The Queen Of The Stadium

They're shouting for her.

Two syllables, echoing around the stadium, picked up and tossed from voice to voice until there's just one huge roar, the crowd a single giant animal with a hundred thousand voices and two hundred thousand stamping feet.

Ga-er! Ga-er! Ga-er!


They're shouting for her, all those Holders and navy officers and rich commoners. Shouting for the slave child of slaves, worth less than a good breeding steer in the ordinary scheme of things.

But she is not ordinary.

Ga-er! Ga-er! Ga-er!

 She is Gaer Anansi, who scored three times in the match against Dam-Torsad's best team.  Gaer Anansi, who made the over-hand throw from half-way down the stadium that was widely agreed to be the play of the decade. Gaer Anansi, whose boots are said to be blessed since her kicks never, ever miss.

Slave child of slaves, in the stadium she is a queen.

Ga-er! Ga-er! Ga-er!


The noise builds and rolls and just as it is about to peak and fall back in on itself in a murmur of disappointment, Gaer strides forward.  She looks neither right nor left, not a flicker of her eyes or a lift of her hand to acknowledge the crowd, screaming wordlessly now. The tattoos on her face and the number branded on her bare back mark her as the left flanker for Euathrace, but she knows no-one there needs either to recognize her.  Children playing pick-up games in parks imitate her walk, the easy stroll that explodes into a blur of speed when the siren sounds.  Teenage girls - and boys, for that matter - copy the way she holds her head. Last spring there was a public scandal when two well-brought-up daughters from good families turned up to school wearing her tight-braided Brutor hairstyle.

Amarr daughters imitating a slave?

She is Gaer Anansi.

Normal rules do not apply.

At the center of the field, she stops, and for the first time acknowledges the presence of her audience, raises one hand. Quiet. The game is about to begin.

They obey her, and the noise dies away into a breathless silence.  They obey her, the slave child of slaves.

The ball rises in the air.

The whistle blows.

And then she is neither slave nor queen, nor Gaer Anansi either, but movement and light and the angle of the ball, for a period of time that is both infinite and far, far too short.

The whistle blows and she stands panting, sweat rolling down her sides and trickling into her eyes. Her palms sting from the burn of the ball, her shoulder aches from a half-remembered collision.

Ga-er! Ga-er! Ga-er!


The scoreboard says she won.

She always wins.

She is the queen of the stadium, still.

Gaer gives the crowd one long look, all those open mouths, shouting her name, gaping wide to swallow as much of her beauty and her skill and her grace as they can.

As she turns towards the exit the cheering crowd is almost loud enough to drown out the jingle of the collar around her neck.