As they were being led to lunch, Antonius heard a commotion down the corridor. Footsteps, getting closer and closer, and shouts.

"You fucking little-ow!" There was the sound of a body hitting the floor, followed by a high-pitched scream.

"Lieutenant, what's going on?" one of the guards asked Warden Vance, who did not look troubled, despite the fury he must have been feeling inwardly.

All of a sudden, several children dashed into the corridor, guards closely on their heels. As Antonius watched, all but one were scooped up and dragged away. No, not one - two. A barefoot child of around eleven or twelve with a toddler in their arms. They looked around the defendants for a fraction of a second before dashing over to Antonius.

"Please, uncle, could you spare any change?" they asked in a wheedling voice, eyes wide. They put the toddler down. "Please, uncle!"

"I'm hungry!" the toddler wailed, clutching at his leg.

Why had they picked him? Antonius looked around the corridor, confused eyes staring back at him. As the children continued their doubtless much-rehearsed performance, Antonius realized he was the best-dressed defendant. They had zeroed in on the one who, in their opinion, was the most likely to have anything.

"Sorry," he said, gesturing with his free hand to the handcuffs securing him to the guard. The other children had been taken away, but backup had not arrived yet and Warden Vance was not going to debase himself by personally throwing urchins out of his jail, so they had time to speak. Nobody else said a word. "I do not have any money."

The twelve-year-old's face visibly fell. Antonius' heart broke.

"Please, uncle!" the toddler insisted, tugging on his trousers leg. "Please!"

Antonius reached into the lining of his jacket and took out a small twist of sugar and a chunk of energy bar. He handed the former to the older child and the latter - to the toddler, eliciting two wide smiles.

"Thanks, uncle!"

At that moment, backup finally arrived. A guard scooped up the children, one under each arm, and walked out of the corridor.

"Keep moving," Warden Vance said.

Usually, if he went with them to the lunch room, he supervised lunch, but the warden left almost immediately. The guards who had allowed a group of children to break into the jail would be lucky to keep their jobs. Antonius realized that he had revealed himself to have contraband in front of everyone. Warden Vance would come for him, too, but that would be in the evening.

Very worried now, Antonius took his customary seat, from which he could hear Thread complaining to Verdant about sitting next to Lark. In his opinion, it had been done deliberately to antagonize him.

"Don't they understand?" he raged quietly. "Lark said these things about us, too. We gave our lives for the country and this is the thanks we got in return!"

Lark said nothing, focused as he was on his beans and rice. Antonius dug in as well, dreading the evening. He felt like a child who was afraid to come home for fear of the punishment for some misdeed that awaited them there.

"Thirteen down, eleven to go," Slice said from the other end of his table. "Huh."

And Antonius was one of that thirteen. He kept on catching himself on the thought that he should have said this or that differently. The only consolation was that everyone else felt the same way.

"Why d'you have food on you?" Brack asked.

"To eat," Antonius replied curtly.

"I can't believe security here is so bad," she said. "Anyone could break in and shoot us."

"No they can't," Talvian said at the middle table, leaning over towards Brack. "The reason they broke in is because the guards don't pay as much attention to children. Of course, it's possible that a child is astute enough to want to shoot us-"

"Astute enough?" Oldsmith demanded.

Talvian nodded. "Do you think the average twelve-year-old has an explanation for why there's rationing other than 'because of the war' or 'that's just the way it is'?"

"Of course not."

"Some do. Especially those who listen too much to their parents."

"You overestimate twelve-year-olds," said Dovek.

"No, you underestimate them."

They began to argue about that. Antonius looked out the window, the only sight he got of outside, as the window in his cell looked out into the jail yard. Everything lay in rubble outside the window. Skeletons of shelled-out buildings. Hastily erected shanties. Some people lived on second and even third floors of the wall-less carcasses - they must have been freezing, with such total exposure to the elements, not to mention the vertigo they must have been feeling when approaching what had once been the wall of their apartment and was now an empty space and a dizzying drop.

