CHAPTER NINE - A BLIGHT ON THE LAND
Katniss woke up in her underwear. It wasn't the practical kind she had at home in District Twelve but rather the lacy, skimpy stuff.
In her exquisite state of exhaustion the night before, she had completely forgotten about modesty. Embarrassment washed over her. Hopefully, she thought, Peeta wouldn't have noticed either, and she hurried to clothe herself before he woke up.
She was pulling on her pants when she heard him stir and then groan and stretch. From across the room, he blinked bleary blue eyes at her.
"Don't look at me!" she said, turning away. She still wasn't wearing a shirt.
Peeta didn't comment. Modesty was of no great value in the Mellark household. According to what he had once told her, none of his family members bothered much with it.
Prim and Katniss's mother, too, looked at the body as purely biological, not inherently sexual or embarrassing. For some reason, this view had never rubbed off on Katniss. She turned back to Peeta once fully dressed.
"I forgot to ask," he said, stifling a yawn. "What did Thread say about the note?"
Katniss hadn't decided beforehand whether to lie to him about it, and she took too much time standing there to decide. He caught it immediately.
"You didn't take it to him."
Katniss felt a strange shame creep over her.
"No," she said, "I didn't take it to him."
Peeta sighed heavily and closed his eyes. The embarrassment Katniss felt was irritating her, making her feel like she needed to defend herself. She wondered why she would need to. It was perfectly acceptable for her to make decisions on her own.
"Why not?" asked Peeta.
"Because I didn't want to."
He sat up. "You don't have any other reason? You just left the room and pretended to give the note to Thread to shut me up?"
"I didn't pretend anything," Katniss said, forcing herself to stop playing with the hem of her shirt. "I just didn't give it to him."
Peeta sighed again, and Katniss ignited.
"It's a terrible idea, Peeta! Thread's a pompous old bully, probably taking orders from Snow. And—"
"He's still the only help we've got, though," said Peeta, his voice even.
"It doesn't matter!" she said. Giving the note to Thread would be a bad idea; of that she was sure. "I don't think he'll do the right things with it."
"So what do you want to do then?" Peeta asked, standing up from the bed. He pulled on his own pair of pants, unmoved by her glare.
Never having fought with him before, she found herself irritated that he was keeping so calm.
"I don't know. Not that."
"So we just sit here and wait for someone to try to kill you again? Because I don't think—"
"That's not what I said!" Katniss cried. "I just think we should take care of this ourselves."
"Yeah, all right," said Peeta, and she could tell he was getting annoyed now. "Because Johanna's theory about Chaff is a great lead. Excellent idea, Katniss."
Peeta's dig was infuriating. In her anger, Katniss could not distinguish what was smart to say from what she should keep to herself.
"Everything else darling Johanna says seems to be wonderful," she said. "Why don't you go do some plotting with her and Thread?"
She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Peeta stared at her in bewilderment, and she could see the gears grinding in his head. Opening his mouth, closing it again, and then venturing once more, he said:
"Are you jeal—?"
"NO!" Katniss shouted, red in the face. "No, I'm not, and that's not what we were talking about." She crossed the room and picked up her bow bag.
"I'll see you later," Katniss said, marching to the door and slamming it on her way out. Peeta had never inspired this in her before.
Gale's insistence that Katniss take her bow along had proved to be a good thing. She would take it to the Gymnasium and shoot until she cooled off. Yes, she was angry that Peeta didn't trust her decision-making, but she was painfully aware that her reaction had also had a lot to do with guilt. She knew she had no right to Peeta's continued attention or affection when he got so little in return. The suggestion that she was jealous made her feel like a spoiled brat, and she didn't want Peeta to see her that way.
The Gymnasium felt different to her now. The last time she'd been here Peeta had been a stranger, and she had been sure she was going to die. Now it was just a place to pass the time.
Katniss nodded at the small, petulant looking Peacekeeper who sat at a desk by the entrance. He waved her through, yawning and looking bored out of his mind.
The stations were all present and open, exactly where Katniss remembered them, but most were unoccupied. The old lady, who Haymitch had told her was called Mags, was making a fishhook at a station with rope. Brutus and Gloss were at the station at the back of the room, throwing knives at dummies. Katniss rolled her eyes at the grunts Brutus was producing as he threw.
