The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

by Suzanne Collins

  Except that line. Whether anyone pieced together his actions or not, he knew he had crossed it. In fact, he knew he’d been dancing on top of it for some time. Like when he’d taken Sejanus’s food from the dining hall to feed Lucy Gray. It had been a small infraction, motivated by his desire to keep her alive and his anger at the Gamemakers’ negligence. An argument could be made for basic decency there. But it was not a lone incident. He could see it all now, the slippery slope of the last few weeks that had started with Sejanus’s leftovers and ended with him here, shivering in the dark on a deserted park bench. What awaited him farther down that slope if he was unable to stop his descent? What else might he be capable of? Well, that was it. It stopped now. If he didn’t have honor, he had nothing. No more deception. No more shady strategies. No more rationalization. From now on he’d live honestly, and if he ended up as a beggar, at least he would be a decent one.

  His feet had carried him far from home, but he realized the Plinth apartment was just a few minutes away. Why not pop in?

  An Avox in a maid’s outfit opened the door and gestured to ask if she should take his book bag. He declined and inquired if Sejanus was free. She led him to a drawing room and indicated that he should sit. While he waited, he took in the furnishings with a knowing eye. Fine furniture, thick carpets, embroidered tapestries, a bronze bust of someone. While the exterior of the apartment had not impressed, no expense had been spared on the interior. All the Plinths needed was an address on the Corso to solidify their status.

  Mrs. Plinth bustled in, full of apologies and flour. Sejanus, it seemed, had gone to bed early, and he’d caught her in the kitchen. Would he come downstairs for a moment and have a cup of tea? Or perhaps she should serve tea in here, like the Snows had. No, no, he assured her, the kitchen would be fine. As if anyone served a guest in the kitchen but a Plinth. But he had not come to pass judgment. He had come to be thanked, and if that involved baked goods, all the better.

  “Would you like pie? I’ve got blackberry. Or peach if you can wait for it.” She nodded to a pair of newly assembled pies on the counter awaiting the oven. “Or maybe cake? I made custards this afternoon. The Avoxes like those best, because, you know, they’re easy to swallow. Coffee or tea or milk?” The lines between Ma’s eyebrows deepened in anxiety, as if nothing she could offer would be good enough.

  Although he’d eaten dinner, the events at the Citadel and the walk had left him drained. “Oh, milk, please. And the blackberry pie would be a real treat. No one can compete with your cooking.”

  Ma filled a large glass to the brim. She carved out a full quarter of the pie and plunked it onto a plate. “Do you like ice cream?” she asked. Several scoops of vanilla followed. She pulled a chair up to the surprisingly simple wooden table. It sat under a framed needlepoint of a mountain scene overlaid with a single word: HOME. “My sister sent me that. She’s the only one I really stay in touch with now. Or who stays in touch with me, I guess. Doesn’t really fit with the rest of the house, but I have my corner down here. Please, sit. Eat.”

  Her corner boasted the table with three mismatched chairs, the needlepoint, and a shelf filled with little oddities. A pair of rooster salt and pepper shakers, a marble egg, and a soft doll with patched clothing. The sum total of the possessions, Coriolanus suspected, that she’d brought from home. Her shrine to District 2. It was pitiful, the way she clung to that backward mountain region. Poor little displaced person without a hope of ever fitting in, spending her days making custards for Avoxes who would never taste them, and pining for the past. He watched her slide the pies into the oven and took a bite of his slice. His taste buds tingled in pleasure.

  “How is it?” she asked anxiously.

  “Superb,” he said. “Like everything you cook, Mrs. Plinth.” It wasn’t an exaggeration. Ma might be pathetic, but she was something of an artist in the kitchen.

  She allowed herself a small smile and joined him at the table. “Well, if you ever want seconds, our door is always open. I don’t even know how to begin to thank you, Coriolanus, for what you’ve done for us. Sejanus is my life. I’m sorry he can’t visit with you. He’s taken a lot of that sedative. Can’t seem to sleep otherwise. So angry, so lost. Well, I don’t have to tell you how unhappy he is.”

