The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (A Hunger Games Novel) (The Hunger Games)

Sejanus startled in what Coriolanus couldn’t help thinking was a guilty manner, getting rapidly to his feet as he brushed the dust from his uniform. Billy Taupe, on the other hand, rose slowly, almost lazily, to confront them.

“Well, look who’s decided to talk to me,” he said, grinning uneasily at Lucy Gray. Was this the first time they’d spoken since the Hunger Games?

“Sejanus, Maude Ivory’s all bent out of shape about you bailing on those nuts,” she said.

“Yes, I’ve been shirking my duties.” Sejanus held out his hand to Billy Taupe, who didn’t hesitate to give it a shake. “Nice meeting you.”

“Sure, you, too. You can find me around the Hob some days, if you want to talk more,” Billy Taupe replied.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” said Sejanus, making for the house.

Lucy Gray released Coriolanus’s hand and squared her shoulders with Billy Taupe’s. “Go away, Billy Taupe. And don’t come back.”

“Or what, Lucy Gray? You’ll sic your Peacekeepers on me?” He laughed.

“If need be,” she said.

Billy Taupe glanced over at Coriolanus. “Seem like a pretty tame pair.”

“You don’t get it. There’s no walking this back,” said Lucy Gray.

Billy Taupe turned angry. “You know I didn’t try and kill you.”

“I know you’re still running with the girl that did,” Lucy Gray shot back. “Hear you’ve made yourself right at home at the mayor’s.”

“And who sent me over there in the first place, I wonder? Makes me sick how you’re playing the kids. Poor Lucy Gray. Poor lamb,” he sneered.

“They’re not stupid. They want you gone, too,” she spat out.

Billy Taupe’s hand whipped out, grabbing her wrist and pulling her up against him. “Where, exactly, am I supposed to go?”

Before Coriolanus could intervene, Lucy Gray sank her teeth into Billy Taupe’s hand, causing him to yelp and release her. He glared at Coriolanus, who’d stepped up protectively beside her. “Doesn’t look like you’re so lonely yourself. This your fancy man from the Capitol? Chased all this way after you? He’s got a few surprises waiting for him.”

“I already know all about you.” Coriolanus didn’t, really. But it made him feel at less of a disadvantage.

Billy Taupe gave a disbelieving laugh. “Me? I’m the rosebud in that dung heap.”

“Why don’t you go, like she asked?” said Coriolanus coldly.

“Fine. You’ll learn.” Billy Taupe gathered his possessions into his arms. “You’ll learn soon enough.” He strode off into the hot morning.

Lucy Gray watched him go, rubbing the wrist he’d grabbed. “If you want to run, now’s the time.”

“I don’t want to run,” said Coriolanus, although the exchange had been unsettling.

“He’s a liar and a louse. Sure, I flirt with anybody. It’s part of my job. But what he’s implying, that just isn’t true.” Lucy Gray looked over at the window. “And what if it was? What if it was that or letting Maude Ivory starve? Neither of us would have let that happen, no matter what it took. Only, he’s got a different set of rules for him than for me. Like always. What makes him a victim makes me trash.”

This brought back disturbing memories of his conversation with Tigris, and Coriolanus changed the subject quickly. “He’s seeing the mayor’s daughter now?”

“That’s how it is. I sent him over there to pick up some cash teaching piano lessons, and the next thing I know, her daddy’s calling out my name in the reaping,” said Lucy Gray. “Not sure what she told him. He’d go nuts if he knew she was running around with Billy Taupe. Well, I survived the Capitol, but not to come back for more of the same.”

Something in her manner, the raw distress, convinced Coriolanus. He touched her arm. “Make a new life, then.”

She entwined her fingers with his. “A new life. With you.” But a cloud hung over her.

Coriolanus gave her a nudge. “Don’t we have a goat to milk?”

Her face relaxed. “We do.” She led him back into the house, only to find Maude Ivory had taken Sejanus out to teach him to milk Shamus.

