebel hotel behind them. Heading… somewhere.

She hoped Cor knew where they were going. She trusted her for that. That was Cor's job.

"What's the–"

"Good question." Cor's eyes were hard, as they always were, but they softened slightly when she turned to her sister. She was still holding Kyo's hand, as though afraid they might be separated again, and she squeezed it slightly now. "You know I can't let this whole ordeal go unanswered."

Kyo knew. She had expected as much. This was Corvina Rouen, after all.

"Of course. But does that mean…?"

"I was going to ask you..."

"The options are clear–"

"Two good starting points..."

"I get the impression," Khione said, "that you favour one starting point over the other."

Because she knew her sister, and she knew Cor would not just go after the man who had imprisoned them but the men who had ordered it, the whole network that had facilitated it, the whole cause that had made it necessary. That meant not just killing Demetri Dunin, but ensuring he lost this whole damn pointless war first. And Kyo could tell that Cor's favourite first step would be hunting down Thiago Wesick, gutting him, and butchering him like an animal.

It was the Rouen way. Kyo would be happy to be at her sister's heel every step of the way.

She was beginning to recognise some of her surroundings now. This was the border between Sonage and Fennley, where so much of their smuggling was concentrated – drugs and guns and women and money. Pandora operated a brothel not far from here, in the shell of what had been a bank in the days before the war. They were going to be safe, Kyo realised. They were returning to Pandora heartland, and they would rally whatever remained of their forces, and they would win.

She squeezed Cor's hand tightly, as though she could transmit by contact alone her dedication to the plan, to their future, to their victory. The windows were down: the wind tore through her hair, bloody and matted; the sun warmed her bloodied skin; when she reached out a hand, the whole world seemed to slip through her fingers, no matter how tenaciously she attempted to grab at it with the stubs of her worn-down nails. She tilted back her head. She smiled.

Cor directed Jones to the bank, a slight edge apparent in her voice at the thought of seeing her family again. Kyo could read her sister's emotions easily, no matter how well Cor disguised them to outsiders, and right now, the relief of freedom was obvious in every single line of her body, from the way that she pointed to the way that she raised her eyebrow at some of Jones's musical choices on the radio.

Her relief was short-lived, because as they pulled up to the bank, it became apparent to both of them that something was very, very wrong.

No one else might have noticed it – it was the little details. The blinds on the lower floor windows had been raised, and left raised; Vida would never have been so careless. The street outside the shop had not been swept in… by the amount of litter debris, Kyo had to guess perhaps four days. And, perhaps most damning, the little red light over the leftmost window which was left constantly lit, whether the brothel was open and closed, had been left utterly dark and unlit.

For the keen eyes of Kyo and Cor, that was akin to an SOS painted on the walls.

"Jones." Cor barely breathed the word. "I don't suppose you'd lend me your gun?"

"You suppose correctly." Jones climbed out of the car, and joined Corvina on the sidewalk, She slung her rifle from her back to her arm with the ease and skill of one enormously accustomed to the weight of a firearm in her hands. "Don't worry, little gangster. I have you covered."

Cor hesitated and then, after meeting Kyo's eyes and nodding briefly, seemed to come to a rapid conclusion. "Very well. You will forgive me if I insist that you lead the way."

"I'd expect nothing less."

The door was unlocked; that, too, was a sign that something was terribly awry. The front door was nearly always left locked; repeat clients knew to come through the back. So they proceeded in a little awkward procession – first Jones, then Kyo, and finally Cor, bringing up the rear with the look of one who was expecting a fight on their hands.

The first room, what had once been the bank's waiting room, was empty and tidy. All was quiet; all was cold. It felt as though the heat had been off for a few days. They proceeded past the bulletproof glass over the counters, and into the back corridors of the business, which split into three corridors – to the girls' rooms, to the clients' rooms, and towards Pandora rooms. Cor indicated that Jones should proceed towards Viridia's office, and so they did.

And then….