  “The Capitol isn’t really the best fit for him,” said Coriolanus.

  “For any of us Plinths, really. Strabo says that while it’s hard for us now, it will be better for Sejanus and his children, but I don’t know.” She glanced up at her shelf. “Your family and friends, that’s your real life, Coriolanus, and we left all ours back in Two. But you know that already. I can see it. I’m glad you’ve got your grandma and that sweet cousin.”

  Coriolanus found himself trying to cheer her up, saying that things would be better once Sejanus graduated from the Academy. The University had more people, and more kinds of people from all over the Capitol, and he was sure to make new friends.

  Mrs. Plinth nodded but didn’t seem convinced. The Avox maid caught her attention and communicated in a kind of sign language. “All right, he’ll come up after he finishes his pie,” Mrs. Plinth told her. “My husband would like to see you, if you don’t mind. I think he wants to thank you.”

  When Coriolanus swallowed his last bite of pie, he bid Ma good night and followed the maid up the stairs to the main floor. The thick carpeting silenced their footsteps, so they arrived at the open library door without warning, and he was able to get a look at Strabo Plinth with his guard down. The man stood at a fancy stone fireplace, his tall frame propped up by an elbow on the mantel, staring down into where the flame would be in another season. Now the hearth was cold and empty, and Coriolanus had to wonder what he saw there that would provoke the profoundly sad expression on his face. One hand gripped the velvet lapel of his expensive smoking jacket, which seemed all wrong, like Mrs. Plinth’s designer dress or Sejanus’s suit. The Plinths’ wardrobe always suggested they were trying too hard to be Capitol. The unquestionable quality of the clothes clashed with their district personae instead of disguising them, just as the Grandma’am in a flour-sack dress would still scream Corso.

  Mr. Plinth met his gaze, and Coriolanus felt a sensation he remembered from encounters with his own father, a mix of anxiety and awkwardness, as if, at that moment, he’d been caught doing something foolish. This man, however, was a Plinth, not a Snow.

  Coriolanus produced his best society smile. “Good evening, Mr. Plinth. I’m not disturbing you?”

  “Not at all. Come in. Sit.” Mr. Plinth gestured to the leather chairs before the fireplace rather than the ones before his imposing oak desk. This was to be personal, then, not business. “You’ve eaten? Of course, you couldn’t get out of the kitchen without my wife stuffing you like a turkey. Do you want a drink? A whiskey maybe?”

  Adults had never offered him any beverage stronger than posca, which went quickly enough to his head. He couldn’t risk that for this exchange. “I don’t know where I’d put it,” he said with a laugh, patting his stomach as he settled himself into a chair. “But please, you go ahead.”

  “Oh, I don’t drink.” Mr. Plinth folded himself into the facing chair and looked Coriolanus over. “You look like your father.”

  “I hear that a lot,” said Coriolanus. “Did you know him?”

  “Our business overlapped at times.” He drummed his long fingers on the arm of the chair. “It’s striking, the resemblance. But you’re nothing like him, really.”

  No, thought Coriolanus. I’m poor and powerless. Although maybe the perceived difference was good for tonight’s purposes. His district-hating father would have loathed seeing Strabo Plinth admitted to the Capitol and becoming a titan of the munitions industry. That was not why he’d given his life in the war.

  “Nothing at all. Or you’d never have gone into that arena after my son,” continued Mr. Plinth. “Impossible to imagine Crassus Snow risking his life for me. I k
eep asking myself why you did it.”

  Not much choice, really, thought Coriolanus. “He’s my friend,” he said.

  “No matter how many times I hear that, it’s difficult to believe. But even from the beginning, Sejanus singled you out. Maybe you take after your mother, huh? She was always gracious to me when I came here on business before the war. Despite my background. The very definition of a lady. Never forgot it.” He gave Coriolanus a hard stare. “Are you like your mother?”

  The conversation wasn’t going the way Coriolanus had imagined. Where was the talk of reward money? He couldn’t be persuaded to take it if it was never offered. “I’d like to think I am, in some respects.”