“He couldn’t say no. He’s in the doghouse for talking to the enemy,” said Barb Azure. She took a pan of chilled milk from the old refrigerator, set it on the table, and examined it. From a shelf, Clerk Carmine retrieved a glass jar with some sort of contraption on the top. A crank attached to the lid appeared to move small paddles within the jar.

“What are you doing there?” asked Coriolanus.

“A fool’s errand.” Barb Azure laughed. “Trying to get enough cream so as we can make butter. Only goat’s milk doesn’t separate like cow’s.”

“Maybe if we gave it another day?” Clerk Carmine said.

“Well, maybe.” Barb Azure returned the pan to the refrigerator.

“We promised Maude Ivory we’d try. She’s crazy for butter. Tam Amber fashioned the churn for her birthday. Guess we’ll see,” said Lucy Gray.

Coriolanus fiddled with the crank. “So you . . . ?”

“Theoretically, when we get enough cream, we turn the handle, and the paddles churn it into butter,” Lucy Gray explained. “Well, that’s what someone told us anyway.”

“Seems like a lot of work.” Coriolanus thought of the beautiful, uniform pats he’d helped himself to from the buffet on reaping day, never giving a moment’s thought as to where they came from.

“It is. But it’ll be worth it if it works. Maude Ivory doesn’t sleep well since they took me away. Seems fine during the day, then wakes up screaming at night,” confided Lucy Gray. “Trying to get some happy in her head.”

Barb Azure strained the fresh milk Sejanus and Maude Ivory brought in and poured it into mugs while Lucy Gray portioned out the bread. Coriolanus had never had goat’s milk, but Sejanus smacked his lips, saying it reminded him of his childhood in District 2.

“Did I ever go to District Two?” Maude Ivory asked.

“No, baby, that’s out west. The Covey stayed more east,” Barb Azure told her.

“Sometimes we went north,” said Tam Amber, and Coriolanus realized it was the first time he’d heard him speak.

“To what district?” asked Coriolanus.

“No district, really,” said Barb Azure. “Up where the Capitol didn’t care about.”

Coriolanus felt embarrassed for them. No such place existed. At least not anymore. The Capitol controlled the known world. For a moment, he imagined a group of people in wild animal furs scraping out an existence in a cave somewhere. He supposed such a thing could happen, but that life would be a big step down from even the districts. Barely human.

“Probably rounded up like we were,” said Clerk Carmine.

Barb Ivory gave a sad smile. “Doubt we’ll ever know.”

“Is there any more? I’m still hungry,” Maude Ivory complained, but the bread was gone.

“Eat a handful of your nuts,” Barb Azure said. “They’ll feed us at the wedding.”

To Coriolanus’s dismay, it turned out that the Covey had a job that afternoon, playing for a wedding in town. He had hoped to get Lucy Gray off alone again for a more in-depth conversation about Billy Taupe, her history with him, and exactly why he might be drawing a map of the base in the dirt. But it would all have to wait, since the Covey began to prepare for their gig as soon as the dishes were washed.

“Sorry to run you off so soon, but this is how we earn our bread.” Lucy Gray saw Coriolanus and Sejanus to the door. “The butcher’s daughter’s getting hitched, and we need to make a good impression. People with money to hire us will be there. You could wait and walk us over, I guess, but that might . . .”

“Start people gossiping,” he finished for her, glad she had been the first to suggest it. “Probably best if we keep it between us. When can I see you again?”

“Anytime you like,” she said. “I have a feeling your schedule’s a little more demanding than mine.”

“Do you play at the Hob next Saturday?” he asked.

“If they let us. After the trouble last night.” They agreed he would come as early as he could to share a few precious minutes with her before the show. “There’s a shed we use, just behind the Hob. You can meet us there. If there’s no show, just come to the house.”

Coriolanus waited until he and Sejanus reached the deserted backstreets near the base before he broached the subject of Billy Taupe. “So, what did you two have to talk about?”

“Nothing, really,” said Sejanus uncomfortably. “Just some local gossip.”

“And that required a map of the base?” asked Coriolanus.

