Chapter 23: Fixed on Your Hand of Gold

With a roar, my heart rose to its feet, like ashes of ash, settle soft and as pure as snow.
With each love I cut loose, I was never the same. I fell in love with the fire long ago.

- Andrew Byrne-Hozier

The fireworks shattered the world into fragments and the sky seemed to splinter into vibrant colours. With a scream and a whistle, the first sixteen rockets arced into the air and exploded into reds and greens, showing up the clouds in their grey silhouettes as lightning would. For a single second, the stars were utterly obscured by the explosion of brightness. And she said, "we could leave."

That was always her answer, and some small part of him wanted to hate her for it.

"No, we couldn't. We couldn't do that to him." He paused. That wasn't true. Vardi Tayna had done it a dozen times over. She had cut and run more times than he could count. It was like some part of her refused to acknowledge that she could share the air with another. "I couldn't."

She had always come back. For a long time, Täj hadn't been sure who she was coming back for.

"It's as easy as one foot in front of the other, demusha."

"Where would you go?" In the old days, when the Wastelands were still wild, she could disappear like steam into smoke. Nowadays, the Kingdom begin to settle and put down roots, it would be so much harder to vanish. The Crown may not have any pictures of her, but the little dark-haired spy was in competition for the hand of a king. She could not slip into the shadows so easily anymore.

"That," Tayna said, "is a question for after."

He knew that Demetri was afraid of precisely this, that with the General gone and Demetri growing into his kingship and all she knew slipping from her, she would be left without any tethers to the rebellion, any reason at all to fight. It was why the General had always compared her to a feral dog - without someone on the other end of the chain, there was no telling which way she might go when she decided to maul. It wasn't as though they couldn't fight without her, but a Kingdom without Vardi Tayna - Täj wasn't sure it was a kingdom he would want any part in.

"Even if I asked you to stay?"

She said, rather sadly, "would you?"

He paused.

Vardi Tayna said, gazing at the stars like she had lost some piece of herself, strewn among them, "we're soulmates, remember? Welded together, artery to vein, sinew to ligament. Me being in the Selection didn't change that. You fucking some other girl definitely won't."

"Don't say it like that." Every so often, she reminded him what kind of a person she was, that she had tried to kill him thrice over, that she was still half-feral, that she responded to kindness with more profound cruelty, that she didn't trust anyone enough to care, to hang around, that she was a product of the Wastes and always would be. Bad for him, in other words. He wasn't sure why he cared so little about that simple fact. Probably the same reason he still smoked.

"I'm sorry." Even now, she couldn't resist being difficult. "Make love?"

"You're being a bitch, and you know it." He moved forward to adjust the ai-katean in her hair, which was beginning to slip free. "Let me."

She turned, and he carefully tucked it into the uppermost lacing of the loose braid she was wearing, so that the delicate forget-me-notes wove among the inky strands of her hair. Treason had never looked so beautiful.

"I didn't," he said, and wasn't entirely sure why he did. "Sleep with her."

"That," Tayna said. "Might actually be worse."

He put his arms around her and she relaxed into them as though her bones had finally given out, putting her head against the warm fabric of his sweater and he said, "it's definitely worse."

"She's in the Selection as well." Tayna's voice came out muffled.

"It's different. She's got no chance of winning." He said it, and it sounded hollow even to him. He didn't know what to tell her. He didn't know how to tell her.

Tayna lifted her head. In the dark, her eyes were tiny microcosms of the night sky itself. "And I do?"

He could only look at her.

"Even if I won," she said, her voice low and husky. "Even if I married Demetri..."

He winced to hear the name.

"Even if I became the queen," she persisted. "It wouldn't… I don't...demusha, yesli khochesh' menya..."

"Plokhoye vliyaniye." The words hung heavy on his tongue, like he had almost forgotten how to speak the language, like he had blocked it all out.

She said, "then things won't change anyway. Not even if I win."

"Yenifer," he said, very softly. "Don't you dare lie to me."