And the rubble-people. From where he was sitting, Antonius could see clear across the wide street and observe a few people scraping mortar off bricks. They were almost all in late middle age or older. Good thing the family had stayed with the house, even if it meant that they were now servants in their own home - Antonius could not imagine his seventy-nine-year-old parents sitting amidst rubble and looking for bricks that could still be reused. He ate his food mechanically, still feeling the toddler's hands on his leg.

Lunch ended. They handed back their trays and spoons - the one meal where they did not have to wash their own dishes - and filed back to the courtroom. Antonius asked to use the bathroom and was escorted down the corridor by a guard. At the beginning of the trial, Antonius had been able to get the guard to at least turn his back, but as the trial went on, security became more stringent.

When Antonius got back, he noticed that Madaichik was playing on her computer. Same as Rankin, who defended Bright, Madaichik had done a tour of duty before pursuing higher education. From what Antonius had heard, she felt no particular loyalty to the institution that had given her nothing but chronic health problems, and had volunteered to defend at an IDC trial because she needed a roof over her head. Thread had been handed to her on the assumption that she would have a better understanding of his case, having been a Peacekeeper herself.

Antonius sat down on the bench, feeling his back and thighs protest, and looked around the courtroom. Pulzer had promised that he only needed half an hour more to finish off Lark. And after that would be Thread.

"You know," Jiao said to Mikola, "you can just go to the press room if you're that bored."

Mikola huffed and put his phone away. "If I wanted to watch the trial on television, I could have stayed in the press camp."

Thumeka looked around the mostly deserted press section. Neither a propagandist of a breed many knew from their own televisions nor a brutal general the likes of whom never left the international section of newspapers back home were of much interest to anyone.

"It's more boring when it's on television," Thumeka said.

"Very true." Mikola had gotten ill last week and had missed a few days. "Ugh. This is still so boring."

Once Lark's cross-examination finally ended, it was time for Madaichik to call witnesses to the stand. It was one and a half days of pure boredom as the witnesses lied about their role in massacres, whether they had ever visited secret or even regular prisons, and how orders had been implemented.

The witnesses should have been very different people. They were an even mix of men and women, with ages ranging from early forties to late seventies, they had very different colourings, and yet they still seemed to be cast out of the same mold. They spoke in the same angry barks, they held themselves the same way, and something about their faces looked identical.

Thread himself appeared to be the culmination of heel-clicking militarism. He even looked like the generals Thumeka had interviewed back in England, though that was hardly a valid point - Mikola looked like them, too, and Thumeka had the same colouring as Bright and Best. Lack of melanin aside, Thread had that same facial expression and same imperious and arrogant bearing.

Thumeka thought of something she had seen on the Web once. Someone grew fruits in molds, which made them all take the same shape, cubic and pyramidal oranges and the like. Perhaps something similar had taken place at the military schools of Panem. Very different children were subject to rigid expectations, and then they grew into them. Once the process ended, the general shape was identical, even if the skin-deep differences were not erased. Like a fruit with a slightly different colouring than another, when both had the same shapes.

Thumeka jotted that thought down. She had been asked to write an article about the training of the so-called Peacekeepers, and this would fit in there perfectly. Feeling much better about herself, she placed her phone on the railing in front of her and refocused on what was happening.

Unexpectedly and completely unlike the witnesses and the other military defendants, Thread used humour. Thumeka couldn't help but chuckle at a few things he said. His line was that he had only ever obeyed orders, and had not known about local excesses due to spending his time at headquarters.

"I told them to deal with it," he said at a volume just loud enough to cause pain. The microphone had long since been turned off. "When one tells someone to deal with a rat infestation, they do not expect to come back and see the building on fire, do they?"

Was that a clumsy comparison or had he just likened dissidents to rats?

