Finally, finally, a billet had been found. Multiple ones, in fact. A small cluster of undamaged houses equidistant from the defense, prosecution, and Justice Building. It was a bit far from them all - about an hour's drive - but the garages were already stocked with cars, and even drivers.

Thanks to her unconventional marriage, Dora was acutely aware that the house she lived in back home was like a mansion compared to the usual apartments city dwellers resided in, and like a palace compared to village huts, though nothing compared to the villas latifundia managers had resided in. This, though, was something else. So far, the only parts of the Capitol Dora had seen were the Lodgepole Justice Building in all of its dilapidated glory, the black market, and the exteriors (and interiors, when the walls were missing) of buildings. Now she stood inside one.

"What minister did we steal this one from?" Dora wondered out loud, acutely aware that she was standing in a very rich person's house. She remembered her family's house as being massive and luxurious, but this was on an entirely different level.

"Not a minister," an androgynous voice said. Dora turned around to see a person of around forty, with medium-brown skin and mid-length curly hair sticking out in all directions. "Ministers lived in palaces. This place used to belong to a singer."

They didn't have to tell what happened to the singer. "Were you the...housekeeper?" Dora asked, trying to figure out the right word.

The person shrugged. "I suppose so. Keep the house, cook food, things like that. There used to be an entire staff of us."

Behind Dora, Juan and the assistants were following the conversation with interest. Raymond had originally proposed dividing them up by gender, earning a raised eyebrow from Taylor. Raymond had then decided that they were mature adults who could be trusted to get dressed before leaving their rooms and had them pick their own housemates.

Dora had immediately gravitated to Juan. Out of all of them, she got along best with the slightly younger judge who had simply tried to do justice, no matter how poor the tools he was given. Since they had an uneven number, Raymond would be sharing with Rose (she had no assistants and thus took up less space, as well as being practically his adopted daughter by now) and Daniel, who was exhausting to talk to or even spend time with.

The other divisions had been unsurprising, if worrying. Sean and Rosalinda were like as not to create a negative feedback loop of irritation and insecurity - both were still struggling to come to terms with the decades they had wasted. Brutus and Taylor both compared themselves to Dora and Juan endlessly and felt bad about it, which was highly ironic, given what Dora and Juan thought about themselves. Rosa and Drexel could bond over their past silence. And, oddly enough, Cora and Moira were quite close. Perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising. Cora had, after all, actually been fired.

"Do you live alone?" Dora asked the person as they shook hands. "And I am Dora Rescu, of Ten. This is Juan Mendez of One." Juan also shook their hand.

"Oh, no, I've got my immediate family with me. My husband and two children. The eldest is turning eight in a few days, the other is ten months. I'm Drazen Roland."

"Mine are all long-grown," Dora said.

"So are mine," Juan echoed. "My grandchildren are that age."

Someone came up the stairs from the basement. A pale man of around the same age, bald and with facial hair that straddled the line between 'unshaven' and 'short beard'. "So they finally confiscated our house?" he asked Roland.

"No, they're just moving in."

The man scratched his chin. "We've got two little ones, you know." He eyed the group of assistants behind Dora and Juan. There were five of them, three from One and two from Ten. "I think we can get each of you a room."

"Praise be unto the Lord," one of Dora's assistants, a young man of around thirty-five she had worked with before, said. His name was Austin Grybauskaite. Dora's other assistant was Sarah Lai, who had spent a decade in Thirteen, and Juan's assistants were Maria Guzman, Jorge Guerra, and Guadalupe Encarnacion, who had been in the same spy ring.

"That is indeed excellent," Dora said. "Where do you and your children live?"

"Basement," Roland said. "There's nothing down there of interest, it was all sold or stolen months ago."

"Feel free to join us for mealtimes. Your children, too."

"Of course," Roland said. "By the way, this is my husband, Sean. Also Roland."

"Our colleague is named Sean," Dora realized.

"Good thing we didn't get him billeted here," Sean joked.

Drazen nodded. "How about we get you settled into your rooms?" they offered. "You must be tired."

"Yes, please." Dora only then realized just how exhausted she was. The indictment was being filed tomorrow, and they still hadn't had a proper sleep in a proper bed since arriving to the Capitol! The eight of them pulled their suitcases behind them as they entered a long, wide corridor of sorts. There were rooms to the sides and a palatial staircase rising up to the second floor.

"Alright," Drazen said, looking around. "We'll have the judges stay on the first floor, we've got two identical bedrooms that should do fine. The assistants can go upstairs - I assume there aren't any issues with stairs?" Head shakes all around. "You can pick your rooms there. They're quite similar, though. Judges will have a bathroom of their own, assistants will have three to share."