The rain in Whites was falling quick and softly, sheets of water falling like so much silk past the windows of the city hall in which the provincial council met. In times of peace, they convened five times in a month. In times of war, it was rare that they went longer than two or three days without needing to see one another. The meeting today was unusual in that it had been scheduled some six days ago, rather than six hours, and unusual again in that they were joined by the other northern councils – the hardened quasi-military command from Bankston and St George, the rustic council members from Baffin who arrived in flannel and leather like they were expecting a drinking session, the more refined crowd from Yukon who greeted the council from Whites like old friends, their long border having tied them together like a chain for so long. Even if Xue Bing and her husband had not pushed to accede to the Kingdom in Exile, Xue thought, it would have been inevitable once Yukon had switched its allegiance – they could have been very easily locked out of Illea and starved, given that Yukon could have easily blocked any material transports setting out from Likely along the Pacific channel. Instead, they had declared their treason in the very same document, and the peaceful transition had been made.

Peace – that was the most vital part of this whole business, Xue Bing thought. The northern provinces were the most prosperous of all the Kingdom, because not a drop of blood had been spilled in their winning. Maybe somewhere along the borders – Atlin, Ottaro, the rough division drawn across Hudson to lop off a chunk of valuable farming land with all the grace of a fieldside amputation – but here, in Whites, life had not changed, but for the removal of the portraits of Queen Ysabel and the slow reworking of school curriculum. There had been a few growing pains, particularly when the Crown had shut off their connection to the electricity plant in Likely, which had prompted a desperate scramble by engineers from Yukon and the Russian Union to repair before deepest winter hit and left them without light and heat. But, Xue Bing noted, for an area often dismissed as "the north", the northern provinces were really all the Kingdom had to point to as a success, particularly when they were still waging battles in Tammins and Fennley and Midston to dry and retain the land they had taken in the south. Land, Xue thought, that was populated by those the Crown could do without: uneducated, provincial, criminal. A poor foundation on which to found a country.

And yet, despite that, they had to meet like this, in the city hall that had once heard ever meeting begin with an oath of loyalty to the king in Angeles, and wheedle more money from the Warden for basic necessities of the most loyal members of the new kingdom, so that they could buy misprinted books from the Saharan Federation and canned goods from the Russian Union, what few nations recognised them as legitimate and would do trade with them. Xue didn't mind admitting that it hurt her pride, at least a little.

They sat in a crescent half-moon in the hall, Xue at one point and her fellow council member, Taichi Yukimura, at the other. Like the other provinces, Whites had six council members, relatively few for its immense size, but having more than fifty people in the room would have made for an immensely chaotic affair, so there was a leaner group of fifteen assembled today, empowered to make their case before the Warden for the entire region.

The Warden, Devery Atiqtalaaq, was Iñupiaq and her family had lived in the province that was now called Whites for longer than any other, since before it had been Exile, since before it had been Illea, since before it had been America, before it all. As a result, Xue often thought she was less concerned with what flag flew over her land, than simply ensuring that the people who dwelled therein survived to see their nation called another name, hundreds of years hence. She was a pragmatic woman who seemed to have no time for prettiness, always wearing her hair in the same two plain braids and wearing the same clothes fretted with fur, but over the course of their dealings, she had proved herself to be an acute negotiator, and for the time being, their priorities were the same.

"Thank you for convening," she said now. "Let us begin with the good news. Our men in the south have broken through the Zuni line and advanced into Fennley."

Xue could practically hear the effect this pronouncement had heard on the other members of the council. Fennley bordered Angeles, and the Crown was in Angeles. All the rest of the nation, the broad swathes of provinces who still clung loyal to the Dunin family, would fall like grain before the reaper's scythe once the palace was taken. That was, at least, the hope of the rebels. Not for the first time, she was glad that she was ensconced up in Whites.

"Now is not a time for celebration," Devery continued. "It is a time for pressing forward and taking advantage of momentum. Therefore..." She took a deep breath. "Our tithes have been increased, by a further sixty percent, in order to fund the next six weeks of battle."

"Unacceptable." Taichi was a dignified man with dark eyes and dark hair, just like his daughter's, although unlike Yue, he was starting to bald. "Our economy is already on its knees, Warden. We cannot sacrifice what little prosperity the north clings to in the name of perpetuating Demetri's bloodbath."

