Since Rye didn't need to pay attention to Bright's direct examination, she could focus on the live feed of her home town's city council debating budget allocations. They were discussing snow clearance! In October! Under Mayor Anatolius Elbow, the city council had only remembered that snow did indeed fall in winter when the first snows came and paralyzed the city for days.

Elbow was currently behind bars and would remain there for forty years - a life sentence by default for the fifty-eight-year-old former mayor. His old seat was being filled by Serge Vivo, who had managed to be elected to city council in the last elections four years back by some miracle and had made himself known for actually talking to his constituents and solving their problems, such as broken streetlights, a lack of daycares, and potholes.

Rye's ward was represented by Erica Gonzalez, a former underground labour leader at a bread factory. It was very strange to have local politics mean something all of a sudden. After the snow was dealt with, they moved on to the route taxi mafias. From the way the conversation was going, Rye could tell this was something they had often discussed. Rye had never thought it odd that you paid for route taxis with cash into the driver's hands, but now that she thought about it, the buses hadn't worked that way. The paralyzing snows, the annual summer dustpocalypses, every little rain causing a flood, the stench from the giant pig farm on the outskirts dumping waste in the open - so many problems Rye had considered just a fact of life, and now they were being solved.

Rakesh tapped her on the arm. "You paying attention?"

In the meanwhile, Bright was practically shouting answers to Rankin. Rye had thought the witnesses, former Peacekeepers Bright had served with at various levels, were bad enough, but it seemed that the higher-ranking the Peacekeeper, the louder the volume.

"Do I need to?" Bright had never stepped foot in Nine.

"I suppose not," Rakesh conceded.

Rye still felt a little bit bad. She tried to focus on the testimony, which had one argument repeated over and over - Bright was just a soldier under orders who had been taught her entire life to obey and only obey. The judges, however, would recall the documents proving how widespread desertion and defection had been, and judge her testimony accordingly.

Bright's career had been nothing out of the ordinary - enlisted as an adolescent, Academy, military college, deployment, and then a slow and steady climb up the greased pole followed by a second deployment. As a young officer, she had led a task force in Seven, which was why she was here instead of in Eight, where she had served for most of her career. It would be interesting to see what she said about that when pressed by the prosecution.

Bright had expressed sincere contrition in her cell, but Miroslav waited and waited for her to show some of that in the courtroom, and nothing. He had some hopes for the cross-examination, but that depended on how well Hall handled her.

The prosecutor from Eight was still very unwell - he complained of frequent hallucinations, nightmares, bedwetting, and panic attacks. He wasn't letting that stop him from doing his job, even if the way he flicked his eyes to the side, checking that something Miroslav couldn't see was still there, was slightly unsettling. Most likely, he was seeing the children again.

Hall did a good job of pointing out that she had often been the one giving illegal orders of her own volition. His voice rose as he got her to admit she had requested child soldiers, and Miroslav worried that his sideways glances were so obvious, Rankin would notice and object that the prosecutor was too unwell to carry out the cross-examination. But he did not. Rankin, who had served a stint in the Peacekeepers before going back to school on government money and becoming a lawyer, sat like a statue, scribbling down the occasional note as Hall shoved document after document in Bright's face.

Lux was the most worried by the cross-examination. He scribbled something down furiously and leaned over to whisper to Dovek. Best and Verdant were deep in conversation, and Thread was writing. The others considered Bright's clumsy defense to be irrelevant to them.

Hall managed to extract from Bright the statement that orders were orders, even when they went against your conscience. Miroslav could only shake his head. Hall asked her to give three examples of times she went against her conscience. Before Rankin could open his mouth to object, Bright obediently rattled off a list.

"The use of child soldiers, for one," she said, looking sincerely pained. Her voice was still loud enough for her microphone to be off. "We were told they were just reinforcements, but sending children of twelve and fourteen into combat? I should have reconsidered my decision the first time I laid eyes on those little soldiers." Bright was not cunning enough for that to be a poke at Thirteen. "Hostage-taking was the other. It makes no sense to punish the innocent for someone else's crimes, and it just inspired more rebellion. And the last was giving carte-blanche to the task forces. Now that I know what they really did-" Bright lied as expected, continuing her usual line that her own task force had simply executed the odd bandit.

Throughout all that, Rankin had been trying to signal to Bright that she should stop talking. He sagged down now, looking very irritated.

"Now that you know what they really did?"

"I should not have let them run roughshod."

"Why did you?"

Bright looked him in the eyes. "Because we were ordered to not impede their operations."

Lux looked ready to explode - this would all be laid at his door next.

"What was your reaction to being given the order shown in Document 08-481?" It was an order to annihilate a village.

"I disapproved," Bright said in a steely voice. "This was not pacification; it was pouring fuel onto the fire."

"How did you express your disapproval?" Hall asked. Lux was steaming now, though it was unlikely Bright would call him out by name all of a sudden.

"How could I have? It was a direct order." She still sat stick-straight, but there was a tension to her.