"Now that's more like it," Guzman grumbled. "I've been in here for weeks, stuck in some guest house with ten to a bathroom and two to a bed."

"What about food?"

"There's two kitchens on the first floor, use them as you will. We were directly ordered to provide you with three meals a day and given your ration cards, so rest assured you will be fed well."

"Will there be alcohol?" Sarah Lai asked.

"We were asked not to," Sean said diplomatically.

Lai sighed. "Sanchez is the presiding judge, not our parent."

Dora chose to ignore that. She herself had never had more than a glass or two of wine at important get-togethers for decades now and didn't quite see the allure of partying. "How about we all get settled in?" she offered. "We all need to unpack, and then Raymond wants us over for that housewarming brunch of his."

"It's barely time for breakfast," Drazen pointed out.

"Housewarming breakfast, then." She looked at Drazen and Sean. "So you'll have two less people to worry about."

The assistants looked at each other. "For how long will you be gone?"

"Long enough for you to carry out whatever scheme you're plotting right now."

Sean led the assistants up the stairs while Drazen took Dora and Juan through a nearby door into a beautiful bedroom. The furniture must have been replaced at the last minute - the bed looked just like Dora's bed back home, the chest of drawers was battered, and the less said about the state of the carpet, the better. The walk-in closet was like a room of its own, with plenty of poles (but no hangers) and collapsible shelves.

The bathroom turned out to be the greatest surprise Dora had seen so far in the Capitol. The bathtub was missing.

"What the fuck?" Juan asked, staring at the little round enamel tub that had clearly been attached haphazardly to allow for washing under the shower. "How did that happen?"

"The soldiers did it," Drazen said apologetically.

"What about the other bathroom?" Juan asked.

"It's there."

Dora met Juan's eyes. "Let's flip a coin," she offered.

Fortunately for her, she won that one. She left Juan wondering how in the world he was supposed to wash without getting water everywhere and went to her own room, where she unpacked and lay down on the bed, hands over her face.

She had never felt like an impostor so acutely since her very first time pronouncing a sentence. Was she really in the Capitol, getting ready for the trial of the leaders of the old regime? It felt completely crazy to her.

Jack would have rolled his eyes if he had been there. She could imagine him saying, Really? I told you a hundred times, there's nobody more qualified in the District. The thought made Dora feel a little bit better, even if she knew that Jack was hardly an unbiased source. She was chasing away irrationality with more irrationality.

After a few minutes of lying on the bed, Dora got up and went to find Juan. They had to go over to Raymond's house for that breakfast he had promised. Juan was staring out the window looking like she had just felt.

"Juan?" Dora said. "We really should get going."

The billet shared by Raymond, Rose, and Daniel turned out to be a palatial townhouse similar to theirs. Rosa and Drexel were already there, Rosa complaining to Raymond about how one of Drexel's assistants had stolen her towel just as she was going to shower. Cora and Moira arrived next, Moira claiming a headache from having to listen to two of her assistants debate politics the entire time.

"Wait a second," Rose said. "Where are the assistants?"

"When the children are grown," Dora replied, "it's sometimes better to not know what they get up to when you're not there." Rose did not have children, so she looked a little bit confused. Those who did nodded.

Several minutes later, the others were all gathered and they could go eat breakfast. Breakfast turned out to be quite good - oatmeal and unfamiliar pancakes. Curious, Dora took two. The ones Jack cooked were a bit bigger than her palm without her fingers and light-brown on both sides. These were much smaller, oval, and browned on one side, the other side being pale with a darker perimeter and centre.

Dora tasted one pancake. It was a bit different than what she was used to, but not by much. She added some maple syrup, one of those little luxuries Jack had once been shocked to see as an everyday reality. She also took a bowl of oatmeal and added some cloudberry jam, wondering how it had gotten here. Cloudberries only grew in the Arctic, and Dora doubted the nations of the North were sending in jam as part of the humanitarian aid. Or had someone gone up there and come back with the jam? Dora amused herself with the mental image of Heiko Laur being handed the jar by a head of state as she stirred the porridge.

"What are cloudberries?" Juan asked, noticing what she was doing. The capitals of One and Ten were on the same latitude, very close to the Capitol - and very far from cloudberries.

"Arctic berry."

Juan looked at the jar with interest. "How do you know that?"