Blight was using the throwing weights a few feet away from Brutus and Gloss, but he was lifting them like dumbbells rather than throwing them. He waved to Katniss when he saw her.
She smiled mildly and walked past him to the archery station, where there were three targets arranged something like twenty, thirty, and forty feet away. In unpacking her bow she remembered Gale saying he'd restrung it for her. She'd been annoyed, then, because she had already done so herself. Why hadn't she been appreciative of the gesture? What was wrong with her? Why was it so hard for her to accept help?
Thankfully, Katniss's aim was unaffected by her bad mood. She hit the near bull's-eye on her first shot; the middle bull's-eye, on her second. On her third shot, she aimed for the far target. After double-checking that her elbow was correctly positioned, she pulled back the string, exhaled, and—
"Holy crap!" Blight's voice said. Katniss lost her focus but was too late to stop herself from letting the arrow fly. It zoomed through the air and missed the target altogether.
"Damn it," she said under her breath. Blight was standing right beside her, apparently aware but unconcerned that he'd made her miss her target.
"Whoa," he said. "My fault. Sorry about that. Those first two shots were amazing though."
"Thank you," said Katniss flatly.
"I heard a rumor," Blight said, lowering his voice. "I heard last year you shot an arrow at the Gamemakers. Knocked an apple out of the roast pig's mouth?"
"Yep."
"That's incredible!"
The response to this story was usually a kind of shock, but never praise. Katniss herself had always thought it a bit unfair; she'd known she wouldn't hit any of the Gamemakers, and there had been no Blights around to throw her off the mark. Softened by his admiration, she felt her annoyance fade.
"I'm going to go get my arrows," Katniss said.
Blight nodded and disappeared as she approached the targets. A moment later, he reappeared holding an apple.
"I brought it to eat," he said, gesturing to the apple, "but I've got to see this. If I throw this in the air, could you hit it?"
"I could try."
She pulled an arrow from her sheath and loaded her bow. With the string pulled taut, she was ready to go in an instant. Blight wound up and threw the apple towards the back target in an elegant arc.
Katniss followed the apple's path with her eye, tilted her bow down an inch, and released. It hit its mark easily, perfectly, and Katniss thought fleetingly of Gale's face. If he'd seen her do that, he'd have taken back all of his teasing from the past five years.
Blight was beside himself, and Katniss decided she liked him after all. His earnest, boyish excitement was charming as well as flattering, unfettered by the characteristic aloofness of the other Victors.
"You shot that thing straight out of the air, while it was falling," Blight said. "No wonder you got an eleven. I can't doanything that well."
"Thanks," she said. She didn't want to seem bigheaded, so she added, "I bet you've got some skills on me, though."
Blight shook his head vehemently. "I only got a four."
"A four?"
"Yeah. I wasn't exactly a favorite to win."
Katniss set off to retrieve the apple and gestured for Blight to follow her. "So how'd you do it?"
"Luck," he said, as Katniss picked the evidence of her sharpshooting up off the ground. "The other Tributes all forgot I existed."
"Hm," said Katniss.
In the background, they heard Brutus grunting loudly as he threw a knife that hit his dummy in the shoulder and knocked it down. After glancing at him in distaste, Gloss spun and released his own knife, which lodged deep in the dummy's chest.
"What's Brutus's problem?" Katniss asked Blight in a whisper.
Looking murderous, Brutus was stalking across the knife throwing station to restore his dummy to standing position. He held up his hand and barked at Gloss to stop throwing.
"He's just an ass," Blight whispered back. "Looks like he's going to throw a tantrum in a minute. He always huffs and puffs for a while first."
Gloss twirled his knife through his fingers, visibly impatient. When the other Victor clearly made no attempt to hurry, Gloss threw a sideways look at the Peacekeeper by the door, who looked like he was falling asleep.
"Does he throw tantrums regularly?" said Katniss.
"Oh yeah," said Blight. "You should have seen him last year when that Thresh kid killed his girl Clove. He was furious. Especially because Thresh let you go after that. Brutus got all in Chaff's face about it, like it was his fault."
Brutus set up his dummy, but he was too hasty trying to balance it, and it clattered to the floor again at once. Gloss rolled his eyes. Again Brutus tried, and again the dummy fell.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
"DAMN IT!" he bellowed. "WHY WON'T THESE DAMN THINGS STAND?"
