"Good evening," Vic said. "You know why we're here, and the lady who keeps the books has shown you what it's worth, so I'll keep my part of it plain." He turned slowly, taking in the whole room, the way he read the rules before every circle that mattered. "These are the rules of the survival circle. They do not change because the room is full. They do not change because the night is special. They are the same rules as a Tuesday.
"Three rounds. Three minutes each. One minute between. The circle is the big one β you can see it. Two hunters, one quarry. The hunters' object is a clean tag β two hands, or one hand held a full second, on the shoulders or the back β or to walk the quarry across the line, fair and in control. The quarry's object is to still be standing in the circle when the clock is done. There is no striking. There is no throwing, no tripping, no holding of clothing or limbs β hands are for tagging and for balance, nothing else. A tag is my call and my call only, and when I call it, everything stops, everybody resets, and nobody argues with the geometry. If I say stop, you are already stopping. If anyone is hurt, we are done, and the night is still a good night. The quarry may concede at any time by raising one hand. The hunters may concede a round the same way. Nobody falls in my circle. Everybody in it walks out of it." He paused. "These three have trained under these rules in my building for six years. They know them better than I do. Watch their feet."
He lowered the microphone.
"Sabine," he said.
She came out of the footwork room doorway and down the side of the hall in her chalked shoes, in the club's plain dark kit with her hair pulled back and the grey in it catching the light, thirty-eight years old and entirely unhurried, and the room rose for her β not in the roar it had given the young men of the undercard, but in the slower, deeper sound of four hundred people standing up for a teacher. She stepped over the chalk line at the near gate, alone, and walked to the centre of the great circle, and turned once, slowly, taking the measure of the distances the way other people take the measure of a room they are about to speak in. Then she settled. Feet placed. Weight quiet. Hands open at her sides, raised a fraction β not the fencer's guard, not quite; her own thing, the circle's thing, built for arriving early.
"Marcus," Vic said, and Marcus Webb came in through the far door and stepped into the circle at the east gate, rolling his shoulders once, his mother's voice arriving across the hall like a thrown rope β "That's my boy, that's the one, you show them how a Webb hunts" β and his eyes, as he set his feet and looked across twelve metres of white chalk at the woman standing in the centre, were not on the crowd, and they were not on Dana, wherever Dana was standing with her programme and her revised arithmetic. They were on the circle, and on Tyler.
"Tyler," Vic said, and Tyler Brooks entered at the west gate, quiet as weather coming in, and set himself at the line, and looked once β openly, without the old glance of negotiation, with something nearer to respect β at Marcus across the diameter of the circle, and then at Sabine, and nodded to her, a small, exact nod, the nod of a man greeting the hardest examination of his year.
Vic stepped back to the line with the whistle at his lips and the clock in Carla's hand showed three minutes, unstarted. The hall was silent. The circle was full and had not yet begun.
Vic Anselmo lifted the whistle to his lips, looked once at Sabine Renaud in the centre of the chalk circle, once at Marcus Webb on her left and Tyler Brooks on her right, and blew a single short note that cut the gala noise in half.
"Round one," he said. "Wrestle the feet, gentlemen. Touch with two hands or not at all. Defender stays in, you stay honest. My whistle ends arguments. Go."