Prized (15 page)

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Authors: Caragh M. O'Brien

BOOK: Prized
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“How about you?” Larson called to Xave. “Who's your last man?”
The Shirts captain was surveying the crims, and then he raised his finger and pointed. “I'll take Little Malachai,” Xave said.
The noise of the crowd diminished as people tried to see whom he meant, but Gaia already knew. Her heart thudded heavily as Leon took one step toward the field and then stopped. His ankle was still caught in the chain.
A guard stooped down beside him to release his shackle, and Leon waited, unmoving. The crowd was laughing because, superficially, Leon did look like a smaller version of Malachai, with similar unkempt dark hair and beard. Once free, he didn't hurry but walked with long, slow strides to take his place on Xave's team. Gone was his hunched shuffle. Leon's shirt was threadbare and gray over his straight shoulders. Unlike the athletes, he wore work pants and rough shoes. He made no effort to stretch or warm up his muscles, as if he were too sore to move or too uncaring. He did not look again for Gaia in the crowd, but rather directed his unwavering attention toward the Matrarc's platform. The crowd's laughter died away.
Gaia couldn't take her eyes from him. Two things were clear from his proud stance: he agreed to play, and he despised them all.
the thirty-two games
S
HE WAS ALREADY RISING.
“Where do you think you're going?” Taja said.
Gaia started down the slope, winding through the sitting spectators. She had to get closer. There had to be a way to talk to him. Several guards started forward, preparing to intercept her at the edge of the field.
“Come here,” Taja said, following after her and tugging her arm. “You're blocking people's view. You're making a scene.”
“I have to talk to him.”
“Not now you don't.” Taja pulled Gaia toward the platform and planted her along the side.
“Let go of me,” Gaia said, pulling her sleeve free.
“After the game,” Taja said. “You can see him then.” Peony caught up with them, carrying the blanket. “It's okay, Mlass Gaia,” she said. “Just wait here with us.”
“I need to see,” Gaia said impatiently.
The ref was holding a soccer ball now, and a whistle dangled from his lips. Sixteen men on each team were ranged across the field: Skins on the left heading toward the south goal, and Xave's team of Shirts on the right, facing north. Xave
directed Leon to a defensive position near the goal. Peter was positioned as one of the Shirts' center forwards. Will took a midfield position for the Skins. Like a great animal rolling in the sun, the crowd gave a slow, rippling shudder, and settled back to watch.
The ref blew his whistle and dropped the ball. The Shirts team, led by Xave, quickly gained control and pushed forward.
Leon began to walk, then jog in his zone of the field, keeping open in a position that echoed the movement of the ball. There was a lightness, a readiness that came to him as soon as the game commenced, and Gaia recalled he'd once told her he'd played soccer growing up. A Skins player gave a Shirts player a powerful shove, and the man pushed back, then twisted out of range in time to receive a pass and send it up to Xave. Up and down the field, the ball traveled in a zigzag of ricochets, while men shoved and flagrantly tripped each other.
“Why doesn't the ref call any of the fouls?” Gaia asked.
Taja looked surprised. “What fouls?”
I guess the rules are different,
Gaia thought. It almost seemed there were none, other than that the players couldn't use their hands on the ball. The ref blew his whistle only when the ball went out of bounds. During all the action, Malachai crouched like a bear off the corner of the goal, hardly moving, but when Will ripped a long pass up the field toward Malachai, the big, bare-chested man trapped it with a clumsy foot and lunged with it toward the goal. Leon closed in from the outside, effortlessly stole the ball from between the giant's feet, and sent it back out, wide left, to an open shirts teammate.
“Nice save, Little Malachai!” yelled a voice.
Four seconds later, Xave drilled the ball into the net to score for the Shirts, and a burst of cheering filled the air.
“That's it?” Gaia asked.
“That's the end of round one,” Peony said, nodding. “All those Skins players? They're eliminated.”
Will stood panting, and then he turned with the other Skins players to leave the field. Four guards surrounded Malachai to escort him back to the crims' section, where the nearest crims pounded him on the back and roughed his head until he shook them off.
“Now what?” Gaia asked. “They pick again?”