  “In what respects?” asked Mr. Plinth.

  The line of questioning felt weird. In what way was he anything like that loving, adoring creature who’d sung him to sleep each night? “Well, we shared a fondness for music.” Did they? She liked music, and he didn’t hate it, he guessed.

  “Music, huh?” said Mr. Plinth, as if Coriolanus had said something as frivolous as puffy clouds.

  “And I do think we both believed that good fortune was . . . something to be repaid . . . on a daily basis. Not taken for granted,” he added. He had no idea what that meant, but it seemed to register with Mr. Plinth.

  He thought it over. “I’d agree with that.”

  “Oh, good. Yes, well, so . . . Sejanus,” Coriolanus reminded him.

  Mr. Plinth’s face grew weary. “Sejanus. Thank you, by the way, for saving his life.”

  “No thanks necessary. As I said, he’s my friend.” Now was the time. The time for the money, the refusal, the persuasion, the acceptance.

  “Good. Well, I guess you should get home. Your tribute’s still in the Games, right?” asked Mr. Plinth.

  Thrown by the dismissal, Coriolanus rose from his chair. “Oh. Yes. You’re right. Just wanted to check on Sejanus. Will he be back to school soon?”

  “No telling,” said Mr. Plinth. “But thanks for stopping by.”

  “Of course. Tell him he’s missed,” said Coriolanus. “Good night.”

  “Night.” Mr. Plinth gave him a nod. No money. Not even a handshake.

  Coriolanus left off balance and disappointed. The heavy bag of food and the chauffeur assigned to drive him home made a decent consolation prize, but in the end his visit had been a waste of time, especially when Dr. Gaul’s paper still awaited him. The “nice addition to your prize application.” Why did everything have to be an uphill battle for him?

  Coriolanus told Tigris he’d checked on Sejanus, and she didn’t press him for further explanation of his lateness. She made him a cup of the special jasmine tea — an indulgence like splurging on the tokens, but who cared now? He settled down to work, writing the three C-words on a scrap of paper. Chaos, control, and what was the third? Oh, yes. Contract. What happened if no one was in control of humanity? That was the topic he was supposed to address. And he had said there was chaos. And Dr. Gaul had said to start there.

  Chaos. Extreme disorder and confusion. “Like being in the arena,” Dr. Gaul had said. That “wonderful opportunity,” she had called it. “Transformative.” Coriolanus thought about what it had felt like to be in the arena, where there were no rules, no laws, no consequences to one’s actions. The needle of his moral compass had swung madly without direction. Fueled by the terror of being prey, how quickly he himself had become a predator, with no reservations about smashing Bobbin to death. He’d transformed, all right, but not into anything he was proud of — and being a Snow, he had more self-control than most. He tried to imagine what it would be like if the whole world played by those same rules. No consequences. People taking what they wanted, when they wanted, and killing for it if it came to that. Survival driving everything. There had been days during the war when they’d all been too scared to leave the apartment. Days when the lawlessness had made even the Capitol an arena.

  Yes, the lack of law, that was at the heart of it. So people needed to agree on laws to follow. Was that what Dr. Gaul had meant by “social contract”? The agreement not to rob, abuse, or kill one another? It had to be. And the law required enforcement, and that was where control came in. Without the control to enforce the contract, chaos reigned. The power that controlled needed to be greater than the people — otherwise, they would challenge it. The only entity capable of this was the Capitol.

  It took him until about two in the morning to sort that out, and then it barely filled a page. Dr. Gaul would want more, but that was all he could manage tonight. He crawled into bed, where he dreamed of Lucy Gray being hunted by the rainbow snakes. He awoke with a start, trembling, to the strains of the anthem. You have got to hold yourself together, he told himself. The Games can’t last much longer.

  The breakfast delights provided by Mrs. Plinth gave him a boost into day four of the Hunger Games. On the trolley, he gorged himself on a slice of blackberry pie, a sausage roll, and a cheese tart. Between the Games and the Plinths, his waistband was becoming snug. He would make an effort to walk home.

