Miroslav could only nod along as Dovek explained everything that, in his mind, was invalid about the trial. "Honestly, Doctor, what was the point of the last few weeks? Explaining that I was indeed the Minister of Internal Affairs? I could have told them that myself!" He chuckled.

"You haven't been troubled by the evidence?"

"Troubled? Ha! Bored nearly to death, more like."

He had been far less cheery on the evenings following some particularly damaging revelations, especially when it came from someone he knew. "What do you expect of the next phase of the trial?"

"Proof that the Hunger Games did indeed happen?" Dovek's knee bounced fitfully. "Dr. Low tells me they're going to bring in the Victors."

Miroslav had heard similar things. "I have also heard some of the survivors will testify," he said. "What do you think about that?"

"I think that if you use the word 'survivors', you're setting yourself up to not understand the situation. That's not how anyone saw it, and you know it."

"That was how I saw it," Miroslav said. "It was not imposed on us, and we were free to call it however we chose. But we are getting off-topic. What do you expect from the testimonies?"

Dovek flapped his hand. "Things everyone already knew and lies."

"You seem very dismissive of that."

"Of course I am," Dovek said, leaning back against the wall. He carried himself as if he was at home in his bedroom, not in a jail cell. "I don't understand why the prosecution is making such a big deal out of the Games. More than twenty-three teenagers died of tuberculosis every month, or in workplace accidents, or during reprisal actions. What's so special about the Games?"

Was he serious there or fishing for Miroslav's response? "I'd have thought it was obvious," Miroslav said. "The government made it special. You are the ones who turned the killings of hostages into a bizarre pageant of death."

Irritation passed over Dovek's face. "I? I was born over a decade after the Dark Days. Everything I did was to stop another one from happening."

"I see you did a great job of it," Miroslav deadpanned.

Dovek burst into laughter. "We've got you to thank for that, Doctor. Spreading propaganda among our workers so that they'd go along with your crazy schemes."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Miroslav said.

Oldsmith's table was covered with balled-up papers. "Writing to family?" Miroslav asked.

"Can't think of anything," Oldsmith said, glum-faced. There was ink on his hand even though he was using a ballpoint pen. "My wife's doing terribly right now, and here I am being fed three times a day."

"Where is she staying?"

"With a cousin. Building's half-destroyed - she says the stairwell has no walls, it gives everyone vertigo. No glass in the windows, no anything."

"Terrible," Miroslav said. Tens of thousands were living in the rubble, but hearing that would hardly make Oldsmith any happier.

"It is. And what are they doing instead of rebuilding? This nonsense! That conspiracy charge - honestly, who came up with that? By their definition, everything is part of the conspiracy!"

Miroslav shook his head, keeping his eyes on Oldsmith's face. "Actually, the prosecution decided to use a narrower definition than the one typically used before."

Oldsmith exploded. "What does that have to do with anything?" he demanded, sweeping a piece of paper off his table onto the floor.

"I thought you might know-"

"Are you accusing me of something, Doctor?" Oldsmith asked. His jaw was clenched. "Look, I can't stand talking about this. I can feel the noose being placed on my neck. Why do you bring this up over and over?"

It was Oldsmith who had brought it up, but mentioning that would not improve the situation. "Is there something you'd like to discuss?"

"No," Oldsmith said glumly. "I feel so trapped in here. Why can't they just realize I'm innocent and let me go already?"

"Good day, Dr. Aurelius," Bright said, stopping her exercising and sitting down on the cot. The window was as open as it would go, but it was still extremely stuffy.

"Good day. How are you doing?"

"Better, now that Count One is over." She was not being charged on Count Two, which meant the next few weeks would be easy ones for her. "The way they brushed aside my lawyer like that - it's unfair."

Her lawyer, due to a lack of other options, had tried to win points in cross-examining prosecution witnesses by means of 'orders are orders', 'military necessity', and 'the Dark Days'. The last excuse wasn't even allowed, but it hadn't stopped Rankin from trying to get military witnesses to explain that all of their brutality had been for a higher goal - to prevent another Dark Days.

"You think the lawyers are being treated unfairly?"

Bright said nothing for a few seconds. "This is a political trial," she said. "I'm a soldier. What do I know of trials?"

"But soldiers were involved with trials, too," Miroslav reminded her.

Bright stiffened. "I wasn't. I did my job. If some desk soldiers in the Capitol wove intrigues - that has nothing to do with me."

"You, being the Head Peacekeeper-"

"I focused on my District," Bright said coldly. "Unlike some people, I did not chase after promotions to the Capitol." That was a shot at Thread, who had done just that and ended up sent off to Twelve instead, a general commanding a tiny town garrison.

"There were no intrigues in Eight?"

"There were intrigues in every last small town with a force of three privates and a chronically drunk sergeant. I did not concern myself with them."

"Wise decision," Miroslav said, going through his notes. "But didn't you have to deal with local civilian authorities?"

"Of course."

"And you never had to-"

"No," Bright said coldly. "Never."

"Never took bribes?"

"No," Bright lied.

"Never gave bribes?"

"Never."

Bribes were hardly the biggest things Bright had to worry about, given what the prosecution would read into evidence when Count Three came around. "Never slept with locals?"

"They were all of age."

"And that you wished them luck before the Reapings?"

"I meant their younger siblings."

Miroslav sighed. "Do you really think that nothing you did was wrong?"

"Maybe I made mistakes. But that can hardly be laid on my doorstep. I am a soldier. If ordered to kill, I kill. If it turns out it was the wrong person - that is very sad, but it's not my fault."

