PART II: STRIFE.
7
Cynane Rendevez - The Caladrius.
"... I don't know what to think," Daria admits. Her eyes flit up to Cynane's, nervousness fluttering like candlelight. "I-I guess I do see the reason behind your thoughts, but… what about the others? Like… um…"
Daria's mouth opens and closes for the next few moments, clearly conflicted and guilty over voicing any name upon her mind.
"Like Rhodos?" Cynane supplies. " Jordyn? Madison? Kathvarine? Hezediah?" She takes Daria's guilty look as confirmation.
"One: McNamara is in debt. His submissiveness and loyalty writhes at the thought of betrayal."
"Two: Moriau is guilty. Her friends' vain deaths shake off any thought of disillusionment."
"Three: Saros is heartsick. Her lover's glassy eyes and her guardian's wanton smirk destructs any desire for self-immolation."
"Four: Guthrie is mad. Her desire to annihilate Snow ends any thought of duplicity."
"Five: Hezediah is vindictive. Her hatred of The Capitol sung to the heavens means any possibility of perfidy was buried with Avansika's screaming."
Daria looks up at Cynane, her eyes wide. "Oh… wow," she says. "That's… you've really thought this through."
Cynane tilts her head. "I am The Vultures' leader. Did you expect any different?"
"No! Not at all. I guess… I guess I'm just wondering, if you've already got everything thought out, what do you need me for?"
"Since you've taken the fall, one of the traitors shall invariably slip up, which will allow me to put the nail in the coffin. What I need you to do is stay put and lay low. That is how you will best contribute to the revolution."
"... I can do that."
"And Daria," Cynane says. "For your sake, I do hope that Seasbane and Ivory are loyal. I am not saying, by any means, that they are traitors. Only there is a significant possibility."
Daria bites her lip. "Okay. Um… I hope so too."
She doesn't look convinced.
"If it's any help, my suspicions lean towards Althea and Sadie. I just need the evidence to prove so."
"Oh! Okay," Daria says. Her relief shines through her eyes. "Because I don't think that Tal or Cel would do something like that, I mean. It just doesn't make sense." She stops mid-ramble, shooting an apologetic look at Cynane's direction. "Sorry. I've said that a lot. But, um… will you come back for me?"
"Of course."
Her revolution is for honour.
She bites her lip but the gallows flash anyway. Her parents hung from the rocks on live TV. The Capitol kept zooming in on their eyes. As if they were affirming the fire had indeed died with their souls.
When she was young, she could only think of those abysses. Wormflesh would wither out of their crevasses, reaching for her neck. Flesh coiled and rippled into rope and there she hung,three's a dozen on the lynches.
How the gallows adorned her dreams. Is it amusing that her escape was through her nightmares?
Hands had held out towards her shoulders as she made the underground trek to District Thirteen. Did you know there existed a railway tunnel that connected through the Districts? You could only reach it through writhing through the sewers, or through the tunnel bricks that Eight renegades had boxed out and broken down. She made the journey, the entire three months at fifteen, till she came to the wasteland her parents so loved.
Her entrance ticket was her parents' swaying feet. She slithered between their bodies upon the gates to enter home again.
"Rendevez," she'd whispered to nowhere. "My name is Cynane Rendevez. I am the daughter of the dead rebels blasted on screen. Let me in, please."
They needed no more beckoning.
"Their martyrdom inspired us," was what Ramiro had told her, once she was shuffled into a grey seat in their war room. They had taken a blanket over her shivering body as she held the rationed hot chocolate with marshmallows in her fingertips - it was the most hospitality she'd ever been greeted with.
"Their deaths enrage us," Ramiro said, softly. For anger, his eyes were flickering cold. "How does payback sound?"
"I'll give anything," Cynane whispered, "Everything for it."
A smile turned upon Ramiro's lips. It didn't reach his eyes. "Good. You don't want to dishonour the dead, do you?"
"No," Cynane scoffed. "I'll make them proud."
"Good. I'll teach you how."
Ramiro extended a hand to her, smiling the same smile. Without hesitance, Cynane took it.
The winds were gathering now, round where her parents' bodies hung, stirred alive like lifeless marionettes. Only now she was the one that steered the gales.
Here's to the revolution. Here's to the dead. I won't let them rest till you're avenged.
DAY 7.
"Let Makrain's betrayal and death be known throughout the Districts," Cynane says. "Let that galvanise their loyalty. One front. There may be scum but they only wish they could rend us. Vultures stand strong. Understand?"