"Read it in a newspaper. They've got all sorts of foreign recipes in there now." Dora put her bowl next to her plate on the large round table in the massive kitchen and went to pour herself some tea, into which she added a generous dollop of honey. Whoever had done catering had finally gotten it right. This was how judges were supposed to be treated, not given a tattered mattress with no bedsheets on a splintery floor.

They took their seats, Juan poking skeptically at his pancakes. "Why do they taste so strange?"

"They're made on kefir," Rose said. "I helped the housekeepers."

Everyone looked at each other awkwardly. Once Dora had gotten a place of her own her finances had been firmly in the 'spouse stays at home and handles most housework with someone coming by once a week or so to clean' range, but she remembered well how her parents had reacted to her spending her time around servants and trying to help them. Dora herself had let Ashley clean together with the man. She had simply been curious about his equipment and lacking an intuitive grasp of social hierarchies.

"What a lovely house this is," Raymond said. "I've forgotten what it feels like to live in luxury." He sighed and ate a piece of pancake with jam. "Now that we're all here, let us begin the meeting."

Of course it would be a meeting. Raymond could act as Capitol as he wanted, but deep down, his soul was pure Thirteen.

Decius felt as if everything before his defection had been in a previous life. Had he really once panicked when the mailperson knocked on his apartment door? Had he really lied to students for decades despite knowing very well that there was more to the history of law than what he had been telling them? Had he really spied for Thirteen right from university, like something out of the most absurd propaganda?

The audacity. The cowardice. The all-encompassing fear worn dull after decades of freezes and thaws. The countless legal professionals who did not know anything about their own profession thanks to him. Miryam did not understand him, she couldn't. Even Latreya and Chee, who studied dictatorships, had never lived in one.

Decius tried not to think about his age, because when he remembered he was already fifty-two, he wanted to cry from helplessness and frustration.

At the moment, Decius had nothing to do, and neither did his friends, Latreya's Talaat Pasha biography aside (and Chee had somehow managed to convince the administration that the best way to spend their money was to pay them to translate nineteenth-century Yiddish poetry). Their bosses had forgotten about them and nobody knew what the university's reopening plan was and if it would reopen for the summer semester at all. Chee had threatened to move to Eleven to teach at university there, as it had not closed even at the height of the street fighting, but Decius knew full well Chee would never move away from the trials. So it would be back at the University of Panem again for Decius once it opened. What a presumptuous name for a university that had taken in students from just one single province.

Until it opened, the three of them were trying to make the most of this unrestful vacation. Decius showed them and their spouses places he remembered from before, the nostalgia for the oddest things choking him. He had cried the first time he had taken the Express Orange since his defection. Was that colour-coded network of express buses seriously the thing he missed the most? Not friends he abandoned, not family he still had no idea how to best approach, but the buses he had taken to university for so many decades? As a child living on the Express Blue route, he had thought it only natural that the bus was light-blue, and had been so disappointed to discover that all of the buses were the same colour. The route to school and then work was engraved on his mind - walk five minutes, take the Express Blue to Upper Hill interchange, and the Orange from there to the terminal stop, the university. How he had loved his old apartment - the best balance of affordable and close to transit he had been able to reach. That apartment did not exist anymore. The express buses did.

Chee had dragged them to the theatre to watch a version of Nathan the Wise set before the First Rebellion. Decius wasn't sure how much sense that re-imagining made, but Chee had loved it, going so far as to jump up and shout 'You tell him!' at one of the most iconic lines before throwing a bouquet of flowers right at the face of the actor playing Nathan. Decius had nearly had a heart attack before remembering that Capitol audiences tended to be much more raucous than the ones in Thirteen. He had also gone with Miryam to a version of Waiting for Godot set on a trolley stop. It had been basically the same, but there had also been several extras sitting silently and reading newspapers, napping, or knitting, and every instance of 'Godot' had been replaced with 'the trolley'. Decius still burst into laughter every time he recalled an exchange.

Vladimir: You have a message from the trolley.

Boy: Yes Sir.

Vladimir: It won't come this evening.

Boy: No Sir.

Vladimir: But it'll come tomorrow.

Boy: Yes Sir.

Vladimir: Without fail.

Boy: Yes Sir.

Ah, now if only he had had people dropping by his stop during those nights to announce that the last bus had already gone and he needed to get a taxi, instead of wasting time standing there.

Now, it was Latreya's turn to decide on entertainment. Fortunately, they were going to the cinema and not the theatre, which meant that at least she wouldn't be throwing flowers at anyone. Latreya bought the tickets as the other two stood around - unlike them, the spouses had work to go to, and thus couldn't always come along. The queue was massive. Everyone wanted an escape from the destruction outside.

