“And you’re wondering why.”
Dairine looked at Nita for a moment and opened her mouth.
“You don’t want me and Kit to look bad, do you,” Nita said.
Uh oh, Spot said silently.
Fortunately Nita had already seen sufficient yawning from Dairine in the past few minutes for Dairine to think it wouldn’t look suspicious to shut her eyes and lean back against the pillows, rather than meet her sister’s eyes and possibly let Nita see what was going through her mind. Ideas such as Things are weird enough for you and Kit right now. No point in making them even weirder or more stressed. “Since it seems your guy is a jerk,” Dairine said, “no point in letting you have trouble dealing with him at the technical end, too. Not when I can make a suggestion or two, anyway.”
Nita nodded. It occurred to Dairine that she looked tired, too. “Is this strictly legal?” she asked after a moment.
Spot made ratchety noise: mechanical laughter. Dairine opened her eyes again, meeting his stalky ones. “I win,” he said aloud.
The look Nita gave him was bemused. “Win what?”
Dairine snickered. “Spot bet me that you’d want a rules check before you decided to do anything with the advice.”
Nita swatted at Dairine’s head, missing on purpose. Dairine didn’t even bother moving. “As long as I’m not mentoring him solo, as long as one of you two is directly present in the loop, you’re fine,” Dairine said. “I checked.”
“Okay,” Nita said, looking over at the spell again. “Tell me. Without this being fixed . . . what do you think of his chances of making it through the Cull?”
“Without the fix? Not so great. With the fix? Could be better than even.”
They both spent a few moments more regarding the spell’s general structure. To Dairine’s way of thinking, it was nowhere near as tidy as something she or Nita or Kit might have built. And especially, while she was thinking of it, the lovely rigorous structure of Mehrnaz’s spell made this one seem shabby by comparison. This looks lumpy, somehow. Even after being worked over in line with Nita’s suggestions, there were still places in which too much wizardry was crammed into too small a space, and there were barren spots that made no sense. One or two of them reminded her vaguely of the “lacuna” nonstructures that Mehrnaz had built into her anti-earthquake spell. Here, though, the resemblance was accidental: just empty places left that way because the designer hadn’t thought ahead.
Dairine yawned again, rubbing her eyes: they felt grainy. “God, I’m sorry . . .” she said.
“Don’t be!” Nita said, getting up. “The second opinion’s useful.”
“But look, you did good with this, for someone who hasn’t been working on stellar stuff as much as I have.” Dairine pushed herself up against the pillows, as while looking the spell over again she’d slid down. “You’re seriously going to make him stay up late and fix this?”
“Thinking about it real hard . . .” Nita shook her head. “Don’t know that I can make him do anything, but I can strongly suggest it.”
“It’ll be his fault if he ignores you and gets his butt deselected. Though I get a feeling with the attitude he’s got, you might not mind that.”
Nita looked somewhat shocked at the suggestion. “Because I think he’s a pain in the ass? No.” Though then her gaze dropped, and Dairine found herself wondering whether this thought had indeed crossed Nita’s mind, to her embarrassment.
But a second later Nita looked up again. “Fifty-fifty,” she said, looking over at the spell, “honestly?”
Dairine shrugged. “Well, yeah. In terms of the spell itself. But from the reading they gave us, it looks like whether you pass or fail isn’t always about the project, is it? Sometimes it’ll be about the wizard. When Seniors and above are doing the judging, you have to assume that the Powers are whispering in at least some of their ears. And when Irina’s the prize—can you imagine she’s going to let herself be tied down to someone she can’t make a big difference for?”
“No,” Nita said. “I see your point.” She shoved her manual back into her otherspace pocket, then stretched. “Well, I’m not going to be his favorite person in a few minutes.”
“Don’t think you’ve been his favorite person since you met,” Dairine said.
Nita laughed once, a momentary, sour sound. “You should have seen him trying to fake it, though. The hand kissing.”
“Surprised he didn’t pull back a bloody stump.”
“So am I,” Nita said, and headed for the door. “You need a wake-up call?”
“No, Spot’s got it handled.”
“Want coffee before you go?”
“If you want to make some, sure. Thanks.”
Nita paused in the doorway as Dairine waved a hand at the floor and banished the Mobile-world landscape. With the hall light on behind her, it was hard to see her sister’s face clearly: but the shadow of a smile was there. “Is it that obvious,” Nita said in a low voice, “what’s going on with Kit and me right now?”