The radio operator nods. He barks an order into his comm, and so the message spreads. Give it an hour, two, maybe - and soon the whole of Panem will know.
The defamation, the libel… is necessary to create a united front, to persist even as all fell to hell. Morale is how they'll do it. Morale is how they'll win. She can fix it after the rebellion's over.
Footsteps clack into the radio site. Cynane turns around.
"Madison. What are you doing here?"
Madison bites her lip. Her eyes flick to the radios for a moment. She sighs. "I… I just wanted to talk about Veneri Vonsettos. Why was he working with The Vultures?"
Ah. Of course.
"He never was," Cynane says. "He infiltrated into Ravensbirk and claimed a position of power. Never - never - did we endorse him or his presence."
"I understand," Maddie says. "I just mean. It doesn't add up. When he was… operating… on me, he maintained that he was doing it out of professionalism. Just his job. And I hated - god, I still hate - his guts, but he promised it was just for the paycheck. I took solace in that." She exhales. "Sorry. I didn't think… didn't think he'd resurface, that's all."
"It would be worth exploring why," Cynane replies. She presses her lips together. Maybe she should throw in another consolation or two for Madison's sake, a promise that she'll send troops after him to see what he turns up? It will be a useless mission - they don't have that much time, and she doubts Veneri would be of any use to The Vultures - but promises help morale.
"Is Levine alive?"
What?
Cynane retains her composure. "Yes. I wouldn't have promised him to you if he weren't."
Madison isn't convinced. Not with how she looks into her eyes.
"Where is he?"
"In the Capitol."
"Where?"
Cynane knew she fed a lie to the girl who needed it most. Levine Saros is alive had leaked through her teeth, and I have the devices for your vengeance. It would be found out, sooner or later. But Madison Saros needed purpose that was not wishing for her manic lover again. Purpose that was not despair— at least, not the unavailing despair that renders people immobile.
Perhaps she should confess. He is dead, she could say. I didn't know he was at the time. Another lie. Madison would never know. But that is when she realises.
Madison stares at her with desperation in her eyes. But Cynane averts away from how she is breaking. She has enough weight upon her heart already; how has it not turned to stone yet?
(It's fine. Rooks are rooks. Suicides are suicides. War is war. She'll treat them human again when it is all over.)
"He is—"
An explosion booms across the skies.
"What is that?" Maddie says.
Cynane's throat constricts.
The explosions echo across the heavens. The skies are streaked damp-gold and bleed right down, as if wrung from a rotten-yolk corpse. The vultures that roam across Eight screech at her mockingly down.
The people are roaring.
An abhorrent feeling sinks down and settles in her gut. Not again, she thinks, but those are not the words that release from her teeth.
"... No."
She never meant to have Zeniah.
It was a moment taken too far with Ramiro, during those reckless years when twining their souls as one superseded war.
But it was not a moment that she regretted. As her belly rounded and her hand curved round the shine that creased down her dark skin, she felt the life pulsing in her body and knew more than anything that she wanted her child to live.
Not just breathe.
Zeniah Alasdair Rendevez was born upon a sunny morning. Later, Cynane would joke that Zeniah was born into being at a thunderstorm night, just as the rumbles struck and lightning flashed out above.
Zeniah always preferred that version of the story.
A giggle. "'Cause I'm just that powerful! Even the skies are scared of me. Mom, d'you think I'm a god?"
She never meant to love Zeniah as much as she did. For children meant everything to mothers, yes, but to be attached is to count your pain. For while Thirteen may not have the Reapings, they had a host of diseases just as lethal: radioactive poisoning that swallowed victims slowly, sicknesses that made people drop at any moment, a lack of nutrients and food that malnourished till you were as good as dead.
But Zeniah was different. Bright and smiling and pulsing even from her youth, despite the abysmal world she called a home. Snarky, of course, and cynical at times, but still happy. Still a child.
She saw so much of Zeniah reflected in herself, too. Stubbornness, pride, a fire that she wouldn't let die. A brightness in her eyes, intelligence sparking so brightly. Zeniah had always looked more like her father than she did Cynane - curly brown hair, hazel eyes - but there was no doubt she was her child. Zeniah was her, in more ways than one. More than anything, she wanted the world.
But Zeniah was always herself, too. Her own hopes were sowed into her bones - I'll save the world and I'll make it better. We'll have it all. Won't we, Mom? Another grin that crinkled her eyes. Her smile always pulsed with fire. We will.
