against the cellar wall, retracing the events of the last day. Moving death by death. Counting them up on my fingers. One, two—Mitchell and Boggs lost on the block. Three—Messalla melted by the pod. Four, five—Leeg 1 and Jackson sacrificing themselves at the Meat Grinder. Six, seven, eight—Castor, Homes, and Finnick being decapitated by the rose-scented lizard mutts. Eight dead in twenty-four hours. I know it happened, and yet it doesn’t seem real. Surely, Castor is asleep under that pile of furs, Finnick will come bounding down the steps in a minute, Boggs will tell me his plan for our escape.
To believe them dead is to accept I killed them. Okay, maybe not Mitchell and Boggs—they died on an actual assignment. But the others lost their lives defending me on a mission I fabricated. My plot to assassinate Snow seems so stupid now. So stupid as I sit shivering here in this cellar, tallying up our losses, fingering the tassels on the silver knee-high boots I stole from the woman’s home. Oh, yeah—I forgot about that. I killed her, too. I’m taking out unarmed citizens now.
I think it’s time I give myself up.
When everyone finally awakens, I confess. How I lied about the mission, how I jeopardized everyone in pursuit of revenge. There’s a long silence after I finish. Then Gale says, “Katniss, we all knew you were lying about Coin sending you to assassinate Snow.”
“You knew, maybe. The soldiers from Thirteen didn’t,” I reply.
“Do you really think Jackson believed you had orders from Coin?” Cressida asks. “Of course she didn’t. But she trusted Boggs, and he’d clearly wanted you to go on.”
“I never even told Boggs what I planned to do,” I say.
“You told everyone in Command!” Gale says. “It was one of your conditions for being the Mockingjay. ‘I kill Snow.’”
Those seem like two disconnected things. Negotiating with Coin for the privilege of executing Snow after the war and this unauthorized flight through the Capitol. “But not like this,” I say. “It’s been a complete disaster.”
“I think it would be considered a highly successful mission,” says Gale. “We’ve infiltrated the enemy camp, showing that the Capitol’s defenses can be breached. We’ve managed to get footage of ourselves all over the Capitol’s news. We’ve thrown the whole city into chaos trying to find us.”
“Trust me, Plutarch’s thrilled,” Cressida adds.
“That’s because Plutarch doesn’t care who dies,” I say. “Not as long as his Games are a success.”
Cressida and Gale go round and round trying to convince me. Pollux nods at their words to back them up. Only Peeta doesn’t offer an opinion.
“What do you think, Peeta?” I finally ask him.
“I think…you still have no idea. The effect you can have.” He slides his cuffs up the support and pushes himself to a sitting position. “None of the people we lost were idiots. They knew what they were doing. They followed you because they believed you really could kill Snow.”
I don’t know why his voice reaches me when no one else’s can. But if he’s right, and I think he is, I owe the others a debt that can only be repaid in one way. I pull my paper map from a pocket in my uniform and spread it out on the floor with new resolve. “Where are we, Cressida?”
Tigris’s shop sits about five blocks from the City Circle and Snow’s mansion. We’re in easy walking distance through a zone in which the pods are deactivated for the residents’ safety. We have disguises that, perhaps with some embellishments from Tigris’s furry stock, could get us safely there. But then what? The mansion’s sure to be heavily guarded, under round-the-clock camera surveillance, and laced with pods that could become live at the flick of a switch.
“What we need is to get him out in the open,” Gale says to me. “Then one of us could pick him off.”
“Does he ever appear in public anymore?” asks Peeta.
“I don’t think so,” says Cressida. “At least in all the recent speeches I’ve seen, he’s been in the mansion. Even before the rebels got here. I imagine he became more vigilant after Finnick aired his crimes.”
That’s right. It’s not just the Tigrises of the Capitol who hate Snow now, but a web of people who know what he did to their friends and families. It would have to be something bordering on miraculous to lure him out. Something like…
“I bet he’d come out for me,” I say. “If I were captured. He’d want that as public