"Without taking the capital," Devery said, and Xue could see that it pained her to be taking the side of high command. "We will remain what we are: a loose alliance of traitors relying on the winter to shroud us. The only reason that Set's forces have not rolled over the Atlin border to retake our lands is because their attention has been drawn south, and they are not foolish enough to open up two fronts. If the rebellion starts to flag, starts to falter, starts to fail, then there is no reason that Ysabel's eyes shall not turn north. We must ensure that does not happen."

Xue said, "until winter falls, correct?" When she was sure that all eyes were upon her, she continued, "once the temperature drops. In Whites, during that season, we have an average temperature below minus fifty. Baffin reaches minus sixty. I assume, Warden, that they are also not foolish enough to emulate that oldest error of Napoleon to invade the north in the winter?"

"If our own infrastructure can even survive the same." Taichi cut in, his voice as cold as the lands that Xue now spoke of. To see the way their eyes met, one would have been forgiven for mistaking them for political rivals.

"Well," one of the representatives from Bankston said, "we'll direct focus there, then. Strip back on public expenditure, pump money into our generators and our food channels. Prepare to dig in."

"And then what?" Devery rarely sounded exasperated, but she appeared to be touching on it now. "Stop paying your tithes?"

"Renegotiate," Xue said, "from a stronger position. We are not suggesting treason, Warden."

"Not this time," Taichi said, and that was the problem, wasn't it, that they had not been won but had chosen to join the Kingdom of their own volition and might easily change their minds again and choose to leave. Xue could see that issue play out in Devery's eyes, sometimes, and she wasn't quite sure which the Warden would prefer to see. Instead, she merely nodded.

"An excellent proposal, Councilman Yukimura, Councilwoman Bing. Councilman Tulimaq, please draw up a report on the same – costs for the generators, for the agricultural side of things, where you want to draw the money from. Councilman Yukimura, please assist him." She looked down at her notes. "Further to that. King Demetri will be travelling to the Saharan Federation very shortly. Ostensibly a goodwill trip, but I am given to understand he'll be negotiating some trade deals as well." She didn't need to explain further – the north was really the only place that had anything worth exporting, oil and gold. Keeping the oil rigs going during the transition had been the combined work of Xue Bing, Taichi Yukimura and Anjij Khatri, while the gold mines – as well as most of the other mines – had just been a matter of the Warden hacking out deal after deal with Bataar Altai, the bastard who owned the greatest stretch of them in Yukon. He was sitting at the centre of the table now simply by virtue of that fact, unelected and yet important enough that he had to be included in council meetings. For a long time, Xue thought grimly, they had just been sitting on these vast stores of useless gold and irrelevant oil, with nowhere to send it but to the rebels in the south. Now, at least, they would be able to start selling. "I'm working hard to convince Givre to get the bulk of that income funnelled north, whenever it comes, but you know how Commander Ndlovukazi can be when it comes to funding his war machine."

"It's northern labour, northern goods, northern enterprise." Tulimaq's voice was cold. "It should go to the north."

"Couldn't agree more," Devery muttered, just loud enough that Xue knew she was meant to hear. "Right, before we get on to the matter of Killiniq High School, I have to touch briefly on the Selection."

In the rebel heartlands to the north and south, the Selection had proven to be ridiculously popular, despite the dearth of content that had actually made it to the screen. Of course, anything Devery Atiqtalaaq promised the northerners would prove popular. It was a quality that Xue knew the rebels had to appreciate and fear in equal measure - for it was all well and good to have a popular commander who could sway those she conquered to the reign of their new king, but a popular commander could easily a usurper make. It wouldn't take much for Atiqtalaaq to decide that she preferred being queen to her people over being a mere warden for the faraway rule of a young king.

"Yes." Even after all these years in the north of Illea, Bataar Altai still had a trace of a Mongolian accent clinging to his reedy voice. He was persistently paranoid, Xue knew, that the rebels would requisition his lands – his mines, his farms, his properties – and turn them over to the national good. It was the reason he had forced not just one, but both of his granddaughters into Selections, to curry favour with both sides and ensure he would secure a favourable position no matter what the result was. "How is my beloved ach ochkin?"