Kyo was distantly aware of someone screaming. After a moment, she realised that it was her. She had seen so much in her life – she had been raised in the same slum orphanage as Cor, she had cut her teeth on the same hard streets, she had been all but a co-founder of Pandora – but this… this was…

This was Viridia Cox. The first recruit Kyo had brought into Pandora's ranks. The madam of their brothels and the carer for the staff therein. The only mother Kyo or Cor had ever known.

Or at least, it was her body.

Viridia had been a vivacious woman in life – curvacious and curly-haired, with the brightest blue eyes that Kyo had ever seen and skin like porcelain. She had been fastidious about her appearance, even when they were going through the hardest of times, and she had never met someone that was too reserved to open up to her.

All of that still seemed to be true – but her face, oh, Kyo's stomach lurched at the sight of Vida's face. It was so disfigured, the flesh so twisted, the viscera so think, that it was hard for Kyo to tell what was blood and what was skin. It took her a long moment that it was not merely a generic mauling of the face, but that Vida had been branded, burned, in the very centre of her face… and by the ligature marks around her wrists, it had been done while she had struggled against it. She had been alive.

When Cor went very still like this, Kyo knew that she was a step beyond furious. She was at that white-hot level of rage that approximated something from hell. She stepped over Vida's body like it was nothing – just trash. Kyo did not blame her. Cor treasured people, not the husks that were left after the people had died. She valued life. And that meant she could easily ignore the body of one of her oldest friends, and move from that room to the next, her dark eyes flicking about like a set of scalpels looking to wound.

In the next room over, closer to the threshold, lay Kanon Justus. Pandora's businessman – the head of their casinos and bars. Vida's lover. Kyo's favourite big brother. He looked as if he had died pleading.

Kyo wasn't sure she could keep her small rations down.

He had been shot – several times, by the look of it – shot, as though someone had attempted to dismember him with lead alone, hit in each shoulder and each knee and the gut and the throat and the head. He had been standing at the entryway; he had been protecting Vida. That much was clear to Kyo. She almost didn't have to look around for evidence of that. She knew. Kanon would not have allowed himself to fall in another cause. He had been defending Vida, and he had fallen.

Kanon had never been a fighter. That poor fool.

One arm, outstretched, still reached towards the room in which Vida had died. On the inside of his forearm, where the pale bleached veins were closest to the surface, the same brand that marked Vida's whole ruined face. Kyo did not recognise it, but she could tell from the way that Cor's eyes narrowed that her friend certainly did.

"I think," Jones said, her voice strained. "We're going to have to amend those priorities of yours."

The brand, now that Kyo could bear to look at her poor dead friend for longer than ten seconds, had been shaped like this:


They had been given a house as a courtesy. It was a nice house. Even Eden, raised in the bejewelled heart of Angeles celebrity elite, found it hard to describe it as just… a house. Just as she found it difficult to describe this as just… a foyer.

The doorways leading off the foyer were framed by narrow, pointed arches, the stone of which had been delicately whittled and sculpted into floral arrangements that crept along the wooden ceilings like creeping ivy. Above these arches, the second landing was restrained by a whittled wooden balcony in a pattern emulating wicker. The panels of the main doorway were embedded with rondel stained glass in varying dark shades of green, chosen, Eden imagined, to approximate the colours of Demetri's eyes; the other doors were amber ring-mottle, blue craquel, and purple bevelled glass, leading out towards the lounge and the patio and the bedchambers respectively; and on either side of the main doorway, two smaller passageways led to the stairs which linked bottom floor and top floor. At several interims, gaslight lamps lit the interior of the room in a rich, warm golden light.

She catalogued each detail as though she was expecting to be tested on it later. She thought carefully about each element, because she was afraid of what she would think about if she didn't. She focused on the room, as though her life depended on it.

Uzokuhlenga had apologised for the space when they had first been shown it. "It is only a small place. Two storeys. Five rooms."

Five rooms. One could almost see the assembled Illéans trying to do the math in their head when he said that. Four Selected, three Inner Circle, one Atiena. Even Eden couldn't quite force those numbers into rationality, without expecting most people to double up.

