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She’s looking for Peeta or for some reprieve from the smothering attentions of the Capitol crowd – whichever she happens upon first – when she feels it. A stab of unease shooting like an arrowhead through their bond. Flint, who’s been circling above her head to try and catch a glimpse of their fellow Victor’s dog-dæmon, swoops back down, resuming his place on her shoulder, perched all pretty like they were instructed to by their prep team.
At the insistent nipping of his beak against her earlobe, Katniss glances over to the alcove wedged between an imposing bay window and a hallway leading into a sealed-off wing of the mansion, bracing for another depiction of her very soul turned into a gaudy accessory on top of a wealthy heiress’ elaborate wig or matching jewellery for a fashionable couple, and finding two very familiar figures instead. Her mentor, on the right. On the left, the man who not an hour before accompanied her into what is probably the stiffest dance performance Panem has ever seen. Evidently arguing.
Though their conversation is drowned by the combined chatter of several hundred voices, it’s not hard to tell as much. Haymitch is making the face of when she’s being difficult – the half scowl half smirk she’s come to know as closely as every tree and cobble on the route to the Meadow, which usually precedes a sardonic remark. His lips move around words that don’t quite reach her, yet she can very well imagine. He’s got a knack for riling people up. Especially after a few rounds of complimentary champagne.
Whatever the jab, Plutarch takes it with considerable aplomb. His dæmon, who introduced herself earlier by some fancy Capitol name, Aristea, or maybe Althea, sits unruffled on his shoulder, not a single inky feather out of place. He’s harder to read than her mentor. The tilted-up corner of his mouth could be amusement just as easily as it could be contempt. Katniss knows nothing about the man but enough about Capitol élites to hazard a guess. He doesn’t seem in a rush, either, despite his talk about secret meetings. This secluded little corner can’t be where he was headed with such urgency. More likely, a tipsy Haymitch snatched him from the ballroom with some excuse or other – any is good to annoy a Capitolite, if his inane spats with Effie are anything to go by – and, loathing to make a scene, he decided to indulge him so long as it happened in private. Well, the closest thing to private there is in a house fit to burst with clamouring patrons driving themselves dizzy with alcohol and dance.
She’s not sure what about the scene merits Flint’s disquiet, however, until her gaze falls on Isel.
She’s not bristling.
Out of the two of them, Haymitch’s dæmon is always the first to rise to a confrontation. Sometimes he has not yet scoffed that she’s already flashing a toothy sneer, lips pulled back over tiny white fangs. Where he dilutes his surly temperament with humour, brazen and off-colour as it may be, she’s concentrated vitriol. Even at her most placid, she’s got an air about her, a sort of silent watchfulness that tells you she won’t hesitate to snap at the slightest provocation. One would think being in the proximity of a Gamemaker would be enough to have her raising her hackles. Instead, she sits quietly at Haymitch’s feet, yawning every now and again and only occasionally peering up at the other man. Indifferent. Almost tamed. A display so unthreatening that Plutarch’s own dæmon feels safe enough fluttering down to meet her, with much more grace than Katniss would have given her credit for, after she declined Flint’s proposition to join the other bird-dæmons in their aerial choreographies.
“Maybe she’s bad at flying. All day batting her wings about indoors can’t be doing her much good,” her dæmon had whispered, snide, as she and the new Head Gamemaker exchanged pleasantries, and she couldn’t help a snort the man had done her the favour of assuming was exclusively in response to his joke about the punch bowl.
Her beak pours out what must be senseless babble Isel doesn’t appear too enthused with, while close by Haymitch sighs, or huffs, or either way produces a sound that doesn’t require words to be understood in response to Plutarch’s tirade, accompanied by ample gestures to reinforce his point.
“She’s—they’re drunk,” Katniss says, noting the glass in her mentor’s hand.
“They always are. But has she ever let that stop her?” Flint counters.
In all fairness, he might have a point. The same foul-smelling liquors that occasionally have a mellowing effect on Haymitch just as often only manage to make his dæmon more irritable, with words as sharp as her claws until they both eventually doze off in their drunken stupor.