(Why did she have her? Why did she love her? Why did she lose her?)
That was the paradox of the mother and the war leader: you could only be one or the other. Drag your children with you to hell or be damned yourself. Forget the war and live hell in the life the Capitol's left for you.
Did she choose?
Of course. Cynane had always wanted the world. When it was so close to her fingers - why wouldn't she leap?
And with that leap she killed. With that leap she sealed Zeniah's fate. Forced her screaming into a tombstone with dead eyes and hopes still latched in her throat. She killed her own daughter for a revolution meant for her. How about that?
(At least her feet didn't dangle on the screens for all to see. At least it was private. That is the only solace she can take in her daughter's death.)
Cynane rushes towards the radio stations and taps in her communications - 3-4-5-1-7 - and raps her fingers against the table. Pick up pick up pick up…
"Hello?"
Cynane clears her throat. "Sadie. What are you doing?"
A scoff echoes from the other end. "Saving your sorry revolution. But don't worry. I'm making my own. Don't you dare get involved."
"Sadie!"
"What, Cynane? You should be thanking me for all that I'm doing. Can you hear it? Eight is rising."
She hears it. It crackles through the comms - a thousand chants and roars that crash in waves over and over. It breaks through the heavens - molotov cocktails, self-made explosions, metal weapons glittering across streets.
It is ideologically perfect. This will be the beginning of the Capitol's end. She hears the rhetoric already - You can divide the people but the people will never fucking die! Eight, bombed but never ever broken. This is the Vultures' hometown. You heard us first. We fight forever!
It is victory words. It is an interlude in immortality. It is alive, a slimy, writhing infectious thing, it's going to fucking crawl down her daughter's throat and it's going to fucking kill her.
"Sadie Rendevez, for once in your life listen to me. Reel it in. Call it off. I don't care where they go, but you have to stopthis madness from happening."
"Sorry, am I speaking to the war leader? Sounds like she's telling me to quell a Vulture insurgency."
"Sadie, I am begging you. Nothing good comes out of this sort of anarchy. Shut. It. Down."
"Jesus. In case it isn't clear, the answer is no. Don't you get it, Cynane? I'm not yours. I'm the fucking Vulture now and you can't stop me."
The line crackles, splutters, and dies in her hands.
Zeniah was always discontent in Thirteen. The skies were infused in her blood, and to exist in the underground was a prison sentence.
Cynane could never let her daughter leave far - not to the grassy expanses of Ten and Nine, nor the lively waves that strike the shores of Four - so Zeniah had the most she could have.
Eight. With its smog and smoulder and vultures. A hellhole, ran ragged by Peacekeepers and factories and poverty. An entertaining hellhole, by all means, far more than Thirteen - but Zeniah was always discontent.
"It's a boring dystopia here, Ma."
So came her renegades. Three and two dozen at a time; graffiting the streets, getting into fights with Peacekeepers, roaring their message of change to all that would hear.
"Do you have a name for your renegades?" Cynane had asked. "It is important that the people know it's not a spastic cause."
Zeniah smirked. "Oh, 'course. I'm calling them The Vultures."
She was always so proud of her daughter. For how much she fought; for how much she took after her. Their souls were mirror images; but her daughter's was a better her reflected.
Cynane always thought Zeniah Rendevez would change the world. She would weary her days away, brick and stone, to make the stage where her daughter could shine from. Zeniah would change the world. That was fact. She's so proud of her.
Perhaps too proud.
All in Sparrow Fort are dispersing.
"A self-mobilising mass movement of rebels, rioting and ravaging their way through Eight…" — "Rendevez's daughter is leading the cause…" — "What are you waiting for? We're going in the goddamn history books for this one!" — "We're gonna fuck 'em up for this one, we're winning." — "We'll show 'em all our wrath. For all it's worth!"
It is like she watches a drain spin. The destroyed camp empties itself out and pours through the streets in active revolt. It would have been a romantic sight, positively beautiful, but not…
Not like this.
She has no control. Her rebels fall from her fingers and turn to Sadie, their new hurricane, her daughter that lives in the eye of the storm and roars her troops forward, danger uncaring.
Not again.
Cynane grits her teeth. She grabs a sword and a gun from the racks in the radio station, and turns to the operators left. "Keep trying to make contact with Sadie Rendevez. I'm going in."
Eight is overflowing with rebellion. A hundred thousand people jam-packed on the streets, chanting a dozen insignias and cries, killing all opposition that comes past and recruiting more along their pseudo-crusade. And she is trapped in the middle.
