solandis (n.) a beautiful flower.

"We were just about to close for lu – oh." The door to the tailor shop swung shut, jingling the bell overhead, slamming closed harder than it should have due to the wind shrieking through the streets outside. "Oh. Captain Morozova. My apologies."

"Lieutenant." Their voice was cool, relaxed in that elastic way that they had – a rubber band, inclined to snap, expecting gratitude that it had not yet done so. They adjusted their cuffs, lazily. "Lieutenant Morozova. Should we come back?"

"No, no, not at all." The tailor was quick to smile; he managed to make it seem natural. He had the soft hands of one with no military training, no exposure to the harder parts of life, but the lean, wiry build of a kid from the outer walls. He looked like his brother, Reiko noted with irritation. "Not at all. I'll hardly starve in an hour." He brushed off his hands, scattering tailor's chalk in a pale white cloud. The door behind him, leading to the living space above the shop, had been left ajar; the space beyond was silent and dark. "What can I do for you, lieutenant?"

"Clothes," Reiko said, keenly aware of the sardonicism leaking into her voice. "I imagine."

"Well, I should hope so. For yourself, for all three...?"

Reiko cut her companions off before either of them could volunteer their thoughts. "Just for one."

An inclined head, a raised eyebrow, but her new grey protegé said nothing.

"You look like hot garbage, Schovajsa. Don't blame me for saying what everyone else was thinking."

Sahar Yakhin was hiding a smile, but extremely poorly. Her grey headscarf had been dishevelled by the storm whipping about outside, revealing the black bandana she wore beneath to contain her hair. Reiko had always been irritated at only getting one sister, while the older twin, Maryam Yakhin, had been selected for ascension to the tagma; getting an identical pair for the palace guard would have been a positive boon. There was any number of tactics that could only work with an identical pair, a particular set of feints which operated best with total believability. Instead, Maryam had lost most of her face defending the Wall, and Sahar whiled away her days pacing echoing marble halls. Reiko knew what it was to have the life for which you were intended pass you by; she knew what it was to have the tagma tell you that you weren't good enough. The Yakhins were a microcosm of a recurring pattern, one to whose rhythms Reiko themselves had marched before.

"No," Schovajsa said, mildly. He always rested his hand on his sword when he was relaxing like this, a casual reminder of how quickly and surely he could move; it was the same position Reiko herself usually adopted when she got the impression that a projection of arrogance was needed to push her agenda through a given situation. She, too, had been plucked from the ordinary palace regiments to serve as personal guard to the crown; some part of herself wondered whether she was getting old and sentimental, to identify with a young soldier so. "No, it's fine – I'm in full agreement, actually, lieutenant. Hot garbage is right."

Yakhin said, looking extremely thoughtful, "does hot garbage really differ much from cold?"

Schovajsa offered his thoughts almost reluctantly: "the smell?"

"I suppose so…" Yakhin tilted her head. "But looks-wise? You look like hot garbage?"

"Flies," Schovajsa said. "More flies."

"Maggots?"

"Two suits," Reiko told the tailor, ignoring her subordinates. "Notch lapel, single breast, no vent. Imperial grey."

"Overcoats?"

"We have our own." She could feel winter approaching by the ache in her shoulder; they would need the woollen coats to stay warm. "How long will that take?"

"The end of the week, if I –"

"We need them by tomorrow."

Kenta Hijikata had an expression which suggested he rather thought Reiko had asked the question only so they could correct him. He wouldn't have been entirely wrong, Reiko mused dryly, and he knew better than to argue with a personal guard to the crown. "I'll see what I can do."

Reiko snapped her fingers. "Schovajsa. Measurements."

Schovajsa, looking slightly befuddled, wandered in the direction that Reiko had indicated. Kenta smiled apologetically as he unwound his tape from around his neck; Schovajsa stepped up onto the low stool indicated. Reiko hadn't realised that he was tall; he always seemed somehow shorter, maybe diminished, when they saw him around the palace. He had unfolded today; it was unnerving to notice.

"Does this mean you're getting ready for a nice event?" Idle small talk. Reiko almost rolled their eyes. "The Selection must be in full swing by now."

Reiko said, "I would have thought your brother had kept you informed. Hasn't he brought his harem this way already?"

"Kane has plenty of nice clothes as it is," Kenta said, pinning his tape to Ilja's shoulder blade and unravelling its length in his hand. "Too many."

There was a low thud upstairs that suggested the presence of some hidden others, a murmured swear that might have evaded the notice of duller senses; Reiko lazily glanced towards the ceiling. "Company?"

Kenta only smiled blithely and made a written note of the breadth of Ilja's shoulders.

Hijikata Fabrics had no official royal patronage, which meant that they could not produce garments for the royal family or for the palace per se; however, its convenient location in the innermost circle of Gjöll, the expertise of the workers and the relative cheapness of its products made it a favourite of palace workers who lacked access to the haberdasheries of the wealthier courtiers. The maids tended to prefer the Halliday shop, around the corner, which had a softer and more feminine style; at Akanksha's urging, Reiko had tried it twice in the interests of avoiding the alternative, but found it to be of almost determinedly bad quality.

She couldn't avoid even the shadow of that outer-wall bastard, it would seem; any sense of relying on a person of that name had to be grounded under heel before they were allowed even the tiniest spark of life. Kenta was not providing her with anything, Reiko thought sourly, he was serving her, and it was important that all understood it as such.