Lux was reluctant to set aside his book, a hefty paperback tome, to talk to Miroslav. "You seem to be engrossed," Miroslav said to the former general, who looked quite unmilitary in a T-shirt and shorts. "What's that?"

Lux held up the book so that Miroslav could read what was written on the cover. "Shakespeare. Collection of all the plays."

Miroslav had read a couple of his plays in school - some had been fascinating to his adolescent mind, and some, simply boring. "Are you finding it interesting?"

"I suppose. The language is difficult to understand, but that's what the footnotes are for. There are some lines that really get to me," he said, putting the book down. "It's incredible, that something written centuries ago can be so relatable."

"Could you give me an example?"

"Of course, Doctor," Lux said. "Perhaps this could be another one of your evaluations - tell me your favourite line from Shakespeare, and I'll tell you who you are!"

"I'm not thinking quite so far ahead," Miroslav said.

"That would be an interesting test," Lux mused. "In any case, have you read Othello?"

"When I was sixteen - I don't remember much beyond Othello killing Desdemona."

Lux chuckled. "That was certainly something," he said, flipping through the pages. "Bit too much, in my opinion - couldn't he just talk it out like a normal person?" Miroslav's fellow grade ten students had agreed. "Ah, there it is. 'He that filches from me my good name/ robs me of that which not enriches him/ and makes me poor indeed.' Made me think about the intrigues that used to happen at the General Staff." He looked grave now. "I'm just thinking - it hurts enough for me to be here, and I know that everyone knows this is nonsense. But what was it like for those people who lost in a backroom struggle or were at the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up accused of leaking information to terrorist groups or some such rot? Everyone thought they were guilty."

Miroslav was shocked to hear such insight from Lux. "Everyone thought they were guilty?"

"Of course. I knew, of course, that some of the accusations were overblown, but I thought that if someone was being arrested, then there was a reason for it."

"Even if you were at the very top of the military hierarchy?"

Lux looked uncomfortable. "Well, yes."

Still, this was a little step forward.

"The weather is terrible," Cotillion said in lieu of greeting.

"It is," Miroslav agreed. "At least we have air conditioning in the courtroom."

Cotillion made a vague gesture with her head. "I suppose that's the best place for it. I'm already constantly on the verge of falling asleep in there. I'm sorry, Doctor, but all these boring documents - my brain just shuts down."

"Don't apologize to me, I'm hardly better off." Miroslav fanned himself with his clipboard. Out in the corridor, the radio was blasting 'Don't Lock Me Away'. "How are you doing this fine evening?"

"As well as I can be, under the circumstances. All that nonsense they're saying about me - they act like we were some kind of sadistic torturers. Not a lab like any other. When I was an intern there, ninety percent of my time was spent doing paperwork for my supervisors. And I wasn't even paid at the beginning!"

"What did you live on, then?"

Cotillion looked at him oddly. "Parents covered my rent and meals."

So anyone whose family couldn't afford that wasn't able to get the position. No wonder they had created nothing of use, if they had been able to draw from such a tiny pool of potential staff. "That's nice."

"Yeah. It was fun, you know. I felt like I could do anything, like all the paths were open to me."

"In short, you were twenty-five."

Cotillion laughed. "That's true. But I do miss it. I liked spending time with the other interns. When I look back, even the paperwork wasn't so onerous compared to what came next."

"What came next?"

"The more I rose, the more I had to worry about," Cotillion said simply. "So I miss the days when my greatest worry was trying to get all the forms filled in time."

Listening to her, one could have thought she had worked in an ordinary lab, not one where people had been murdered by the hundreds.

"A shame we can't be outside in such nice weather," Blatt said with complete sincerity.

Miroslav wanted to disagree, as he actually went outside in this horrid weather, but Blatt hadn't gotten to actually go outside since her arrival at Lodgepole. "It is," he said. "I'm trying to convince the warden to let you go outside, but he's refusing."

Blatt sighed. "Can't they remove the bars, at least?"

"I'm sorry. I try."

"You have nothing to apologize for, Doctor." She paused. "I really don't want to speak today, Doctor. I'm so tired."

"I remember it was even hotter on the day we went into the ocean for the first time," Verdant reminisced, running his hand absent-mindedly along his brace. "And it was so sunny! I covered myself in sunscreen, of course, with my colouring I got into the habit early, but quite a few of my fellow cadets were bright-red when they got back."

Verdant was by now wraithlike from lack of sun, though with his grey eyes and rapidly whitening light-brown hair, it was doubtful he had ever had much in the way of melanin. "Ouch," Miroslav said. "That was smart of you, to wear sunscreen." He had always forgotten to put some on before going outside.

"I suppose. Everyone was very annoyed with me for being so pale but not burning." He chuckled. "When I was little, I'd burn as soon as the sun appeared - we couldn't afford sunscreen. At the Academy, they warned us that burns will give you skin cancer and handed out sunscreen. Some of my relatives died from just that, so I wasn't going to take risks in a foolish quest to try to be tougher than the sun. Even if I was jealous of my chameleonic fellows."

"Chameleonic?"

"Started out light but changed colour in days."

Miroslav laughed. "That's a good way to put it."

"The ocean - it was beautiful," Verdant said, staring at nothing. "I always loved being on the water. But it was terrifying sometimes - the giant ocean, and your little boat. When I found out about the existence of rogue holes, I had nightmares for weeks."

"Rogue holes?"

Verdant nodded. "The opposite of rogue waves. Instructor mentioned having worked on a project at a university where she did some sort of physics on a tank of water and discovered rogue holes. I kept on dreaming about being on a boat that suddenly fell into the void."

That was definitely something to give anyone nightmares. "That sounds terrifying. Did you ever get caught in bad weather?"