"Sadie!" Cynane roars, but she's pushed away by the rebels that surround her. She shuts her eyes— fuck, she has to get to her, she has to!
Thankfully, it isn't hard. Whispers flow all around her — that's Cynane Rendevez, let her pass, she wants to speak, needs to see her daughter— and the rebels part like the Red Sea till all she sees is a silhouette.
It turns. Strolls right up to her. Sadie's just as she'd remembered her. Creased sneer, crooked brow, narrowed eyes.
"Nice of you to come despite me telling you not to get involved. I don't remember you caring so much when I entered the Games," Sadie snarks. "You know, when every Career and non-Vulture was out for my ass?"
Cynane shuts her eyes. "This is different."
"Don't see much of the difference myself," Sadie mutters, rolling her eyes. "Unless… oh, wait." Her grin widens. "Oh wait, of course. You don't give a shit. You're just having flashbacks." A rotten laugh leaves her daughter's throat. "I should've fucking known it! What do you see when you see me, Mom? Is my hair curly brown? Are my eyes hazel? Does my name start with a Z? I cannot believe you."
"This isn't about her!" Cynane roars. "This is about you, Sadie. It's always been about you. From the beginning till the end."
Maybe she can tell the truth that goes something like this - I'm fucking terrified of you dying. I'll admit it. I've made so many mistakes. I've lost one daughter to war. I swore I'd never love again, but then you came along. You showed me how much I cared, even as I lied and manipulated lives for the rebellion's benefit.
You were my weakness as you were my strength. I thought I could rid myself from motherhood by encouraging you into the Games. The Vultures - Zeniah's legacy - was rising, and I could never be a mother as a leader. But god, the truth I cannot - I cannot - lose you too.
I love you, my daughter. You are just as - if not more - important to me as Zeniah. I'm so sorry for my mistakes.
But Cynane Rendevez is a liar. She's so good at it that it's the only thing she knows how to do.
Is it any surprise, then, what spills from her lips?
"You never listen. You never do what you're supposed to. You try to be like her, but…" Cynane shakes her head. "All you do is destroy. And I do not want you to ruin Zeniah's legacy."
"Wow. Wow," Sadie drawls, but her voice is choked. "I knew it, but wow. When will you stop comparing me to Zeniah? You love a fucking psychopath more than you love me! What the fuck's up with that? What the fuck's…" Sadie blinks her tears back. "... up with that?"
"Don't call her that."
Sadie scoffs. "Is Little Miss God Complex better? I cannot believe you. I don't even know why I try, fuck, you always make it about her. You always make it about her."
"Am I wrong to? You can never live up to who she was. Do you finally understand that?"
Sadie gazes at the rebellion, weary in her eyes, her lips quivering. Cynane's heart leaps to her throat. Let it go, Sadie. Let it fucking go.
But she'd forgotten what exactly her daughter was made of. Too blinded by love, too ruined by her past, too caught up in her web of spiralling lies - somehow, along the way, Cynane Rendevez let herself forget that Sadie ran on gasoline.
She threw her the flames.
"Hear me speak! I've stopped you all here for a reason. We're not going to give up, are we? We're going to fucking victory. My mother's blessing." Her smile is as wicked as Zeniah's. "This is the revolution of our times! We are the Rising."
A thousand cheers meet a thousand choruses.
Fucking… fuck it.
If Sadie wanted to be The Vulture, then so be it. She could play the game. It was about time she stopped being a mother in a revolution, after all. She had never been much of one anyway. To say she was would be kidding herself.
What sort of mother sends her child to the Games? What sort of mother lets her child get caught up in rebellion? What sort of mother lets her children's friends die and forces her to live through the trauma?
Cynane Rendevez never should've tried.
She was always a war leader, first and foremost. War leaders rouse. War leaders fight. War leaders award their insurgents. She better give Sadie Rendevez what she deserves.
"You've heard Sadie Rendevez speak," Cynane says, turning towards the insurgents. "Follow her to the end of time. Even if you die, death is immortality. The New Vulture can attest to that."
A glimmer of surprise tinges Sadie's eyes. But that is quickly overtaken by a scoff.
Better for it, really.
Sadie is not her daughter. Cynane is not her mother.
That is how it always should've been.
Please be safe, Zeniah. Uprisings are fickle. Volatile. They devour the children that create them.
I'm not stopping you, Zeniah. No, I would never undo what you've done.