Once the tickets for 'The Warlord's Due', whatever that was, were bought, they walked to the indicated room, sat down, and waited. Latreya was nearly vibrating with anticipation. A while back, they had gone to watch a movie about sixteenth-century pirates - the genre was apparently extremely popular, given the menace that pirate crews were to world trade. Latreya had loved it, even if there had been a few historical inaccuracies. Decius had been more neutral. The final scenes with the pirates facing a show trial had been excellently done (awareness that international law, show or not, was an ancient and modern concept and not an accidental blip in 1945-48 was always welcome), but the scene where some of them were publicly executed had been a bit too graphic for his liking. He had never liked watching death - in hindsight, another reason for his mute disapproval.

The movie began. On screen, the words 'Burgundy, 1469' appeared. Decius and Chee whirled around to stare at Latreya.

"What? How?" Chee hissed. "Please don't tell me you were secretly the historical consultant."

Latreya shook her head, grinning widely. "I guess someone realized it's a great story?"

The 1474 trial of Peter von Hagenbach was indeed a great story, but Decius had never met anyone besides Latreya who cared about it. He watched the movie attentively and soon realized that a) the writers had been very careful to stick to the interpretation of events Latreya agreed with and had almost certainly leaned heavily on her favourite book about it and b) the audience, most of whom had picked a movie at random, would soon be very confused.

The most basic historical background was given by an English-speaking narrator, clearly re-recorded for the tiny market. Dialogue was captioned. Who had even made this movie, and where? Central Europe was probably the last place in the world for movie-making.

The events were framed as a fairly conventional story. Hagenbach arrived to the town and sparks immediately flew due to language and religious differences. Over the next half hour, things slowly went from awkward but alright to bad to terrible.

In hindsight, Panem was the last place to show a movie about a town rebelling against a cruel leader. Some people looked very awkward as the years passed by and the situation became worse and worse until Hagenbach's final year in Alsace could be described as a reign of terror.

"Wait a second," someone sitting behind Decius hissed to their neighbour as the Upper Rhine rose up and seemed to be winning, "there's still an hour left! This isn't going to go well. I think he's going to come back."

Latreya shook with barely-suppressed silent laughter.

On the screen, Breisach's underpaid garrison decided that mutiny was the best option they had.

"What, you think I was paid any better?" a woman demanded in a parade-ground voice. "Traitors, the pack of them!"

The mutiny went ahead, and thanks to the intervention of one local, Hagenbach was put under house arrest and word was sent to the archduke asking what to do.

"Told you," the person behind them said. "He's gonna escape, he's got connections."

The person ended up being very wrong, but that was not what Decius was concerned about. As Latreya giggled to herself, the Archduke decided that Hagenbach's former position meant that he was entitled to a formal hearing. Then, the makeup of the court was explained, but not very well. Decius only understood why certain regions sent in judges because he was already aware of the role of the League of Constance, and that was probably the most obscure thing he knew anything about. However, the others were more focused on something else.

"Wait a second," someone demanded loudly. "When was this movie made?"

"Last year," Latreya called out.

"This is really similar to that trial the IDC is planning," someone else said. "Is that where they got the idea?"

Latreya nearly fell over from laughing too hard. She was, in fact, telling anyone who would listen or could not easily exit the conversation that the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century could be compared to modern Panem when it came to how decentralized they were (and District Twelve's dimensions - to the microstate of Lippe). Decius felt like he was a celebrity sitting and listening to people talk about the things he was interested in.

"This is bullshit," someone said.

"Would you rather they lined us all up and shot us?"

"Stop making everything political! This is just a movie!"

"Yeah, a movie about a political trial!"

"Shut the fuck up, all of you! I'm trying to watch the movie!"

Ah, Capitol audiences. Decius had missed the rowdiness. In the darkness, they felt anonymous, and thus were more free to express themselves, even if it was just to shout that the hero's love interest had a nice ass. Now, they could speak even more openly and get downright political.

Fortunately, they had only missed a few scenes of interrogators discussing what Hagenbach had confessed to under torture. The movie continued. The trial began, with Heinrich Iselin the prosecutor giving his opening statement. The line about 'trampling on the laws of God and man' was kept despite its dubious historicity - one primary source had been destroyed in the nineteenth century and thus it was theoretically possible that it had been recorded there, with no way to check.

