Soo made a complaint about the underground.
It arrived the morning after the Tunnel team’s win, typed, calm, and entirely without exclamation marks, which Gwendoline found almost more alarming than if it had been furious. The complaint stated, plainly, that players surfacing unpredictably from beneath the pitch constituted an unreasonable competitive advantage, and requested a formal review.
Griselda read it twice at her desk, then called Soo in personally, which she rarely did for paperwork of this kind.
“You want the tunnels investigated,” Griselda said.
“I want a level playing field,” said Soo, calm as ever.
Griselda considered this, tapping her pen once against the desk. “And your own captain,” she said, “spent the match waving a wand at the opposition’s attacks. Silently. Repeatedly. To an effect nobody can explain and Sooty has, at no point, confirmed or denied.”
There was a pause. Sooty, present in the room as ever, said nothing, which was itself a kind of answer.
Soo’s composure held, but only just. “That’s different.”
“Is it,” said Griselda, not really as a question.
Soo considered the room, considered Sooty, considered the fact that any ruling against unexplained advantages would have to apply evenly, and withdrew the complaint on the spot, with as much dignity as the situation allowed. Sooty said nothing throughout, which somehow made it worse.
Griselda closed the file. “Withdrawn,” she said, “wisely.”
But she didn’t stop there. She sat with the folder a moment longer, then reopened it and added a second ruling underneath the first, in her own hand, for the record.
“The Tunnel team’s use of the underground during their last match was not against any existing rule,” she wrote, “and the result stands unchanged. However, now that the matter has been formally raised, reviewed, and found to warrant scrutiny, surfacing from beneath the pitch during open play is banned effective immediately, for all future matches. What was permitted once, unchallenged, is not permitted twice, challenged.”
She stamped it, filed it, and sent a short note to the Tunnel team’s captain, informing her that whatever came next, it would have to be won from above ground.
Greta’s line appeared under the glass before the ink had dried:
Appeal — withdrawn. Ruling — stands. The tunnels stay closed from here.
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