Five.
I should've known I'd flub training. I didn't have anything to show the judges during my private session, and making things up on the fly hadn't worked out at all. Finch had done her best to console me, recounting that she'd received the same training score before the 74th Games, but it didn't help me feel better.
Five. Cicero Templesmith's stupid grin taunted me as the morning sun crept over the Capitol's peaks, the brilliant yellow-white alpine light shining in through the apartment windows with a certain hardness this morning. The whole audience probably had smirked right alongside him, laughing at the dumb girl who the arena was sure to knock off quickly. This entire dumb strategy of playing under the radar was backfiring in a hurry.
The savory smells coming from the dining room table annoyed me. I didn't feel like eating whatever it was the silent, crimson-robed avoxes were laying out. I didn't feel like listening to Finch's encouragements, or hearing Elan's snide remarks about sponsors. I only felt like going back to my bed and sleeping through the rest of the Games.
As usual, Daud woke before the others. He looked even more ragged than the past few days, his beard ragged and gangly, his eyes underlined with violet half-moons as he flopped down in the nearest dining room table.
"You not eatin'?" he grunted.
I gritted my teeth at the sound of silverware clanking against ceramic plates. Everything was noisier today, like the whole Capitol was out to mock me for my training score. Five!
"I'm not hungry," I said, lying down on the couch and propping my head up on a cushion. "Just wanna go back to sleep."
Daud snorted. "Shoulda slept longer, then," he said in the midst of a mouthful. "Can't take a bed for granted these days."
"I'm sure you can," I muttered. I didn't mean to sound so spiteful to him, but I wasn't in the mood for my mentor's bluntness – especially after he'd hardly been around the past three days.
He laughed. "Not really. Not how this life works."
I forced myself up and stumbled towards the table. Daud already had mowed through half a sausage in under a minute and piled on a clump of grapes as I slumped forward on the table. "Getting sponsorships sounds really tough," I sighed, dropping a piece of toast on the floor.
"You have no idea."
Sure.
"Think I'll take all these sausages," Daud muttered as Elan strolled in, puffing up his blue hair with one hand while smoothing out his shiny gold shirt with another.
"I could ask for another plate," Elan said. "Of course, you probably don't want to see much of the avoxes today, do you?"
Daud stopped in mid-bite. His lip curled, and he glanced up at Elan with narrowed eyes. "Not that hungry," he said, his teeth clenched.
"I wouldn't be, either. Getting sponsorships is such hard work," Elan said. "I hope you're not too upset over your score, Terra. I came back after you were already asleep, but Finch told me you'd had a little trouble with it."
"Doesn't matter," I murmured, pushing a grape around my plate with my fork. "Nobody'll care anyway."
"Quite the contrary. I'm much happier you received a low score over a high one," said my escort. "I've met a bunch around the city who sympathize with the underdogs. I've stretched the truth a little bit, but when they see you as an underprepared, emotional girl thrown into a grindhouse, well, it provokes some protective instincts."
"'Cuz stretching the truth is such hard work," Daud snorted.
Elan smiled at him. "I like the stories I tell compared to yours. Less grisly."
"Finch said I was supposed to be 'useful,' whatever that means," I grumbled. "So the Gamesmakers would like me more."
"You'd be surprised about what passes for useful here," said Elan.
"Well, I'm not exactly pretty or strong or anything –"
"Sometimes it's the meek and the quiet who hold all the best cards," Elan interrupted. "Someone overlooked can wedge themselves into a dark corner and listen to what everyone else has to say. Knowing what others don't and staying on the periphery of the games of the strong and powerful breeds survivors. It can even lift you up, say, from tribute to victor…or to the most lavish parties thrown during the Games, escorting one of the wealthiest districts in Panem and listening to the drunken conversations of some of the most powerful people in the country."
Elan leaned back and crossed his arms. "Training doesn't mean much for those who take it literally, Terra. Finch figured it out with her own five in training, and I have no doubt you, and Glenn with his six, will figure it out as well."
He knew something about what the Gamesmakers wanted, but I didn't get the chance to ask for details. Breakfast flew by once Glenn and Finch settled down, and my mentors whisked me away for the rest of the morning to sharpen my interviewing skills for the pre-Games festivities the next night. I wasn't looking forward to that. The thought of a sea of twenty thousand probing eyes intimidated me, and the last thing I wanted was for thousands of strangers to laugh at my stutters and awkward pauses right in front of me. It wasn't exactly positive reinforcement headed into the arena.