She had to imagine the king would get his own room.

In the end, it didn't come to that. Uzokuhlenga had said that Uzohola should stay at the Ndlovukazi family compound in Aswan to catch up, and although Uzohola had cast a look at Demetri that was familiar to Eden from any number of high society events – please, intervene, argue – the king had just nodded and said, "of course – we'll see you at the reception tomorrow, Uzo."

Uzohola had not intervened or argued, only hugged the Selected girls goodbye and kissed Täj and Atiena on the cheek before she went, trailing behind her cousin with a slightly forlorn look.

Eden could relate to the look on her face – it was the same expression of missing something that would distract you from whatever pressed on your mind with the urgency of a tumour. Eden wasn't sure Uzohola was sorry to leave Demetri so much as she was sorry to leave the chaos of a displaced Selection. Once you had silence and stillness, the grief and fear crept in.

Eden couldn't let that happen. Not now. Not yet. Maybe later, at night, when she could no longer hold it back and when there was no one about to glimpse her vulnerability, she would let it in, let it fester. But not yet. Now was not then.

She had to keep busy.

Atiena seemed to have placed herself in charge of assigning rooms, examining the hallways and the layout with the look of one who has very different priorities from merely assessing décor and aesthetic. Liara and Yue and Liz were to sleep in the three rooms upstairs, she had designed; that left Eden in one of the two rooms downstairs, off the lounge, and that left one room between three people.

"Atiena," Liz said, clearly coming to the same conclusion. "Are you…?"

"There's a guardhouse in the garden," the Tammins girl said briefly, with a slight smile.

And Liz said, her brow furrowed, "that doesn't seem fair."

"They may have welcomed us, but we don't need to trust them. I don't expect to sleep many nights."

Yue said, "in that case, Tiena, you should take my room during the day. Get some proper sleep, okay?"

Atiena had made no promises, but it was clear by the warmth in her eyes that she was touched and appreciative of the simple, quiet gesture from the smaller Whites girl.

Eden had gone to her room then, because the panic was swelling to overwhelm her and the deluge of grief was threatening to drown her. But once she was in the room she had been assigned, she could return to cataloguing, to examining her surroundings, to thinking, and that was what Eden did best.

Her bedroom was tawny-walled and wooden-floored, the bed wide and close to the bed with a crimson and black quatrefoil blanket and several piles of pillows; the drapes were tile-patterned crimson and orange over white lace, and a geometrically perfect rug covered the space between the bed and a fireplace that Eden expected would be functionally useless for most of the year. Similar gaslight lamps were studded into each wall, though the window was wide enough that the room needed no extra sources of light – indeed, as she drew closer, she realised that when she drew back the curtains, the window was actually an egress onto one of the avenues of the Moroccan-style garden which occupied the western side of the grounds, much like the one that Eden's mother had brought her to see in Waverly.

Her mother.

Eden turned, very quickly, as though the thought was something she could physically dispel, and opened the dark wooden drawers to see if their hosts had thought to leave them any new clothes. Indeed they had – not Federation clothes, as she had expected, but something which approximated their shape and patterns. A white blouse, which she belted tightly at the waist, for the fit was not as snug as she would have liked, and a long geometrically-patterned skirt which brushed her heels as she walked. Like something Fatimah might have worn, before she had joined the rebellion.

Oh, Fatimah.

The garden, Eden thought. The garden would be nice. The garden would be something new. She did not replace her shoes – the ground looked freshly swept – and she did not wander with purpose, but merely by following the shape of the house rather than the shape of the garden, she soon found herself by the bay doors which joined the patio to the lounge. Within, Demetri was speaking agitatedly on the phone; she did not know him well, but the way he moved his hand as he paced as far as the line would allow him to pace… that was rather unmistakeable. At her core, Eden was an observer of people, and she could read him like a book.