Sejanus pulled up short. “You never miss a beat, do you? I remember that from school. Watching you watch other people. Pretending you weren’t. And choosing the moments you weighed in so carefully.”

“I’m weighing in now, Sejanus. Why were you in deep discussion with him over a map of the base? What is he? A rebel sympathizer?” Sejanus averted his gaze, so Coriolanus continued. “What possible interest can he have in a Capitol base?”

Sejanus stared at the ground for a minute, then said, “It’s the girl. From the hanging. The one they arrested the other day. Lil. She’s locked up there.”

“And the rebels want to rescue her?” pressed Coriolanus.

“No. They just want to communicate with her. Make sure she’s all right,” explained Sejanus.

Coriolanus tried to keep his temper in check. “And you said you would help.”

“No, I made no promises. But if I can, if I’m near the guardhouse, perhaps I can find something out. Her family’s frantic,” said Sejanus.

“Oh, wonderful. Fantastic. So now you’re a rebel informant.” Coriolanus took off down the road. “I thought you were letting the whole rebel thing go!”

Sejanus followed on his heels. “I can’t, all right? It’s part of who I am. And you’re the one who said I could help the people in the districts if I agreed to leave the arena.”

“I believe I said you could fight for the tributes, meaning you might be able to procure more humane conditions for them,” Coriolanus corrected him.

“Humane conditions!” Sejanus burst out. “They’re being forced to murder each other! And the tributes are from the districts, too, so I don’t really see a distinction. It’s a tiny thing, Coryo, to check up on this girl.”

“Clearly, it isn’t,” said Coriolanus. “Not to Billy Taupe, anyway. Or why did he wipe out that map so fast? Because he knows what he’s asking. He knows he’s making you a collaborator. And do you know what happens to collaborators?”

“I just thought —” began Sejanus.

“No, Sejanus, you’re not thinking at all!” steamed Coriolanus. “And, even worse, you’re falling in with people who barely seem capable of thought. Billy Taupe? What’s his stake in this anyway? Money? Because to hear Lucy Gray talk, the Covey aren’t rebels. Or Capitol. They’re pretty much set on hanging on to their own identity, whatever that is.”

“I don’t know. He said he . . . he was asking for a friend,” stammered Sejanus.

“A friend?” Coriolanus realized he was shouting and dropped his voice to a hush. “A friend of old Arlo, who set the explosions in the mines? There was a piece of brilliant plotting. What possible result could he have been hoping for? They have no resources, nothing at all that would allow them to reengage in a war. And in the meantime, they’re biting the hand that feeds them, because how will they eat here in Twelve without those mines? They’re not exactly bubbling over with options. What sort of strategy was that?”

“A desperate one. But look around!” Sejanus grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop. “How long can you expect them to go on like this?”

Coriolanus felt a surge of hatred as he remembered the war, the devastation the rebels had brought to his own life. He yanked his arm free. “They lost the war. A war they started. They took that risk. This is the price they pay.”

Sejanus looked about, as if unsure which direction to go, and then slumped down on a broken wall along the road. Coriolanus had the unpleasant feeling that he was somehow taking old Strabo Plinth’s role in the endless discussion over where Sejanus’s loyalties lay. He had not signed up for this. On the other hand, if Sejanus went rogue out here, there was no telling where it would end.

Coriolanus sat down beside him. “Look, I think things will improve, really, but not like this. As it gets better overall, it will get better here, but not if they keep blowing up the mines. All that does is add to the body count.”

Sejanus nodded, and they sat there as a few raggedy children went by, kicking an old tin can down the road. “Do you think I’ve committed treason?”

“Not quite yet,” said Coriolanus with a half smile.

Sejanus tugged at some weeds growing out of the wall. “Dr. Gaul does. My father went to see her, before he went to Dean Highbottom and the board. Everyone knows she’s really the one in charge. He went to ask if I might be given the chance you were, to sign up for the Peacekeepers.”

“I thought that would be automatic,” said Coriolanus. “If you were expelled like me.”