Later on, Madaichik asked about a massacre that had taken place on the outskirts of Eleven's capital city. Following an incident where a drunk student tried to shoot their local Peacekeeper, a hunt for conspiracies had resulted in hundreds being rounded up and shot without even the usual 'trial'. "Were you aware of the massacre on March 4, 67 by the old style?"

"No."

"Were you aware of Gabriel Davis' attempted assassination of Pablo Ortega?"

"Yes."

"What orders did you give to your subordinates?"

"Find the perpetrators no matter what it takes."

"Were you in the city during the massacre?"

"No."

"Where were you?"

"In my home village, at my grandmother's funeral."

Thumeka nearly choked. That was the first time she had ever seen someone plead dead grandparents in a criminal court.

"Usually," Jiao whispered, "I said that when my professor asked me where I was instead of in my dorm studying." Thumeka and Mikola chuckled.

Madaichik hadn't batted an eye. "Did your deputy inform you of the massacre when you returned?"

"I did, but it's not like I could bring them back to life, could I?"

"You did not consider replacing your subordinates?"

"I did not get to choose my subordinates. Had I tried to demote or otherwise punish my deputy, she would have pulled some strings with Command and we'd have found ourselves in the other's position." Lux did not look very happy to hear that. He resembled a student who was not very happy that their group member was pushing all the problems with the presentation onto them.

"Doctor, kindly stop looking at me like that," Thread snapped.

"Looking at you - how?" Miroslav hadn't thought he was looking in a specific way.

"Like that. You're judging me for not taking responsibility, aren't you?"

Miroslav shook his head. "I am paid specifically to not judge you."

That much, Thread could believe. He nodded. "You have to understand, Doctor," he said with a tinge of desperation. "I was just a soldier. I was trained a certain way. It didn't enter my head that anything else was possible. I don't understand where the prosecution dug up so many defectors, because I know for a fact I never even thought that was an option." His perfect posture cracked, and he began to wring his hands. "It's alright if I'm maybe not as honest as you would have wanted, right?"

"I cannot tell you what to do."

"Then what's the point of you!" Thread snapped in a high-pitched voice. He paused, taking deep breaths. "They want my blood. Not literally, of course, blood isn't spilled during a hanging." He fell silent again, mouth moving soundlessly. "Do you think they will agree to shoot me instead?"

"I don't know," Miroslav said. Everyone talked as if it had been decided for certain that the condemned would hang. As far as he knew, that method had been chosen because shootings were too reminiscent of the regime's methods. Hangings had been used as well, but they didn't have the same aura clinging to them. The proverbial line, after all, was 'have them shot'.

"I've seen deaths by hanging in Twelve. It's a nasty way to die, choking slowly like that."

Miroslav shook his head. "Long-drop hanging is completely painless. You fall through a platform and your neck breaks instantly."

"Oh, really?" Miroslav nodded. "That does not sound too bad - if the rope isn't deliberately made too short, of course."

"Let's not discuss execution when you haven't even left the stand yet," Miroslav said, holding up a hand.

"What else is there to discuss, Doctor? I did my duty and now I will be hanged for it. A quick death is the most I can ask for." His eye began to twitch, and he rubbed it with the back of his hand.

"How is your family doing?"

That seemed to lift Thread's spirits somewhat. "My brother's in the Capitol - he won't go home until he gets to see me."

"Your younger brother or your twin?"

"Twin." The barest shadow of a smile passed over Thread's face. "He's beating himself up over this all. Thinks it's his fault because he didn't want to join up."

Miroslav knew that much already. "You were happy you'd be able to be just Romulus Thread, with nobody asking about your brother when they saw you."

Thread nodded sharply. "Very much so. I missed him, of course - we had never been apart before. But even if we were like two drops of water, we were very different on the inside. I knew deep down he'd never want to go to the Academy. I remember when I got back on leave my first summer, everyone remarked that there was something different about us that made it easy to tell us apart." He sighed, staring at nothing. "I thought it was a result of me being fed better. Remus and I went down to the grocer's and used her scale to weigh ourselves - but there was no difference there, the food we had received at the Academy had been adulterated garbage. We even undressed to compare our musculatures, and there was no difference. In hindsight, it was all about my bearing. Every summer, I would come back carrying myself more and more like a soldier, and Remus was just another quarry worker obligated to bow and scrape when he saw a white uniform."