"But why did you obey?"

Bright looked confused. "I do not understand. All my life, I was raised to believe in duty and loyalty. In such circumstances, the idea of disobedience to direct authority was tantamount to treason."

"Even if ordered to shoot children?" This was the most direct Hall had gotten, and Miroslav could hear the emotion in his voice.

"The order was given by superior authority. The question of personal scruples was irrelevant, as we had sworn obedience to the people who had issued those orders." The answer was given in a rehearsed and vacant tone.

The prosecutor held up a small book. "Is there not a paragraph in the Peacekeeper's handbook that directly says that only lawful orders must be obeyed?"

Bright nodded, suddenly looking much younger than her fifty-four years. "But what is the law?" she asked in a high voice. "When we were instructed, we barely went over that passage."

Hall leaned in slightly. "Is there or is there not such a paragraph?"

"There is." Bright glanced at the dock, looking for reassurance from Lux.

The cross-examination abruptly shifted to how deserters had been punished under her command. Soon, Bright was on the defensive again, trying to deal with the fact that full generals had defected for moral reasons. Hall reminded the tribunal of the testimony of one of them. Bright tried to snap something about traitors, but Miroslav could see how exhausted, both physically and emotionally, she was.

During the break, all of the defendants, including Bright, left the courtroom. Miroslav decided to try chatting with Wreath and Teck, the only Peacekeeper uniforms in the courtroom.

"What did you think of that?" he began with an open question.

Teck looked away from her keyboard. Next to each other, they looked almost comical - Wreath looked like he had stepped out of a propaganda poster, and Teck looked like she had stepped out of a caricature. "Dr. Nurbeko's going to laugh their head off when they hear - and go annoy Jason Nelte again."

"Those historians," Wreath said with a slight shake of his head. He, being also aptly-named, also had to put up with Dr. Nurbeko's jokes. And Nelte at least was safely hidden away at the Peacekeepers' trial, but even Miroslav had to agree that Wreath's name, role, and background were an amusing coincidence. "Of course I'm going to approach a similar case similarly - that is only common sense."

Teck glanced at the clock. "I'm going to go stretch my legs - feels like I've been sitting here for an eternity. You coming?"

"Of course."

As the two walked away, Miroslav decided to go for a bathroom break. He was careful to use the side door out of the courtroom to avoid laying eyes on the coffee shop. He had no money, but many a cashier was willing to slip trial staff a donut hole or two. Kind, but misguided.

Thinking about food ruined Miroslav's mood, and he was fuming as he sat back down and watched the defendants trickle back in. Bright stood by the dock and talked quietly to Lux.

"That was bad," Lux said point-blank. "You need to stop caving."

"What should I do, then? Lie?"

Lux looked at her disdainfully. "You can't even do that. They'd find you out in an instant."

The crueler Lux got, the more desperate Bright and Thread were for his approval. "What do I do?" Bright whispered.

"Try not to disgrace yourself." Lux opened up his folder and perused something, making it clear that he did not want to talk to her anymore.

Hall looked a little bit calmer now, thanks to the break. He took Bright through order after order, highlighting that she had acted independently, but with a wiliness Miroslav had not expected, she managed to make it all about superior orders. Even if Hall got her to admit there were limits to obedience, she was successfully managing to sidestep the fact that she had committed many atrocities of her own initiative.

Miroslav could tell that her front was crumbling. Bright wasn't sitting as upright anymore, though that could have been simple exhaustion, and she was admitting to far more than before.

"According to this document, you protested an order from higher authority because you believed it to be in error," Hall said minutes before the session was due to end.

"Yes."

"You did not carry it out."

"Yes."

"Because it was to your troops' detriment."

"Yes."

"Why did you protest?"

Bright looked straight at him. "Because I was familiar with the situation on the ground and knew that the order was not reflective of reality. To oversimplify, we had to attack point A from point B when point B wasn't in our hands anymore."

"Do you believe that disobedience was the right thing to do in this situation?"

"Yes," Bright admitted.

"So there are situations in which the correct military doctrine is to make one's own decisions."

"Yes," Bright said solemnly, "there is such a thing as taking obedience too far. That is my guilt, that I was not able to tell the two apart. Our loyalty was abused and betrayed. We were taught to become the executioners of our own people. I am ashamed to admit that every single positive quality I ever strove to uphold in myself was twisted into something I can only recoil in horror at."

So she had said those two words - 'my guilt'. Miroslav nodded to himself. This didn't answer the question of why she had done those things in the first place, but it was something.

Hall turned to the judges. "Your Honours, I believe this would be a good time to pause."

"The court is adjourned until 8:00 tomorrow," Sanchez said.

Bright's forehead furrowed as she realized she may have said too much. She looked at the clock, then down at her papers. Slowly, she climbed to her feet and walked towards the far end of the dock. Miroslav followed her.

"You ended on a high note," Blues said with a calculating air about her. "For saying what you did - you have my respect."