She rather wished she could read lips, in this moment, just to know what he was talking about, why he seemed so irritated. Was irritated the right word? Maybe he was upset. Had he been told about the attack on the Axiom? Had he known about it, beforehand? Had he ordered it?

She had always thought he was rather kept at arm's length for most tactical decisions, but maybe she had been wrong. She didn't want to believe that she was, not merely because she would have to live in close quarters with him for the foreseeable future, but also because, quite simply, she did not want to attach that sort of atrocity to the man she had talked to, laughed with, kissed. It was an immature thought, and one she would be quick to discard if new information revealed itself, but she thought it anyway.

Maybe it was something else – something linked to the destruction of poor, perfect Layeni, something linked to the death of little Vardi Tayna, something linked to the disappearance of the mysterious Artur Gildas.

She wondered if anyone had told him about Raphael's death. Surely someone – Uzohola, his oldest friend, or Täj, his executioner, or Atiena, his new second in command – would have told him by now. Did that mean he was in the same emotional space as she was, as though the very earth had been ripped out from under her while she tried to hold up the sky? Or could the loss of a romantic love ever compare to the devotion one felt to one's family, the ties of life and long-knowledge and loyalty?

She could only think of the letters she had read, feeling the whole while as if she was intruding onto a very private moment between two people who cared about each other more than Eden could ever remembering caring for anyone outside her family.

I love you. Whether you forgive me tomorrow or you ignore me until we are dust, I love you. I miss you. And I love you again.

Her family. Her family. Her family.

Yes, she could have written the very same letter to her mother, the very day before. I love you. I miss you. And I love you again.

Demetri's shoulders curled inwards. He was nodding, in staccato little movements that suggested he was barely aware of the motion, and saying something that seemed to be getting cut off every few moments. As he ran a hand through his hair, he turned towards the door – and caught sight of Eden.

He gestured that she should come in and, perhaps against her better judgment, Eden did so.

"Yeah," he was saying. "Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell – yeah. Okay. No, I'll make sure that – yeah. She's here."

He held out the phone. It was one of those little analogue phones – rotary, with a little dial on the front and a thick black body that Eden thought would crack a skull if the situation called for it.

"She wants you."

"She?" Eden replied dully, and, against all the cynicism in her heart, she felt an iota of hope creep into her veins. Her mother? For a split second, it seemed plausible. Her mother knew the Saharan ambassador well enough to attend dinner parties with her every other month; the Saharan ambassador would surely know the relevant nomarch; the nomarchs would surely know how to reach the King in Exile that they were sheltering, against Illean directive.

For a split second. And then she put the phone to her ear.

"Mælngsab."

And that, by itself, was almost enough to pull out all the stops she had forced into her mind over the past five hours. "Pa."

Rather than her mother's clipped, refined Angeles tones, it was Mæhmay Klahan's broad vowels and gravelly voice that rattled in the speaker.

"You're alive," Pa said. "Good. He's managed one task, then."

"Pa, I..." Eden bit back her words, and shut her eyes, feeling the tears swell beneath her lids, trying to force them back before they fell. "Pa..." Have you seen the news? "Are you safe?"

"I am safe, kracxk. Don't worry about me. Are you well?"

"I'm safe, Pa."

"That isn't what I asked."

Eden was silent for a long moment. If she trusted anyone, she trusted Pa.

She wasn't sure she trusted anyone.

"Have you seen the news?"

"I'm guessing," the older woman said, with a deep melancholic sigh. "You aren't referring to… Layeni."

"Please." Eden hadn't realised her voice could fall so soft and still be, however vaguely, audible. It felt like she was squeezing her words out through a vice. "Please. Is there… Are there…"

She understood, as she always did. Eden did not have to finish her sentence.

"The Kingdom's victory is tallied in bodies, little one. They won't mention survivors even if there aren't any."

"Are there," Eden said, "any?"

A deep sigh on the other end, that rattled the receiver. "I will find out."

"Thank you, pa." Eden could barely breathe the words. The tears had squeezed out between her lids, and rolled slowly down her cheeks. In that moment, she hated herself for that weakness.