“That was my father’s hope. But she said, ‘Don’t conflate the boys’ actions. A piece of faulty strategy is not commensurate with a treasonous act of rebel support.’” Bitterness crept into his voice. “And so a check appeared for a new lab for her mutts. It must have been the priciest ticket to District Twelve in history.”

Coriolanus gave a low whistle. “A gymnasium and a lab?”

“Say what you will, I’ve done more for Capitol reconstruction than the president himself,” Sejanus joked halfheartedly. “You’re right, Coriolanus. I’ve been stupid. Again. I’ll be more careful in the future. Whatever that holds.”

“Probably some fried baloney,” Coriolanus said.

“Well, then, lead on,” said Sejanus, and they resumed their trek to the base.

Their bunkmates were just rolling out of bed when they returned. Sejanus took Beanpole out to work on his drills, and Smiley and Bug went over to see what was happening in the rec room. Coriolanus planned to use the hours until dinner studying for the officer candidate test, but his conversation with Sejanus had planted an idea in his brain. It grew rapidly until it wiped out everything else. Dr. Gaul had defended him. Well, not defended him. But made sure Strabo Plinth understood that Coriolanus was in an entirely different class than his delinquent son. Coriolanus’s crime had been only “a piece of faulty strategy,” which didn’t sound like much of a crime at all. Perhaps she hadn’t written him off entirely? She’d seemed to take special pains with his education during the Games. Singled him out. Would it be worth writing to her now, just to . . . just to . . . well, he didn’t know what he hoped to achieve. But who knew, up the road, when he might be an officer of some consequence, if their paths might not cross again. It couldn’t hurt to write her. He’d already been stripped of everything of value. The worst she could do was ignore him.

Coriolanus chewed on his pen as he tried to compose his thoughts. Should he start with an apology? Why? She would know he wasn’t sorry for trying to win, only for being caught. Better to bypass the apology entirely. He could tell her of his life here on the base, but it seemed too mundane. Their conversations had been, if nothing else, elevated. An ongoing lesson, exclusively for his benefit. And then it struck him. The thing to do was to continue the lesson. Where had they left off? His one-pager on chaos, control, and — what was that third one? He always had trouble remembering. Oh, yes, contract. The one it took the might of the Capitol to enforce. And so he began. . . .

Dear Dr. Gaul,

So much has occurred since our last conversation, but every day I am informed by it. District Twelve provides an excellent stage upon which to watch the battle between chaos and control play out, and, as a Peacekeeper, I have a front-row seat.

He went on to discuss the things he’d been privy to since his arrival. The palpable tension between the citizens and the Capitol forces, how it threatened to spill over into violence at the hanging, how it had overflowed into a brawl at the Hob.

It reminded me of my stint in the arena. It’s one thing to speak of humans’ essential nature theoretically, another to consider it when a fist is smashing into your mouth. Only this time I felt more prepared. I’m not convinced that we are all as inherently violent as you say, but it takes very little to bring the beast to the surface, at least under the cover of darkness. I wonder how many of those miners would have thrown a punch if the Capitol could have seen their faces? In the midday sun of the hanging, they grumbled but didn’t dare to fight.

Well, it’s something to think over while my lip heals.

He added that he did not expect she would reply but wished her well. Two pages. Short and sweet. Not overly demanding of attention. Not asking for anything. Not apologizing. He folded the letter crisply, sealed the envelope, and addressed it to her at the Citadel. To avoid questions, especially from Sejanus, he went over directly and dropped it in the mail. There goes nothing, he thought.

At dinner, the fried baloney came with applesauce and greasy chunks of potatoes, and he ate every bite on his heaping tray with relish. After supper, Sejanus helped him study for the test, being noncommittal as to his own interest in it.

“They only offer it three times a year, and one’s this Wednesday afternoon,” said Coriolanus. “We should both take it. If only for practice.”

“No, I don’t have a handle on this military stuff yet. I think you’ll get through it, though,” Sejanus replied. “Even if you’re a little shaky, you’ll ace the rest of it, and your overall score might be high enough to pass. Go ahead, take it before you forget all your math.” He had a point. Already some of Coriolanus’s geometry seemed a bit rusty.

