More than half of the other tributes had already arrived by the time Caspian and Lucy stepped into the massive training center. They took turns pinning the number 8 onto each other's backs, and the last few districts filtered in as a tall, athletic woman opened training with a lecture on the rules.
Lucy's eyes wandered to the other tributes, gathered in a wide, scattered circle as if it were the first school assembly of the year, the woman's voice humming in her ears as the inside of her skin tingled at their proximity.
These kids could have been her classmates, a blond boy with his thumbs in his pockets, a girl no older than twelve in a frilly green dress she'd clearly chosen for herself, older kids spaced awkwardly apart and avoiding eye contact.
Only one group stood with relaxed shoulders, and she shifted imperceptibly closer to Caspian as Peter crossed his broad arms and Susan snickered to her district partner, dark curls cascading over bare shoulders and low-cut top, even taller and more imposing here on level concrete than they had seemed in their chariots.
The career tributes.
Just lay low, she reminded herself before the panic could set in, breathing out and averting her eyes as Susan glanced in their direction.
"The Gamemakers will be watching from the loft," said the tall woman, wrapping up her speech just as Lucy tuned back in.
She quickly played it back in her head. No fighting, lunch served in the cafeteria. Easy enough.
"Alright then, get to it."
And just like that, the woman turned away and set twenty four kids free over the massive gymnasium for the rest of the day, each wall lined with various work stations from axe-throwing to knot-tying, metal glinting in every direction.
Colorful Gamemakers milled about the shielded balcony a story's height above them, notebooks in hand while tributes dispersed across the room, keeping well away from each other. All except for the careers, who made straight for the sparring rings in the middle of the floor as Peter lifted a sword from the rack and balanced it on two fingers before flipping it into his hand with a silver flash so quick even Lucy couldn't see how he did it.
Show off.
He didn't need to train. He'd been training all his life.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Caspian watching, too.
"Remember what Polly said," she breathed. Save some surprises for the real Games.
Caspian glanced at her, then back at Peter, and heaved a sigh. "Well, good luck." He shot her an ironic smile before striking out in the direction of a spear-throwing station instead.
"You too," she muttered.
Not that he needed it.
She wandered slowly around the room, taking in the different stations until one in particular caught her eye: traps. That would be useful in the arena, especially as she hadn't the first clue how to hunt. Maybe she could even trap a career while she was at it.
The teacher greeted her and walked her through the basics, sat her down on the fake forest floor with all kinds of different natural materials she might find, and showed her how to make a simple cage trap for small animals. Lucy followed along carefully, trying her best to store the information away.
"Good!" praised the teacher when she'd completed her first cage successfully. "Let's try the next one."
Lucy worked until the teacher got up to help another tribute, and kept going on her own, now attempting a type that required string. As a substitute, she was braiding long grass.
She gazed around the room while she worked, shrouded enough by the false forest that she didn't mind staring. The boy from Five had already cut his finger on a sword, and a team of Capitol attendants rushed in to deal with it before a single drop of blood hit the floor.
A few stations away, Susan nocked another arrow, pulled the string back to her cheek, and let it whiz through the air to land with a thunk in the center of the bull's eye.
Lucy shuddered and turned back to the twigs in her hands. She'd spent nearly an hour working on traps by the time a boy's voice came behind her.
"Pole, there's no reason to go—"
She looked up and the boy stopped in his tracks.
"Oh, sorry, I thought you were my district partner. You looked like her from the back."
Lucy took him in at a glance, younger than her but taller, gangly, blond. "You're from District Three, right?"
He turned to show the 3 pinned to his back. "Your eight's a bit wrinkled. Looked like a three."
Lucy reached back and smoothed out the number, glancing around the training center. "I think I saw your district partner go into the bathroom a little while ago."
The boy rolled his eyes.
"I'm telling the truth!"
"I know, she's spent half our time in the Capitol sulking in the bathroom." He sighed and shook his head. "I'm Eustace, by the way."
"Lucy," she replied, reaching up to shake his hand, "It's nice to—"
"Don't bother, there's no point pretending we want to be here."
"I can still be polite," said Lucy indignantly, though she couldn't exactly argue with him.
