The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Read online

  Coriolanus swallowed the saliva flooding his mouth as he reached for the gilt-edged plate embossed with the Academy’s seal. Even in the leanest days, the Capitol had not lacked fancy dishware, and he had eaten many a cabbage leaf from fine china at home. He collected a linen napkin, a fork, a knife. As he raised the lid on the first sterling silver chafing dish, the steam bathed his lips. Creamed onions. He took a modest spoonful and tried not to drool. Boiled potatoes. Summer squash. Baked ham. Hot rolls and a pat of butter. On second thought, two pats. A full plate, but not a greedy one. Not for a teenage boy.

  He set his plate on the table next to Clemensia and went to retrieve his dessert from a cart, because last year they had run out and he’d missed the tapioca entirely. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the rows of apple pie wedges, each decorated with a paper flag sporting the seal of Panem. Pie! When had he last tasted that? He was reaching for a medium-sized piece when someone thrust a plate with an enormous slice under his nose. “Oh, take a big one. Growing boy like you can handle it.”

  Dean Highbottom’s eyes were rheumy, but they had lost the glazed look of the morning. In fact, they were trained on Coriolanus with an unexpected sharpness.

  He took the plate of pie with a grin he hoped was boyishly good-natured. “Thank you, sir. I can always find room for pie.”

  “Yes, pleasures are never hard to accommodate,” said the dean. “No one would know better than I.”

  “I suppose not, sir.” But that sounded wrong. He had meant to agree with the part about pleasures, but it sounded like a snide remark about the dean’s character.

  “You suppose not.” Dean Highbottom’s eyes narrowed as he continued to stare at Coriolanus. “So, what are your plans, Coriolanus, after the Games?”

  “I hope to go on to university,” he replied. What a strange question. Surely, his academic record made that evident.

  “Yes, I saw your name among the prize contenders,” said Dean Highbottom. “But if you shouldn’t be awarded one?”

  Coriolanus stammered. “Well, then we’d . . . we’d pay the tuition, of course.”

  “Would you?” Dean Highbottom laughed. “Look at you, in your makeshift shirt and your too-tight shoes, trying to hold it together. Strutting around the Capitol, when I doubt the Snows have a pot to piss in. Even with a prize, it would be a stretch, and you don’t yet have one, do you? What then, I wonder, would happen to you? What then?”

  Coriolanus could not help but glance around to see who else had heard the terrible words, but most people were engaged in mealtime chatter.

  “Don’t worry — nobody knows. Well, hardly anyone. Enjoy that pie, boy.” Dean Highbottom walked away without bothering to take a piece himself.

  Coriolanus wanted nothing so much as to drop his pie and run for the exit, but instead he carefully set the oversized slice back on the cart. The nickname. It could only be that the nickname had found its way back to Dean Highbottom, with Coriolanus given the credit. It had been stupid on his part. The dean was too powerful a person, even now, to be ridiculing in public. But was it really such a horrible thing? Every teacher had at least one nickname, many far less flattering. And it wasn’t as if High-as-a-Kite-Bottom had made much effort to hide his habit. He seemed to invite derision. Could there be some other reason he hated Coriolanus so much?

  Whatever it was, Coriolanus needed to set it right. He could not risk losing his prize over such a thing. After university he planned to embark on some lucrative profession. Without an education, what doors would be open to him? He tried to imagine his future in some low-level city position . . . doing what? Managing the coal distribution to the districts? Cleaning cages of genetic freaks in the muttations lab? Collecting taxes from Sejanus Plinth in his palatial apartment on the Corso while he lived in some rat hole fifty blocks out? That’s if he were lucky! Capitol jobs were hard to come by, and he would be a penniless Academy graduate, no more. How was he to live? Borrow? Being in debt in the Capitol was historically a ticket to being a Peacekeeper, and that came with a twenty-year commitment to who knew where. They’d ship him off to some horrid backwater district where the people were hardly better than animals.

  The day, which had held such promise, came crashing down around him. First the threat of losing his apartment, then the lowliest tribute assignment — who, on further reflection, was definitely crazy — and now the revelation that Dean Highbottom detested him enough to kill his prize chances and condemn him to a life in the districts!