Hans Irmy the defense lawyer then made his own statement. He began by challenging the jurisdiction of the tribunal. Decius had to hold back laughter. The defense at Tokyo had done the same thing. Irmy then argued that the executions and quartering of troops had been legal and used the tu quoque defense for the charge of rape (probably the strangest way that defense had ever been used). He followed that up with the superior orders defense. The judges seemed to have been swayed, and Iselin even made a motion to withdraw the charges.

"Is he going to get away with it or not?" the person behind Decius demanded.

"He better not!"

"No, no, I think I got it. He'll get away in court and then they'll get some people together and string him up from a lamp-post!" The mere fact that this thought could enter someone's head made Decius grit his teeth. Another thing he had always hated - the justice system discrediting itself so strongly, Peacekeepers legendary for their 'come when they kill you', that mob justice had been a normal part of life. Raped by your date? Get the family, get the friends, and go after the perpetrator, who is sure to get their own people to stand up for them.

"There were no lamp-posts back then, you idiot!"

The new attorney for the prosecution, Hildebrand Rasp, reasserted the charges of the indictment, arguing that Hagenbach had confessed to them. After a back-and-forth about the validity of confessions gotten under torture, Rasp gave another argument - by claiming that Charles the Bold had given these patently illegal orders, Hagenbach had committed slander and lese-majeste.

"Wait, what?" someone demanded. "They had illegal orders back then?"

"Yes!" Latreya shouted back. "Laws and customs of war date back to the first wars! It was the enforcement that was missing!"

On the screen, Irmy asked for an adjournment so that the Duke of Burgundy could be asked if he had actually given such orders. The judges rejected the request. The implication was that, even if he had received orders, he should have known that these orders were illegal.

"I knew my uncle is full of shit!" someone shouted. "You can't just shoot everyone and say you were ordered."

"That's bullshit! The point of being a soldier is that you obey!"

The deliberations of the judges were not shown, most likely to minimize the amount of fabrications in the movie. Hagenbach was sentenced to death and allowed to request a preferred method of execution - the sword. The request was granted and Hagenbach was executed.

"Take that, you piece of shit!" the person behind Decius shouted.

On the screen, the Duke of Burgundy flew into a rage and started planning to invade the region. The screen faded to black and a brief explanation of how this resulted in protracted hostilities appeared in stark letters.

"Wait, so what was the point of that stuff if it was just all shit in the end?"

"Well, they couldn't just look into a crystal ball and see that it would end up so bad!"

Chee snorted. Their preferred line was that 'Robert Jackson couldn't gaze into a crystal ball and see My Lai.'

More writing appeared - a rather respectable summary of the state of international law over the next few centuries. And then a final bit of text.

Since the Cataclysm, no international trials have taken place.

"Maybe if ours works out, other countries will pick it back up again," someone said hopefully.

"Ours is a national trial, you idiot."

"Well, so was that one. Technically."

The screen faded to black, with silhouettes of people lying dead on the ground barely visible. Another figure stood above them.

Wars and conflicts continue to tear the world apart.

That faded away as well, the credits began, and the lights went on. Everyone quietly got their things together. In the bright light, confidence evaporated like fog on a hot morning.

"So," Chee asked Latreya. "What did you think of that?"

Latreya grinned widely. "It's great. It's not very good at explaining the background, but otherwise, it's great. I'm definitely buying the movie."

"That's nice," Decius said.

"None of this makes sense," Marcellus announced, wrist-deep in the dough. It was a rare day that already-baked bread was given out. "Even the name makes no sense! Why's it a military tribunal when only one of the judges is military?" He nodded at the newspaper Mom was reading, which had a photograph of the judges.

"Because the Capitol is under military government," Mom explained.

"But it's a national trial!"

"Oh, who cares?" Leon snapped, waving the knife he was using to chop soy into cubes in the air. "Most of them fought in any case. It's their business what to wear."

Marcellus breathed out. "Whoa, relax. What's gotten into you?"

Ever since his conversation with the elderly pacifist Tom Hope, Leon had found himself arguing more and more, telling himself that Hope wouldn't have kept his mouth shut just because it was easier that way. "Look," Leon said. "Yesterday, I photocopied an order to confiscate seed grain from farmers alleged to be involved with rebel groups. Who cares if the judges are civilian or military in light of that? As long as they're competent."

"Exactly," Marcellus muttered, kneading the dough with more force than necessary. The bowl almost tipped over from the forceful motion. "As long as they're competent."

Leon rose to the bait. "Do you even know who a single one of them is?"

"He's got a point." Mom laid aside her paper. "Do you really think there are good judges in Panem?"