"If you must. In that case, the pleasure's all mine," he said dryly. Then he looked around, and shifted on his feet.
"You can stay here while you wait for your district partner." She didn't know why she said it, but it came out anyway. "I mean, if you want."
Eustace surveyed the station, weighing his options. He shrugged, but sat down across from her. "Not much point in waiting. She'll be in there for hours."
"Do you want me to look for her?"
Eustace raised his already arched eyebrows.
Why would you offer? She kicked herself, and he shook his head.
"Don't bother. I know Pole, she hates consolation even more than bullying. I'm not about to make that mistake again."
"Are you allies?"
Shut up, shut up.
These weren't just any ordinary kids she could befriend. They weren't classmates, no matter what appearances might suggest.
"Dunno," said Eustace, "We're sorta friends, I guess. Her name's Jill—well, I call her Pole—we were in school together."
Lucy almost choked at the past tense and covered it up with a small cough. Of course she knew they were never going back to their districts. Or at least, not together. But still, she wasn't sure she liked the way Eustace talked.
He fiddled in his pocket for a moment and pulled out a small candy wrapped in wax paper. "Peppermint?"
"Thanks," she laughed in surprise, and accepted it.
"One thing I have to say for the Capitol," he said, unwrapping one for himself, "their sweets are better than any we had in Three."
Lucy popped hers into her mouth and sharp peppermint flavor burst over her tongue, crisper and sweeter than any of the dry peppermint balls she'd so looked forward to at school holidays.
"You didn't poison this, did you?" She peered at the wrapper, half joking, too late for it to matter.
"Oh, now there's an idea." Eustace glanced over his shoulder to Peter and the District Four boy leaning on weapons racks, watching Susan shoot. "Don't suppose they'd take a sweet from me?"
"You're not serious."
He looked back at her, cogs turning behind pale grey eyes. Then shook his head. "Too risky. Guess I should've poisoned you."
Lucy scoffed, unable to tell if he was joking.
Eustace didn't seem to notice.
He picked up a pile of sticks and arranged them to match Lucy's, twisting grass rather than braiding it to tie them together. The finished product looked like the instructor had made it, and when he cut the cord, the trap sprang shut. Lucy hadn't even made it that far yet.
"How did you do that?"
He shrugged, but the corner of his mouth twitched. "Three is technology. We learn basic engineering stuff in school."
What would his odds look like if the Capitol people could see him do that?
Digory was right, they couldn't underestimate anyone.
The two of them worked together on traps for the rest of the morning, talking here and there, though it seemed they didn't have much in common, and at last Lucy stood to stretch her aching legs. "Been anywhere else interesting?"
"Edible insects," said Eustace, still fiddling with a wire trap, and Lucy wrinkled her nose. "Alright, it's not for everyone."
Before she could retort, a clash of metal echoed from across the room, and she spun to see a dark haired boy circling a Capitol sparring instructor in the center ring, face hardened with determination.
The instructor lunged, but the boy leapt out of the way and struck back so sharply that the instructor barely held onto his sword.
"He's not bad." She leaned back against a fake tree to watch.
"Athletic type," said Eustace dismissively from the ground. "They're going easy on him."
The dark-haired boy slashed fast and ducked under the counter-strike. If the blades had been sharp, the instructor might have lost an arm.
A smirk flickered over the boy's lips, and suddenly Lucy remembered where she'd seen him before. The stables, the woman, Caspian's face gone white. District Six.
"Eustace, do you know anything about that boy's mentor?"
"What?" Eustace glanced up again, and Lucy almost thought he shuddered. "The tall one?"
She nodded.
"Only what a horrible fright she gave Pole. Nasty pale face and all that, nearly frightened her to tears right before the parade. And that certainly didn't help matters."
Nervous faces flashed back into her mind, none quite so shaken as Caspian, but she'd been so engrossed by the woman that she'd barely noticed anyone else, not even the boy.
She watched him now.
They weren't the only audience, either. Another girl stood beside the ring, warm brown skin and silky hair more than a little eye-catching. She must be his partner.
A loud clatter echoed through the gym as the instructor's sword flipped over the edge of the ring onto the concrete floor, and the girl jumped back, but gave a small applause nonetheless, hovering very close to a weapons rack.