Lux, meanwhile, looked ready to implode. Small wonder, that - he was next, and Bright's admission, half-hearted that it was, would not do him any favours. The united front was smashed to pieces now, and it was everyone for themselves - and some had better defenses than others.

"I screwed that one up," Trevor Hall muttered, pouring honey into his tea. "In my eagerness to wring a confession from her, I let her make it all about superior orders."

"There is still tomorrow," Mary reminded him. The two of them were meeting in her office to debrief. "Why did you let it end on that?"

"Not enough time to get into my next topic." Trevor smiled. "And it's a nice bonus that we ended on a partial admission."

"You're playing to the audience?" Mary asked disapprovingly and stirred her own tea. She was getting used to having food and drink constantly available. "I hardly think the effect would be so ruined for the judges - it'll be months until they're making the decisions."

Trevor's eyes flicked to the side and he smiled slightly. "Judges are people, too. Best be as effective as I can."

"What are your plans for tomorrow?"

"Deal with the fact that she was often the one giving orders, not receiving them. I want to make her mention Lux by name and denounce Snow."

"I don't think you'll get Lux." That was a disadvantage of a group trial - the defendants were all influencing each other.

Trevor ignored her, looking to the side and focusing on something only he could see.

"Trevor?" Nothing. "Trevor, can you hear me?"

"I killed you," he whispered. "I-" He grabbed a fistful of his hair and tugged on it, wincing with pain.

"Trevor, it's not real."

Abruptly, Trevor looked her in the eyes. "If it's not real, why does it seem so real? This is so unfair. Why can't Bright suffer like this, instead of me?"

"I don't think all of her victims would fit into her cell," Mary joked.

Trevor smiled and picked up a newspaper to fan himself. The front page had an article about how the three-fingered salute was being used by protest movements worldwide and another one about how electrification in Four was proceeding. The rest, Mary hadn't been able to catch. "Not even the courtroom. But I suppose that's why we're here." He took a deep breath. "I am not standing alone," Trevor recited, "with me are millions of accusers. But they cannot stand up and say 'I accuse'. They're dead." He glanced to the side.

Gideon Hausner probably turned over in his grave at this mangling of his words. "Indeed. That's why we're here."

Trevor drank his tea in one gulp and poured himself another cup from the teapot, drinking that one down with equal rapidity. "I think I need to go," he said, grabbing his things and getting up from his chair. "This is too-"

"Of course."

As Trevor swept out of the office, he nearly knocked over Joe. "Is everything alright?" her secretary asked, watching Trevor go.

"Not for him."

"Ah." He sat down in the vacated seat. "I looked at your draft."

Mary had already begun drafting her closing statement, as such things took time. It needed to be at least as good as the opening one. "And?"

"Statements such as 'they enabled atrocities with their silence' will not endear you to the average person."

"I make it clear I am directing it at the defendants." Mary wanted to make it clear that even when they hadn't been doing anything illegal, they had still been supporting the regime with their tacit compliance.

Joe shook his head. "How do you think it will be received by the average person? You can't steal lines from democratic countries and apply them to dictatorships. In the context of a dictatorship, it is frankly insulting to blur the differences between a terrified silence and a silence of acceptance."

"When did you become such a sociologist?" Mary said half-jokingly, flipping through the draft. It had red ink on every other sentence. He was right - she had first learned about slogans like 'silence is compliance' in debates in Thirteen over whether they should take action.

"It was either flight from reality or educate myself, and being your secretary, the former was not an option," Joe said seriously. "This isn't a street protest, where you need simple slogans that cut to the heart of the matter and make it crystal-clear what you want. You have plenty of room. It's a good idea to point out that by simply doing their jobs, they were enabling and directly perpetrating horrors. But I think there are better ways to explain that. Especially when they committed countless crimes, and you can simply talk about that."

"Alright," Mary said. "Any other glaring issues?"

"More than I can count. First off, cut out this entire bit, it's completely extraneous. This segment - the paragraphs are in no clear order, I have no idea what you're trying to get at. Here, you messed up the quote, it is nowhere near as decisive as you make it sound..."

The world was mostly paying attention to the key criminals, but plenty of other things were going on in the Lodgepole Justice Building. At the Peacekeepers' trial, Ivana Delaire was causing a minor furore with her dogged insistence on her being a victim of mistaken identity. Stephen was coming around to thinking she could very well be correct. There were no specific documents tying her to the atrocities being alleged and even her lawyer, who was highly incompetent, managed to discredit the witnesses called against her.

At the Death Squad trial, documents were being read into evidence about a particularly horrifying operation in the course of which poison had been injected into someone's toothpaste. The person only died months later, when they got to that part of the toothpaste.

Stealth and sneaking was not limited to the Death Squad, unfortunately. Stephen was being forced to deal with increasingly creative attempts by journalists to sneak into the building. So far, nobody had stepped foot into the restricted areas of the Justice Building, and Stephen intended to keep it that way. But even he had to take breaks sometimes, which was why he was sitting on the floor in Angelo's apartment and petting Feather, who had lost half a kilo by now.