Leon wondered if Tom Hope had argued with his parents. He went back and forth there. On one hand, he'd never convince his family of anything, so why waste energy? But on the other, he wasn't just going to let Mom feed Marcellus' delusions. "Maybe not," he said. "But what better option is there?"

"Exactly," Mom agreed. "We have to pick the least of the evils."

"I thought we'd be done with that by now," Marcellus grumbled. He took the dough and placed it in a pan so that it could rise again. Loaf bread was a much bigger pain to make than flat bread, but everyone in Leon's family liked the fluffiness, and yeast could be reliably gotten now.

"Even in the richest countries in the world, governments still have to choose between distasteful options," Mom reminded him.

Dad was lying silently on the couch and listening to the radio, which had just finished with a discussion on the hyperinflation and was now broadcasting lists of names of returning POWs. A distant cousin of theirs had returned recently, having surrendered very quickly in Eight and then spent the rest of her time on a farm in Thirteen. Leon didn't think he had known personally anyone who had died.

"Yes, but why?" Marcellus demanded as he washed his hands. "It's not fair."

He was right there. "Because that's just how it is," Mom said. "Sometimes, there's no good options to choose from."

"I wouldn't go that far." Leon tossed the cubes of soy into a bowl. Tofu had a texture reminiscent of that of smoked sausage, which said a lot about what smoked sausage had been made from. Now, that wasn't allowed, so those of them who didn't have the money for black-market sausage had to make do with the cheap soy.

The recital of names was interrupted by a reminder that a press-conference on the healthcare system would be in twenty minutes, and a talk-show panel on cash crops in an hour.

"That sounds interesting," Dad said, sounding half-asleep. The restaurant where he worked forced employees to do reconstruction work as overtime. Leon, too, was exhausted after his twelve-hour shift and lengthy commute, but he took it better, probably because he was half as young as Dad. Plus, Dad had things to do around the house, like laundry and cleaning the floors by hand (the vacuum cleaner had been sold on the black market long ago). Leon had offered to do some chores, but his parents had told him that he needed his sleep. They were right - as it was, Leon was barely getting enough sleep to be well-rested.

Leon had no idea when Mom slept. Maybe during the day, when everyone else was out. When Leon went to bed she was writing code, and when he woke up, she was writing code. That, or watching soccer. She said being an IT person was a million times better than working in the factory, and was in fact happier than she had ever been before.

They worked in silence for a while, accompanied only by the endless recital of names. It eventually ended and was replaced by Bensoussan making a speech. On the radio, the prime minister sounded as uncharismatic as she looked on television. Her even, dull voice was a perfect match for her strict suits, stern bearing, and short bland haircut that would have been Thirteen-style militaristic if not for Bensoussan's total lack of militarism. Weren't the Social Democrats supposed to be one step away from Communists? Bensoussan was nothing like the old politicians struggling to read from a prepared speech, but neither was she anything like he had thought a 'subversive' to be like. Leon cut up the black-market fresh vegetables, eager to be done with it all. He suddenly wasn't hungry at all, listening to her explain the healthcare reforms being planned.

"I'm going to bed now," he said as Bensoussan handed over the microphone to Hirji, the new minister of health. The older man from Thirteen had spent his career in the field and was certainly competent (even if he could only be considered charismatic when compared to his prime minister), but his calm, unemotional voice made listening to the horrific statistics he was reciting unbearable.

"Without dinner?" Dad asked.

"I'm not hungry."

Marcellus sighed. "You don't have to kill youself over that trial."

Leon often thought of quitting and going back to construction, but every time, he thought of Tom Hope. "If I quit, we won't have any fresh vegetables."

"Don't be silly," Mom chided him. "You're more important than any vegetables."

Leon shrugged and went to his room. He really wanted to sleep. Tomorrow, he was in for twelve more hours of photocopying. He climbed under the covers and curled up his legs, to let them rest fully. On the other side of the wall, he could faintly hear Hirji muttering away about the percentage of localities with less than five thousand people who had to go somewhere else for even the most basic healthcare. The percentage was ninety-eight.

Janie slapped down a domino, her last one. "I win."

"Aw, come on." Hollerberg was a few years older than her and reluctant to demob because his entire family had been killed and he had no home to return to. He placed down his own tile. "I'm second."

"Screw you all!" The third and last player was Ben-Itto, fourteen years old and also with nowhere to go. She put down her tiles, looking annoyed.

Hollerberg chuckled. "Told you not to play for money." He actually refused to play with the little ones for money. The man was protective of them as if they were his own siblings.