This thought so thoroughly irritated her that she found herself folding her arms and ignoring Yakhin's droll attempts at small talk while Kenta went about his work.

Only the opening of the door could have stirred her from these vague, bitter thoughts, but open it did and stir her it did – if only, perhaps, because there was little Rakel liked better than a sparring session, even if she had to settle for a verbal one.

"Txori."

"Mora." Oroitz Txori looked windswept and interesting; he had always resembled something of a cubist painting in Reiko's eyes, just a pale, cruel face into which had been slashed the black lines of his eyes and brows and mouth. He had pushed his way into the building, but looked like a man with little intent to shop for clothes; his dark eyes skipped across each person in turn, Reiko and Yakhin and Schovajsa and Kenta, and came to rest, finally, as Reiko's eyes had, on the ceiling. The little living room upstairs was silent now; perhaps it had just been a cat. "You missed the security convention."

Reiko said, "I imagine you can let me in on the highlights." She didn't attend the security conventions, and he knew that – he knew that. She was a personal guard to the crown, to the favoured princess, to the King himself on occasion, but that was a matter of individual consideration, for tactics in the moment, for wrestling back soldiers whose minds had broken under the weight of a lifetime facing the druj with no end in sight. She didn't attend security conventions; she didn't strategise. She was barred from that, a consequence of her rank and unit. Those who were a little less kind about Reiko Morozova – and oh, she knew that, of those, there were dozens, hundreds – said that she had climbed this high on the ladder only for her superficial resemblance to Princess Asenath Schreave and her potential to act as a kind of smokescreen and double for the royal. Reiko cared little; she knew where she had ranked in training, how competent she was, the role she played.

They weren't sure why Oroitz had been at the security convention, for that matter. He was a Watcher second class, was he not? Asenath should have known better than to show such transparent favouritism, was Reiko's first thought, and then, their second thought, perhaps there were no first class Watchers left in Nav, or Txori, or western Vanth. Perhaps Oroitz had climbed the hierarchy in the traditional manner: by outliving all of those around him. As Kane Hijikata had, they thought irritably, going from saddle-warmer to captain simply by virtue of not riding directly into the maw of the nearest druj. Not the smartest bunch, those tagma, no matter how arrogantly they swaggered about the palace when time came to submit the unit reports. Cannon fodder. That was all. They reassured themselves with these musings.

"Highlights," Oroitz said, "that's certainly one word for it."

"The correct word?"

Behind her, Kenta was asking Schovajsa whether he had a date for the ball the following day, whether he would need extra fabric for a dress in the same colour. The grey man had blanched, slightly, at this unexpected interrogation, clearly not expecting that he should have a companion in mind, that he could have a companion in mind, but he had recovered quickly. "Indeed," he was saying, "the most beautiful girl you've ever seen," and Yakhin was laughing under her breath at the idea that the grey man had any life outside the palace, any at all.

Companions. It had fairly slipped Reiko's mind entirely. She supposed that Akanksha would already have someone else in mind. Well, she would be too busy watching the princess as it was.

Speak of the devil.

"Asenath is unhappy," Oroitz said, and Reiko saw those words reflected in his eyes as well as his mouth. Asenath. He shouldn't have called her that; she ought to have been her highness, her serene grace, her imperial majesty. Not Asenath. Never Asenath. "Very unhappy."

"About today?"

Oroitz frowned. "What happened today?"

Reiko said, blinking lazily, like she hadn't said anything, "about what, then?"

"She wishes to speak to you," Oroitz said, "about Silas' personal guard."

"What's wrong with Björn and Agnar?"

"You'd have to ask her." Oroitz adjusted his cuffs. He was a few years younger than Reiko; they and Hijikata had graduated perhaps four years ahead, barely enough to have climbed a class by the time the Txori orphan had come chasing on their heels. Reiko didn't remember when they had first taken note of the wiry Watcher – perhaps when he had taken control of Nav Gate on Wall Alliette in an unprecedented coup in his third year after graduation, controlling all western traffic in and out of the walls. Asenath had taken note of him around the same time. Reiko had always wondered whether they should have warned him about the end of that particular path. "My understanding is that she wants Silas to have a personal guard."

Reiko exhaled. "I wasn't aware that the Selection were this fearsome."

She eyed the grey man. If a soldier was needed – there were worse candidates.

It might be better to keep him close. A strange sort like him… answers came easier when the questions were kept close.

Oroitz's eyes were dark, his tone low. "The druj press ever closer."

"Yes," Reiko said, dryly, "you lot are proving quite useless at your jobs, aren't you?"

"And yet the kingdom celebrates us," Oroitz said, his voice rich with venom. "You'll fête us tomorrow with the rest of them, Morozova."

The ball was, officially, to be thrown in celebration of the tagma. To acknowledge the number of apocalypses they had faced down in the last year, the legions of troops dead to the druj in the past six months alone, that they still existed as an entity after all that had occurred. Reiko's skin crawled with it. They set their jaw, teeth grinding, but did little elsewise to acknowledge what the Txori boy had said.

"Well," they said, finally, "that's tomorrow."

Reaching into their pocket, they retrieved the small bag of coins reserved for this endeavour and dropped it lazily onto the counter.

"I'll see you at dawn tomorrow." Reiko's voice was cold. "I'd best not keep her Highness waiting."