"What a blob," he remarked.

"He is, isn't he?" Angelo sat down behind Stephen, rubbing his shoulders. "I was thinking maybe we could also get a cat when the situation improves."

Was he-

"I always wanted a rat," Stephen said dumbly. "What do you mean, when the situation improves?"

Angelo leaned on Stephen's shoulders. "I wanted to suggest we move in together, given that you're over every free second you get, but you're still stuck there."

Belatedly, Stephen remembered things were different here. "In Thirteen, people only moved in together when they got married."

Angelo shuffled over so that they could look at each other. "Oh, sorry, I didn't realize," he said, turning red. "I didn't- I don't want to push you. If you're not- I mean, who knows how long until they let you out of the building?" He giggled awkwardly.

"No problem," Stephen said, reaching up to lightly tug on Angelo's braid. His own face felt like it was burning. Why did he leave his speaking ability at work? "I, er, am happy with how things are now."

Feather meowed angrily, upset that Stephen had stopped petting him.

"Fine, fine," Stephen said, scratching behind his ears.

Angelo scooted back to embrace Stephen from behind. That was their favourite cuddling position, with Angelo being Stephen's backpack. Sometimes, Feather joined the cuddle-pile, though that could be risky, as nineteen and a half kilograms of cat stepping on someone's genitals tended to kill the mood.

Feather stood up, took two steps towards his food bowl, reconsidered, and lay back down.

"Now if only my charges were so neutral about food," Stephen said, moving over so that he could reach all of the blob-shaped cat. "Though even the elderly politicians aren't as demanding as you when you ask for ear scritches."

Angelo looped his braid around Stephen's neck. "I can think of someone else who can get very demanding," he whispered in a seductive voice.

That was not fair. "Who - you?"

Angelo practically cut off Stephen's air supply. Stephen tapped him on the arm, and he let go slightly. "Did I squeeze too hard?"

"A little."

"Sorry." Angelo tossed back his braid and used his hands to massage Stephen's neck. "Better?"

Stephen was about to answer affirmatively, but then he saw Feather looking disdainfully at him as if to say 'what are the silly humans up to?' "Let's relocate so that the cat stops judging me."

In the bedroom Angelo shared with several other people, he used a key to unlock his cupboard and pulled out a complicated leather harness. "Look what I found on the black market!"

Stephen couldn't bring himself to chide his boyfriend for using the black market, even though leather was supposed to be strictly rationed. "What do you do with it?"

Angelo shot him a lecherous grin. "Let's put it on you, and we'll find out."

"She was just a soldier," a twenty-year-old veteran with no arms insisted. "I still think it's crazy they've trying generals."

Leon and his friends just looked at each other. Sebastian rolled his eyes, though discreetly - the veteran may have been younger than them, but he was still a veteran.

"Yeah, but not a soldier like us," another veteran said, this one a woman with no visible scars aside from a few on her face. "Are people really falling for that soldier-following-orders bullshit? She was the one ordering us around."

Leon nodded appreciatively. It was always a pleasant surprise when someone picked up on that.

"She was still in the chain of command," the man insisted. "Generals aren't there to think. It's the government that decides where to send them."

"Lord save us from any more generals who don't think," Inge whispered. Leon giggled.

"How's a government supposed to know where to send the armed forces?" the woman shot back as the man sipped iced tea through a straw. They were sitting on the outdoor porch of a black-market cafe that would have had been closed down by MPs months ago if not for the proprietor's willingness to share. It was early October, so everyone wanted to enjoy the last few days of summer.

A person sitting at another table leaned over. A man of around sixty who had done a tour back in the day, going by his decorations. "Don't presume to judge our leaders like that!" he said, wagging an artificial finger. "Our duty is to obey, not ask questions. It's the same for our generals on trial, and the other Peacekeepers, too."

Oh, great, the Peacekeepers' trial had been brought up in front of veterans. This was going to be fun.

"Obey?" the woman asked angrily. "I obeyed every order, and all I got was a medal and PTSD! Tell me, Uncle, do you shoot them again and again in your sleep?"

Going from the older man's face, he did. "Injury can happen to anyone," he said unconvincingly. "We knew what we were getting into when we volunteered."

"That's the thing, we didn't! Did anyone tell you that soldiering meant shooting babies?"

"Oh, stop exaggerating," a civilian nearby said.

Now that got every veteran in hearing radius up in arms. Whatever they thought about the criminal orders they had carried out, they had done so, and knew very well that thousands of babies had been shot, stabbed, buried alive, dashed against walls, and thrown into fires. As Leon and his friends looked on, a massive argument began and soon escalated into a fight. Leon felt a stab of terror before he remembered that the worst that would happen to them was community service, or a fine, if they could pay it.

The MPs may have been the universe's most corrupt organization, but they had a very low tolerance for public unrest (except when they were the cause). A squad appeared on the scene less than a minute later, breaking up the fight.

"What happened here?" an officer demanded.