"Cicero Templesmith doesn't make fun of anyone," said Finch after the tenth or eleventh time I'd brought up that fear. I dug my chin into my knees, sinking into the silky cushions of the living room's widest chair and wishing it would swallow me up. "He learned from old Caesar Flickerman. He brings out the best in everyone."
"Wouldn't be a very good interview if he didn't," Daud added, idly picking at a long, jagged, angry red scab along his forearm.
I shook my head. "I don't know how to sound smart."
"Terra, give yourself a little credit," said Finch. "Alright – alright, let's start a little easier. Just tell me about the kids from District 2. What d'you know about them?"
"What?" I asked. "I mean – they don't like each other. The boy's quiet and wants to be left alone, but I'm pretty sure he's hiding how good he is, since the girl said he volunteered. Acheron, that's his name. He'll survive at least, since he knows his plants and can make a shelter. The girl's brash and is angry at him for not teaming up, and it sounded like she listened to their mentors more. She hasn't done anything but hit things with an axe and talk to the two from District 1. What's that got to do with anything?"
"See? You sounded smart right there," Finch said with a grin.
"No I didn't, I just paid attention to what they were saying and doing in training."
"Which is a pretty good way to play smart in the Hunger Games," said Daud.
"It's just training. Elan said –"
"The hell with Elan," Daud growled. "He's not in this thing. Besides, he told you very well that listening counted for a lot. If you're freezing to death off in the arena and you see a little point of light on the horizon that no one else does, maybe you find somewhere warm to spend the night while everyone else shivers in the snow. Maybe you find food in there and you don't starve. Maybe you survive the night. That's all you can ask for when you're freezing to death. Little details matter."
"I just –" I said, stopping and throwing my hands up. "I don't know."
"Cicero's predictable," Finch said. She leaned over and put a hand on my knee. "I've listened to him for more than twenty years, and he asks the same kind of questions from the same kind of kids. He's worked with the Head Gamesmaker for a while, and he knows all about trying to build an image around each person. If you can let him know from the get-go all the things going on in that head of yours, he'll play along."
It didn't sound like a great plan to me. I was counting on an act I didn't know if I could pull off, and I knew I needed every bit of rapport with the audience I could muster in the arena. With my time left here in the Capitol growing shorter with every minute, the Games themselves swelled up in front of me.
The hell with it. I'd trust my team.
"Alright," I said. "Tell me what I need to do."
/ / / / /
The Head Gamesmaker smelled of cheap perfume and expensive wine.
"Why does he call these things at this hour?" Galan yawned, stretching his arms over his head and squinting against the noonday sun's reflection against the hot asphalt in the City Circle. "Barely even midday."
Cyrus rolled his eyes. The Games wouldn't be over soon enough for the man, even if only to avoid the Gamesmaker. "Creon gets up with the sun. He says it's to keep time with the districts."
"Terrible policy."
"It's just a meeting. You can go back to your whoring and games-making right after, or whatever kept you up last night."
Galan smirked as the two men reached the concrete steps to the Presidential Mansion. "One of these nights you'll accept my invitations. They're parties. We're not having secret blood rituals or deciding matters of state at three in the morning."
"I'll take your word for it."
The great golden gates of the palatial building glistened in the sunlight. A pair of Peacekeepers loitered nearby, their guns slung over their shoulders, their postures anything but professional. Neither had to check Cyrus and Galan's identifications: The two men went where they pleased. Creon trusted them, and that was enough.
An anxious gnawing ate away at Cyrus's stomach as he and Galan hurried past the mahogany-lined halls and floor-to-ceiling pastel portraits within the mansion. He wasn't in the mood to admire the opulence of the palace today, or to stop and enjoy the sweet creamy scents that wafted through the air. He had Creon's trust, but men like Galan had a way with getting people to like them. Cyrus wanted to insulate the president from the sea of influences that Coriolanus Snow had navigated so well for fifty years, but the job was a lot tougher in the uncharted waters of a new presidency.
"Why am I even supposed to show up to this?" Galan asked as the two tromped down a wide, tile-floored hallway lined with marble sculptures of past Capitol icons. "Not exactly my line of work, governing and all. I'm a fan of more impulsive priorities. There's a delightful young thing from District 4 this year…"
"Coincidence, I'm sure."
"C'mon, Cyrus. Sometimes good luck strikes in the arena."
"It had better be more than your luck. Let's go in. Your arena can wait an hour."