Verdant held up his hand and rotated it this way and that. "Nothing too horrible, but it was very unpleasant at the time. And once I was done with training, I was stationed on a submarine, so that wasn't as much of an issue. Then I got promoted, and it was the office life for me after that."

"Because of your cluster headaches?"

"Not exactly - that started earlier, when I fell down the stairs and hurt my head." He scratched his leg where the strap of his brace touched the skin. "I earned my promotion fairly."

"Were you happy?"

"Yes. I was glad for the promotion. Even if it meant I could seldom leave land. I was proud that my hard work had been recognized."

"How is the family doing?" Miroslav asked, nodding in the direction of the letter on Best's immaculately made cot.

"My cousin says everything is going well."

"Which one?" Like any other well-off Capitolian, Best had a small army of cousins, most of whom were not actually his cousins and were related to him in a way nobody actually understood.

"Claudia. She's two years older than me."

Unlike the other former Peacekeepers, Best had spent the past ten years in retirement with his family, so at least he knew them well. "Is she your actual first cousin or-"

Best scratched his head. "No idea. But we grew up together. I remember I saw her off for the Academy when I was ten, and then two years later, it was my turn."

"Are you close?"

"Always were." Best smiled softly. "We were inseparable as kids - but then came the Academy. And then it's like I blinked and I was retired, and so was she. She was a colonel, you know."

That was no surprise - connections had been crucial for promotions. "Did she fight?"

"No. Health problems." Best glanced at the door. "I was going to say that maybe that was for the better, but I didn't fight, either, and here I am."

There were far too many retired generals to try them all, but only two people had ever commanded the Coast Guard, which meant that every single crime against humanity carried out by it could be laid at someone's door.

"Is she doing alright now, health-wise?"

Best thought for a second or two. "As fine as she can be, under the circumstances. At least that's what she says, and she's never been one to complain. I remember how once-"

Best launched into a funny story from his childhood, Miroslav nodding and saying 'uh-huh' at appropriate times. The elderly former admiral seemed to relax when he talked about his family, and any way Miroslav could get his patients to relax was welcome.

"I can't believe I missed my daughter's birthday," Krechet said as he sobbed into his hands. "She's twenty. And I wasn't there!"

Good thing this conversation was confidential, because if his parents found out that Krechet of all people reacted more strongly to missing a child's birthday than him, there would be hell to pay.

"Did you write her a letter?" Miroslav asked gently.

"Of course!" Krechet wiped his face with a sleeve. "But I feel so awful. I've never missed any of their birthdays before, and now I'm missing one after the other!" He cried harder now, trying to dry his eyes with wet hands.

"Has she replied to your letter?"

Krechet nodded. "Yeah. But I miss her. And the other kids. Little Verax is ten now!" Thinking about his children getting older made Krechet burst out sobbing again. He grabbed an undershirt from a shelf and used it instead of a handkerchief, dabbing at his eyes and nose. "He keeps on asking everyone where I am and when I'm coming back."

"That must be hard for your wife."

"It is. And my middle boy, he's fifteen and he's always hungry. She's at wits' end trying to feed him."

With two parents a metre ninety-five tall, that was to be expected. "Is he getting the food he needs?"

Krechet chuckled. "My wife doesn't need to haggle at the black market - she just looms. The kids are in good hands. They're eating better than I did when I was fifteen. Norm's the same as me, you know." He used a dry corner of his undershirt to wipe his nose. "I was always big, but then I started growing - and growing, and growing. At sixteen, I reached my final height but weighed just fifty kilograms."

"You must have been the size of a telephone pole!" Miroslav exclaimed.

"That's a good way to put it," Krechet said, putting down his undershirt. His eyes were red and puffy. "I was like a skeleton stumbling around tripping over the floor. The instructors kept on shoving extra rations at me at every turn. Poor Norman. The rations aren't calculated with outliers in mind."

"How tall is your daughter?"

"Maybe a centimetre or two taller than me."

The next time Biljana wished she was taller, Miroslav would tell her that being a metre fifty-seven was better than being a metre ninety-seven.

"The guard at my door is addicted to mephedrone," Talvian said casually during a lull in the conversation. "And probably something else I can't figure out right now."

"Oh - really?" Miroslav jotted that down. He'd have to do something about that. "Does she sell?"

Talvian shook her head. "Just buys individual doses."

That would be both harder and easier to deal with. Due to the MPs having too much else to do, people were free to poison themselves however they wished, but this also meant that convincing the guard to go in for treatment would be that much harder.

"Well, that's good to know," Miroslav said. "Do you know anything about her history?"

"No. She's guarded me three times and been high on meph for all of them." Talvian had an uncanny knack for spotting that. Miroslav could only envy her attention to detail. "The market here is cornered, so she can't be doing anything major, and I don't think she's desperate enough to be burying for a few pennies or a dose." 'Burying treasure' was slang for dropping off small bags of drugs at predetermined locations.

"So she might be a small-scale dealer, but you don't think an MP is going to do that unless something out of the ordinary happened."

Talvian nodded. "She earns more than enough as is. If her addiction is still under control, her pay should cover it easily."

And if it spiralled out of control, the guard would next be seen burying in a tracksuit jacket and uniform trousers. She wouldn't be the first. Busy as Miroslav was with the key criminals, it still hurt him to hear of how the guards were struggling with their problems. A few days ago, a guard had been arrested for running someone over in a jeep while under the influence and killing them. His parents had died in the fighting.

"You know, Dr. Aurelius," Talvian said, "I'm glad you trust me."

