They’re some of the first tributes to arrive in the training center, nearly half an hour early as per Electra’s orders. One of the trainers rushes over, pins large number 3’s to their backs and tells them to wait there until everyone else arrives. Districts 4 and 11 are there already, and the boy from 8. No one talks. Peris wants to know if Radia’s mentally ranking the tributes like he is, wonders what her system is, if she can tell which ones she’ll need to avoid from the start. If he’s one of the ones she’ll be avoiding. He jams his hands into his pockets and looks everywhere but at the dark eyed girl beside him.
The rest of the tributes file in over the next twenty minutes. With a jolt, Peris realizes that he's one of the tallest. It shouldn't surprise him, given that he stands a full head over most of his classmates back home, but he's even got a couple inches on the careers. He knows from years of practice with his sister that being the tallest doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the strongest, but a lot of sponsors equate size with skill in the beginning. That will help him if he ends up with a lower training score. It’ll also make him a target to the careers wanting those sponsors for themselves.
You know, in case any of the careers weren’t already targeting him for being the last victor’s baby brother.
The two boys around his height are the first ones Peris really looks over, knowing they did the same to him to minute they walked in the door. The boy from 7 - his name starts with an L, Peris thinks - is a little taller, with thick muscles in his arms that make his otherwise lanky frame look top heavy. Peris doesn't need to see him train to know he could be brutal with an axe if he's got the stomach to throw it at another person. Most kids from the lumber district don't.
His gaze shifts to the only other tribute at his eye level, the boy from 6. He's definitely got the potential to be that massive, looming tribute the capitol latches onto, the one that doesn’t talk but can snap someone's neck with his hands. Peris thinks belatedly that he can do that, too, but he pushes the thought away before it gets very far. Even Six's size can't make up for the hungry look that wraps around him and most of the other tributes. Skin tight, bones a little too defined, eyes sharp but empty. It's a familiar look, even though the stylists generally try to hide it before the kids are sent into the arena. District 3’s tributes usually have it, too.
Peris knows he should be grateful to be the exception. He's lucky. His size and health and training – not to mention Electra’s reputation – put him leagues ahead of most of this group. In the back of his mind he knows that while he’s looking for the biggest, most intimidating tribute, more than a few of them could be seeing that in him.
He’s lucky, but it makes him feel sick. He scans the rest of the tributes, sizing them up like his dad taught him, finding the obvious threats early but you can’t count out anyone until you've seen them fighting to live. So many look shaky and breakable, like one touch would be enough to shatter them.
Wait until they start training, he reminds himself. Wait until they’re in the arena. This is his first real look at them all, but that’s all it is. A first glance. Without moving enough to be obvious, Peris lets his posture slouch and presses his shoulders in to seem a little smaller, a little less sure of himself, a little less ‘son of a Peacekeeper who’s been training him and his vicious victor sister to fight since they could walk.’ He can play Cerealia’s god-character for the capitol, but Electra insisted on him having a low profile during training.
The head trainer finally arrives, an impressive woman with hair shorter than Peris’s, and gives them a basic rundown of the rules and the schedule. The longer she goes on, the tighter the space seems. Peris itches to move, to start, to do something, and he can feel the same agitation from the other tributes. The careers from 1 don’t even try to hide it; they nudge each other and whisper and laugh when the trainer explains different stations, shooting dangerous glances at anyone who looks over at them and sneering at anyone who doesn’t. The boy and girl from District 2 have the self-control to stay quiet, which, to Peris, makes them more of a threat. They don’t have to posture and sneer to show their strength. Aggression rolls off of them in waves.
If I were a sponsor, they’d be my first and second. Them, then the girl from 1 and probably the boy from 7. The tributes from 7 had had terrible chariot costumes, but the girl volunteering for no apparent reason – the first volunteer to come from District 7 – had brought attention to them both. She’d looked almost crazed up on the stage, but here she just looked pale and small. Probably the least intimidating of the eighteen year olds.
And there are so many eighteen year olds. At least half the group is older than Peris, which has to be a direct result of the capitol’s displeasure at having to watch so many young kids die the year before. But while older tributes make everyone feel better morally, they usually make for bloodier games. The smaller kids – the boy from 9 with his round, innocent face, the girl from 6 with the long hair and skinny arms – will be lucky to make it past the bloodbath. Technically everyone who makes it past the bloodbath is lucky.
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