“If you were an officer, perhaps they’d let you train to be a doctor. You were awfully good in science,” said Coriolanus, trying to feel out where Sejanus’s head might be after their conversation. He definitely needed something new to focus on. “And then you could, like you said, help people.”

“That’s true.” Sejanus thought it over. “Maybe I’ll talk to the doctors over at the clinic and find out how they got there.”

The following morning, after a night of strange dreams that vacillated between him kissing Lucy Gray and feeding Dr. Gaul’s snakelets, Coriolanus added his name to the list to take the test. The officer in charge told him that he’d be officially excused from training, and that in itself seemed incentive to sign up, for the week promised to be broiling. It was more than that, really. The heat, yes, but also the boredom of his day-to-day life had begun to wear on him. If he could become an officer, Coriolanus would be given more challenging tasks.

The day brought two alterations to the regular schedule. The first, that they would begin serving on guard duty, caused little excitement, as the job was widely known for its tedium. Still, Coriolanus reasoned, he’d rather be manning the desk at the front of the barracks than scrubbing pans. Perhaps he could sneak in a bit of reading or writing.

The second change unnerved him. When they reported for marksmanship, they were informed that Coriolanus’s suggestion to shoot the birds around the gallows had been approved. Beforehand, however, the Citadel wanted them to trap a hundred or so jabberjays and mockingjays and return them to the lab, unharmed, for study. His squad had been tapped to help position cages in the trees that afternoon, which meant he’d be working with scientists from Dr. Gaul’s lab. A team had arrived by hovercraft that morning. He’d only ever seen a handful of people at the Citadel, but the idea of encountering anyone from the lab, where no doubt everyone knew the details of his trickery with the snakes and subsequent disgrace, set him on edge. And then a terrible thought hit him: Surely, Dr. Gaul wouldn’t oversee the bird roundup herself? Sending her a letter across the expanse of Panem had seemed almost like a lark, but it made him tremble to think of meeting her face-to-face for the first time since his banishment.

As Coriolanus bounced along in the back of the truck, unarmed and perhaps soon to be unmasked, his optimism from the weekend vanished. The other recruits, happy to be on what they seemed to view as a field trip, chattered around him as he sank into silence.

Sejanus, however, understood his trepidation. “Dr. Gaul won’t be here, you know,” he whispered. “This is strictly lackey work if we’re involved.” Coriolanus nodded but was not convinced.

When the truck pulled up under the hanging tree, he hid in the back of the squad while he surveyed the four Capitol scientists, all of whom were ridiculously dressed in their white lab coats, as if they might be about to discover the secret to immortality instead of trapping a bunch of insipid birds in hundred-degree heat. He examined each face, but none looked even remotely familiar, and he relaxed a bit. The cavernous lab had contained hundreds of scientists, and these were bird, not reptile, specialists. They greeted the soldiers good-naturedly, directing everyone to grab one of the wire mesh traps, which looked like cages, while they explained the setup. The recruits obliged, collected their traps, and took seats at the edge of the woods near the gallows.

Sejanus gave him a thumbs-up at Dr. Gaul’s absence, and he was about to return it when he noticed a figure in a clearing deeper in the woods. A woman in a lab coat stood motionless, her back to them, head tipped sideways as she listened to the cacophony of birdsong. The other scientists waited respectfully until she finished and made her way back through the trees. As she pushed a branch aside, Coriolanus got a clear look at her face, which might have been forgettable had it not been for the large, pink glasses perched on her nose. He recognized her at once. She was the one who’d chewed him out for upsetting her birds when he’d been flailing around, trying to escape the lab after watching Clemensia collapse in a rainbow of pus. The question was, would she remember him? He slouched down even farther behind Smiley’s back and developed a fascination with his bird trap.