Pa's last words were spoken very softly. "Mind yourself, little Lahela. That cat of yours expects you to come home at the end of this all."

Home.

She hung up, and slid slowly to the ground, pressing her forehead against the cool wooden surface of the end-table on which the telephone was set. She allowed no other tears to escape, but abruptly, she found that the air around her did not seem to contain as much oxygen as it once had. She needed to take deep, shuddering breaths to maintain herself; if she didn't, she wasn't sure what would happen. What did people do in the movies when this happened? They screamed, and threw things, and broke windows.

Eden just breathed, and thought, and tightened her fingers around her wrists.

She was only distantly aware of someone standing over her, and then that same person sitting down next to her, and then there was an arm around her shoulders that she did not resist. She turned her face into the king's shoulder, and let Demetri stroke her hair very slowly and very deliberately, and she just kept breathing. That was all. That was all she could do.

He didn't say anything. Maybe he knew there was nothing to say.


Marjorie didn't get much sleep these days. She tended to treasure what few hours she could manage, often resting her head on stacks of documents in some provincial intelligence office or on bags of rice in the back of a munitions truck or lying on piles of clothes in the back of whatever refugee camp Thiago decided they should operate from for the duration of that particular week. She had long ago abandoned any attempts to keep herself neatly attired – and beside, she had found that she stood out less when she allowed herself to be a little more dishevelled, as the people around them were. She was starting to understand why Thiago always had a five o'clock shadow, why he always wore the same threadbare coat. A poor man could be found anywhere, but a rich man so often stood out in the Wastelands.

Mostly, though, she had too much work on her hands to even think about sleeping. She wasn't sure when Thiago ever got the chance to rest; he was always awake when she fell asleep and awake when she woke up. He was ill, she thought, and felt brave enough to say a few times. He should rest. He had her for a reason – to split the workload. And yet, he seemed to treat her presence as a reason to double the amount of work they took on, triple it even, so that every moment was filled with meetings and messages and memos.

Anytime she tried to tell him to give her more work and give himself more time to rest, he would simply reply, "Jori, descansaré cuando esté muerto. I'll rest when I'm dead."

And what was more, they were constantly on the move – never in the same place for longer than a few days. They were living like hunted things. And Marjorie had never been learning more about her own nation. She was beginning to run out of space in her little encrypted notebooks, so many lines had she filled with details about the revolution, about the Wastelands, about King Demetri.

And yet, she still was no closer to realising which secret Thiago had been referring to when he had said the secret this kingdom was founded on.

For a long time, she had suspected that he might have meant the identity of Obelisk. Obelisk, of course, was the spy that the rebellion had embedded in the Angeles 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, but in the short time that Marjorie had been with Thiago, their usefulness had become staggeringly apparent. Obelisk passed information about troop movements, about propaganda efforts in the capital, about the false prince Mordred's mood.

And more than that, darker – when Marjorie fed through some of these reports, it became apparent that some of the captured rebels had not been executed by the palace, but eliminated by Obelisk before any secrets could be extracted by torture. That, she thought, rather ruled out any idea that they were a houseworker or a stablehand, unless Angeles was enormously accepting of murderous maids.

And that… that was as far as Marjorie had got, though she didn't think it was bad progress for her first few days of wondering. Unless, of course, this wasn't the secret Thiago had been referring to at all. She was sure this rebellion had no shortage of secrets – which of them were considered foundational?

An obvious answer, of course, would be a secret about the king that led it.

That interested Marjorie fine enough, but here, operating a whole continent away from the man himself, it was extremely difficult for her to try to discern any new information about the man, so tightly sewn up were the mouths of those who knew him. Anytime she tried to derive more information from Thiago, no matter how obliquely or coyly, he would just dismiss her with a wave of his hand. "Hazlo mejor, habla menos. Do better, talk less, Jori."

Do better. Talk less. Marjorie kept a close eye on Thiago, and she wondered.


