“You’s gettin’ ex-ploy-ted!” Grimmy Grimejacket had turned up for the game against the Skitteringi to speak to the Xonyxas, now some of the agent’s key clients. True to form, he had donned his usual assortment of finery, though he’d made an effort to get decked out in the Militantes’ colours of blue and yellow. He wore a canary jacket trimmed with azure brocade in military style.
There was Diandro Paredes at the far canal lip, his legs driving hard and his body leaning forward. He had a harness around his bare torso, to which was hitched a hawser that stretched back and down into the canal, to a grain scow loaded with what had to be a score of big jute grain sacks.
Eguardo Giamucci burst into the owner’s box like a tsunami slamming into a secluded cove, his twisted hands thrust high in the air, one holding his cane aloft like a messiah of yore. “I’m tellin’ ya, Thordwall, there ain’t no way your Militantes win today.”
“This is the signing that carries us over the finish line.” In her notebook, Thalia Espinas jotted down the words spoken by the owner of the Mytilan Militantes, Cassandra Thordwall, who stood on the bar of the Luffing Lateen speaking to a packed house. She could only guess because Thalia didn’t come down to this part of Guayamartí often, but she had the distinct impression the owner of the Lateen, Samuel Gosling, was unused to hosting such formal events.
“Is it from a BOY friend?” Jasmine, Jacyntha’s sister and Mytilan’s Crown Princess, held a sealed letter to her chest, a coquettish smile lighting her copper face.
“Is it from a BOY friend?” Jasmine, Jacyntha’s sister and Mytilan’s Crown Princess, held a sealed letter to her chest, a coquettish smile lighting her copper face.
A club thumping into an Exotherm’s skull. That was what Anahuark’s foul sounded like to Jacyntha; the skulls of those damned big lizards were hard and had hollow chambers running through them, making an echoing thump when they got brained in battle.
The ball was big and round. It was thick polished leather stitched around an interior cavity stuffed with wool. And it was heavy! With a cry, Jacyntha twisted, torquing momentum into the damned thing, and she hefted it with all her wilting strength, her throwing arm pitching it all of ten paces through the air to Anahuark. The Militantes’ trouble-making catcher caught it with both arms, spinning as she did so, a grunt exploding from her lungs.
Cassandra Thordwall pointed a finger at all but one of her counterparts, a dozen team owners gathered around the massive oak table in the Cámara de Comercio de Guayamartí. The encounter, a meeting of the Board of Governors of the Sommer Sea Football League, might have been better held in the league offices, but last autumn Thordwall herself had ransacked them. So the chamber of commerce had rented the league the space … after the team owners had fronted a significant damage deposit.
She opened the door to the night and took a deep breath of the sea air coming in off the Calxi Strait. Then she turned and laid the palm of her hand against Umberto’s cheek. “My dear, there’s one thing makes me wonder about what really happened that night.”
