The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Chapter 25–Epilogue

“Yes, I’ve been shirking my duties.”

Coriolanus waited until he and Sejanus reached the deserted backstreets near the base before he broached the subject of Billy Taupe.

“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.

But she said, ‘Don’t conflate the boys’ actions. A piece of faulty strategy is not commensurate with a treasonous act of rebel support.’

But she said, ‘Don’t conflate the boys’ actions. A piece of faulty strategy is not commensurate with a treasonous act of rebel support.’

He could tell her of his life here on the base, but it seemed too mundane.

He went on to discuss the things he’d been privy to since his arrival.

It reminded me of my stint in the arena.

After supper, Sejanus helped him study for the test, being noncommittal as to his own interest in it.

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 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.

Sejanus, however, understood his trepidation.

A woman in a lab coat stood motionless, her back to them, head tipped sideways as she listened to the cacophony of birdsong.

He spotted Sejanus, in a neat suit, smiling pensively from the second row.

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.

So supportive. So duplicitous. So self-destructive.

“The whole transmission system was dismantled, and our old aviary seems to store supplies now. Besides, I’d rather have my hands on them. We don’t want them to fly off and never come back, do we?”

He didn’t mind the jabberjays so much—they seemed rather interesting from a military standpoint—but something about the mockingjays repelled him. He distrusted their spontaneous creation. Nature running amok.

After the incident with the map, he’d seemed genuinely contrite, so hopefully he’d recognized the danger of acting as a go-between with Lil.

Leaving Smiley, Bug, and Beanpole to haggle, they found the door near the stage and exited onto a narrow, empty backstreet.

If Lucy Gray was still upset about their tiff, she didn’t show it.

The canopy of trees provided shade from the sun but little respite from the heat.

Coriolanus felt better that the cryptic song was at least subject to debate, and he wasn’t too dim to grasp the one erudite interpretation.

Coriolanus joined in, glad to be doing something just for fun. The strain of being a full-fledged adult every day had grown tiresome.

“Hey, you found some katniss. Good work, CC.” Coriolanus wondered if he meant it to be decorative, like the Grandma’am’s roses, but she immediately examined the roots, from which small tubers hung.

“I can’t change your mind?”
Sejanus was adamant. “No, I’ve decided. I can’t stay here. We both know it. Sooner or later I’ll snap. I can’t do the Peacekeeping work in good conscience, and I can’t keep endangering you with my crazy plans.”

Part of him wanted to run to the hovercraft and erase jabberjay number 1. Put it on PLAY, then NEUTRAL, then RECORD, then NEUTRAL again in swift succession so that it would have nothing memorized but the distant shouts of the soldiers on the tarmac.

The idea that the roses, the very symbol of the Snow dynasty, were to be demolished precipitated her downward spiral into even greater agitation and confusion.

He kept waiting for Strabo Plinth to descend in a private hovercraft, negotiate a discharge, offer to upgrade the entire air fleet for free, and whisk his errant son back home.

The size and volatility of the crowd confused him—surely, Sejanus had not garnered this sort of support in a few weeks—until the Peacekeeper van arrived and both Sejanus and Lil stumbled out in their chains.

He felt too debilitated to rejoin his squad for target practice, to face Bug and Beanpole and Smiley. His hands shook too badly to hold a rifle anyway.

Maybe he should just give himself up. Before they came to arrest him because Spruce had confessed to, or—more likely—Sejanus had divulged the details of the murders.

He wept for Sejanus, and for poor old Ma, and for sweet, devoted Tigris and his feeble, delusional Grandma’am, who would soon be losing him in such a sordid way.

And him dead and the birds screaming it all out until the mockingjays turned it into some macabre song!

There she stood, unloading a stack of bundles from a small wagon, his scarf wound in a fetching manner around her head.

“I know that. Of course, I do. I’m a victor,” she said ruefully. “It’d be nice, in my new life, not to have to kill anyone else.”

The murder weapon. Not in a Capitol forensic lab, but here, in his hands, in the middle of the wilderness, where it posed no threat at all.

Clever, devious, deadly girl.

Coriolanus made it back. Not to the hanging tree, exactly, but to District 12, wandering out of a stretch of trees into a clump of miners’ hovels and somehow finding the road.

He looked gorgeous in his new suit, especially with the return of his curls, and his stint as a Peacekeeper had given him a certain cachet that drove his rivals wild.