Yue had already curled up in the armchair that occupied the corner of Liara's room when Liz put her head in the door. The younger girl's hair was slowly drying around her shoulders, and she had clearly changed into the dress that had been left for her in her room – a pale blue babydoll dress, which left her long pale legs bare and made obvious the scrapes and scratches on her knees which had een earned from the chaos of the Layeni escape. Liz found it mildly amusing how the girls had seemingly all silently agreed to go barefoot, without conferring for a single second.

"Hey," Liara said, beckoning that Liz should enter. "Settling in okay?"

As much as one could settle in the space of a half hour, Liz thought, but did as she was encouraged, and moved forward to sit on Liara's bed as the girl from Angeles moved about the room, not quite seeming to be accomplishing anything significant but appearing to draw comfort from the movement. "Could be worse."

Liara's room, at the back corner of the chateau, was one of the prettiest, the farmer girl thought, if one of the smallest – a bare stone wall, a thick Oriental rug occupying most of a flag-stone floor, with lacy curtains obscuring the aperture that led to the stairs down to the garden at the back. She had a four-poster bed with a frame of solid African blackwood, etched with intricate geometric designs, and her blanket was a rich red, embroidered with intricate golden stitching. It was similar enough to Liz's room, but for the stone – Liz's room, and Yue's beside it, were all wooden-floored and plaster-walled.

"It's nice," Yue said, almost hesitantly. "Don't you think?"

"Nicer than the alternative," Liz said.

"Okay," Yue said, "I was trying to put the bar a tiny bit higher than that..."

"We'll take what we can get at this point," Liara said wryly. "Are you sure you're doing okay, Yue?"

The Whites girl nodded, turning her hands over and over in her lap in a manner that suggested she certainly was not. "I'm… I will be. It's just a bit of a shock. You know."

She did. Liz may have been raised on a farm, with all the slaughter and butchery that necessitated; her mother may have been a field medic to injured rebels when the situation called for it; her very own fiancé might have been returned in a coffin. But she had always been a few steps removed from it all – from real human loss.

Layeni… that had been real. That had been visceral, and close, and real. She wasn't sure when she would be able to sleep again. Certainly, she wasn't sure when she would be able to sleep again without nightmares.

"We're gonna be okay," was really all that Liz could say, but Yue seemed to appreciate it.

Liz lay back on the bed and stretched her legs out, easing the stiffness in muscles she had not even realised that she possessed. "So," she said. "What do you think their plan is? Are we going to wait out the rest of the war here, or…?"

They had all left their entire families behind in Illéa. They had left everything behind. And here…. They didn't even speak the language, for Christ's sake.

Yue said, rather hesitantly, "they want recognition, right? Presumably this is just a… diplomatic trip."

Liara seemed a little more sceptical. "Most governments-in-exile are just that… in exile. Not 'just a little bit south of the border'. And look at all of this." She gestured. "Seems a little bit more… kingly than Layeni, don't you think?"

Yue seemed almost offended by this pronouncement. "Layeni was…" She seemed to be searching for a term that wouldn't betray the depth of her feeling. "Layeni was such a sweet kind of home."

Liara smiled softly. "I loved it too, Yue. I just mean… from an optics perspective. Think of what Eden would say. Think of how they would frame it on the Report." She gestured to the opulence of the space they inhabited.

"Yeah, but… it must be a bit embarrassing for Demetri," Liz mused aloud, "don't you think? We're basically living off Enhle's charity right now. He's a beggar king."

Yue winced slightly at the harsh wording she had chosen. "I know. I guess it's selfish to say but… I'm just happy to be safe, regardless of the optics or the embarassment." She paused. "I wish all of our girls could say the same."

That solemned Liz somewhat. Of course. It was so strange – how little the other girls were letting it slip – but after all, they had left Saran behind. Vardi Tayna had been murdered. So many of the other girls had been eroded and erased from the Selection over time, without Liz quite knowing where or why they had gone: Marjorie, Lissa, Nina, Cor.