Xue wondered, rather unkindly, if he had to call her that because he had forgotten which twin he had sent to which Selection. Xue wondered, rather detachedly, if he realised that one twin winning one Selection would prove fatal for the other. Xue wondered, rather reluctantly, if it was a good or bad thing that she had only had the one daughter to enter the Selection.

When Bataar had informed the council of Saran's entry to the Selection, many had called him a fool to think that this would win him any clout whatsoever. Imagine, then, Taichi's reaction when they had been informed in that very same meeting that his daughter had not only entered without his knowledge but had been chosen to compete. It had been positively a boon for the rebel Selection, Xue knew – Yue's name was widely known, not only across Illeá, but abroad as well, particularly in Swendway where she had broken records both times that she had skated there. Having a name like that in Demetri's competition, Xue thought, gave them legitimacy in a way that just some other girl from Whites would not have. And so far, she seemed to acquit herself nicely, appearing composed and refined in all Report clips that had filtered up towards the north. The Altai girl could not say the same.

"Saran is safe for as long as Naran is," was Devery's clipped reply. Xue wondered what argument had raged between the landowner and the warden behind closed doors. "More gratifyingly, both northern girls remaining in the Selection have advanced to the Elite."

Xue struggled to contain her composure. She could see that Taichi was doing the same. "Is that quite correct, Warden? Saran Altai and Yue Yukimura are both in the top ten?"

"The top five," Devery corrected him, and there was a general commotion amongst the table as the council members murmured amongst themselves, some glimmer of hope sparking. Two chances for a northern queen, Xue thought – well, one chance for a northern queen, one chance for a Mongolian one. She could see the way Bataar's eyes shone at this news. "Councilman Yukimura, Councilwoman Bing, you must be very proud."

"Of course," Taichi said simply.

Xue added, "our daughter always makes us proud in all that she does."

"Fáilte romhat, take your shoes off at the door." Alistair McIntyre was a broad-shouldered lighthouse keeper with a tightly cropped reddish beard and long, snaking crows feet beside his smiling hazel eyes that suggested he had spent much of his life squinting into the distance or staring into a very bright light. He was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, suggesting that this week, he was working the day shift at the tower and leaving the nights to his younger brother, as was habit. "Monika's rule. Don't ask me."

The McIntyre house was small and cozy, if cozy was a synonym for cramped – as soon as you stepped in the door, you were practically staring up the stairs, and had to skirt around a pile of abandoned shoes through a narrow wooden hallway to move into the tiny kitchen, where the table was covered with a woven cloth and the woman of the house, Monika Kim, was setting out the tea for the new visitor. Mouchard dutifully took a seat at the table as she put a cup out before him, and thank her quietly – for all their rat-faced visitor looked like a typical rebel recruiter, in a patched grey suit and scuffed black shoes, he knew his manners better than most the McIntyre family had encountered over the last few years of agonisingly slow transition. Hansport had transferred allegiance to the Kingdom, as the North had, and had been alone in doing so, for all their neighbours had remained stubbornly tied to the Crown, and so Hansport had been made a little enclave on the sea, the Kingdom's best sea gate to the west and yet stranded and isolated, utterly on its own.

Opal McIntyre's little sister, Ruby, as much as you could call a nineteen-year-old little, was hovering on the other side of the island, watching the rebel rather anxiously as she prepared a small plate of complimentary food for their visitor. The McIntyres had been Sevens, when they were Illeans, and the evidence of poverty still lingered all around, but Mouchard could tell that Monika was anxious to make a good impression on the representative of those who held her daughter's life in their hands.

"Mr McIntyre, Mrs McIntyre, please. Set down. Don't worry about the tea." The man in the grey suit was calm, and utterly collected, but even so, he could tell that they had been alarmed by his request to cut down on the niceties. Alistair eased himself into a chair opposite Mouchard, as Monika leaned against the kitchen island, and Mouchard said, "perhaps Ruby might excuse us?"

Alistair's jaw tightened. "Is there bad news?" He had a thick Scottish accent, despite his years in Illea, which made each word sound sharper and angrier than he perhaps intended – and Mouchard was sure that he intended them to sound plenty sharp and plenty angry.

Monika said, "Alistair, don't jump to any conclusions…."

"I just can't imagine," Alistair said, "why you'd need the bairn to leave if there was good news."