"Definitely going easy on him," muttered Eustace.
Lucy ignored him.
"You're so good with swords, Ed," said the girl. Lucy could just barely make out the words from several yards away. "I simply don't understand how you do it!"
"You might understand if you tried anything for yourself," snapped the boy, climbing down from the elevated platform.
"Oh, don't be so mean," she pouted, "I try things, I'm just no good at them."
"How've you had time for that when you've just been following me around like a dog?" He slammed his sword back onto the rack and brushed the hair out of his face.
"You don't expect me to walk around on my own, do you? With these people?" She motioned dramatically to the rest of the room as if scandalized by the very prospect, then slumped back with her cheek against the rack. "Jadis might at least try to help me, since you can take care of yourself so well."
"Why should Jadis care about you? You can't do anything. She picked me because she knows potential when she sees it, not in some stuck up, blubbering idiot like you."
"I— I— Edmund!"
"Maybe if you stopped acting like such a princess, Lasaraleen, you'd last more than ten seconds in the arena." He smirked. "I doubt it, though."
The girl's mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
Lucy only realized when Eustace grabbed her arm that she'd stepped toward the sparring ring.
"Now's not the time to be a hero," he muttered.
"The nerve!" she gasped, gaping as the dark haired boy—Edmund—walked off unbothered, leaving the girl behind.
Lasaraleen watched him go, still stammering silently.
Several terrible moments passed, and after a while she tried to lift a sword from the rack, but rubbed her eyes as the instructor spoke, and by the end she was trembling too hard to hold it upright anymore.
"Of all the horrid little beasts," hissed Lucy.
"You act like we're not all going to be killing each other by the end of the week," said Eustace.
"Well you needn't SAY it." She spun on him and wrenched her arm free, but he only met her eyes evenly with steely silver and shrugged.
"Suit yourself."
She breathed out, Eustace turned back to his trap, and Lucy glanced over her shoulder to the girl crying by the sparring ring. Something tugged in her gut, aching to comfort her, to storm after the boy, just like she might have if this had happened at school.
But this wasn't school.
This wasn't District Eight.
As if she needed another reminder that standing up for people was exactly what had landed her here in the first place.
Edmund may as well have been Anne Featherstone. Untouchable.
She shook her head to dislodge the thought, trying to refocus on the task at hand. "What about trying over there?"
Eustace followed her gaze to a station for wild plant identification. "Sure."
It was another hour before lunch rolled around and everyone found their way to the big cafeteria just off the gymnasium, set up buffet style with gleaming metal picnic tables scattered throughout, a far cry from the half-rotted benches outside the one decent bakery in Eight.
By the time Lucy filled her tray, the careers had already taken over the center table with rowdy conversation, laughing over each other like they'd been friends for years while the other tributes spread out more evenly around the room, some sitting alone, some with their district partners, some in small groups.
Lucy hovered in place, scanning the room until Caspian came in behind her and nodded to a table off to the side.
She smiled gratefully and moved to sit across from him. "I guess it pays to have a friend here." Friend wasn't the right word, but Caspian didn't correct her.
Loose hair hung over his forehead, mussed out of place from where it had been that morning, sweat stains lacing the collar of his shirt, color tingeing his cheeks. Whatever he'd been doing, it hadn't been traps.
A few moments later, Eustace slid onto the bench next to Lucy and Caspian's eyes snapped up, the air thickening between them.
"What?" asked the younger boy, "Everywhere else is full."
Caspian only glared, and Lucy sighed. "This is Eustace."
Her partner shifted his unimpressed gaze to her, quirking an eyebrow as if to say 'really?'
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Eustace, this is my district partner, Caspian."
"I know," he said, and bit into a roll without so much as glancing up.
Lucy pursed her lips.
So much for civility.
Neither boy said a word until a mousey brown-haired girl appeared with puffy eyes, and Eustace scooted over to make room for her.
"So you'll come out for food but not for practice?"
"Oh shut up, Scrubb, it's none of your business."
"Alright then," said Eustace, and stabbed a baked carrot onto his fork with more force than necessary.