"I could say the same of you." Talvian, being utterly convinced that this was the same sort of justice she had meted out to her predecessor, had zero desire to confuse or obfuscate. Spying on the guards was just a habit for her.

"Well, we all have to play our roles. I'm the spymaster, and you're the spy." She looked him in the eyes. "I collect information on the guards. You collect information on me. Do you really think you'll get anything of use?"

Miroslav shuffled around on the backless chair. "Yes," he said, not bothering to insist that he was just there so that she could talk to someone. If she didn't want to believe him, he wouldn't insist.

"You haven't gotten a single useful thing out of me this entire time."

"On the contrary, every single session nets me something useful."

Talvian looked at him as if he was saying nonsense. She did not understand that what he was looking for was not what she had yanked out of her predecessor.

The timing was perfect. As Chaterhan sat down on his cot, yielding the stool to Miroslav, the song began to play. Chaterhan's face twitched, but he said nothing.

"Is the song bothering you?" Miroslav asked. "I can ask them to turn it down."

Chaterhan flapped his hand elegantly. "No need."

"You are not obligated to put up with insults," Miroslav said gently.

Confusion flickered over Chaterhan's face before he settled back into a pretense of placidity. "I do not wish to be a nuisance."

The prisoner, not wishing to inconvenience his jailers. Perhaps that should have been expected from someone who had lived his entire life in such a strict hierarchy. "They mock you," Miroslav prodded. "All you have to do is politely ask for them to turn it down. They won't hurt you."

"I never thought I was so hateable," Chaterhan said softly, hands folded on his knees. "You will laugh, but I never knew how much they hated me. I suppose they cannot be blamed for being angry, but I am not at fault here." He sighed. "What do I do to make them stop hating me?"

Miroslav looked him in the eyes. "How can you ask that when you aren't even honest with me?"

Chaterhan jerked as if stung. "I do not lie to you."

"But you evade. Every single time I ask you about something serious, you change the topic."

"This is pointless," he declared in a firmer tone. "Why do I waste my time talking to you?"

"There you go again."

"What do you want from me?" Chaterhan demanded, leaning towards him.

Miroslav quickly decided on which question to ask. "If you could, would you have done things differently?"

The strength disappeared from Chaterhan as he sagged against the wall. "Yes."

"Why?"

"So I would not end up here."

Miroslav tapped his pencil against his clipboard. "And the horror stories from the factories. Had you heard about that-" he had known, but now was not the time to press there "-would you have done anything about it?"

"Of course," Chaterhan said indignantly. "I am a businessperson, not a butcher. My job is to keep my factories and mines running. Unlike what those newspapers would have you believe, I take no pleasure from knowing my workers suffered."

He was lying - he had visited those factories and mines and signed off on punishments and quotas. Chaterhan had not liked to cause pain, he had simply not cared. Were these words yet another bald-faced lie or did he block out what he did not want to dwell on?

"My father says he's getting better," Blues said, turning the letter this way and that in her hands.

"Do you believe him?"

Blues thought for a few seconds. "Yes. But he doesn't say how much better."

"At least he's heading in the right direction," Miroslav said.

Blues unfolded the letter and scanned it, looking for something. "That's what I tell myself. My brother said something that was blacked out. Though I guess that's just my brother being himself."

"And the others?"

"The little ones are asking for me. My second has taken to reading the papers even though he doesn't understand anything." She ran a hand over her face. "He'll read in some rag that I'm going to be executed and runs off to ask my parents if I'm going to be executed."

"Ouch."

"Dovek joked that that's why my father is ill. I'm impressed my brother didn't come up with that - or perhaps that's the blacked-out part." Blues seemed amused by the dark joke.

"How's your eldest?"

"Still trying to ignore everything. Not that I blame her. I wish I could do the same, but Count Two is coming up, as if that conspiracy nonsense wasn't bad enough."

"Count Two," Miroslav said carefully.

Blues sighed. "I can't get around it. The Games - I do bear some responsibility for that. Honestly, Doctor, if they find me guilty on Count Two, I won't be able to complain."

"You consider yourself guilty?"

Blues jerked as if stung. "By no means. But if they're going around assigning blame, then pinning the Games on me would have more logic than I'd like to admit."

"Only the Games themselves?"

"Of course," Blues said in a firm voice. "Did I have that supervisory role? Yes. I built the Arenas. From a certain point of view, that ties me to the Games. That's it."

And yet, this was something. Miroslav could see a handhold there, a way in. If only he could push and prod a little bit more-

"I'm glad you can recognize that," he said instead. "It means a lot to everyone that someone like you can recognize how wrong this was."

Lark was standing on tiptoe and opening the window when Miroslav walked in. "Ah, good afternoon, Doctor," he said, brushing off his hands and sitting down on the cot. "How are you doing this fine day?"

Opening the window hadn't made it any less stuffy. "Alright, I suppose." Miroslav sat down on the stool and took out his clipboard. "You?"

"I've been reading some books lately. Seems that I never did anything people in other countries don't do. So why am I here?"

Miroslav gestured in the direction of the papers on Lark's rickety table. "According to the prosecution-"

"Oh, spare me!" Lark flapped a dismissive hand and leaned back against the wall. "I know what the prosecution thinks, it's their job to make me out to be some sort of murderer. It's the political side of things that confuse me. I was only mentioned a handful of times during the presentations on Count One, and all had to do with what I said - doesn't that violate those free speech laws of yours?"

Miroslav shook his head. "Free speech doesn't mean you can say anything consequence-free. Encouraging violence-"

"It's not my fault if they took a few rhetorical tricks the wrong way," Lark grumbled, running his hands through his hair. Despite being the same age as Miroslav, he had a full head of grey hair. "I never said anything you don't hear in those talk-shows the guards blast."