Mouchard inclined his head. "Very well. I am afraid it is, indeed, bad news. Opal has been removed from his Majesty's Selection."

"Oh," Monika said, and placed a hand flat on her chest, as though she could by pressure alone convince her heart to slow and steady. "Oh, thank goodness, you really did worry us, Mr…." She cast around for a name for a single moment, and then seemed to think better of it. "Oh, well, that's a disappointment for sure, but no matter. I'm sure she did her best."

"Mrs McIntyre, I'm afraid there's a little more bad news."

"Worse news?" Alistair's voice came out as a growl.

"Indeed. I would preface anything I say by adding that… a mission is underway to ameliorate the situation." Mouchard still wasn't sure if they were planning to rescue Opal, or kill her, and certainly was not prepared to tell the McIntyres of that fact.

"The situation."

"Following her elimination, Opal ought to have been removed to Hansport to begin her transition back into the community. Unfortunately, her convoy was ambushed en route, and she has been taken into the custody of the Crown."

"The custody," Alistair repeated. "Of the Crown."

"What does that mean?" Monika asked. "I don't understand. She was arrested? For being in Demetri's Selection? How can that have happened?"

"We are currently working to figure out exactly how that all happened, so that we can solve the situation."

"Where is she?"

"We are currently working..."

"I fucking ask you a question, and you'll fucking answer it. Where is she?"

"The palace," Mouchard said, "the palace in Angeles."

"Will she be alright?" Monika's eyes were darting about, and Mouchard could see that there was a sheen of tears rising within them. In her application to the Selection, Opal McIntyre had been asked why she wanted to join the process. Her answer had been, I never want my mother to ever again go without food so that my sister and I can eat. "She's alive, so she'll be alright? Or will they… oh god, please, tell me she'll stay alive."

"We believe she will be kept alive," Mouchard said, and omitted the unspoken for now. "She will not be harmed. She will be used in some propaganda exercises, so they'll want to keep her looking healthy, looking happy. She will be treated as well as anyone can hope to be treated in Morded's custody."

"I owe no fealty to this Demetri fellow," Alistair said. "I owe no fealty to the rebellion. But you lot promised me you'd look after my girl. I let her go, because she told me she wanted to go, and because you told me you'd protect her. What the hell kind of people are you? What thehell kind of king can he call himself?"

"Mr and Mrs McIntyre," Mouchard said softly. "I understand how you feel."

"You cannae possibly."

"Well then, all I can do is apologise. On my part, and on Demetri's."

"And what, pray tell, could you possibly have to apologise for?"

Mouchard said, "I was on the convoy when we were hit. I was meant to protect your daughter. Six men died trying to save her. It ought to have been seven."

Alistair said, his voice gruff, "how old are you, sir?"

"I'm twenty-two years old, Mr McIntyre."

"Twenty-two. And those men?"

"The oldest was twenty-two, like me. The youngest was sixteen."

"As I said," Alistair McIntyre said, and Mouchard could see that the anger in his eyes had been replaced by a very deep, very profound sorrow. "What the hell kind of king can he call himself?"

The driver's name was Peter Novak, and his older sister, Nina, was in the Selection. Not the Crown's Selection, he said, but the real one, and by real one, he meant the rebel one. He told this fact three times over as he drove his passenger over the border into Paloma, where there was word that, if you waited at the right station at the right time of the day with the right code word, you could catch transport into the Wastelands, and make your way to Layeni. He thought that maybe the festival had already started, Peter Novak wasted no time telling him, but the festival lasted four days, so there was still time to catch some of the celebrations, and if you were a rebel, there was no finer place to be. His passenger had just smiled.

Peter was not a rebel, though he came from a line of rebels, because his sister had told him not to be. He wasn't a miner either, though he came from a line of miners, because his sister had told him not to be that either. He wasn't much of anything, this Peter. He seemed to be pustoy. He had considered going against his sister's advice, he mentioned, as they coasted through gold sands in Paloma, but she wouldn't have been happy to find that out once she had got back from the Selection, and anyway, she was doing her part to make sure that he stayed safe and what good would he be doing if he repaid that gesture by going out and getting into trouble? No, said Peter, no, and so he had taken up a menial driving job, moving coal and sometimes fruit around the safer areas, doing his part without ever offering his life. He had moved coal up into Denbeigh last week, and brought livestock from the Tucker farm in Midston the week before. He was seeing a lot of the country, so much of which he had never seen before, like it was a new nation and not the Illea he had always known.