"You must have felt like you were from different worlds," Miroslav prompted.

"I felt like I was looking into a funhouse mirror when I looked at my brother," Thread said quietly. "It got worse after I was deployed. Once I was eating as much as I wanted, I stopped resembling an uncooked noodle and actually looked like a man, not a dystrophic corpse. On my very last leave, we were walking around and met the new husband of a villager - he was from out of town. He asked us who we were to each other."

Miroslav took a photograph of the two men from the table and studied it. According to the date on the back, it had been taken in 67 by the old style, so not too far ago, for someone of Thread's age. The similarities were evident. Identical height, facial structure, and eyes, though Thread appeared younger and his face wasn't so skeletal. "Had I been there, I would have noticed you were twins. Perhaps he was just distracted by the uniform."

"Perhaps." Thread took the photograph and studied it. "You know, when I introduced myself by full name, I was often asked if I had a twin brother named Remus. That was probably the worst thing you could name your kids."

"Why? I never studied mythology, so I don't know."

Thread nodded. "Neither did anyone who named their children that. I looked it up once I learned how to read. In the myth, Romulus kills Remus. Hardly something you would wish on your sons."

"That must have been very strange to find out."

"It was." Thread looked out the window. "How do you do it, Doctor?"

"Do what?"

"Make me forget that I'm here."

"I just prompt you to talk about certain things."

"Huh."

The silence stretched. Thread said nothing.

"How are your other relatives?" Miroslav asked.

"As fine as they can be. The village is getting running water installed. No more boiling water from improperly dug wells."

"That's amazing!" Miroslav said sincerely. He couldn't imagine living without running water or electricity.

Thread nodded, frowning slightly. "It is amazing. Shame I won't be able to see it."

"You see," Thread said, "if I had let subordinates carry out the sentences, then they'd be the ones here!"

There were a few chuckles in the dock and the audience, but the prosecutor was not very amused. She continued to poke holes in his arguments, tripping Thread up with his own words.

"Yesterday, you said that you were in District Two on March 4, 67 by the old style."

"Correct."

"When did you arrive and go back?"

"I arrived on February 28. The funeral was on the second of March, I went back to Eleven on the sixth."

"So a week's leave, then?"

"Correct."

"In that case, why was your return ticket for March 3?"

Thread did not look very happy at that being brought up. "I was told to go back - I know now my presence was wanted at the execution. I insisted that I had my leave and had every right to not have it be cut short in peacetime."

"Why is there no record of your return trip at the later date?"

"The database can't have everything," Thread lied. The NCIA's database of train and hovercraft trips had been captured in its entirety.

As Carver proceeded to tear Thread to shreds, Antonius blocked out the unpleasant sight and focused on reading a newspaper over Talvian's shoulder. The debate over the death penalty had been given new impetus by the sentencing of a serial sex killer to death the other day. Someone had written a large article called 'Yes, I Defend' where they, in no uncertain terms, argued that executing the maniac would provide legitimacy for other, less justified executions. Antonius was not sure if they meant him or ordinary judicial mistakes, but either way, he saw the point there.

"This article is stupid," Talvian said in a low whisper, "but I welcome anything that can help us. If they don't execute someone who raped and murdered a bunch of children, they certainly can't execute us."

"How is it stupid?"

"The author doesn't understand anything. You simply can't let people like this live. It's a matter of national security."

Antonius agreed somewhat, but there was a caveat there. "What about that case they bring up where someone was wrongly executed for one of the maniac's crimes?"

"That hardly ever happens. It's a small enough price to pay for keeping society safe."

Antonius tapped his fingers against the barrier in front of him. Perhaps to Talvian it was still a small enough price, but he had zero desire to die for the crimes of someone else.