Every cell in Leon's brain wanted to keep his mouth shut, but Nilofar was made of sterner stuff. "Fight over politics," she said.

"Huh." She looked around the courtyard. Two pensioners in tattered finery were sipping tea and carefully not paying attention to anything. One participant in the fight had a bloodied head; she tried to use her shirt to staunch the bleeding. Most of the fighters were sitting or standing or lying frozen where they had been. "Alright, everyone who was in the fight and doesn't have anything left to eat or drink - clear out."

They obeyed, and soon, the only people in the courtyard were sitting at tables. The two young veterans were still next to Leon and his friends, but the older one had left - he had broken his cane over someone's thigh.

"What bullshit," the man complained as the woman fixed his straw and pushed the glass towards him. "Thanks. But really, do they have no respect at all? Can't they see I have no arms?"

"You're the one who attacked first." Now that the fight was over, the woman was shaking badly. She tried to pick up her glass and dropped it. "Shit."

"You can have some of mine," the man offered.

"Did I tell you I won tickets for a trial?" Leon asked his friends. He had found out just that morning.

"I think you mentioned it at lunch," Inge said. "The Death Squad trial?"

"Yeah." And a good thing, too - he didn't think he'd have enjoyed going to one of the trials of the Games functionaries, or the judges' trial. Even the Death Squad trial was bound to be quite boring, but at least it would be possible to follow what the prosecution was saying. "I was just thinking - my family's opposed to the trials. So why don't you come with me?"

"Wow, thanks," Nilofar said. "When is it?"

"Tuesday morning."

"I thought only your brother was opposed to them," Sebastian said.

Leon shook his head. "If I press them, they say they're fine with the IDC trials, but they keep on muttering about how bygones should stay bygones. I just don't get why. My brother was the most political one of us, and he got to stay on as a teacher. It's not like we have anything to hide."

"Are they just anti-District?"

"I think so, yeah. They never used to be before."

Inge nodded contemplatively. "It's because the country's becoming a fairer place. To a prejudiced person, having the people they don't like brought up to their level feels like them being brought down to theirs."

Then why wasn't Leon like them? Before, he had never thought that his political opinions could differ from those of his family. They told the same jokes and complained about the same things in the kitchen. Was working with those documents with District coworkers really insulating him somehow from being prejudiced?

"Huh," Nilofar said. "I guess that makes sense."

Leon hated it when District people talked about these sorts of things. It always made him feel like he had done something wrong and needed to somehow atone for it. "Yeah," he said - he didn't want to come across like Marcellus did. "It's all about that hierarchy. They're fine with District people who know their place, as they say."

"Could be worse," Inge said. "My parents are literal Games apologists. You should have seen how they reacted when I got arrested."

Nilofar rolled her eyes and drank her tea. "Same here. Always feels weird when your own relatives basically imply they would have been fine with you dying a horrible death on semi-live television. Though I suppose it's the sort of thing everyone was fine with as long as someone else went in."

She had been born in the same year as Leon, though in a different calendar year - out of laziness, cutoffs for school had been established as June 15, which was usually close to the second Saturday of the month or Reaping day, in the Capitol as well as in the Districts. It was seldom that the Reaping actually fell on that date, though, which led to the obvious question Leon really wanted to ask but felt awkward doing. "Er, I have a question about that," he said. "Well, not really that."

"Go right ahead," Nilofar said encouragingly.

"What happened if your birthday fell between the cutoff and Reaping day?"

Nilofar chuckled. "Everyone whose birthdays were in mid-June knew the calendar years in advance. I had one kid in my class who was eligible as a fourteen-year-old twice in a row. He ended up getting to stay home when eighteen, because the system only printed your name for seven years."

"Lucky they didn't put him in there for an extra year," Sebastian remarked. He looked ill at ease with the conversation. "Though I guess it didn't matter for you."

"Very true." Nilofar leaned back in her seat and sighed. "Feels like an eternity ago that we went to light candles for the strangers who were to die. Though I remember when I was ten, a schoolmate's cousin volunteered."

"Ouch," Inge said. Leon couldn't imagine it.

"I mean, she hadn't been in the town for six years, so I didn't realize who it was until my schoolmate told me."

"Oh, wow," Sebastian said. "What was her name?"

"Anna Castillo."

Leon vaguely remembered the name. Castillo had been a tall dark-skinned girl who died when the Gamemakers randomly unleashed predatory lizards onto the Careers and their supplies.

"I don't remember her," Inge said. "But then again, I was once threatened with expulsion for skipping the assembly on opening day," she added in a defensive tone.

"Oh, really?" Nilofar asked curiously.

"Yeah. They took attendance very carefully. They'd even note down who went ostensibly to the bathroom - that was a popular way to sneak out - and who showed emotion. Thing was, I was on the tech team. On the auditorium balcony - it was a big auditorium - there was a little booth for us which had its own door out of which we could sneak out. And the best thing was, nobody was in the corridor because they also had to watch the Games, so once you got out safe, you were safe."