  Everyone knew what happened if you went to the districts. You were written off. Forgotten. In the eyes of the Capitol, you were basically dead.

  Coriolanus stood on the empty train platform, awaiting his tribute’s arrival, a long-stemmed white rose balanced carefully between his thumb and index finger. It had been Tigris’s idea to bring her a gift. She had arrived home very late on the night of the reaping, but he had waited up to consult with her, to tell her of his humiliations and fears. She refused to let the conversation spin into despair. He would get a prize; he would have to! And have a brilliant university career. As to the apartment, they must find out the specifics first. Perhaps the tax would not affect them, or even if it did, maybe not soon. Maybe they could scrape up enough for the taxes somehow. But he was to think of none of that. Only of the Hunger Games, and how he might make a success of it.

  At Fabricia’s reaping party, Tigris said, everyone was nuts about Lucy Gray Baird. His tribute had “star quality,” her friends had declared as they drunkenly slurped their posca. The cousins agreed that he needed to make a good first impression on the girl so that she would be willing to work with him. He should treat her not as a condemned prisoner, but as a guest. Coriolanus had decided to greet her early at the train station. It would give him a jump on the assignment, as well as an opportunity to win her trust.

  “Imagine how terrified she must be, Coryo,” Tigris had said. “How alone she must feel. If it was me, anything you could do to make me feel like you cared about me would go a long way. No, more than that. Like I was of value. Take her something, even a token, that lets her know you value her.”

  Coriolanus thought about his grandmother’s roses, which were still prized in the Capitol. The old woman nurtured them arduously in the roof garden that came with the penthouse, both out of doors and in a small solar greenhouse. She parceled out her flowers like diamonds, though, so it had taken a good bit of persuasion to get this beauty. “I need to make a connection with her. As you always say, your roses open any doors.” It was a testament to how worried his grandmother was about their situation that she had allowed it.

  Two days had passed since the reaping. The city had held on to the oppressive heat, and even though it was just past dawn, the train station was beginning to bake. Coriolanus felt conspicuous on the wide, deserted platform, but he couldn’t risk missing her train. The only information he could get out of his downstairs neighbor, Gamemaker-in-Training Remus Dolittle, was that it was supposed to arrive Wednesday. Remus had recently graduated from the University, and his family had pulled in every favor they had to get him the position, which paid just enough and provided a stepping-stone to the future. Coriolanus could have inquired through the Academy, but he didn’t know if greeting the train would be frowned upon. No rules had been laid out, per se, but he thought most of his classmates would wait to meet their tributes at a session overseen by the Academy the following day.

  An hour passed, then two, and still no train of any kind appeared. The sun beat down through the glass panes of the station ceiling. Perspiration trickled down his back, and the rose, so majestic that morning, began to bend in resignation. He wondered if the whole idea was ill-conceived and if he would get no thanks for greeting her in this way. Another girl, a typical girl, would be impressed, but there was nothing typical about Lucy Gray Baird. In fact, there was something intimidating about a girl who could pull off such a brazen performance on the heels of the
mayor’s assault. And that, just after she had dropped a venomous snake down another girl’s dress. Of course, he didn’t know that it was venomous, but that was where the mind went, wasn’t it? She was terrifying, really. And here he was in his uniform, clutching a rose like some lovestruck schoolboy, hoping she would — what? Like him? Trust him? Not kill him on sight?

  Her cooperation was imperative. Yesterday, Satyria had led a mentor meeting in which their first assignment had been detailed. In the past, the tributes had gone directly into the arena the morning after they’d all arrived in the Capitol, but the time line had been extended now that the Academy students were involved. It had been decided that each mentor was to interview their tribute and would be given five minutes to present them to Panem on a live television program. If people had someone to root for, they might actually have an interest in watching the Hunger Games. If all went well, it would be prime-time viewing — the mentors might even be invited to comment on their tributes during the Games. Coriolanus promised himself that his five minutes would be the standout of the night.