Slice could say that and sound at least halfway believable, but not Lark. "Like what?"

"You know. The usual appeals to patriotism. Though your radio is remarkably...peaceful, for lack of a better word. I suppose covering up incidents of sabotage and the like is one option."

"Covering up?" The main complaint about today's media was that it talked too much of things people would have preferred to go under the radar.

Lark huffed. "I suppose not. I can't believe the newscasters can stay so calm when discussing strikes. Don't you understand how dangerous that is?"

Being a born-and-bred Thirteener, Miroslav didn't understand that sentiment. "Really?" he asked, feigning ignorance. "It always seemed to me that strikes are quite safe. The workers stand around, present complaints, management provides a counter-offer, an arbitration board decides, and everyone gets back to work. No sabotage, no shooting."

"No offense, Doctor, but that is a very naive viewpoint," Lark said before launching into a monologue about the evils of strikes. As usual when one-on-one, he was calm, collected, and his arguments had an internal logic.

Miroslav came to Thread's cell armed with a newspaper clipping. It had mostly gone without notice, as news like that appeared all the time, but Thread would not be able to ignore it so easily.

"Nonsense," the former general snapped after reading a few sentences. "Where do the journalists even get these ideas from?"

"You never made Peacekeepers build your cottage in Eleven?"

"I never made anyone do anything. Who else was I supposed to hire?"

The crux of the matter was that they had not been hired - they had been ordered to do work that was not listed in their contracts for no extra pay. "Perhaps you could have gone to a construction firm and hired some workers for a worthy wage?"

Thread shook his head. "Trust locals? They'd have sabotaged something."

"Tell me," Miroslav said. "When you were a child seeing your local village Peacekeeper, what did you think of them?"

"Oh, she was a regular petty tyrant."

"And you never thought the people in your territory might view you the way you viewed her?"

"Of course not. I didn't turn around and become the oppressor of people just like me."

To that, the people of Eleven would have disagreed. "What made them unlike you?"

Thread looked at the article for a final time and set it aside. "Please, Doctor. They were Eleven. I am Two."

"And what makes Eleven inferior?"

"Did I say inferior?" Thread said coldly. "I meant different. A tenant farmer or sharecropper wasn't inferior to my parents, and neither is Kitteridge inferior to Smith. They were different."

"And what of the people under your command?" Miroslav asked. "Building generals' cottages doesn't seem to have a connection to national defense, in my mind."

Thread chuckled. "Don't pay it too much attention, Doctor." He handed back the article. "I built my fair share of cottages at military college - instead of going for exercises during the summer, we'd go to construction sites. And the Academy, of course. I remember when I was twelve, my first winter there, and we spent weekends building the Head Peacekeeper's cottage. It was so cold!"

"I remember when I was in university," Ledge said, "there was a fad for trying to find your District relatives. It died fast, though." He shrugged. "It was considered impolite to mention."

Given how spread-out families had been, much like how it happened in the rest of the world, it was no wonder that they hadn't seen the point in trying to move closer to each other until it was too late and they couldn't even send letters to each other. "Did you find anyone?"

Ledge laughed. "Doctor, I'm flattered you can forget so easily that I'm fifty-eight. I was born in 18." It took Miroslav a few seconds to convert that to international style. "I asked my parents - do we have District relatives? And they explained that yes, I have an aunt who's the mayor of Three's capital city."

"Your parents were separated from their siblings?"

"Of course. We were hardly the only ones." He said that without any sadness. "That aunt is still living, you know. Living the life in retirement with her family - she's far too old for anyone to bother her about the cottages, apartments, and automobiles. None of them tried to contact me - not that I blame them, of course, I can't imagine voluntarily claiming kinship to me."

Miroslav had heard of and seen plenty of reuniting families, but none at this level. Ledge spoke the truth when he said that talking about it had been impolite. Even in cases of illegal communication, the fact that it had been relatives they had tried to reach had not been mentioned.

"That's fascinating," Miroslav said. "I don't know anything about my family." Dad had no idea who his parents were and Mom couldn't track her ancestry further than her own parents.

"It was better to not know. A friend of mine found out their uncle had died in one of the first Games, the third or fourth one, I think. That gave them dangerous ideas. Ended up arrested for I don't remember what now, five years behind bars, couldn't get anything beside a menial job. Last I checked, they were working in a bread factory." Ledge spread out his hands. "Though I'd give a lot to be in a bread factory and not here!"

"You never tried to help them?"

Ledge shook his head. "Of course I tried to help them. Gave character testimony - within reasonable bounds, of course. Leveraged my connections, tried to have it passed off as a harmless misstep. That's how they only got five years, and in a covered colony at that." A covered, or indoor, prison had been a sweatshop - better than outdoor heavy labour, but not by much. "Nobody's doing that for me," he added without any self-pity.

"Do you think you know why?"

"No," Ledge said. "This is a political trial same as any other. But there's nobody standing up for me. I pulled strings for people I was close to and they're too busy being depurated to care about me."

"Do you know when this heat will end?" Brack asked, fanning herself with a folder.

"When the summer ends, I presume." Miroslav was not a meteorologist.

"Is it me or is this summer particularly scorching?"

Miroslav shook his head. "I think that's just because we have no air conditioning."

"I guess." Brack switched hands and continued to fan herself energetically. Her shapeless clothes gave her the air of an aunt selling mushrooms by the roadside, except the aunts and uncles at the black markets usually fanned themselves with real fans (if they had one) or newspapers, not folders. "At least there's aircon in the courtroom. I'd have died if there wasn't."