Yue had lost Vardi Tayna, Saran and Raphael in the space of a day. Liz wondered if the magnitude of this bereavement had quite sunk in just yet – if the shock had even started to wear off. Somehow, Liz suspected the younger girl was still managing to keep it at bay, however roughly. The alternative would require a callousness that Liz could not quite fathom of the delicate ice skater from the North.

Liara, at least, was a general's daughter; she had some practical, if not personal, experience of war. "I'm sure Saran's fine, Yue. You know Harjo won't let anything happen to her."

Yue smiled faintly. "Of course."

"And we'll have a nice time at the reception tomorrow," Liz added, somewhat weakly.

"Take our mind off things."

"Get raging drunk."

Liara laughed. "Liz said it, not me."

Yue said, "I don't know much about the Saharan Federation. I suppose… I suppose it'll be nice to learn more about it. It might feel more like a proper Selection now."

"A proper Selection," Liz echoed meaningfully.

Liara smiled, and then caught the way that Yue and Liz were both looking at her. "Why are you looking at me?"

"Well," Yue began.

"Yukimura and I are both in it for Demetri," Liz said – whether that was true or false mattered little, really, she just wanted to needle Liara a bit, bring some levity into the space, set them on a bit more of an even keel.

"And you..." Yue shrugged.

"Well," Liz said, "you and the pale dog looked very cosy the whole flight long."

Liara was clearly biting something back – something, Liz imagined, about the fact that Täj had just lost his best friend and she had just been comforting him and no one could criticise them for their emotional reaction after a massacre. But that would have drawn cruel reality back into their conversation, when it was very clear that all involved were just looking for some escape. "Well," she said at last, "Everyone knows getting close to a guy's friends is the way to get close to him."

"Yeah," Liz said, "because that worked out so well for Saran."

"And Atiena," Yue said, thoughtfully.

"And..."

Liara held up her hands. "Enough already!"

"But don't forget Yue, she and Demetri go way back." Liz winked. "She didn't need to put in any effort to make it to the Elite… unlike us plebs."

Liara looked as though she were about to argue, when abruptly there was the sound of a door slamming downstairs and an argument raging in the foyer. The noise floated in through the open door; Liz could vaguely recognise Atiena amongst it all, and an unfamiliar female voice with an unmistakeably Illéan accent. That there had not yet been any gunshots, Liz thought, could only bode well.

"I'm not going to say it again –"

"I'd like to see you try to stop me –"

"If you do not step back, I will be forced to act with lethal force – "

"Ms Morris, I don't think you know who I am."

"You're absolutely correct."

"I am the first wife of Inkosi Enhle, Ulpia al-Ilyah."

At that, with a widening of her eyes, Liara went quickly to the landing, and after a brief moment, Liz followed her. Atiena and the woman were, indeed, in the foyer, and indeed there looked to be no question of actual violence, despite Atiena's words – mostly, she imagined, because the other woman was dressed as Liz imagined a Federation princess would be dressed, in a long pale pleated dress, sleeveless but with a broad golden usekh collar studded with pale green gems.

She was also, quite unexpectedly, white – white and blonde and pale, with an obvious Angeles accent, the same as Liara's or Eden's. Not exactly what Liz had ever expected from a Federation boqorad. And yet… Liara, certainly, didn't seem to be questioning it.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," the girl from Angeles was murmuring. "I never put two and two together. I might actually be a moron."

And below them, the woman from Angeles was saying, "I would like to see my nephew immediately, Ms Morris."

"Ulpia," Liara murmured. "Ulpia Dunin."

And that – well, even Liz knew that. Ulpia Marciana Dunin. Erstwhile princess of Illéa. Elder sister of the late King Trajan. Paternal aunt to Kings Mordred and Demetri.

Funny, Liz thought, as Demetri and Täj moved from the lounge into the foyer, apparently summoning by the commotion as the Selected girls had been. She would have thought, after so long separated from his family, that Demetri would have looked a little bit happier to see her.