"Lieutenant!" one of the little guards squeaked, running up to him. "There's cupboards at the small entrance!"

Small entrance - the side entrance that exited to the smaller street west of the building. "What?" Stephen asked. They were in the witness wing, Stephen having just supervised dinner. Fortunately, the break-in a few days ago had turned out to be a one-off, but that did not mean any of them could relax.

"Cupboards! Two of them." She then ran off before Stephen could ask what that was supposed to mean. Sighing, he headed for the entrance where he was confronted with Krechet's family. Stephen recognized Helena Lowman from the brief time she had spent in a detention centre under his supervision, and the children took after her strongly, and not only in height. Little wonder the girl, who had suffered from malnutrition her entire life, had compared Lowman and her eldest daughter to cupboards. As Krechet had said, one of Rachel's sleeves was empty. There was also a boy a hair taller than his mother and a hair shorter than his sister whose gaze was completely blank, a child of ten who could have easily passed for twelve who must have been Verax, and a small boy of thirteen or fourteen Stephen didn't recognize.

"Helena Lowman?"

"That is I. I was hoping-"

"The prisoners are not allowed visitors." Stephen wished he had that quality of Talvian's that made others feel like it was their height that was excessive.

"We've spent hours getting here, it's already dark!" The girl fidgeted with the strap of the duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Her hair was very closely buzzed and she wore the jacket of the university's rugby team with the empty sleeve pinned up so that it didn't flop around too much. Stephen would not have wanted to get to the field and see her on the opposing team.

"I'm sorry, but the rules are the rules."

"I want to see Dad," the little boy wheedled. "We haven't seen him in so long!" The children spoke in middle-class accents thanks to Krechet's job having netted him the money to send the kids to a private school known for turning out future doctors, lawyers, and computer programmers.

"The rules have been made clear," Stephen insisted. "You will not get special privileges just because you appear in person. How about I get you dinner and then get a jeep to drive you back?"

"Dinner sounds great," the older boy said predictably, coming to life a little bit. "Mom, can we? I'm really hungry."

"You're always hungry," the girl muttered.

"Oh, shut up, like you were any better."

"Kids," Lowman said tiredly.

"I know an excellent place," Stephen offered. "I'll pay, of course."

"That's very kind of you."

On the way to the restaurant, the family was quiet, but they warmed up once they were ordering.

"You must be Rachel," Stephen said to the girl, "and that's Norman and Verax?" Nods. "And who are you?"

"Peter."

"Just Peter?"

"Peter Lowman now," Norman muttered sarcastically. "He's Rachel's son. Of all the things to find on the battlefield. I lost my brain and didn't get anything in return. By the way, tell Chaterhan I saw his cousin die."

"I will." Stephen kept his confusion out of his voice. "Do you mean Andreas?"

"That's him. We were sitting in a trench and then artillery rained down. They dug me out, but Chaterhan was a bunch of scraps not bigger than a finger." Helena covered her face with her hand.

"I'll tell him." Though without the details. "So, Peter, what's your story?"

Peter said nothing.

"You've got a quiet son, Rachel."

"He's not my son." Rachel slapped her brother on the head. "He's not even ten years younger than me, you can't adopt with that age difference. And Mom's his legal guardian, anyway."

"Yet another baby brother, then?"

"Hey!" Verax protested, but Rachel cracked a smile.

"Your father talks about you all the time. Never mentioned acquiring another child, though."

"Yeah," Rachel said, looking around in anticipation of the food.

Lowman looked too tired to converse and the boys too hungry, so Stephen continued talking to the girl. "How did that happen?"

"He was in my squad. His feet were damaged by a petal mine, so I had to carry him. We were captured together."

"You forgot to mention that you only lost your arm because you covered him up with your body, leaving you exposed," Norman butted in.

"Children, please," Helena begged. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Do you still play rugby?" Stephen pointed to her jacket.

"Yes."

"That's good."