Her reply goes forgotten, however, substituted by a polite greeting as a patron approaches to congratulate. He insists on kissing her hand, to which she grudgingly but smilingly submits, and even then it takes some effort to shoo him away without breaking the ecstatic young Victor façade.
When she looks back, Haymitch has moved the empty flute he’s been clutching to his left hand and is smoothing his right over Plutarch’s lapel, making a parody of assessing the fabric between his fingers as he speaks again, a full-blown grin on his lips, now. Katniss’ imagination fills the gaps with all sorts of scathing comments he’s ever heard him utter on the subject of Capitol fashion before, although the Gamemaker’s rather conservative outfit doesn’t lend itself to mockery much. Something must strike true regardless, for when Haymitch makes to pull away he lays a hand on his forearm. A warning. One her mentor doesn’t shy away from, even as his dæmon rears up.
That’s it, Katniss thinks.
She’s about to pounce.
Out in the woods surrounding Twelve she’s seen creatures like her take down prey twice their size – rather, she’s seen the aftermath. It’s never pretty.
Plutarch’s dæmon seems utterly unconcerned by the threat. Either she hasn’t noticed, or she’s awfully confident in her ability to elude her jaws. The image of bloodied feather strewn on the grass superimposes with the more recent memory of the bird-dæmon’s impassive black eyes as her human spoke about the Quell, and the Games, and Seneca Crane’s so regrettable but entirely fortuitous accident with the detached confidence of the untouchable, and she realises she wants to see them humbled. And since she doubts her successors will repeat her stunt with the pig, it might as well be Haymitch and Isel. She’s fine with that.
Flint isn’t. He jabbers something low and sensible in her ear, how they’re in a dangerous spot already, and they should get away now, really get away before things turn ugly, so that when white-clad guards are inevitably summoned they’re found amidst the throng, better yet if at Peeta’s side letting people and dæmons ogle at them, able to truthfully deny any involvement with whatever mess her mentor is about to stir. Still, her heels remain rooted to the marble floor.
Isel does spring, though not towards the bird. Small claws find purchase on the Gamemaker’s coat, and soon she’s winding her slender body around his neck. For a few long, horrifying seconds Katniss fears she’s going to tear his throat out. The only kind of violence that rattles District and Capitol folks alike, rarely ever seen even in the Arena. Recalling a Tribute from an old edition of the Games going after his opponents’ dæmons barehanded and getting buried under an avalanche when even the most morbidly fascinated audiences couldn’t stand watching him any longer, she has to suppress a wince.
But no – there she rests, idly flicking her tail, draped across the man’s shoulders like a living fur trim. She’s not exactly touching him, there’s at least two, perhaps three layers of fabric between them, but it’s close. Close enough to send a sickly feeling trickling down Katniss’ spine and reverberating in Flint’s hollow bones. An involuntary shift, a breath just on the side of too deep, and her dark tawny fur would be brushing the sliver of bare skin above Plutarch’s collar.
All the novelty food she sampled makes itself known in the pit of her stomach. She might not need Flavius’ cocktail, after all.
Any remaining illusion of it being some strange intimidation tactic, insane even for the dæmon of a drunken man who never seemed to cherish his own survival, evaporates the instant Plutarch lets out what appears to be a chuckle and Haymitch, rather than barking at his soul to cut it out like she only saw him doing once, when Isel got a tad too close to biting the ear off a nagging prep team member’s hare-dæmon, limits himself to shaking his head in exasperation.
Then Plutarch’s dæmon is airborne again and, in that moment, both she and Flint decide that they don’t want to see where her parable ends.
On their way back to the refreshment tables, they practically crash into Effie.
“There you are!” She exclaims. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! I wanted to introduce you to my sister, she’s a huge fan, but uh… I think she went a little overboard with the punch. I persuaded her to go sit outside in the garden and cool off for a bit. Maybe we’ll catch her later. On that note, have you seen Haymitch?”
“No,” Flint replies in her stead before Katniss can take a stab at a convincing lie.
“Oh,” the escort just says after a couple rapid blinks of her lashes, painted blue and gold to complement her macaw-dæmon. “Well, whatever he’s doing I sincerely hope it’s not something that’ll put us all in trouble. Come, now, I heard they’re starting to bring out the desserts!”
For once in her life, Katniss finds herself agreeing with her.