Brack wasn't exaggerating - she had problems with her heart. In her cell, she could ask for cold water and ice packs, but that would not have been feasible in the courtroom. "It's nice in there, isn't it?"

Brack nodded. "I'm beginning to suspect it was a deliberate strategy - making the courtroom a pleasant environment in that regard to make us more willing to go there."

As far as Miroslav knew, the main concern had been the sheer physical possibility of spending full days in the room, but who knew - perhaps that was a nice bonus for the IDC. "It certainly does that for Dr. Mallow and I," he said. "Every time it's my turn, I find myself looking forward to the pleasant coolness."

"Oh, and here I am thinking you just want to record Dovek's terrible jokes," Brack quipped.

"How could I forget that?" Miroslav asked, playing along. "What the IDC really wants from me is the record of the jokes everyone makes. The worse, the better."

Brack wiped her forehead with a damp cloth. "I do not look forward to this next count, that's for sure."

"Why?"

"They don't understand," she said, desperation evident in her voice. "They act as if I said things because I believed in them. I didn't. It was just my job."

"What kind of a difference do you think that makes?" Miroslav asked, careful to pitch the question in a way that didn't make her think it was rhetorical. No, he was very much interested to know her opinion on the matter.

Brack looked at him oddly. "Of course it makes a difference. I'm not Lark. I simply did my job."

"I heard the guards are laying bets on how often my name will be mispronounced," Dijksterhuis said.

"Aren't a few of the others also keeping track?"

Dijksterhuis nodded. "Yes, but laying bets? Don't they have better things to waste their money on?"

"Well, what do you think motivates them?"

"Boredom?" Dijksterhuis offered. "I know I'm plenty bored, and I at least get to sit. Not to mention most of them are around twenty at most." She said that as if it was a diagnosis - which, given the sort of things Biljana got up to from time to time, was an understandable sentiment. "They're going to be coming up with the strangest ways to entertain themselves. My son has taken to climbing on shelled-out buildings - no idea how he hasn't broken his neck yet."

"Which one?" She had four children, two sons, one daughter, one non-binary.

"The sixteen-year-old - I'd have been very surprised had my thirty-five-year-old decided to climb piles of rubble."

Dijksterhuis' youngest child was from her second marriage - her first husband had died of brain cancer and she had remarried six years later. "Good point," Miroslav said. "Though I don't envy your husband. The rubble looks easy to climb, but it's dreadfully treacherous."

"Oh, I don't even want to talk about that. It drives me nuts that I'm stuck in here and can't as much as talk to my family." Dijksterhuis reached up as if to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, though her medium-length curls had long been buzzed to the point of appearing straight. "It's crazy," she said quietly, dropping her hand to the blanket.

"What is?" Miroslav wished he could unbutton his shirt, as the heat was killing him.

"Just...everything."

She certainly wasn't wrong there.

"This is all absolute nonsense," Pollman said, waving around a stack of documents he had been going through. "I was a minister just like whoever they've stuffed into the job now."

"There's no more Ministry of District Affairs," Miroslav reminded him. "Its duties were handed over to the Districts themselves."

Pollman shook his head sharply. "My mind's going. I knew that. Anyway, I was just a little grey bureaucratic rat going about my business and pushing papers from office to office. Why am I being accused of every little misdeed carried out by local authorities?"

The misdeeds had been carried out on his orders, and while Pollman had perhaps been a bureaucratic rat, he had been one of those giant city rats that allegedly grew to the size of cats. "Why do you think that is so?"

"Because of this conspiracy nonsense," Pollman said confidently. "All of a sudden, Snow's a gangster who inherited his turf from McCollum, and we're all the thugs. It's an easy image for the popular press to propagate, which is why they picked it."

Listening to their interpretations of what was going on was like looking into a distorted mirror. "You disagree with the accusations against you on Count One?"

Pollman looked at him wide-eyed. "Doctor, do I really need to tell you that? Of course the accusations are nonsense. I was hardly an all-powerful puppetmaster. I didn't want to sign those brutal decrees."

"Then why did you?"

"The circumstances," Pollman said vaguely, unwilling to condemn Snow. "The situation was bad, I had to look like I was being tough. It was just posturing, really." He glanced at the photograph of his husband and children and sighed. "It was just the sort of thing you said. I didn't realize anyone would take it seriously."

Decrees and propaganda - different in so much, but the exact same excuse.

Toplak was lying on her cot when Miroslav walked in, tapping the fingers of her right hand against the sticking-plaster on her left arm. "The shot went fine?" he asked as she sat up and pulled down her sleeve. Toplak received biannual long-acting injections of antipsychotics, considering them more convenient.

"Fine. Hurts a bit, but it's easier than taking pills every day."

"Have you ever gone off medications?"

Toplak nodded. "When I was twenty-five, the psychiatrist thought it was worth a try, but I had a psychotic episode within the month." She spread out her hands. "Since I don't suffer from any side effects, I might as well stay on them."

"How long ago were you diagnosed?" Dr. Mallow, being the psychiatrist, focused on Toplak's schizophrenia. "I think it's in your file that you have early-onset?"

"Yes. Cognitive symptoms appeared when I was ten - my parents said that it was like I had suddenly begun to regress intellectually. School and social interaction became difficult. Then, I started showing depression-like symptoms, so my parents decided I had depression and took me to see someone." She scratched her arm right next to the sticking-plaster. "Wait, did I tell you this before?"

"No - you're Dr. Mallow's domain," Miroslav said with a smile.