  Another hour crawled by and he was just about ready to give up, when a train whistle sounded deep in the tunnel. Those first few months of the war, the whistle had signaled his father’s arrival from the battlefield. His father had felt that, as a munitions tycoon, military service enhanced his legitimacy in the family business. With an excellent head for strategy, nerves of steel, and a commanding presence, he’d quickly climbed the ranks. To publicly display their commitment to the Capitol cause, the Snow family would all travel to the station, Coriolanus in his velvet suit, to await the great man’s return. Until the day the train brought only the news that a rebel bullet had found its mark. It was hard, in the Capitol, to find a spot that wasn’t linked to a terrible memory, but this was particularly bad. He could not say he had felt great love for the remote, strict man, but he had certainly felt protected by him. His death was associated with a fear and a vulnerability that Coriolanus had never been able to shake off.

  The whistle blew as the train sped into the station and screeched to a halt. It was a short train, only an engine and two cars. Coriolanus looked for a glimpse of his tribute in the windows before he realized the cars had none. They were designed not for passengers but for cargo. Heavy metal chains attached by old-fashioned padlocks secured the goods.

  The wrong train, he thought. Might as well go home. But then a distinctly human cry came from one of the cargo cars and he remained in place.

  He expected a rush of Peacekeepers, but the train sat ignored for twenty minutes before a few made their way to the rails. One of them exchanged words with an unseen engineer, and a set of keys was tossed out the window. The Peacekeeper took his time meandering down to the first car, flipping through the keys before he selected one, stuck it in the padlock, and gave it a twist. The lock and chains fell away, and he rolled back the heavy door. The car appeared empty. The Peacekeeper pulled out his baton and banged it against the doorframe. “All right, you lot, let’s move!”

  A tall boy with dark brown skin and patched burlap clothing appeared in the doorway. Coriolanus recognized him as Clemensia’s tribute from District 11, rangy but muscular. A girl with similar coloring but a skeletal frame and a hacking cough joined him. Both of them were barefoot with their hands cuffed in front of their bodies. It was a five-foot drop to the ground, so they sat on the edge of the car before launching themselves awkwardly onto the platform. A small, pasty-faced girl in a striped dress and red scarf crawled to the door but seemed unable to figure out how to cover the distance to the ground. The Peacekeeper yanked her down and she landed hard, barely catching herself with her bound hands. Then he reached into the car and dragged out a boy who looked about ten years old but had to be at least twelve, and hauled him onto the platform as well.

  By now the smell of the car, musty and heavy with manure, had reached Coriolanus. They were transporting the tributes in livestock cars, and not very clean ones at that. He wondered if they had been fed and let out for fresh air, or just locked in after their reapings. Accustomed as he was to viewing the tributes on-screen, he had not prepared himself properly for this encounter in the flesh, and a wave of pity and revulsion swept through him. They really were creatures out of another world. A hopeless, brutish world.

  The Peacekeeper moved on to the second car and released the chains. The door slid open, revealing Jessup, the male District 12 tribute, squinting into the brightly lit station. Coriolanus felt a jolt run through him, and his body straightened in anticipation. Surely, she would be with him. Jessup hopped stiffly to the ground and turned back to the train.

  Lucy Gray Baird stepped into the light, her cuffed hands half covering her eyes as they adjusted. Jessup reached up his arms, his wrists spread as wide as the chain on his restraints would allow, and she fell forward, letting him catch her by the waist and swing her to the ground in a surprisingly graceful move. She patted the boy’s sleeve in thanks and tilted her head back to drink in the sunlight streaming into the station. Her fingers began combing through her curls, untangling the knots and picking out bits of straw.

  Coriolanus’s attention turned for a moment to the Peacekeepers, who were hollering threats into the train car. When he gazed back, Lucy Gray was staring directly at him. He started a bit but then remembered that he was the only one on the platform besides the Peacekeepers. The soldiers were cursing now as they hoisted one of their number into the train car to retrieve the reluctant tributes.

  It was now or never.

  He crossed to Lucy Gray, extended the rose, and gave a small nod. “Welcome to the Capitol,” he said. His voice was slightly gravelly, as he had not spoken for hours, but he thought it gave him a nice maturity.