“Yes. See the new Skins captain?” Taja said. “Xave picked him first last time, so since they won, he's the new opposing captain. There's some strategy involved.”
Out on the field, Xave was returning to the
X
spot as the continuing Shirts captain, and on the corresponding
O
, the new captain for the Skins team took off his shirt.
The picking for the next round, two teams of eight, went rapidly, and Xave chose both Peter and Leon for his team. The intensity of the game changed significantly in round two as fewer players meant less of a scatter-shot mob style of attacking and more deliberate passing. Leon, again, played defense. It became clear, now, that Xave was a careful judge of where to position his players, and they passed around the Skins team with almost comic ease.
“Your crim friend can play,” Peony said. “I think he's missing a finger or something on his left hand. What is that, Mlass Gaia?”
She didn't know. She couldn't bother to reply. She focused intently on Leon, trying to match what she was seeing with what she remembered of him, but it was like seeing a pebble that had always been dry and dusty suddenly thrown into a bowl of clear water. She'd never seen him run, never seen him with long dark hair flying, and fast as he was, he still seemed to be holding something back.
Peter scored off a hard instep drive from fifteen meters out, and the Shirts won again. Gaia kept expecting Leon to look over and find her again. He didn't.
“Now it should start getting interesting,” Taja said, as the Skins players left the field and the others prepared for round three.
There were eight men total remaining on the field now, for two teams of four. The next new captain of the Skins moved to the
O
and took off his yellow shirt. The others stood in a rough semicircle. Peter wiped the sweat from his face with the hem of his red shirt. Leon stood quietly, flat-footed, his arms loose at his sides, while a man with black curls bounced lightly on his feet beside him, clearly eager to get on with it.
“That's Munsch, that man by Little Malachai. You used to have a thing for him,” Taja said to Peony. “What happened to that?”
“Nothing,” Peony said. “That was last year. He rides with Chardo Peter now, I think. Look. They're choosing.”
Xave chose Peter first for his Shirts team, and then Munsch and one other. The Skins captain chose Leon last.
Leon walked slowly over to the Skins, pulling his gray shirt over his head, and for the first time, his chest was exposed to view.
Gaia stared. She remembered Leon most in a precise black uniform, his skin protected from the damaging sunlight, a hat brim always shading his features. Even his hands had always been lighter than her own. Now his torso was tanned, and the orange-hued sunlight that washed across the field cleanly defined the taut lines of his muscled chest and lean belly. Gaia's response was visceral and immediate.
Then Leon turned his back to the crowd.
It was clear, even from a distance, that scars mottled the
skin across the back of his shoulders in a vivid, savage pattern of white and brown.
Gaia felt sick. “No,” she whispered. Hushed murmurs were spreading through the crowd as others noticed, too, and a gasp came from one of the mladies on the platform.
“That's not right,” Peony said quietly.
“No one's been flogged like that here,” Taja said. “Not in ages. He must have come like that.”
“Who would do that to him? Why?” Peony asked. “He must have done something awful. Really awful.” She turned expectantly to Gaia.
But Gaia was unable to answer. She pressed her knuckles against her lips, hating this. She couldn't bear to think of Leon being hurt. What if they'd done it to him back in the Enclave
because of her
?
She'd left him in the Sylum prison.
She hadn't even accepted his note.
“What have I done?” Gaia whispered. She turned to Peony, horrified. “What did you tell him about the note?”
“I never spoke to your friend directly. I told Malachai's brother the truth: that you refused to take it. Why?” Peony said. “Regrets?”
Gaia could barely breathe.
He must hate me.
Round three began, four versus four, and this time Leon was playing defense for the Skins team, facing in Gaia's direction from the far north end of the field. Fierce concentration ruled his features. Xave's team tried to pass around the Skins like they had in the previous round, but Leon's team was quick to anticipate, and a teammate passed back to Leon, who feinted right, then dribbled left, and popped the ball up high and hard toward the goal, perfectly arced for a header.
Two players leapt into the air, straining toward the ball, and
a nasty cracking noise came as they collided and fell sprawling to the ground. The ref blew his whistle. Munsch lay still while the bare-chested player slowly sat up, blinking.