Lucy tried to focus on her own food, but stole a few glances at the girl, Jill, noting her pert nose and faint dusting of freckles under rich brown eyes, her hair a good deal shorter than Lucy's, and she thought with some amusement that Eustace wasn't very good at identifying people from the back.
Her attention wandered as she nibbled on a toasted sandwich, tuning in to the surrounding conversations.
"So, why'd your district get rid of you?" asked a boy at the table ahead of her.
"Just too much to handle, I guess," said a girl with dark, frizzy hair, though her tone said she was avoiding the question more than answering it.
"Come on, Aravis, everyone else is saying."
"What about your district partner, then?" asked the first boy, blond locks falling into his face as he leaned forward on his elbows. "I didn't know Eleven played to win."
Aravis laughed, a sharp, derisive laugh. "What, Rabadash? Are you kidding? They voted him out cause nobody in Eleven could stand him."
Someone else at the table snickered.
"Really? I saw him practicing, he's nearly as good as a career."
Aravis shrugged. "If he wins, great. If not, even better."
Lucy followed their glances to a tall, well-built boy with deeply tanned skin lounging at a table by himself as if he owned the place.
"What about you, Twelve?"
"It's Corin," snapped the blond boy, "And don't say Twelve like it's some kind of insult."
"Alright, alright." Aravis held her hands up in mock defeat.
Corin snorted and tossed his hair back, ignoring the fact that it only flopped right back into place. "Picked one too many fights. Or they just got tired of getting knocked down, bunch of cowards."
"I thought Twelve wasn't an insult," lilted Aravis.
"I'm the only one allowed to judge my district, okay? Me and Betty, though she refuses to speak to anyone except our mentors, so I guess it's just me."
"At least your mentors still pay attention to you," sniffled a girl that Lucy recognized a second later as Lasaraleen.
Sympathetic noises murmured over the table, but Lucy guessed they were really urges to say more.
"Ever since the Reaping, Jadis only cares about him. She barely even spares me a glance! And he's such a horrid suck-up, does everything she says. And of course he's terrible to me."
Another pang of sympathy tugged at Lucy's insides. Mentors controlled sponsors' support in the arena, so Lasaraleen really had no chance if she was telling the truth.
She wanted to hear more about Jadis, but the conversation moved on and became much less interesting as others pitched in complaints about their districts.
Her attention settled next onto the career table, to her back and a bit further away, though just as easy to hear.
Two boys spoke closest to her, and Lucy spared an innocuous glance to identify them as Peter and the District One boy whose name she didn't know.
"She wasn't supposed to come this year," the One boy was saying, "But no one could beat her in the voting."
Susan, thought Lucy.
"The second she got it into her head she wanted to go, no one could compete. Everyone back home's crazy about her. Except for Margaret, of course. Poor girl's training's all wasted now, she'll be too old to volunteer next year. I think Su enjoyed replacing her, too. Certainly been smug about it since."
A silence ensued in which Lucy guessed the boys were watching Susan, currently flirting with the District Four boy on the other side of the table.
"She's a scene stealer," agreed Peter, though Lucy couldn't tell if he said it with a smile or a frown.
Ironic, how so many would kill to get out of here, while others competed for the opportunity to kill at all.
But it was the other career girls' words that brought her up short, strawberry suspended halfway to her mouth. "Then there's that Pevensie girl."
Her spine stiffened.
"Awfully plain without all that makeup. She's not even pretty. I don't see what all the high ratings are about."
"Just wait, she'll screw up and they'll all forget about her. All she got was a lucky stylist. Mine's an idiot, I swear, District Four is always mermaids, that trend's been dead for years. She turns up in that frilly monstrosity and everyone goes crazy."
"Don't worry, she won't be very pretty when I'm done with her."
The girls giggled, and Lucy looked up only to lock eyes with Caspian. Her heart jumped. She'd already forgotten him there, and now at a glance she knew he'd heard, too.
Her cheeks flushed hot.
Eustace hadn't noticed, busy arguing with Jill again, but the career girls gossiped loud enough for the whole room to hear if they chose to.
Suddenly she'd eaten quite enough.
She swung her legs over the end of the bench and stood, turning one or two heads as she abandoned her half-eaten sandwich, ignored Caspian's eyes, and walked back out into the gymnasium, now empty save for a tall boy at the weightlifting station who had apparently decided to skip lunch.