The rosily bespectacled woman, who one of the scientists affectionately introduced as “Our Dr. Kay,” greeted them in a friendly manner, explaining their mission — to collect fifty each of the jabberjays and mockingjays — and laying out the plan for achieving it. They were to help seed the forest with the traps, which would be baited with food, water, and decoy birds to draw in the prey. The traps would be open for two days so that the birds could freely come and go. On Wednesday, they would return, refresh the bait, and set the traps to capture the birds.

Eager to please, the recruits divided into five groups of four, each of which followed one of the scientists into a different part of the woods. Coriolanus swerved into a clump with the man who’d introduced Dr. Kay and concealed himself in the foliage as soon as possible. In addition to the traps, they carried backpacks containing various types of bait. They hiked a hundred yards until they reached a red mark on one of the trunks indicating their ground zero. Under the scientist’s direction, they spread out concentrically from the spot, working in teams of two to bait the traps and position them high in the trees.

Coriolanus found himself paired with Bug, who turned out to be a first-class climber, having been raised in District 11, where the children helped to tend the orchards. They spent a sweaty but productive couple of hours working, with Coriolanus baiting and Bug hauling the traps into the branches. When they reconvened, Coriolanus ducked out and sat on the truck bed, examining his multiple bug bites until they’d put some distance between him and Dr. Kay. She had paid him no special attention at all. Don’t be paranoid, he thought. She doesn’t remember you.

Tuesday was back to business as usual, though Coriolanus reviewed for the test over meals and in the brief time before lights-out. He was itching to get back to Lucy Gray, and she kept drifting into his thoughts, but he did his best to push her out, promising himself he could revel in daydreams when the test was over. On Wednesday, he muscled his way through the morning workout, sat alone during lunch with the manual for a final cram, and then went over to the classroom in which they did their tactical lessons. Two other Peacekeepers had signed up, one in his late twenties who claimed to have taken the test five times already and another who must have been pushing fifty, which seemed ancient for a life change.

Test-taking ranked among Coriolanus’s greatest talents, and he felt the familiar rush of excitement as he opened the cover of his booklet. He loved the challenge, and his obsessive nature meant almost instant absorption into the mental obstacle course. Three hours later, sweat-soaked, exhausted, and happy, he handed in his booklet and went to the mess hall for ice. He sat in the strip of shade his barrack provided, rubbing the cubes over his body and reviewing the questions in his head. The ache of losing his university career returned briefly, but he pushed it away with thoughts of becoming a legendary military leader like his father. Maybe this had been his destiny all along.

The rest of his squad was still out with the Citadel scientists, climbing trees and activating the traps, so he wandered over to collect the mail for his room. Two giant boxes from Ma Plinth greeted him, promising another wild night at the Hob. He carried them back but decided to wait to open them until the others returned. Ma had also sent him a separate letter, thanking him for all he had done for Sejanus and asking him to continue to keep an eye on her boy.

Coriolanus put down the letter and sighed at the thought of being Sejanus’s keeper. Escaping the Capitol may have temporarily relieved his torment, but he’d already worked himself into a state about the rebels. Conspiring with Billy Taupe. Agonizing over the girl in the guardhouse. How long would it be before he pulled another stunt like sneaking into the arena? Then, once again, people would look to Coriolanus to get him out of the mess.

The thing was, he didn’t believe Sejanus would ever really change. Perhaps he was incapable of it, but, more to the point, he didn’t want to. Already he had rejected what the Peacekeeping life offered: pretending he couldn’t shoot, refusing to take the officer candidate test, making it clear he had no desire to excel on behalf of the Capitol. District 2 would always be home. District people would always be family. District rebels would always have a just cause on their side . . . and it would be Sejanus’s moral duty to help them.

Coriolanus felt a new sense of threat rising up inside him. He’d tried to shrug off Sejanus’s misguided behavior in the Capitol, but here it was different. Here he was viewed as an adult, and the consequences of his actions could be life or death. If he helped the rebels, he could find himself in front of a firing squad. What was going on in Sejanus’s head anyway?