His passenger had just smiled. He had a gold hand. Peter had remarked on the prosthetic three times since he had sat into the car, and his passenger had just smiled each and every time. Peter had known several men with prosthetics, but such was the way of the mines in Allens. And at home, it was never just a hand – if a cave-in took your hand, it would take your whole arm. Mostly, people lost legs. Lots of people hobbling around Allens these days. Apparently, Mordred had a dire need for coal, that's what Peter Novak said. Peter had been working as a cart-pusher when Nina joined the Selection, but the need for coal had gone up, up, up, through the roof, and then they had tried to push him into a full mining job, so he had quit and taken up driving.

He liked driving, did Peter Novak. He liked the peace and quiet. He liked meeting new people. Bit of travelling did the soul a bit of good. He didn't help with the rebels per se, he said, and loved that phrase and used it plenty, per se, he was just doing a job, like so many other civilians. Just doing a job, and whoever was in charge was not a bother to them really, not so long as you could still hand over your big bags of coal and accept a big stack of cash in return – and hell, not even the cash had really changed, still had Mordred on the front, looking like a miserable bastard. So he hadn't technically broken Nina's terms. He wasn't really a rebel. He was just doing a bit of driving.

His passenger had just smiled. He was a very tall and very thin man, dressed in a black waistcoat and black suit pants, entirely too formal for the Wastelands. He had very dark hair and very dark eyes and very pale skin. He had one gold hand, and one hand with a signet ring on it, with a symbol on it: Ꮬ. Peter had picked him up at the point where Zuni and Tammins and Sumner met, and the man had agreed to pay him more than twice his whole day's wages just to bring him as far as he was going. That was an easy prospect to agree to.

Artur Gildas had rather expected that it might be.

With Maria's sights trained closely on them, from her position half-a-mile away atop what had once been a McDonalds, the man they knew as Killmonger moved across the debris-strewn bridge to greet the rebel waiting for him in the middle. Thiago Wesick was always recognised by his purple coat, for it was whispered that he had taken it from the corpse of old king Trajan after killing him. Lethal wasn't sure how true that story was. Killmonger always said that he would not believe the General would have permitted such a gaudy display of such an abhorrent act. Killmonger had served under the General in the Illean military for three months, back when they were both simply Morris and just Klahan, and deserted three months after the General had, when he had found a little girl stowed in a closet in a raided house. It had only been that – knowing that the General would have and must have raised a good man, just as Killmonger had raised a good woman – that had persuaded Killmonger to let Atiena go to Demetri. Even so, he hadn't quite relaxed all this time that Atiena was gone. It was subtle, but after fifteen years fighting at his side, Lethal had grown to understand the subtlest of hints about what was going on in the older man's mind.

Killmonger stopped, and Lethal stopped just behind him, standing at his left shoulder, as Atiena had once stood at his right. Thiago Wesick was looking rather mutinous, but Lethal didn't think he should take it personally, because it was a similar expression to the one Lethal himself usually wore. There was a car parked at the far end of the bridge. There was a girl sitting in the passenger seat. For a split second, Lethal's heart jumped to think it might be his younger sister – but he would have known Atiena anywhere, and he could tell from the way this girl moved that it was not Atiena.

"Well," Wesick said. "There you are."

"Don't," Killmonger said softly. Lethal wondered if Wesick had been on the verge of saying Killmonger's real name, for surely the spymaster knew it.

"A pleasure to see you as well." Thiago Wesick reached into his coat and produced an envelope – another letter. The fourth that Atiena had managed to get to them, patchworked together to avoid censorship. Killmonger said there was a cypher embedded within to tell him that she was actually okay, and not just saying that she was. So far, all seemed to be okay. Lethal had not expected anything less. Atiena knew how to handle herself in whatever situation arose. "From Lady Atiena, with respects."