"Ah." She sat up, suddenly alert now. "It's quite a story. So here I am, getting cognitive behavioural therapy for what was assumed to be depression. It helps, I remain functional and do well in school, but I still experience symptoms. And then, at sixteen, I have what I know now was my first psychotic episode." She grinned, pointing upwards with both hands. "Bear with me. My family is quite religious, several of my relatives would regularly speak to God. So when I heard voices telling me all sorts of things, I assumed they were angels."

"Interesting," Miroslav said. The only person with schizophrenia he knew personally had experienced hallucinations of terrifying, threatening voices. "What did they tell you?"

"Mostly encouragement. They'd tell me to keep going if I was struggling to finish an assignment, things like that. Recited my favourite Bible verses. If I forgot to pray, they'd remind me."

"They were benign?"

"Yes. I lucked out there."

"How did you realize that this wasn't actually a supernatural entity?"

Toplak nodded to herself, lost in thought. "I started to speak to my hallucinations when I was at home. My father eventually realized something was wrong - speaking to God is one thing, having Him reply is an entirely different one. The psychiatrist at first was reluctant to diagnose me, because it wasn't causing me any issues, but then decided that it would be best to go on antipsychotics now in case the hallucinations later changed and became harmful. The voices disappeared after that. That made me lose faith in religion for a while - I wondered if my relatives were maybe also hallucinating. But I came around to it eventually." She nodded at the Bible on her table. "Even if the replies to my prayers aren't so literal."

"You know, you're allowed to talk to a pastor if you wish."

Toplak shook her head. "I'll pass. I'd feel awkward that I get to talk to someone nobody else does." She fiddled with the sleeve of her T-shirt. "You know, it really isn't fair that not everyone had access to antipsychotics."

"Not fair?" Miroslav said.

"Not fair at all," Toplak said firmly. "How can a schizophrenic function without medication and therapy? I understand I'm very lucky to have been in remission for decades with no side effects, but even a reduction in symptoms could mean the difference between institutionalization and independent life. I remember when I went off my meds, an angel told me to go proselytize, so I ran onto the street barefoot to tell everyone the Good News, but my speech was so disordered, I sounded like I was having a stroke. What would I have done had I not been able to get medical help? It's absurd. I'd throttle Lee if I could."

Now that was progress! This was the most coherent thing anyone had said in a long time, even if it was caused by something personal. Now if only he could get her to say that on the witness stand.

Kirji seemed to put some papers away when Miroslav walked in, but noticing who it was, she took the newspaper back out. "Anything interesting?" he asked, gesturing at it.

"Not really." She folded it carefully and put it back into the folder. "Anything interesting on your end, Doctor?"

"Nothing I'm allowed to share with you, unfortunately."

"Makes sense." Kirji noticed a pair of socks lying on the floor. "Oh no," she said, reaching over to pick it up. "I'm sorry. I just finished cleaning up after a search." She put the ball on the shelf. "I hate these searches so much! All they do is waste my time."

For her, yes, because she never tried to hide anything. The only contraband to be found on her was the newspaper in her folder, and she handed those back to the guards as soon as she was done.

"I know it's unpleasant for you, to come back every day to find your cell ransacked."

Kirji nodded sharply. "It's all their fault!" she exclaimed. "I won't name names, but there are a few of the others - if only they didn't hamster away anything they could get their grubby hands on, the rest of us wouldn't have had to put up with this nonsense!"

"So you don't blame the warden?"

"Of course not. His job is to keep this place secure. How else can he do it when some people keep on dragging things that can be used for suicide into their cells?"

So the fault for the constant, brutal searches lay with the prisoners. At least Kirji was consistent.

"Makes sense," Miroslav said, jotting that down. "Now, we've been talking for months, and still you and Toplak have never explained to me, in your own words, what exactly your jobs were."

Kirji frowned. "Haven't you read the interrogations?"

"I want to know what you think of yourselves in a non-judgemental environment."

"Well, then," Kirji said. "Don't bother with Toplak, she won't answer - fifty weeks of the year, she tried to stick her fingers into as many pies as she could. And the other two, she oversaw the Training Centre with everything that implied."

"And you?"

"Oh, this and that." Miroslav decided to ask the others about Kirji. He jotted down a reminder - so many things, and they got distracted so often. "PR, mostly. It was a little department."

"And that's it?" She had been more honest in the interrogations.

"Basically, yes. We managed Victors' public appearances and the like. Unlike some people, I stayed in my lane."

That was a blatant lie.

"What are you drawing?" Miroslav asked.

Lee looked up. A folder was propped up on his knees to provide a relatively stable surface. "One of the guards requested a portrait."

Lee was quite the portrait artist. "Trying to unwind after Count One?"

"Oh, very much so. I've told you this before, Doctor, and I'll say it again - I've never been insulted like this in my life." He set the portrait aside. On the sheet of standard printer paper, a man of about twenty-five was gazing heroically at the horizon, instead of the much more prosaic figure the guard usually cut.

"He looks much better than he actually does," Miroslav pointed out. "You do that with everyone. Why?"

Lee shrugged. "That's either how they think of themselves or how they want to be portrayed. I may have never gone professional, but I do know that an artist must respect a client's wishes."

"Do they tell you what to draw?"

"No, but I can tell." He paused. "Not to mention that drawing the guards looking heroic gives me a respite from what they actually are."

"You've told me before you draw as an escape," Miroslav prompted.

"Very much so. A prosecutor bored to death by this nonsense is transformed into someone doing something they care about. A guard whose avowed purpose in life is to hook up, get drunk, and earn money just to waste it becomes a heroic soldier. Makes it easier to be guarded by them."

This wasn't the first time Lee was deluding himself into prettying up his mental image of the situation. "Interesting," Miroslav said.