… Yes, I believe in you.
Yes, you can save the world.
No, you're human. Always have been.
That doesn't attest to anything!
Gods can be foolish.
I hope, for your sake, that it's true.
…
I love you.
She does not stay with the Rising. She is not welcome in Sadie's revolution.
Instead, she watches from the side. Called for her radio operators to shut down the search for Sadie and open a new broadcast.
EIGHT RISES. I REPEAT, EIGHT RISES.
VICTORY IS IN OUR SIGHTS!
ROUSE YOUR PEOPLE. FIGHT! WE CAN OVERWHELM THE CAPITOL TOGETHER.
OUR CHILDREN ARE HEROES.
Perhaps for a fickle, fleeting moment, she believed that Sadie could win. That Eight's reckless rise was the first wave in a drought, crashing to shore with victory tunes and a thousand more arms, and with it would come the Districts. One by one until the fight was done.
But Cynane knew her lies. They curved across her fingertips in her count. She could never indulge in a delusion as large as that.
Not after before.
Only hours later, the bombs begin to echo in chorus.
Her belief was affirmed. They saw themselves as the conflagration. The Capitol saw a frenetic flame, spluttering and desperate, an opportunity begging to be put down.
This is how Sadie Rendevez's revolution ends.
Fires scorch the earth. Screams swallow the dusklight. Panicking, manic, desperate, the people did not stand but ran - a dozen at a time, stamping across fallen bodies and crushing screaming others.
When all is said and done, District Eight is a wasteland of flame.
Nothing can be salvaged. Not its buildings, all crumbling into rubble. Not its people, all dead and wounded, for the Capitol did not hesitate to turn their world into a gallows hell for their attempt at a last stand.
Not Sadie Rendevez.
Her death was captured on screen. Her shout was cut in half by an explosion.
She looks away from her daughter's body. But it could never be for long.
She makes her way to the battlefield. She cradles her head in her hands. She closes her eyes. She carries her in her arms.
The screens made the most of it.
SADIE RENDEVEZ DIES IN REVOLUTION… WATCH CYNANE HOLD HER… THIS IS WHY WE FIGHT… NO MORE BROKEN FAMILIES… LET THIS BE THE LAST SACRIFICE.
There was no reason to stop them. If they wanted a clear-cut narrative, then that they shall have. Not Sadie's rage that would've resented being called a martyr. Not Cynane's failings as a mother that would've sighed at the idea of being a good parent. Not her choices on why it was okay to involve her daughters in rebellion.
It is better that way.
This is how the revolution begins, for Cynane Rendevez.
She watches as the Rising sweeps through Eight. She nods one affirmation and lets go. She watches as the Rising explodes in hues orange and red as prophesied.
She cradles Sadie in her hands. Her tears, wept freely, reinstate her as a mother. She closes her eyes and she is a revolutionary again.
She propgandises her daughter's death. It is how it must be, she tells herself. That was always the fate of their family - doomed to burn on film. And Sadie was always, undeniably, a Rendevez.
This is how it begins.
Cynane isn't back for her yet.
Daria closes her eyes. She exhales a shuddery breath. She knows to keep waiting, but it's… hard. Hearing the explosions above and the roars of flames and she knows something's happening. Not knowing what makes it that much more difficult to stay still.
A rap on metal. Daria looks up.
Masked faces peer down at her.
She pales. Oh no. What are The Metals doing here?
"I'm surprised you're still here. Would've assumed The Vultures executed you already."
That voice is familiar.
Daria's eyes widen. "... Kathvarine?"
Her face comes in view. "Here," she says.
"What… what are you doing with them?"
"When I said I didn't like metal… I lied." Kathvarine tilts her head. "I have quite a fondness, actually."
Oh. Oh shit.
"You're the traitor," Daria whispers. "You're the one who exposed our bases. You betrayed us."
"Strong words," Kath says, "For a person who was never truly aligned with them. And for a person who was left for dead by their cause."
Daria shrinks. Is… is Kathvarine wrong about that? Not really.
"But… why?"
"My reasons are simple. The Vultures - Cynane - never had a shot at Snow. But The Vivisector does." Kath tilts her head. "So here I am. Let's put it this way: I never lied about my alliances."
Different goals, same end in sight. Down with Snow is a sentiment all can get behind.
"Oh."
Kath's smile is wry.
"I like you, Makrain. I don't want to see you become a pretty corpse in time, either. What do you say to joining The Metals?"