On the platform, the Matrarc stood. “Is there blood?” she called.
“Yes,” called the ref. “Munsch is down, and Sundberg. They hit heads.” He waved in a few of the other athletes to lend a hand.
“Bring them here. Where are Mlass Gaia and Mx. Dinah?” the Matrarc said.
“I'm here,” Gaia called, moving forward.
Munsch was moving now, slowly rolling over on the grass, and he touched a palm tenderly to his forehead. Sundberg came to his feet and gave him a hand up, and with the others, the two walked slowly to the sideline before the platform. The crowd applauded out of respect.
“Resume play,” called the Matrarc with a wave. “Mlass Gaia, take a look. See if there's anything you can do.”
Gaia heard the ref's whistle and the action starting up again behind her. Sundberg was already looking better, but Munsch had a cut on his forehead, and a bruise was forming under his skin. His eyes seemed fine and he said he wasn't nauseous, but he looked a little dazed. One of the guards passed Gaia a basket of bandages and a bottle of water, and as she started dabbing at Munsch's cut, Dinah came up beside her.
“How are they?” Dinah said.
“I'm okay,” Munsch said. “Just let me be for a minute. I want to watch.”
“Hold still,” Gaia said, and finished cleaning his wound.
“That crim's fast,” Sundberg said.
Gaia glanced over her shoulder, then sat beside Munsch. The Skins captain had repositioned Leon to play forward. Only
six men were left on the field, and it was now obvious to Gaia that though Leon's skills were decent, they weren't the best. What he had was speed.
On an inbound throw, Leon intercepted the ball and crossed it to his captain, who took a long, risky shot from way out. The deepest Shirts player ran it down, passed it up to Xave, and the Shirts began a punishing series of passes to move up the field again, dominating Leon's team. The crowd revved, voices massing into a wordless wall of sound as Xave closed in on scoring range
The Skins captain began to backpedal defensively toward his own goal.
“No! Forward!” Leon yelled, driving forward to cut off the angle.
Xave powered a shot high and wide over Leon's teammate's head into the goal.
The crowd jumped to their feet in a deafening roar of cheers. Gaia shifted her gaze from the ball in the net to Leon, who stood with his hands on his hips, his head down, his body working for breath. She felt the crush of vicarious defeat. A corps of guards was already moving onto the field to isolate him.
Leon lifted his head and looked over his shoulder toward the Matrarc. He wiped his forehead with his arm, and then, deliberately, he started walking toward the platform. It took the startled guards two seconds to respond, and then they circled tight around him. Leon made a grab for a guard's sword, but was instantly wrestled to the ground and pinned there.
Gaia couldn't see because the players were crowding in on the commotion. Peter was talking to the ref, pointing to Leon.
“What's going on?” Dinah asked.
“Peter's picking the crim, that's what,” Munsch said with a laugh. “It's an insult to Xave and the other players.”
“I don't understand,” Gaia said.
The guards still held Leon to the ground.
“Xave won, so that makes Peter the other captain,” Munsch explained. “Normally, they'd each pick one new teammate, but there's only one left since I'm out injured. Peter gets to pick a Skins loser instead, and he's picking the crim. It's diabolical. The other losers want to kill him. I don't blame them.”
“We want the crim!” the crowd chanted.
Boys ran out with water bottles. Xave drank a long swallow and dumped the rest of the water on his upturned face while Peter, animated, continued to talk to the ref.
“Let's go,” Xave said. He clapped a sure hand on the shoulder of his Shirts teammate. “Give Chardo the filthy crim, and let's get this over with.”
The crowd laughed. The ref pointed his whistle at Leon. The guards lifted Leon to his feet, untied his hands, and marched off the field.
Leon walked to join Peter on the
O
. Peter pulled off his shirt, and his torso twisted in a supple economy of motion as he tossed it to a runner. Leon stood listening, rubbing his wrist, while Peter spoke in his ear. Gaia peered at the two shirtless men, trying to see what made them, nearly the same height and age, so different, and where Leon's stance was cautious, intense, coiled, Peter's personified an eager, magnanimous confidence.

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