On impulse, Coriolanus opened Sejanus’s locker, removed his box, and slid the contents onto the floor carefully. They included a stack of mementos, a pack of gum, and three medicine bottles prescribed by a Capitol doctor. Two appeared to be sleeping capsules and the third a bottle of morphling with a dropper built into the lid, much like the one he’d seen Dean Highbottom use on occasion. He knew Sejanus had been medicated during his breakdown, Ma had told him as much, but why had he brought these here? Had Ma slipped them in as a precaution? He flipped through the rest of the contents. A scrap of fabric, stationery, pens, a small chunk of marble crudely carved into something that might be a heart, and a pile of photos. The Plinths had annual portraits taken, and he could map Sejanus’s growth from infant to this past new year. All the pictures were of family, except an old photo of a group of schoolchildren. Coriolanus took it to be one of their class, but no one looked familiar, and a lot of the kids were dressed in rather ill-fitting, shabby clothing. He spotted Sejanus, in a neat suit, smiling pensively from the second row. Behind him towered a boy who he took to be much older. On closer inspection, though, the pieces fell together. It was Marcus. In a school photo from Sejanus’s last year in District 2. There was no record of his Capitol classmates at all, not even Coriolanus. For some reason, this seemed the greatest confirmation of where Sejanus’s loyalties lay.

At the bottom of the pile, he found a thick silver frame holding, of all things, Sejanus’s diploma. It had been removed from its fine leather folder and transferred to the frame, as if for display. But why? Sejanus would not in a million years hang it on the wall, even if he had a wall to hang it on. Coriolanus fingered the frame, tracing the tarnished metal, and flipped it over. The back panel seemed slightly askew, and a tiny corner of pale green paper peeked from the side. That’s not just paper, he thought grimly, and slid the fasteners to free the panel. As it popped off, a stack of freshly minted bills spilled to the floor.

Money. And quite a lot of it. Why would Sejanus have brought so much cash to his new life as a Peacekeeper? Would Ma have insisted? No, not Ma. She seemed to feel money was at the root of their misery. Strabo, then? Thinking that whatever his son encountered, the money would shield him from harm? Possibly, but Strabo usually handled the payoffs himself. Was it something Sejanus had done on his own, without his parents’ knowledge? That was more worrisome to think of. Was this a lifetime of allowances carefully squirreled away for a rainy day? Withdrawn from the bank the day before his departure and hidden in his picture frame? Sejanus always complained about his father’s habit of buying his way out of trouble, but had it been ingrained from birth? The Plinth method of solving problems. Passed down from father to son. Distasteful but efficient.

Coriolanus scooped up the cash, tapped it into a neat stack, and flipped through the bills. There were hundreds, thousands of dollars here. But what use would it be in District 12, where there was nothing to buy? Nothing, anyway, that a Peacekeeper’s salary wouldn’t cover. Most of the recruits were sending half their paychecks home, as the Capitol provided almost everything they needed, short of stationery and a night at the Hob. He supposed the Hob had the black market, but he hadn’t seen much to tempt a Peacekeeper once the booze had been bought. They didn’t need dead rabbits, or shoelaces, or homemade soap. And even if they did, they could easily afford it. Of course, there were other things you could buy. Like information, and access, and silence. There were bribes. There was power.

Coriolanus heard the voices of his returning squad. He swiftly concealed the cash in the silver frame, being careful to leave one tiny corner of green visible. He repacked the box and stored it in Sejanus’s locker. By the time his bunkmates rolled in, he was standing over Ma’s boxes with his arms spread wide, wearing a big grin and asking, “Who’s free on Saturday?”

As Smiley, Beanpole, and Bug tore open the boxes and unpacked the treasures within, Sejanus sat on a bed and watched with amusement.

Coriolanus leaned on the bunk above him. “Thank goodness for your ma. Otherwise we’d all be flat broke.”

“Yes, not a penny between us,” Sejanus agreed.

The one thing Coriolanus had never questioned was Sejanus’s honesty. If anything, he’d have welcomed a little less of it. But this was a bald-faced lie, delivered as naturally as the truth. Which meant that now anything he said was suspect.