Lethal thought that Wesick might have been trying to prove a point by holding the letter just short of Killmonger's grip, so that he had to step forward to take it. Maria's rifle, he knew, would be tracking closely, and not missing anything. Killmonger was careful to leave the shot at Wesick's head unimpeded as he accepted the letter, and stepped back again. "With thanks," he mimicked, his voice sounded somehow grizzled. "She's good?"

"She is."

"Good."

"Got something for you."

"That so?"

"Don't get your hopes up." Wesick indicated the casket beside him, a wooden box about three foot by one, and pushed it across the bridge with a single press of his boot, so that it skidded and landed at Lethal's feet, and, after Killmonger gave him an approving nod, the younger man crouched and slid open the lid of the box. Nestled in a little pile of straw within was a set of five Hilgarri handguns, the sharpest kind. Lethal had never even thought he would see one, except in the hands of Crown soldiers who came for them. Wesick added, "Hilgarri means Lethal. Like your boy. Thought it was appropriate."

Always the same exchange, each time Wesick came to them – Atiena was good, and then some small token gift of ammunition or explosives or armaments. Lethal hadn't been able to understand the meaning behind it, the first few times it had occurred, but now he thought it was quite clear that Wesick had been building up a rapport and showing he could, in some small way, be trusted. Such a process did not and could never occur over a single meeting, but after six such meetings on this bridge, it was becoming clear that Wesick was unlikely to suddenly produce a revolver from beneath his purple coat and blow the Morrises away.

Wesick said, "I don't know if the news has yet reached Tammins, but we've broken through the Zuni line. We can advance east towards Angeles, or west into Tammins to consolidate land. Demetri wanted me to come and speak to you first. Parlay."

"Parlay."

"This is your territory," Wesick said, "you've been fighting the Crown forces here for more than fifteen years. We shouldn't muscle in without a… courtesy visit."

"Courtesy," Killmonger repeated. "So if I told you to get lost, would it matter?"

"I'd hope," Wesick said, "that you wouldn't."

Lethal moved his hands to sign out his feelings. Killmonger tactfully elected not to interpret.

"What do you need?"

Wesick shrugged. "Obviously if we succeed in taking the province, we can ensure that you and your family are compensated, cared for. From what Lady Atiena has told me, you've done good work. We'll need some information on the practicalities – patrols, caches, safehouses. We could do with your militia continuing to provide support on the ground, and look after your community. You're embedded here. People know you. They trust you. You clear out, we move in… that doesn't look like freedom. You think there's public support for the movement?"

"People don't like tyrants," Killmonger bit out. "Better you than Ysabel. The people will support you."

Lethal signed out, for as long as you're better than Ysabel.

Wesick said, "thank you." And then, his hands moving fluidly, if not quite fluent, he signed out a response: we'll try to avoid becoming tyrants.

There was someone tapping at the window of the little room that she had shared with the other Selected girl for the past three months, the lightest tick away at the glass. In her half-doze, lying on top of the blankets, lost in a haze with the world spinning in tight spirals around her, she had almost mistaken it for a bird. Instead, she slipped across the room and pulled open the curtains, her lips quirking into the faintest trace of a smile as the shape of Täj's face swam into view despite the gloom (sharp-featured and angled like he was still being starved, pale as the stars overhead) and she would know him anywhere. She wondered if she could draw his face from memory at this point.

She pushed open the window, and (without asking for permission) he put his hands on the sill and climbed into the room, the effects of the night's revels making him ever so slightly clumsier than usual, like his muscles had frayed away, like he was not merely rusty but ever so slightly misconfigured. She almost thought he was going to stumble when he landed (he certainly landed heavier than he usually would).

"Shut the fuck up." In the hush of the night, her voice was the barest hiss, just the fragment, the ghost, the memory of a sound. "People are asleep."

"You're not." Even for how dark it was, his pupils were like little black holes. She wondered what he was on, if this was just what he had been smoking with Atiena or if he had taken something else afterwards. No wonder, she thought, he was being brave, if you could ever ascribe such a label to this idiot.

"No." It sounded like a confession, but he had never known her to break under interrogation. "I'm not."