Janie was really glad she had told Ricky to stay home and help out Mom and Dad. She couldn't imagine her brother here with her, peddling stolen gum and losing money at cards. Instead, he was going to school in the evenings for the first time in his life. Ricky had never been very smart - maybe he'd be better at the school kind of smart. He was already writing the letters for everyone, so he clearly wasn't doing too badly.

Her other two siblings were actually going to school all the time, and not working at all. Everyone underage got free rations, which still seemed completely insane to Janie. Annie and Jo were not taking it well - they had thought they were better than the kids of clerks and accountants who sat around doing nothing all day, and now they sat in the same classrooms as them. Janie could only sigh. She wished she could have spent her childhood in a classroom instead of the steel mill.

"The lieutenant told me he wants to send me to a Community Home," Ben-Itto complained. Janie had recently started getting to know people other than Dusk. There weren't that many guards at the Justice Building, even if people were constantly leaving and coming, so Janie knew most of their names by now. "It's not fair. I'm a decorated combat veteran, not a little kid."

Hollerberg looked like he was having to actively stop himself from taking off her helmet and ruffling her hair, possibly while holding her in a headlock. That was what Janie wanted to do, at least. "You're fourteen," he pointed out.

"So what? I don't want to live with a bunch of kids." Her hand went up to the little fabric squares on her chest - the girl had been wounded twice, participated in a bunch of battles, and done something heroic once. Janie still had no idea what the situation had been with kids in combat. She had asked around, and was still confused.

In Thirteen, people had started military training at fourteen (it was now nineteen). At sixteen, they could be sent into supportive roles such as driving trucks and counting socks, but only adults could be sent into combat. Thirteen officers commanding District groups had tried to send back children who had fought locally, but many had fallen through the cracks. On top of that, during the assault on the Capitol, those orders had been ignored on the suggestion of some Thirteen general who had wisely retired after Coin's death. Every last stray cat knew that the Mockingjay's thirteen-year-old sister had been sent to the Capitol, where she had died in that false-flag operation Coin had done for some reason.

That was one more thing Janie didn't understand. It's not like the girl had tagged along with a unit, she had been sent from Thirteen - the hell had been up with that? Nobody liked to talk about it. Janie didn't like to think about it, either. It made her feel like she had done something wrong.

"Well, where are you going to live once this is over?" Hollerberg asked.

Ben-Itto shrugged. "I heard there's going to be more trials."

"Yeah," Janie said, "but they're going to demob us all eventually."

"By that time, I'll be old enough that they won't be trying to stick me into a Community Home."

Janie seriously doubted there would be that many trials. The IDC was a scene of chaos on the best days, and nobody really cared about the trials. The one of the Gamemakers was still paused, and the others showed no signs of starting. Janie looked around and froze. "Incoming!" she hissed.

The two others hid the dominoes and straightened out as a cluster of thirteen older people walked towards the Justice Building. They were 'guarding' a side entrance, but everyone who was actually involved with the trial went in through it, because the main entrance was besieged by journalists.

Janie realized that these were the judges. A couple of them looked familiar - she must have seen them around before. They didn't look like the judges she had seen on television a few times. They just looked like rich old people. They walked up the stairs, a few of them nodding at the guards. Janie realized that one was barely old enough to be her mother.

"So what?" one of them was saying. "The bathtub in my billet was stolen. I have to use a small basin someone welded to the floor." Janie fought not to laugh at the thought of the tall, fat man trying to wash himself in the kind of basin Janie had used to wash her siblings when they were babies.

"Could be worse," another man, shorter and skinnier, said. "There's a large window in my bathroom, with no curtains. I had to hang up a bedsheet before I could shower." He was about sixty, with bad skin and barely any hair. Janie doubted anyone except his spouse wanted to watch him naked.

"I just like my bed," the youngest judge said. She had yellow hair and blue eyes. "It's soft. And big."

"Shame we can't have anyone in it," another woman sighed. She was shorter and fleshy, and about as old as Janie's grandparents. "I don't understand that ban on spouses. My husband eats like a bird, and it's not like he'd need an extra place to sleep." Janie tried and failed to get rid of that mental image.

"I heard it's because the Chief of Counsel has a handsome secretary."

"No way. I knew her, in a way, back in Thirteen. She and her husband are a very sweet couple. Shame they couldn't have kids, I know they both wanted to."

The judges walked through the door, which shut with a loud click. Janie looked at the other two guards. She hadn't realized judges could be so gossipy. "They sounded like the old people gossiping on benches outside the building," she realized.