  Velvet ropes cordoned off the section of the dais with the eight remaining mentors, and now a sign with the occupant’s name hung on the back of each chair. Assigned seating — that was new, but probably an attempt to mitigate some of the snarkiness that had sprung up in the last few days. Coriolanus remained in the back row, between Io and Urban. Poor Festus was sandwiched between Vipsania and Clemensia.

  Lucky welcomed the audience with the long-suffering Jubilee, who’d been confined in a cage more suited to a rabbit than a bird. Nothing stirred in the arena, and the tributes seemed to be sleeping in. The only new development was that someone, likely Reaper, had dragged Jessup’s body to the line of the dead near the barricade.

  Coriolanus nervously awaited the announcement of Gaius Breen’s death, but no word was forthcoming. The Gamemakers spent time with the crowd in front of the arena, which continued to expand. The different fan clubs now sported shirts with tribute and mentor faces, and Coriolanus felt both pleased and embarrassed to see his image staring back at him from the giant screen.

  Not until midmorning did the first tribute make an appearance, and it took the audience a moment to place her.

  “It’s Wovey!” Hilarius shouted in relief. “She’s alive!”

  Coriolanus remembered the child as scrawny, but now she looked skeletal, her arms and legs like sticks, her cheeks sunken. She crouched at the mouth of a tunnel in her filthy striped dress, squinting into the sunlight and clutching an empty water bottle.

  “Hold on, Wovey! Food’s on the way!” said Hilarius, hammering away at his cuff. She couldn’t have much in the way of sponsors, but there was always someone willing to place a bet on a long shot.

  Lepidus swooped in, and Hilarius spoke at length about Wovey’s merits. He presented her absence as stealth, claiming it had been their strategy all along for her to hide and let the field clear. “And look at her! Here she is in the final eight!” As a half dozen drones sped across the arena toward her, Hilarius became even more excited. “There’s her food and water now! All she has to do is grab it and get back in hiding!”

  As the supplies showered her, Wovey lifted her hands but seemed in a daze. She pawed at the ground, located a bottle of water, and struggled to unscrew the cap. After a few gulps, she sank back against the wall and gave a small belch. A thin stream of silverish liquid trickled out of the side of her mouth and then she went still.

  The audience watched uncomprehendingly for a minute.

  “She’s dead,” announced Urban.

  “No! No, she’s not dead. She’s just resting!” said Hilarius.

  But the longer Wovey stared unblinkingly into the bright sunlight, the harder that was to believe. Coriolanus examined her spittle — neither clear nor bloody, but slightly off — and wondered if Lucy Gray had finally managed to put the rat poison to use. It would’ve been easy
to poison the last swallow of water in a bottle and discard it in one of the tunnels. Desperate Wovey would not have thought twice about downing it. But no one else, not even Hilarius, seemed to find anything amiss.

  “I don’t know,” said Lepidus to Hilarius. “I think your friend might be right.”

  They waited another ten long minutes without a flicker of life from Wovey before Hilarius gave in and lifted his chair. Lepidus heaped on the praise, and Hilarius, while disappointed, reckoned things could have gone a lot worse. “She managed to hang in there a long time, given her condition. I wish she’d have come out sooner so I could’ve fed her, but I feel like I can hold my head up. The final eight is nothing to sneeze at!”

  Coriolanus mentally checked his list. Both tributes from 3, both from 4, and Treech and Reaper. That was all that stood between Lucy Gray and victory. Six tributes and a fair amount of luck.

  Wovey’s death went unnoticed for a while in the arena. It was almost lunchtime when Reaper came out from the barricade, still wearing his flag cape. He approached Wovey warily, but she had posed no threat alive, and she certainly didn’t dead. Reaper crouched beside her and picked up an apple, then frowned as he examined her face more closely.

  He knows, thought Coriolanus. He at least suspects that it wasn’t a natural death.

  Reaper dropped the apple, lifted Wovey into his arms, and headed to the dead tributes, abandoning the food and water on the ground.