"I often pretended to be sick on the opening day," Leon reminisced. "But then again, my parents were both mute opponents. They practically told us to stay home."

Nilofar stirred her tea with her spoon. "I wonder if there's a correlation between disliking the Games and supporting the trials."

Leon laughed out loud. "I don't see Games fans supporting the trials, but my brother was always the angrier one of us, and he's opposed to the trials. I'm starting to think that he's the principled one, it's just that his principles are weird. I'm just compliant."

Sebastian and Inge laughed, but Nilofar shook her head. "You just said you stayed home during the Games."

"Yeah, because my parents were mute opponents." He angrily gnawed on the rim of his glass as he took a sip of tea. "What an oxymoron. Mute opponents. If you're mute, you're not an opponent. As if my silence ever helped you."

Nilofar rested her chin on her hand. "It's certainly reassuring to know it wasn't like what the television said."

Leon still felt guilty. Not for something he had done, but for something he had not done.

"I can't believe you're willing to wake up for morning shift right after a date," Tiller said, not looking up from her paperwork. "How many hours of sleep did you get?"

"Eight."

Tiller gaped at him. "How?"

"I planned my date so that I would get enough sleep," Stephen explained.

"I always lose track of time," Tiller admitted.

Stephen signed an order form and put it in his outbox. "You're always on time for your shifts." Unlike many of the guards.

"At the cost of not getting enough sleep." She flipped through some documents. "Wish we had more staff."

"So do I." There was a very high turnover among the guards. "Hey, do you want to see a photograph of Angelo?"

Tiller looked up as if catching a whiff of an opportunity to make a lot of money. "Yes," she said, jumping to her feet and stepping over to his desk.

Stephen took his wallet out of his pocket and opened it, revealing the photograph of Angelo in a clear pocket. "What do you think?"

"He's normal-looking, I guess. Bit skinny."

"Everyone's skinny right now."

Tiller shook her head, handing back the wallet. "I think he was always waifish."

"Actually, he used to be overweight," Stephen put the wallet back in his pocket. "Once we're living together and rationing ends, hopefully he won't go back to living off sweet buns."

"Once-" Tiller stared at him wide-eyed. "You want to marry him?" she whispered, as if someone was standing at the door.

Stephen realized his slip. "Well, it's too early for that, but I suppose," he admitted. "How's your TA?"

"Great. Thinks he might complete his PhD within the decade." She sat back down at her table with a sigh.

That sounded just about right for a historian, going off Stephen's limited knowledge. "What's he writing about?"

"International law during the early twenty-second century, especially the laws of the high seas."

Stephen couldn't name a single thing that had happened during the early twenty-second century. "That sounds useful," he said. "They're going to be dealing with that sort of stuff when our admirals take the stand."

"Yeah." Tiller tapped her pencil against the table. "Can't wait to see Linus again. I need some cuddles in my life."

"That's always good." Sex with Angelo was amazing, but just lying in his arms felt just as great. "We took a nap together yesterday. The cat joined in."

"A nap?" Tiller said in a teasing voice. "Did you wear out your poor rubble-man so much?"

"Oh, no, he's the one wearing me out. Keeps on coming up with these crazy suggestions - I swear I still have marks from that thing he tied me up with."

"Nice," Tiller said. "It's good you realize that even you need a break."

Stephen wanted to protest, but he couldn't deny that he was feeling much fresher this morning than he usually did. "It's interesting how Angelo driving me to total exhaustion last night makes me feel so much more alert in the morning."

"I feel the same way." Tiller looked at him in a calculating way. "You know, the way you carry yourself, nobody would ever guess you're into the whips-and-chains stuff."

"There were none of those there," Stephen said. "Only a weird harness."

"Nice," Tiller said again. "Maybe you and your rubble-man should kiss in a courtroom. We wouldn't have to hang the defendants - they'd all die of shock."

Stephen didn't want to think about hangings. "Maybe we should get going," he said, nodding at the clock.

"Already? There's still a few minutes."

"We should check on the guards."

"The poor guards." Tiller stood up and placed her water bottle on top of the complaints she was going through. Stephen did likewise, as the window was open, allowing in a fresh breeze.

Tiller went to check on the key criminals, Stephen - to the lesser criminals. The NCO on duty tried to hide the phone she was playing on, to no avail.

"Hand that over," Stephen said.

"Hand what over?"

Stephen pointed at her side. "Inner pocket. Smartphone." Reluctantly, she complied. Stephen turned it on. "Unlock it for me."

"It's zero-zero-zero."

Stephen clicked on the 'Photographs' icon. Indeed, there were images of the jail and the prisoners there. Stephen deleted them. He could keep outsiders out of the prison, but there was nothing to be done about the guards.

It wasn't even the photographs he was worried about, but poison. Stephen regularly lectured his guards on why they did not want to help their charges escape their just punishment, but they generally did a poor job of listening to him.

"How much did this phone cost you?" Stephen asked.