Cyrus shouldered past the Gamesmaker and pushed open a heavy oaken door. Inside, statuettes of lapis lazuli and red jasper watched over a polished table cut from the heart of some giant spruce in District 7. Crystal windows on the far side of the room diffused the incoming sunlight into the thousands of tiny fractals of light that sparkled on the walls. The golden eagle of the Capitol spread its powerful wings on the great scarlet carpet underfoot, a giant copy of the emblazoned seal in the center of the table. Cyrus knew every inch of the President's Assembly Hall. Coriolanus Snow had come here every day for years, ensuring that he kept his fingers on every heartbeat of Panem's pulse.
That made it all the more worrying that Creon wasn't there.
In his place, a man with long, jet-black hair sat at the far side of the table, his hands folded around a silver pen. He was anything but the Capitol stereotype of a man, with nothing remarkable but his slate-gray vest and arching eyebrows setting him apart from the masses. The woman sitting to his right was something else entirely: With her pale blue-dyed skin, close-cropped white hair and oversized eyes surrounded by lashes the color of ashes, she stood out in a room filled with excess.
Unfortunately, Cyrus knew them all too well also.
"Taurus, Lucrezia," he said, sitting down and propping his elbows up on the table. "Creon running late?"
"He can't make it," the man, Taurus Sharpe, said. It seemed to Cyrus that his mouth hardly moved when he spoke.
"Can't blame the guy," laughed Galan.
Taurus's fingers twitched. "He's booked with Templesmith."
"Why don't we do this later, then," Cyrus said, getting up from his seat. "Wait until he's through with the media."
"We can do our jobs just fine now," Taurus said.
"Creon should have a say –"
"And he will, when I tell him what we've discussed later. Are you finished, Cyrus?"
Cyrus clenched his jaw. He wanted to leave, to slam his chair into the table and walk out, but it wouldn't do him any good. "Fine."
After watching the entire sequence, Lucrezia Bierce folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. "I'm a little concerned about your people, Galan."
The Head Gamesmaker snorted. "What, the crew? Blame the guys who hired them."
"The victors. I don't care about your employees."
"They aren't my people."
"She has a point," Cyrus cut in. "You oversee them while they're here."
Galan frowned and slumped forward. "We're supposed to be one the same side here, Cyrus."
"We are not-"
"The point," Taurus interjected, dropping his pen onto the table.
Lucrezia smiled at the silence that followed. "The point," she said. "Is that I've heard things out of District 4."
Galan perked up. "Me too. Good things."
"About your current victors, not what you're hoping to bed," Lucrezia snapped. "After last year's result, thanks to you, the Odair family is the most influential group of victors in the country. Husband, wife, son – they appeal to the more conservative districts and the audience here in the city alike, not to mention their rabid popularity with their home district. The reports, unfortunately, say that their thoughts about the Capitol are…unfavorable. At best."
"Everyone says things they regret. You don't need a spy network to tell me that," Cyrus grunted.
"Disparaging things? Do you say them?" Lucrezia said, raising an eyebrow.
"Don't play with me. I worked for Coriolanus when you were drooling over schoolwork."
"And Coriolanus Snow let the victors roam about as they wanted, as long as they abided by his terms," said Taurus. "It's a lax policy, especially with the unsettled mood already in District 4. Not every victor's popular in the districts, but plenty are, and we need to keep them on a shorter leash."
Bastard. Cyrus knew a power play when he saw one. Taurus wouldn't have dared to put down Snow's ideas when he was still in office, but now that he was dead, criticizing the former president apparently was fair game. The dead were blind and deaf, after all. "They're just people out there," he protested. "Maybe Finnick Odair can command District 4's respect, but most of them just go about their lives. Half of them are ignored by their districts. Look at 12, or 5, or any of the others that don't care so much about the Games. If we piss them off, all we do is irritate our best connections to the districts."
Taurus frowned. "Our best connections, many of who also have combat and leadership experience and who are used to sacrificing for their tributes every year. Don't doubt for a minute where their loyalties lie."
"We could solve that whole problem by picking more impressionable victors," Galan mused, picking at a fingernail. "Ones a bit, uh, more susceptible to what we have to say. Or what we like to do in our free time."
Taurus nodded to him. "See to it. Whoever wins this year, I want them in our pocket."
"Like Gloss and Cashmere?" Cyrus asked.
Lucrezia laughed. It was a soft, tinkling sound that seemed laced with just a hint of poison, as if someone had dropped a dash of hemlock into a fine wine. "Too obvious. Everyone knows those two, and the sentiments in the outlying districts towards District 1 are not kind. Perhaps someone less…ah, expected, would be better for our purposes."
"You'll figure it out," Taurus said to Galan. "And one more thing – I'm not happy about the Odair boy winning last year. Make sure District 4 doesn't make it two years in a row."