  The girl sized him up, and for a minute he feared she was going to either walk away or, worse, laugh at him. Instead she reached out and delicately plucked a petal from the flower in his hand.

  “When I was little, they used to bathe me in buttermilk and rose petals,” she said in a manner that, despite the unlikeliness of her claim, seemed totally believable. She ran her thumb over the glossy, white surface and slipped the petal into her mouth, closing her eyes to savor the flavor. “Tastes like bedtime.”

  Coriolanus took the moment to examine her. She looked different than she had at the reaping. Except for flecks here and there, the makeup had been wiped away, and without it she appeared younger. Her lips were chapped, her hair loose, her rainbow dress dusty and rumpled. The mark from the mayor’s blow had turned to a deep purple bruise. But there was something else, too. He again had the impression that he was witnessing a performance, but a private one this time.

  When she opened her eyes, she trained all her attention on him. “You don’t look like you should be here.”

  “I probably shouldn’t be,” he admitted. “But I’m your mentor. And I wanted to meet you on my own terms. Not the Gamemakers’.”

  “Ah, a rebel,” she said.

  That word was poison in the mouths of Capitol citizens, but she had said it approvingly, as a compliment. Or, was she mocking him? He remembered she carried snakes in her pocket and the usual rules didn’t apply to her.

  “And what does my mentor do for me, besides bring me roses?” she asked.

  “I do my best to take care of you,” he said.

  She glanced over her shoulder, where the Peacekeepers were tossing two half-starved children onto the platform. The girl broke a front tooth on the platform, while the boy received several sharp kicks upon landing.

  Lucy Gray smiled up at Coriolanus. “Well, good luck, Gorgeous,” she said, and walked back to Jessup, leaving him and his rose behind.

  As the Peacekeepers herded the tributes across the station to the main entrance, Coriolanus felt his chance slipping away. He had not secured her trust. He had not done anything except perhaps amuse her for a moment. Clearly, she thought he was useless, and maybe she was right, but with a
ll that was at stake, he had to try. He ran across the station, catching up to the pack of tributes as they reached the door.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the Peacekeeper in charge. “I’m Coriolanus Snow from the Academy.” He inclined his head toward Lucy Gray. “This tribute has been assigned to me for the Hunger Games. I wonder if I might accompany her to her quarters.”

  “That’s why you been hanging around here all morning? To catch a ride to the show?” asked the Peacekeeper. He reeked of liquor and his eyes were rimmed with red. “Well, by all means, Mr. Snow. Join the party.”

  It was then that Coriolanus saw the truck that awaited the tributes. Less a truck than a cage on wheels. The bed was enclosed by metal bars and topped with a steel roof. He again flashed back to the circus of his childhood, where he had seen wild animals — big cats and bears — confined to such transport. Following orders, the tributes presented their cuffs for removal and climbed into the cage.

  Coriolanus hung back but then saw Lucy Gray watching him and knew this was the moment of judgment. If he backed down now, it would all be over. She would think he was a coward and dismiss him entirely. He took a deep breath and hoisted himself up into the cage.

  The door slammed shut behind him, and the truck lurched forward, knocking him off balance. He reflexively grabbed for the bars on his right and wound up with his forehead crammed between them as a couple of the tributes fell into him. He pushed back forcefully and twisted his body around to face his fellow passengers. Everyone had hold of at least one bar now except the girl with the broken tooth, who was clinging to the leg of the boy from her district. As the truck rumbled down a wide avenue, they began to settle in.

  Coriolanus knew he had made a mistake. Even in the open air, the stench was overwhelming. The tributes had absorbed the odor of the cattle car and it mixed with an unwashed human smell that made him feel slightly nauseous. Up close, he could see how grubby they were, how bloodshot their eyes, how bruised their limbs. Lucy Gray was crammed into a corner at the front, dabbing a fresh scrape on her forehead with her ruffled hem. She seemed indifferent to his presence, but the rest of them stared at him like a pack of feral animals eyeing a pampered poodle.