He stomped across the room to the Peacekeeper's desk and started yelling at him. The Peacekeeper looked at him with dazed, sleepy eyes.
"Poor Bender," said Blight, indicating the Peacekeeper. "Brutus is going to make this all his problem."
"Please calm down, Mr. Kanakaris," drawled Bender in a bored voice. "I am sure the dummies are perfectly fine.
Brutus's face had turned a shade of purple. "DON'T YOU TELL ME TO CALM DOWN YOU LAZY PIECE OF SHIT. GO OVER THERE AND TRY THEM YOURSELF."
As if to make a point, Gloss threw his knife and hit his dummy in the center of the chest again. The dummy stayed upright. Brutus did not notice but rather kept ranting.
"He's going to get himself in trouble because of a practice dummy." said Katniss.
Blight chuckled. "That's our man."
"IF WE'VE GOT TO BE LOCKED IN HERE THEN THE LEAST YOU CAN DO—"
"That's enough, Mr. Kanakaris," said Bender, rising from his chair. "Please go back to what you were doing. You also have the option to leave, if you like."
"LEAVE? LEAVE?" Brutus snarled, his face now an even deeper shade of purple. "I CAN'T FUCKING LEAVE, BECAUSE YOUR LOT THINKS IT'S OKAY TO KEEP US IN HERE TRAPPED LIKE RATS—"
"That's not what I'm referring to, Mr. Kanakaris!" Bender was yelling now, though he maintained his composure much better than Brutus did. "Now I will have to ask you to—"
Brutus grabbed the smaller man around the throat, and Katniss gasped. Blight's amused expression vanished. He and Katniss watched as Brutus lifted the Peackeeper up off the ground. For a moment, it looked like Bender would be thrown across the room.
Katniss saw Bender struggle and wrestle with Brutus, trying to get the larger man off of him. Then, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a rectangular device, and jabbed it into Brutus's side.
Brutus shook, electrocuted, and fell to the ground, on top of Bender. The Peacekeeper wriggled out of the large man's grasp and stood up, dusting himself off. Katniss saw him bring his wrist to his mouth and say something she couldn't catch. Meanwhile, Brutus lay unconscious on the ground.
"What?" Bender snapped at the three Victors openly staring at him. Mags hadn't looked up from her fishhook making once while Brutus had been screaming. "Go back to doing what you were doing!"
Hesitantly, Katniss turned back to the archery station. A few minutes later, more Peacekeepers came and carried Brutus out of the room. Bender had returned to his desk as if nothing had happened.
Katniss went back to making conversation with Blight, though more reservedly. Brutus's outburst had reminded her of the circumstances of the meeting, that they weren't allowed to leave the Training Center, and that one of the Victors in the building was a murderer. It could be Blight just as easily as anyone else.
In reality, all of the Victors were murderers, Katniss included. Hadn't she ended Glimmer with the tracker jacker nest? And more personally, shot Marvel in the neck? Of course, she had been fighting for her own life then, and that context seemed important.
Katniss eventually excused herself and moved to the fishhook station, where she asked Mags to help her. It was a good excuse to get rid of Blight. When he left the gymnasium some time later, Katniss waved to him. She didn't want him to realize that her guard was up.
The fishhook was not easy, and Katniss cut herself four times trying to get it to stick together. Mags could produce them at a rate of one every fifteen minutes or so, but Katniss was still unable to wrangle hers into shape after an hour and a half. Katniss's interest in the subject seemed to make the old lady happy, though. She kept patiently undoing fishhooks she had already made, trying to demonstrate slowly so Katniss could follow along, with limited success. It didn't help that Mags's speech was very garbled, and Katniss could only make out every fifth word or so.
When she finally succeeded in making a fishhook that stayed together, Katniss remembered that she had agreed to meet up with Cressida at two thirty. She glanced at the large clock hanging on the wall. Crap. It was three forty-five, and she was over an hour late. How she had managed to spend such a long time in the Gymnasium, she didn't know. She said goodbye to Mags and hurried out, almost forgetting her bow in her haste.
Of course she would forget her only appointment on an otherwise schedule-free day. Katniss berated herself as she made her way to the second floor. Remembering Cressida's directions, she passed the janitorial closet and found herself in front of an engraved glass door. This was probably Cressida's office. She knocked, but there was no answer.
