“It’s good for morale,” she said, finally. “People like to see their teams play — and win.”
“I’d be happier if they went off and fought the necromancers,” I muttered sourly. “They might actually get something important done.”
It was hard to keep the disdain from my face. The sports captains and their teams had massive egos, and far too many people thought the sun shone out of their arses, but they weren’t that important in the grand scheme of things. Juliet was going to leave her glory days behind when she left school, unless she somehow managed to springboard into a sporting league. I doubted it. She simply didn’t have the contacts she’d need to parlay her time at school into a career. No wonder she had such a bad attitude. She’d committed herself to playing sports and yet, if she didn’t make it this year, she wouldn’t make it at all.
And I might feel sorry for her, I reflected, if she wasn’t such a pain in my rear.
The whistle blew. I reached for my notebook and pencil, resting them on my lap as the two teams rushed into battle. The crowd cheered, even though very little had happened yet, as the ball was launched into the court. I groaned under my breath as the players rushed past, the arena adjusting itself unpredictably to make life difficult for both sides. Being forced to watch the game felt like cruel and unusual punishment.
“Maybe Juliet did it on purpose,” Aniseed suggested. “If she knew how much you hated it…”
“Perhaps,” I agreed. I doubted it — Juliet wasn’t particularly subtle — but it was possible. “Or maybe she just wants to have me under her thumb.”
“Cheer up,” Aniseed said. “She’ll be gone next year.”
I scowled. Sure, Juliet would be gone next year, but I’d be heading straight towards my fourth-year exams. I’d wanted to get the broadsheet well underway before I had to stop devoting so much of my time to my pet project and start concentrating on my exams instead. It shouldn’t have been that hard to recruit newer reporters and editing staff… now, thanks to Juliet, it was going to be a great deal harder. No one wanted to spend their spare time writing puff pieces about sports captains and other pieces of fluff. They wanted to make a name for themselves exposing the truth.
The whistle blew. Something had happened. I tried not to slump in my chair as a player was sent off, a chorus of boos following him. I wondered, idly, what he’d done and then decided it didn’t matter. The player’s gambit, whatever it had been, had failed. If it had worked, the crowd would be cheering instead.
I looked at Aniseed. “How much longer?”
“It’s only been ten minutes,” Aniseed said, amused. “You have an hour or two to go.”
I groaned. “Why couldn’t she have just caned me instead?”
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the game went on and on. The crowd cheered with every goal and booed, mockingly, every time the players came close to scoring, only to miss at the last second. Hexes and curses — some borderline illicit and some very definitely over the line — were exchanged whenever the referee was looking in the other direction; the ball made a raspberry noise as an enterprising player tried to cast a charm on it, then flew right at the idiot and slammed into his chest. The crowd roared with laughter as the stunned player was levitated out of the arena, his teammates looking pissed. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Their teammate’s sin hadn’t been trying to charm the ball. It had been trying and failing.
It’s perfectly legal to turn the other players into small hopping things, I thought cynically, but the gods forbid you try to do anything to the ball.
The referee blew his whistle. Again. I slumped in my seat, thinking baleful thoughts about Juliet as the game resumed. Perhaps sending me to the arena was a subtle punishment after all. I doubted she had the empathy to realise not everyone shared her love for sports… perhaps it had been one of the one of the other sports captains. They’d pegged me as a shirker long ago, and I had to admit they were right. I’d never been the type of person to exert myself on the sports field. It was so much better to just stay on the sidelines and look the other way whenever the ball came near me.
And I didn’t really care if we won or lost, I reflected. What did it matter?
“The REDHAWKS are besting the MAGIS,” the commenter bellowed. I rubbed my ears as the sound echoed around the arena. I’d cast charms to keep the racket to something slightly below a thunderclap, but they’d either been overpowered or simply worn down. “If the MAGIS don’t MAKE points by the END of the match, they have LOST!”
“Ouch,” I muttered. I had no idea what charm he was using, to boost certain words above the others, but it worked far too well. The crowd roared — some delighted, some angry — as the game entered its final moments. I was sure I saw money and gambling tokens changing hands already. “Can they just get on with it?”
“It’s nearly over,” Aniseed said, in a tone that suggested she’d had enough of my grumbling. “Just a few more moments.”
I forced myself to sit up as the losing team launched a desperate play, two-thirds of the team charging their opponents and hurling hexes in a bid to distract them from the players who were snatching control of the ball and tossing it from player to player to keep it from putting them in the sin bin for the last few seconds of the match. A hex lanced at the referee and exploded a moment or two before it reached him, the flash blinding him long enough for the losing team to push through the chaos and try to score. I sensed the anticipation building, the crowd leaning forward in unison — it looked as if they were all under compulsion spells — as the two teams clashed one final time. Hope rang through the air — the gamblers exchanged more money and tokens — before flicking and dying as the winning team stood its ground. It was such a simple tactic that even I could understand it. They were already winning. They didn’t need to score any more points. They just had to keep the other team from scoring enough points to turn their defeat into a draw.
Aniseed leaned forward — I felt a twinge of disappointment from her — as the two teams clashed an instant before the whistle blew one final time. The fighting was already out of hand. The referee blew again and again, but the teams refused to engage. I tried not to laugh at the sight of magicians brawling like mundane apprentices, throwing punches instead of hexes as the wards around the arena started to come down. The crowd laughed and egged the two sides on as the referee tried to restore order. I found it impossible not to laugh, too, as I saw Hector — the snobbiest snob in the school, which was quite a remarkable feat — punching Callam in the face, only to be kicked in the chest by Diamond. Hector was likely to be in some trouble when he got home, I decided. There was little difference, as far as I was concerned, between hexing and punching someone, but the magical families disagreed.
I grabbed my notebook and scribbled notes as the referee battled to restore order. The two teams were too close together for him to simply separate them, not unless… I felt magic flaring through the air as he changed his tactics, freezing the players in place. Silence fell, so heavily my ears rang. The referee didn’t hesitate. He levitated the players out of the field — half of them were going straight to the healers, from what I could see — and ordered the watching audience to leave the arena. I stood slowly enough to take note of more money and tokens exchanging hands, then followed Aniseed back to our bedroom. I wasn’t going to hang around for the post-game party, if indeed there was one. The referee might have already ordered the party cancelled.