"Once she scored a try after running for ten metres with another girl holding on to her ankle," Norman piped up. His food had arrived, and he had already made a sizeable dent in the chicken curry. "She's really good."

Stephen was not surprised. Krechet always spoke proudly about how his children were stars both on the field and in the classroom. "Do you also like sports? Your father mentioned ballet, but I don't know if you do anything else."

"Yeah. I like baseball. I'm a pitcher. I'm not very good at it, though. I'm decent at ballet." By that he meant dancing in the national youth theatre.

Little Verax giggled. "He's the best at ballet. He's always dancing for important people. Earns tons of money."

"Not tons." Norman finished his curry and moved on to a large stack of grilled cheese sandwiches.

"More than me when I played soccer." Rachel ate quickly and neatly.

"You played semipro?" There had been no truly professional sport in the big country; at best, athletes had earned small pittances to supplement their day jobs.

"Until the coach sold us to the recruiters."

"That's awful."

"He then volunteered and died, so at least he was consistent."

Scant consolation.

A silence ensued as the family ate, the kids steadily working their way through mounds of food. "You must struggle to feed them," Stephen told Lowman sympathetically.

"I had no idea what I was in for with Norm," she said with a smile. "I understood what was happening with Rachel - I, too, once could beat the boys in an eating contest. But Norm? It's like he grew overnight, but the rest of him hasn't caught up, he's so dreadfully underweight." Norm glared at his mostly empty plate. "He's like a skeleton, and he's always so hungry, and the rations just aren't enough. When he came back, he was skin and bone, you could see every little bone in his body!"

Unfortunately, the people drawing up ration guidelines did not take into consideration fifteen-year-old boys who had just attained a height of a metre ninety-five. There were always people who slipped through the cracks, and on this occasion, it was the teenage son of what many considered to be Lodgepole's vilest defendant.

"I am still not over Thread pleading a dead grandparent," Rakesh muttered as he took a large bottle of vodka out of his bag. The prosecutors from Nine were meeting up in the kitchen of the women's house, as the delegation from Two had gone out somewhere where there would be mushrooms. Knowing Jinwe, the odds of it being morels or psilocybes were about fifty-fifty.

"Well, I don't know," Torres said. "If it worked for my classmates-"

Rye laughed and made herself a little sandwich with a piece of smoked sausage. "Did I ever tell you about how once, one of my husband's classmates had three grandmothers die in the span of two weeks right during finals?"

"Wait, they actually died?" Perry asked.

"They did. The professors actually called up the funeral agencies and confirmed it."

Hudson's face twisted as she poured herself a beer. "That must have been so unpleasant for the student, to have everyone doubt such a painful tragedy. But then again, if other students had ruined it all for everyone else-?"

Rye looked around the table and picked a red 'cocktail' (in reality, vodka Rakesh had diluted with fruit juice). She sniffed it, not noticing any alcohol smell at all, and poured herself a cup. Back in first year she had diluted vodka with water, but it had still tasted terrible to her unaccustomed tastebuds. Perhaps she should have added juice, then. Rye wondered if Billie had already moved on to drinking vodka as it was before hurriedly trying to pretend that thought had never happened. It was better to selectively forget her own experiences in university and pretend Billie wasn't getting up to anything. Knowing Billie, that was actually plausible.

"Does everyone have a drink?" Rakesh asked. For their first full get-together in who knew how long, they had decided to play 'Never Have I Ever' to get to know better those of the group they usually didn't interact much with. "Alright. Um, I guess I'll start, then. Do I say something I never did or something I did?"

"Something you never did," Anna Goldfield said. The older couple, wisely, had poured themselves small cups of weak beer.

"Never have I ever lied to get out of a deadline - school or work."

Rye thought about it. Lying was too strong a word for the handful of times she had milked valid excuses for all they were worth.

"Does exaggeration count?" Smith asked. "I was recovering from the flu and could work but chose not to."

Rakesh thought for a second and shook his head. "You were still sick, so no. Actual bald-faced lies only."