Deep breaths, red blur, heart pounding, aimless over flat concrete until her feet slowed but her heart didn't.
She could have shouted, at home, at Anne. Repulsive, spoiled, backstabbing little beast! She could have smacked the smug looks right off their faces.
But not here.
None of that mattered here.
Only one thing mattered, and every single kid in that cafeteria would kill her once it came down to it. Many of them would enjoy it. Eustace was right. There were no friends, there was no trust.
Really, that was how life had always been, she'd just been too thick to realize it until now.
The whole world would tear her apart to get what it wanted, at least here she didn't have to pretend otherwise.
And they could say what they liked, but she would earn those ratings.
Almost without thinking, she struck out for the archery station, picking up speed again as Susan's image flashed back into her head, striking the center of the target over and over like clockwork. Trained. Easy. Show-off.
The Capitol must be bored to death.
Playful, engaging. Polly's voice echoed in her head. The Capitol doesn't expect it from outlying districts.
She could give them something new. She could be their darling, if she wanted.
High silver partitions separated several shooting lanes, presumably to prevent crossfire, and Lucy wondered briefly if a tribute had ever been shot in training.
Too risky, came Eustace's voice in her head, and she almost laughed at how far she'd leapt in a few hours, slowing at last as the instructor showed her how to hold and string the bow, how to nock an arrow, how to stand for shooting.
Her first shot straggled a few feet before clattering pathetically to the ground.
Well, at least nobody saw that.
Her next thankfully did fly, though it missed the target by more than three feet.
She nocked another and pulled the string back, peering down the shaft, squeezing her left eye shut, clenching her arms steady, then released it with a twang.
The arrow shot, and stuck with a satisfying chunk in the edge of the target.
She grinned.
"Very good!" praised the instructor, and sent her to retrieve the arrows.
By the time the other tributes filtered out from the cafeteria, she was hitting the target nearly every time.
"Suppose they don't have bows in the arena?"
Lucy jumped at the familiar voice, and let her arrow fly early. It sailed over the target and hit the wall, sticking high out of reach.
She spun to face Caspian. "Don't you ever announce yourself like a normal person?"
He grinned, crossed his arms, and leaned against the partition. "Don't you ever go anywhere without putting on a show?"
"What?"
"Your little display back there. You know you're all they're talking about, right?"
"Nothing's changed, then."
He scoffed, and she sighed, thinking back to his original question before she'd nearly jumped out of her skin.
"And suppose they do have bows in the arena and you don't know how to use them?"
"Fair point."
She pulled another arrow from the quiver at her hip and threaded it, squinting up at Caspian. "Where've you been?"
"Oh, just turning down an offer from the careers."
Lucy's jaw dropped. She forgot her arrow. "The careers?"
Caspian glanced over his shoulder and Lucy followed his gaze to Peter and the District One boy, hanging around the rest of the gang at a rack of spears.
Caspian waved, and Peter glared and turned away.
He turned back to Lucy with an exaggerated look of innocence. "I think I've hurt his feelings."
Lucy laughed in shocked delight, then tried to control herself, straightened her expression. "Isn't that dangerous, though? Turning them down?"
Caspian shrugged. "They'll be dangerous either way. Alliances don't last forever, you know. And besides, they're not really my style."
Lucy caught his eye and thought for a second that something else hid behind his words. Then she shook off the notion. "Now who's putting on a show? Are you just gonna stand around and watch me?"
"Mmmm, you're not really that interesting."
Lucy huffed. "I've only just started thirty minutes ago!"
A ghost of a smile played over Caspian's lips. "I suppose archery wouldn't be a terrible waste of my time."
Lucy rolled her eyes.
Caspian took up another bow from the rack and strung it without the instructor's help, aimed, and shot the target Lucy had just hit the edge of. It stuck just off center.
"Don't tell me you trained with a bow, too?"
"A long time ago," he admitted, almost sheepishly.
Lucy shook her head. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were a career yourself."
Caspian smirked and strung another arrow.
Lucy did too, and for the next hour they made a competition of it.
If the careers talked, neither of them noticed.