"A truck of canned peaches."

"For how many months could your parents have paid rent with that money?"

The NCO gaped at him. "Lieutenant, how do you know they have problems?"

Stephen did not answer that. "You talk to them every day. They tell you about how much they're struggling to pay rent - they don't want to live with ten other people in a communal apartment. And you turn around and waste your money on nonsense."

"I was going to sell the photos."

Stephen put the phone in his pocket. "And now you aren't. What will you tell your parents today?" He looked at his watch. Six-twenty-nine. He walked away, letting the NCO stew in her thoughts, took out his whistle, and watched as the seconds ticked by. As soon as it was six-thirty, he blew the whistle.

There was the sound of motion in the cells as everyone woke up and began to get ready.

"Hey - guard! I need you!" one of the Peacekeepers said.

Stephen decided to see what was going on to save on time. He motioned the nearby guard to unlock the door.

Seeing him, Kismet stood to attention.

"What is it?" Stephen asked.

"Got blood on my jumpsuit again. I have nothing to wear."

"Get her a new one," Stephen told the guard, who commed the person in charge of the civilian workers. It was always good when a problem was solvable.

In the meanwhile, Shentop's young helper came into the wing with her bag. The youth was no doctor, but in Stephen's opinion, they were perfectly capable of giving the defendants their glasses and medications from labelled containers. Like quite a few other civilian workers, they did not have a home to go to and preferred to stay in the jail for the comfortable lodgings and not having to clear rubble for food.

Just minutes later, someone passed on a clean jumpsuit for Kismet. And shortly after that, it was time for breakfast. Everyone was marched to the cafeteria, where Stephen was not surprised to see a group of children sitting at a table and eating semolina.

"What are they doing here?" Stephen asked the first guard he saw. "If you must let strangers in, let them into our cafeteria."

"Shit," the guard said. "I lost track of time."

Stephen turned to the children, who were now gulping down their food, afraid of being kicked out before they finished eating. "Why aren't you in school?" he asked them.

"What would I do in school?" the eldest asked, carefully spoon-feeding a baby. "I can't read or anything." They had a noticeable rural One accent.

"I'm sure there's got to be a place somewhere for the little one," Stephen said, lightly patting the baby on the cheek.

"There isn't. I asked. They'll only take abandoned babies in. I'm not gonna abandon my brother."

"This isn't a soup kitchen," Stephen said. To the guard, he added, "Take them to our cafeteria. This is a security risk." He took some confiscated candy from his pockets and handed it out to the children. "Run along now."

The eldest child carefully wiped the baby's mouth before complying. Another one climbed down from the bench with an agility borne of experience and positioned themselves on a battered skateboard they used to move around. Their hands were covered with scars, callouses, and fresh cuts. "Thanks for the candy," they said as they rolled off.

Several of the Peacekeepers took the vacated table. "You know," one of them said to another, "I was so shocked when I got posted to the Capitol and saw kids with no legs zooming around on skateboards. My cousin just dragged herself everywhere on her hands."

"Yeah," said the other, whose cross-examination was today. Her hands shook as she ate her semolina. "Fucking bullshit. We who had nothing were used to defend those who had everything."

"That's how it goes for people like us. No matter who's on top, we're the ones getting fucked."

That was perhaps not the best analogy - in Stephen's experience, getting fucked was very pleasurable.

"What happened to you after you were taken prisoner?" Tuss, Lux's lawyer, asked the witness, a former lieutenant-colonel.

"We were all tossed off a cliff."

Thumeka nodded to herself. That was to be expected from a defense witness.

"You were tossed off a cliff?" Tuss asked.

The lieutenant-colonel nodded. "Of course we were," she said. "We shot all of our prisoners - how else were they going to respond?"

Thumeka instantly focused on Lux, jotting down his reaction. He looked like his groupmate in a project had just said something stupid during a presentation where the grade would be the same for all group members and now he was watching his prospect of a good grade in the course crumble in front of his eyes as the other person just would not shut up.

Tuss tried to backtrack, but what had been said could not be unsaid. Lux, tired and much smaller than he had been before, listened gloomily to the testimony that wouldn't help him as much as he had hoped.

"We had guns pointed at us and told to jump off the cliff," the lieutenant-colonel said. "So we did. It was a very long drop, and the water was shallow."

The lieutenant-colonel was replaced with a full colonel who had served on Lux's staff. The press section was almost deserted, giving the three of them ample room to maneuver. "Did you read that book about Snow?" Jiao asked.

"I did," Thumeka said. It had been written by a very elderly former senator who had worked with Snow in the early days before receiving an honourable retirement at a palatial cottage. "I can't believe how the government was structured here. First Snow carried the bag for a senator, then someone carried bags for him, and then they all got major corporations and yachts 150 metres long."

"It's like corruption was the pillar on which Panem rested," Mikola said, writing something on his phone. He was wearing a kippah all the time now. Despite his complaints about how the Israelis thought he was one of him (he did not complain about the insults), Thumeka could tell he was very happy to be identifiably Jewish.