So everything Billie-related didn't count, then. Granted, some professors had had the audacity to demand doctor's notes (which had cost a hefty sum) from two students whose baby was sick, so Billie hadn't always been a universal excuse.

Most of them drank. "I guess I'll go next," Carver said. "Never have I ever… committed a crime or a misdemeanor."

Anna and Husk looked softly at each other before drinking, Perry tossed back his drink in one go, and Rakesh belatedly drank. Rye realized that by not denouncing him she had abetted his subversive activities, and also took a sip. The cocktail tasted like juice. Hudson also drank, as did Feng.

"Er, that's not what I meant, but sure," Carver said.

"Morrison, say something before Husk goes on a rant about the philosophic implications of whether it is immoral to break a bad law," Rakesh said with mock terror.

Rye, not being a courtroom lawyer, was not good at improvisation. "Er, never have I ever wished I had a different career." No matter the difficulties, there was nothing else Rye had ever been able to see herself doing.

Surprisingly, most of them drank. "Am I the only one here who is happy where I am?" Anna asked Husk.

"I'm happy," Husk said, "but you know I always hated working for the system."

As the evening wore on, the questions became more and more personal and garnered more and more discussion until Rakesh proposed a different game, where a randomly selected person had to ask another person a question, and they could either answer or drink. He took out a ten-sided die, counted them off, and tossed it. "Er, Perry, you ask Carver."

"For the record," Carver said, "I've already explained to you how I have sex."

Everyone laughed. "Which of the key criminals do you find the most repugnant?" Perry asked seriously but with a smile still trying to appear on his face.

"Oh, that's tricky. Um. Personally, I have to go with Lee, since it's his fault my parents had to do all these crazy things to get me what I needed."

"You ask…me," Rakesh said, throwing the die.

"Deep down, what did you think of your espionage while you were doing it?"

"Oh." Rakesh sighed and refilled his glass with wine. "I thought it was completely stupid. Everyone around me was fine with everything. Well, not fine, but nobody was going around complaining. I don't know. It was like - I thought I was thinking too highly of myself for thinking my reports could change anything. I mean, that's how it was. Just meaningless little reports while people suffered literally on my doorstep."

Rye wasn't even sure what to think. What had she thought of Rakesh's espionage? Had she thought it was stupid? Or was it just another thing she had carefully not thought about? It was already impossible to remember.

"Er, Morrison," Torres said after admitting that he had denounced a professor for 'sabotage' in law school, "how did you know you were in love with your husband? Future husband. Whatever." His face was bright-red.

That hadn't been a moment. It had been a process. But when, in hindsight, she had felt it for the first time? "When he stayed over at my dorm one night, and I woke up in the morning and wished I could always wake up next to him. And then it hit me that I could actually do that, and I felt so happy."

"Aww," Feng said. "And you did."

"For twenty years." It was strange to think about how for everything that had happened to her in the past two decades, Barrow had been there. His presence was so obvious and such a baseline fact of existence, she needed to consciously be reminded of it. "Who do I ask?"

Rakesh tossed the die. "Anna."

"When you began your circle, what was your biggest worry?"

"Oof." The Goldfields briefly met each other's eyes. "When we began it, probably just the family abstractly. When we had kids, it became, of course, the kids. We were terrified of becoming one more family being tossed into a secret prison and our children growing up behind barbed wire."

"And you still did it," Rye said impulsively.

"Of course," Husk said. "It was a trade-off of sorts. We were trying to make the country a better place for our children. But the only way to do that was to endanger them. We could have sent them out of the country, of course, but we couldn't bear the thought of abandoning them. It's nasty that activism as basic as leafleting put our children's lives at risk. We couldn't just not do it, that would have been leaving millions of other people's children to suffer." Anna patted him on the hand. "They don't blame us for endangering them from their very first days, so I suppose we did something right."

Did Billie and Mitch and Flora blame her for having gossiped in the kitchen and done nothing? Rye didn't want to know.