He stepped forward and cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs tracing over her cheekbones very gently. She could feel the scrape of his callouses against her skin, could feel how warm his skin was, even if the very tips of his fingers were still cold from the night air – but there was something comfortable about it, something very real and grounding, like she wasn't in Layeni anymore and maybe she never had been, maybe this whole thing had been a strange and awful dream. "Expecting someone?"

"What would you prefer I say?" She had to put her head back to look at him, and she was far from sober herself, so to steady herself she slipped her fingers through his belt loops. The chain-smoker, the paranoiac, the executioner in exile, product of the hinterlands. She didn't even need a name for him at this point, a description, a term. He was so simply and elementally himself.

He looked as though he was considering the question. "Just don't say anyone else's name."

"Not sure I even remember yours."

"Nothing new there."

He nudged his nose against hers, his stubble slid against her jaw and their mouths fell together, and it was as easy as that, as if I had never been otherwise. What had Fitzgerald said? A tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. All the stories she had heard before her first kiss all those years ago had made it sound like your world should shatter, like you should be wholly transformed by the experience, but she had never found it to be anything other than what it was - skin against skin, him against her. He tasted as he always did, like black pepper and nicotine, vaguely bitter and yet she couldn't find herself caring all too much as he angled his mouth from her and kissed instead her cheek, her ear, her neck.

She said, softly, rather bitterly, "what prompted this?"

"Felt like I missed my chance earlier." She dug her fingers into his hips as he caught a particular spot on her throat. "The festival," he said, rather absently, "you know."

She said, "since when did you need an excuse?" and he quietened her with another kiss, the deep kind that had her pressing against him as though they could possibly be closer if she just arced her body into his the tiniest degree more. She knotted one hand in his shirt, pressed against the small of his back, pulling him harder against her, and felt him turn his head and slightly smile against her mouth, and could only respond by pressing her mouth against his, even harder again, like she was trying to take something back from him.

And yet he was, quite stubbornly, determined to be gentle, and seemed to find it even funnier that this frustrated her, so much that she had to just push him back onto the bed (her bed, though the thought crossed her mind) and climb into his lap and he put his arms around her and he held her and every time they paused to draw breath there would be a whispered exchange ("when is your roommate back?") and then one or the other would angle them back together so that the moment was, again, lost ("were you planning on fucking wasting time?"), and lost again, and lost a third time, and she still found it funny that he hadn't got sick of seeing her after all this time that he still paused and his eyes (she still didn't have a word for that look) and after all this time she still didn't know how to respond (but he never did did give her a chance to).

And anyway, at this point they so rarely needed to speak.

"You literally have your own room." Afterwards, she spoke against his skin, her cheek pressed against his pectoral, his hand tangled in her hair. When she laughed, he could feel her laugh reverberating through her bones. His bones as well. Almost like a shudder. She was thinner than she had been. He had been humming, very softly, some old song from one of her vinyls - Monday, you can fall apart, Tuesday, Wednesday, break my heart, Thursday doesn't even start, it's Friday... "You really had to climb in the window to mine?"

"Krasotka." His voice was so languid, like it had melted, like it always sounded when he had been drinking too much. She slid her hand across the skin of his stomach, her fingertips seeking out the familiar scars along his abdomen. He could feel the cicatrices, where her fingerprints had been burned off all those years ago. "You believe I was thinking straight?"

"Zhizn moya." She mimicked the stretch of his syllables, the slight creak-and-strain of his voice, like it had been burned through over the years. "Are you ever?"

He had his eyes shut. She had always been jealous of his eyelashes – darker than his hair, like his eyebrows were, long and thick. And of his cheekbones, she mused, dark and hollow. He had always struck her as someone who had been composed far too delicately for the terror-and-waste of the lands beyond the south. Every time he had survived, he had surprised her. "I feel like you're setting me up for a line here."

He had bruises under his eyes from lack of sleep, and barva dye streaked messily across his skin, and gunpowder clinging to his wrist. He looked worse than he had in a long time. She knew without looking that his nails would have been bitten short. "Never."

He had his arm around her waist and his cheek against her hair and his fingers tangled, very loosely, in hers. His heartbeat was slow and steady and he smelled like smoke and sage. "I just wanted to see you." The words were whispered, pressed into her hair as though they would be less treasonous if he did it that way. "Is that a crime?"

"Quite literally," she said. "Yes."