She tried the doorknob and found the room unlocked but empty of people. The office was tiny, and the walls an almost blinding white. An ancient looking wooden desk took up almost all the space, and a small wooden chair was wedged behind it. There were also several shelves on which there were at least twenty cassette tapes standing neatly side-by-side.
Katniss had missed Cressida, as expected. Hopefully, she wouldn't consider it a big deal. Hadn't she made a point about being in her office every day from 1:00 to 3:00? They could probably reschedule for tomorrow. Katniss certainly had an abundance of time; she wasn't going anywhere, thanks to Thread. She closed the door and turned around.
Suddenly, Katniss was aware of how alone she was, and it felt as if the walls were closing in on her. Storming off from Peeta's room this morning suddenly seemed very foolish. Now she was by herself, somebody in the building wanted her dead, and they were willing to go to extreme measures to make it happen. For the first time, she hoped there were cameras watching her every move.
The halls were long enough that she'd see anyone approaching. She'd be safe from ambush, unless someone was hiding in a doorway, waiting for the right moment.
What are you thinking? She thought to herself. Her bow was with her. Nobody could get close enough to harm her. She marched towards the elevator, making a point of not looking over her shoulder. There wouldn't be anything there, anyway.
With her renewed feeling of security, she resented the part of herself that had wished for Peeta a moment ago. Katniss could deal with dangerous situations. When she was thirteen, she'd had a run-in with a bear. Peeta would have been holed up in his bakery then, kneading dough or something.
She thought of how she'd revealed the Johanna thing and winced. No, Peeta was actually the last person she wanted to see right now.
Her thoughts turned to Brutus and his tantrum. She wondered how it was possible that someone could get so wound up over something as silly as a practice dummy falling over. She got on the elevator and pushed the button for the tenth floor.
There was that other thing he'd said, though, about being trapped like a rat.
The elevator dinged, having arrived at the destination.
A strange thought popped into Katniss's head. Peeta and Haymitch were certain that the Capitol was confused and thrown off, but she had never known Snow to be anything other than a step ahead of her. The only time she'd bested him was when she'd used a handful of berries to take advantage of the Capitol's need for a Victor.
If it was bigger than one person trying to get at Katniss, why the elaborate scheme? Why go through the trouble of leaving notes and trying to take her out publicly? Then there was the issue of the mugs at the fika. What kind of assassin would be foolish enough to poison the only cup she would definitely not drink out of?
The sitting room was empty; the Peacekeepers had probably been called off once they realized Katniss was not there. She continued through the hall and opened the door to her room.
The metallic, salty odor of blood hit her in the face as if she'd collided with a wall. The bed was drenched with it, looking black in the bright sunlight spilling through the window. There was a body on the bed.
Cressida McGregor lay crumpled, her limbs sprawled out at unnatural angles. Her face was deathly pale, a stark contrast to the blood on the sheets. Her eyes peered at the ceiling, glinting dully but seeing no more.
It was plain to see what had killed her. Cressida's head was tilted upwards, her throat cut. The blood around the wound was still red, not yet congealing.
Katniss was back in the Games again. Back were Glimmer's screams and Cato's moans, and the fear and the blood and the chasing. The mutts were on her again. Her bow and sheath clattered to the ground, and she fell, hitting her head with a thunk on the thinly carpeted floor. She felt like she was going to choke on the stench of blood.
She saw Cressida's empty, dead eyes before her and tumbled into darkness.
A/N: Surprised? Let me know by leaving a short review ;)
Because I'm a grammar nerd, I have a favorite sentence in this chapter. Feel free to guess which one.
Also, I wanted to clarify that you as the audience can absolutely submit guesses about who the murderer is! To avoid giving anything away, though, I'm going to respond with the word "Ah," to any and all guesses. Since I already know the identity of the culprit, I could easily slip and reveal something otherwise.
If you want to submit a guess, PM me, and I'll log it and the date it was submitted. It'll be a sort of competition to see if and when the answer is guessed.
Of course, when I read mysteries, I sort of *like* being surprised, so I don't necessarily try to figure it out. If you want to just follow along, you are perfectly free to do that also.
see you next week, friends.
-ryrous