Hollerberg shrugged. He and Ben-Itto were both from small towns. "Reminds me more of the village busybodies at the teahouse in the evenings."

"Well, I guess they are pretty old," Ben-Itto said with a shrug.

Janie shook her head. "There's different kinds of old. Rich people don't age like normal people. With us, people their age do light work for a quarter of the pay, because at sixty, you're just too decrepit. But if you spend your life sitting at a desk, you'll be still sitting there at eighty."

"Eighty?" Ben-Itto asked, eyes wide. "That means they were around during the First Rebellion."

Hollerberg chuckled. "In the Capitol, rich people can expect to live to ninety." The not-rich, of course, had a life expectancy of fifty. The things you picked up when you learned how to read.

"That's insane. Are the judges really that old?"

"Not that old," Janie said, taking out a stick of gum and offering it to the others. "Most of them look to be sixty-something, except the one with the yellow hair." She popped the piece of gum into her mouth. The taste of lingonberry filled her mouth. Janie had never had lingonberries, so she had no idea how real the taste was.

Ben-Itto chewed on the gum, small arms crossed on her skinny chest. "I never knew people could have yellow hair," she said. "I thought it was all dye. Rich kids always ordered hair dye in these crazy colours."

"Bunch of people have blond hair," Hollerberg pointed out. "Didn't you see it on television?"

"I never even watched the Games," Ben-Itto said with a shrug and blew a bubble.

"Lucky." Janie had always watched mandatory. At work, of course, it had meant a break, which was always welcome. And at home, there was always that one person who considered it their holy duty to walk around the building and listen at the doors. Fucking rats. "Wait, where are you from?" Janie knew only her hometown accents and could tell if someone was from the Capitol.

"Five. Small town, batteries weren't delivered half the time. Mayor used to say we were subsistence farmers. It means we ate what we grew, and if the harvest failed, we died."

Hollerberg nodded. He had been from a coastline village in Four. "I talked to someone who was once tried by one of the judges," he said.

"Really?" Janie asked, surprised. "How did it go?"

"He had written 'Trayvon loves Jack' or some shit like that on a Peacekeeper headquarters in Ten. Charged with terrorism and I don't know what else. They tried to get him to confess, but he insisted on a trial, and I guess they thought it'd make no difference either way. He gets in the courtroom and realizes he's completely fucked - he's all alone against the prosecutor and this smug fat judge looking at him like he's a cockroach. And then it turns out the judge's the biggest stickler for the letter of the law ever. Looks at the charges and immediately acquits him." He spread out his hands. "She basically just read a bunch of definitions, said that the writing didn't fit into any definition of a threat, and let him go."

"Did Trayvon and Jack get together?" Ben-Itto asked, eyes wide.

"No idea."

That made Janie feel a little bit better about everything, but not much. The judges she knew of were mostly the sort to make decisions by telephone. Even if they weren't bad themselves, that didn't help anyone, because they still upheld the system - Janie knew that now. They had had the privilege of deciding how much to follow the line from above. At worst, they could have been fired. Janie's supervisors had once held the power of life and death over her.

A/N: The pancakes Jack makes are like the pancakes I usually see in Canada, the ones Dora is served here are similar to the ones I'm used to - the reason they taste different is because they're made with kefir. Yet another nod to the Capitol's Soviet-ness.

Don't worry, Decius, I don't think anyone understands what in the world is going on with reopening.

The colour-coded express buses that are, to the infinite disappointment of ten-year-old me, all painted the same light-blue are based on the Viva buses in York (basically the northern suburb of Toronto). I don't think they're what I'd miss the most if I had to move away, but nostalgia is weird.

Lippe was a historical state, first a princedom in the Holy Roman Empire, then a province of Germany until it was merged with its neighbour due to being impractically small. On this map, you can see its dimensions in 1918, when it had a population of ~173,000. In the Early Modern era, the prince lorded it over from his castle over 10,000 people scattered over two tiny market towns and a bunch of villages and hamlets.

https colon slash slash en dot wikipedia dot org/wiki/Principality_of_Lippe#/media/File colon Lippe dot png

Hollerberg's acquaintance doesn't have his memories affected by his emotions, Dora did look at him like he was a cockroach. Being autistic, she mimicked her colleagues in how to behave in a courtroom - this is what emotion to speak with, this is how to look at the defendant, this is what expression to have on your face when reading the verdict. Many a person in her courtroom was confused when she announced 'to a year of community service!' in the tone usually used to say 'to the supreme penalty - shooting!'