"I was shocked when I saw those photographs of young Snow as a senator's aide," Jiao admitted. "I was like - wow, he was young once?"

"He became president when I was two," Thumeka said. "I can't imagine living with the same president for my entire life."

"Can you believe the epidemic in Thirteen fifteen years back was artificial?" Mikola asked. "I think most everyone suspected it was, but still."

"Oh, I was convinced of it," Thumeka said. The former senator had found out about it the usual way - gossip. "I don't think normal diseases cause sterility in an equal percentage of men and women." The intent had actually been to wipe Thirteen from the face of the earth, but viruses were a tricky thing, and so the city-state thought that there was a cold going around - until, months later, there was a dramatic decrease in pregnancies. As it was, the senator wrote that Snow had hoped Thirteen would die out, but he had overestimated the efficacy of the virus and underestimated the amount of defectors to Thirteen and the efficacy of surrogacy programs. Of course, nobody had stopped to consider the fact that they were potentially unleashing a pandemic on the world, even if the virus was water-borne, and it was thanks to luck alone (and good wastewater filters) that it had not gone beyond Thirteen.

"What shocked me," Jiao said, "was how widespread knowledge about Thirteen was at that level. I knew that the jokes about people in Panem not even knowing about Thirteen weren't really accurate, but I had thought that it was more of an unspoken thing."

"I, for one, still can't get over that palace," Mikola joked. "I mean, gold loaves of bread? Really?"

"I remember I once got a politician fired for a bribe," Jiao reminisced. "I don't think anyone here would have batted an eye at a mid-range car, but people back home exploded. I know my husband nearly had a heart attack when he found out about Snow's palace."

Mikola tapped his fingers against the barrier in front of them. "You can get used to anything. Unless you don't."

"I think everyone gets used to it in some way or another," Thumeka said. "Even the people who scattered leaflets still reacted without shock to a new cottage or yacht."

"I guess," Mikola conceded. He watched the proceedings through half-closed eyes. Thumeka thought about the memoir. Thirteen had gone through so many terrible things, but it had managed to evade many other terrible ones. Thumeka still wished it could have been helped more. Covering the aftermath of a conflict was like being a vulture preying on the dead.

"I don't know how to process any of this," Lux admitted to Miroslav. "Everything is so wrong. Bright - she betrayed us!"

"What 'us'?"

"The Peacekeepers. The rats are fleeing the sinking ship. I thought we were taught better than this! Where is their honour?"

Miroslav suspected that Bright's admission had knocked him completely off-kilter. Lux had defended himself clumsily, claiming he had been unaware of atrocities that were a direct result of orders he had signed. He also claimed he could not have disobeyed the head of state.

"How do you think you did, by comparison?"

"I hope I did not dishonour myself," Lux said. "Maybe people will think I was evil, but I never did anything that went against my code. Never. I was not cruel, nor capricious, nor cowardly. I served with pride, and if that be a crime - let them hang me."

Strong words, now that Aoife Levron wasn't throwing orders with his signature on them at him. "You think they'll hang you?"

Lux sagged slightly. He was one of the one who had shrunk the most over the months, and his clothes fit him like a sack. "I'm so tired," he said quietly. "I never thought it could ever end like this. I thought it would last forever."

"Nothing lasts forever."

"I didn't think it would end like this. I thought-" He sighed and dropped his face in his hands. "I should have killed myself before the surrender. I wouldn't have had to disgrace myself in this courtroom."

He had already disgraced himself the first time he gave a criminal order.

A/N:

"SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, now, I just want you to tell the Tribunal, what were the worst matters in your view in which you often acted against the inner voice of your conscience? Just tell us some of the worst matters in which you acted against the inner voice of your conscience.

"KEITEL: I found myself in such a situation quite frequently, but the decisive questions which conflicted most violently with my conscience and my convictions were those which were contrary to the training which I had undergone during my 37 years as an officer in the German Army. That was a blow at my most intimate personal principles.

"SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I wanted it to come from you, Defendant. Can you tell the Tribunal the three worst things you had to do which were against the inner voice of your conscience? What do you pick out as the three worst things you had to do?

"KEITEL: Perhaps, to start with the last, the orders given for the conduct of the war in the East, insofar as they were contrary to the acknowledged usage of war; then something which particularly concerns the British Delegation, the question of the 50 R.A.F. officers, the question which weighed particularly heavy on my mind, that of the terror-fliers and, worst of all, the Nacht und Nebel Decree and the actual consequences it entailed at a later stage and about which I did not know. Those were the worst struggles which I had with myself."

Also, 'Anatolius Elbow' is Anatoly Lokot while 'Serge Vivo' is Sergey Boyko (who did indeed manage to be elected to city council despite being a member of an opposition organization). Novosibirsk has over a million people, not forty thousand, but it does suffer from dustpocalypses, floods, pig farms dumping waste in the open, snow not being cleared, and many other problems that could be fixed with competent governance.