"I miss the kids," Coll said with a sigh. "The little ones are all asking for me." He took a photograph from his table and studied it. "The baby twins aren't going to remember me at all. They were infants when I was arrested."

Miroslav did not share with him that it could have been worse - he at least had gotten some time with them, but one of the Gamemakers was going to have his first child soon. His in-laws hadn't believed their daughter and had demanded a DNA test, which proved that the child was definitely Hryb's. Perfect timing from the young Gamemaker and his wife.

"They aren't going to remember you?"

Coll put down the photograph, in which his eldest child was cradling two babies, obviously fraternal twins - they had very different skin colours. "Do you know something I don't, Doctor?" he snapped, running a knuckle gently over the image of his children. "Because from my vantage point, it seems like a noose has already been woven."

Count One had been horrifically damaging to Coll, he wasn't wrong there. "You told me before about responsibility," Miroslav said gently.

"That's not going to get them to show mercy," Coll said, putting the photograph back. He was, most likely, lying. Miroslav suspected that his admission would be a plea for mercy. "Seems rather unfair. I was just a puppet."

"A puppet that accepted a promotion."

Coll gnashed his teeth. "The sort of milieu I was raised in, turning down a promotion was unthinkable. Now I think - I should have pled my youth and stayed in my position. It's not like there was a shortage of people who'd have killed for the job." He wrapped his arms around his knees. "Or had killed. I heard rumours."

"What kind of rumours?"

"Oh, the usual. Denouncing them to the NCIA, things like that. I remember I was a child and my mother got her promotion because her predecessor was arrested for corruption - no idea if he forgot to share or was a victim of intrigue. Died of a heart attack a month later despite never having had any heart problems." Coll chuckled bitterly. "So either they tortured him until a healthy person's heart failed or they killed him and claimed it was a natural death. I don't know which option is worse."

"How old were you then?"

"Oh, I was just ten. I found out about the details much later. Only found out here it was custom to claim all deaths in the prison system were natural."

"Only here?"

"Yes," Coll lied.

Grass was writing a letter when Miroslav walked in. "Good day," she said, standing up and relocating to the cot. She didn't flip the letter over, which let Miroslav see its contents.

"Legal issues? Aren't you worried they'll censor it?"

"Maybe they will. Maybe they won't." Grass sat down more comfortably, fanning herself with a sheaf of documents. "This weather is nothing short of horrifying. Is it me or is this summer particularly hot?"

"Not as far as I know."

Grass nodded. "Perhaps I'm too used to air conditioning." Miroslav understood her there. "Honestly, I don't understand that Sanchez. Jamieson complains about something being wrong and what does he do? Let him talk! As if this is the trial of some petty thief!"

Then as now, petty thieves usually never went to trial, because they took plea deals. "You think that's bad?"

"Of course not, I'm glad our lawyers are able to call the trial what it is, but I don't understand what the judges are playing at. They're letting the defense discredit the trial completely. Jamieson called the tribunal invalid and they recessed to vote on what to say to him!" She switched the papers to her other hand. "I don't understand what to do. If it was a straightforward political trial, I'd know the steps." Grass sighed. "I'm worried this is giving me false hope."

"False hope?"

"Make us think we have a chance and then hang us all regardless." She furrowed her eyebrows. "Though the lawyers have done a good job of discrediting the trial. I don't see what they want out of the proceedings. It's not like what they did with Snow. I just don't understand this."

"The prosecution never mentions me," Slice said with a hint of satisfaction. "Granted, both Lark and I didn't do much, but I'm the least-mentioned by far."

That, despite her role in censoring the District television feed. "I presume that's a good thing?"

Slice tried to twirl her short hair around a finger. "Of course. If they can't tie me to the conspiracy, they'll have to let me go."

"There's also Count Four," Miroslav reminded her. Was the window really open? It felt like he was in an oven. Slice was around his age, but she seemed fine, even as Miroslav felt himself sweating through his clothes.

"So being a talk-show host is now a crime against humanity?" As always, Slice avoided talking about her responsibilities as deputy minister. "Nonsense. Utter nonsense. All of these accusations against me - they wanted Kren but they only caught me. So now they're trying to make me out to have been his shadow, or something."

Miroslav had to concede that the case against her was the weakest - unlike the other deputies, she had been one of many and responsible for a very narrow field instead of being an actual stand-in for the boss. "Do you think the tribunal will notice that?"

Slice shrugged. "I don't know. I hope they do. They seem to be remarkably fair so far - let's hope it's not just seeming."

A/N: At 1.97m, Rachel Lowman would be five standard deviations above the mean in modern-day USA, where the average woman is 1.62m. Since people in Panem tend to be much shorter due to poor nutrition and a better comparison would be the Phillipines, where the average woman is 1.50m, Rachel is 6.6 standard deviations above the mean nationwide (Talvian would have looked perfectly ordinary in a small rural town, but alas she wanted to associate only with fellow rich people). Rachel's 'little' brother Norman will be roughly her height when he finishes growing and end up 4.7 standard deviations above the mean. Needless to say, the Lowmans are extreme outliers and what they get for their ration cards isn't even close to enough. This subplot is brought to you by my realization that I need to spend far less money on food than my friends because I'm so much smaller than them.

Soldiers building generals' cottages is a running joke in Russia.

In honour of the facts that we're a) on chapter 40, which is a nice round number and b) next week we'll start getting into the really intense stuff (hint: the next chapter is titled 'It Sank', anyone who figures out the reference will get a shoutout), I'll answer any questions you ask me, whether they be about headcanons, my writing process, or crochet patterns.