“It can probably be seen from space,” Dairine said. “But don’t let that bother you.”
Nita shook her head—the smile definitely betraying itself as the light caught it. Then she pulled the door mostly closed behind her and headed off down the hall.
Dairine lay there for a moment more in the near dark. Spot, she said then, let me see that diagram again.
It reappeared in the darkness, in reduced form to fit her bedroom floor, and she cocked an annoyed eye at it.
This Penn guy’s structure is sloppy, but he’s got a flair for this, she thought. Without even working at it. Which is kind of unfair. She considered how long it would have taken her to build something like this without Nelaid coaching her through every step, a couple of months ago. And I am not a stupid person. But this guy burps this up in the space of a couple of days?
Dairine scowled. Two thoughts were warring in her. One of them was, If he did this in a hurry, I’d like to see what he could do if he took some time. The other: If he did this in a hurry, I’d like to punch him in the nose.
But why was he in such a big rush? I don’t get it. If this is a specialty for him, and he’d been thinking about it for a while, why not start sooner? Why stress himself out?
She sighed and let her head flop back against the pillow, waving the diagram away into darkness again. Not my problem, she thought. Got enough of my own. Mehrnaz’s certainty that she was going to fail out of the eighth-finals was still on Dairine’s mind.
She lay there smiling about it, convinced that Mehrnaz was completely nuts as far as this went. I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she goes through to the quarter-finals, Dairine thought. Because I really think she’s going to.
Dairine sighed, closed her eyes.
Midnight?
“Yeah.”
She fell asleep.
This time when Dairine was ready to transport in, she decided not to bother with the scenic route. She had Spot check the downstairs lobby in Mehrnaz’s house to make sure that no one was there, then texted her through the manual’s communication system: Be with you in about two minutes, okay?
That’s great! the answer came back. My mama’s here and she wants to meet you before she goes out.
“Oh great, parents,” Dairine muttered, and dashed back down to her room to have one last look at herself in the mirror. She’d dug up another longish tunic like the one she’d worn the other day, this one dark blue, and had wound her mom’s scarf around her neck again in case she needed it. Better keep it conservative, she thought. But this looks okay. She made one concession to her own preferences and rolled the tunic’s sleeves up to below the elbow, then wondered if she should roll them down again.
No one is going to care about your sleeves, Spot said.
“You can never tell,” Dairine said. “Especially when you’re not sure you’ve done enough research yet.” She made a face and rolled the sleeves down. Then she picked Spot up. “Do the circle and let’s go
.”
Their transport diagram flared blue around them and they vanished.
It was an entirely different kind of day in Mumbai this time. The sky was a misty, unrelieved gray, and a faint damp drizzle spattered the big windows. But the heat was almost certainly the same outside. Even in here, with the air-conditioning going, Dairine could feel the stickiness in the air as she climbed up the stairs into that great acreage of marble and greeted Mehrnaz. “Sort of a change from last time . . .”
“Yes it is,” Mehrnaz said, leading her over to the table in front of the entertainment center; tea was waiting on a tray. “And a surprise. We don’t normally get much rain this time of year. But when June comes . . .”
“There’s a monsoon, isn’t there? You get most of the year’s rain at once.”
“Hundreds of millimeters every month,” Mehrnaz said, “until the season’s over. We’re not there yet, though! Which is good. I hate that time of year, nothing ever dries out . . .”
“Then you should go somewhere else,” Dairine said. “You want dry? There’s always the Namib Desert. Or that one in Chile. Even, I don’t know, Arizona or New Mexico . . .”
“Um, well,” Mehrnaz said, “I don’t go off by myself that much. The family doesn’t like it.”
Dairine put up her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything for the moment. “Well,” she said, “we’ve got more to keep us busy right now than the weather. Though the weather report says it’s going to be nice and dry in New York the next few days.”
“This is going to be so wonderful,” Mehrnaz said, dropping her voice to a confidential murmur. “I simply can’t wait to go. I’ve never been to New York before!”
“You’ll like it,” Dairine said. “If we can find time to get out. There’ll be so many super people there, and so much going on—and that’s just around the Invitational itself. Wizards from all over are coming in to see the pre-Cull judging, and all the presentations. It’s a big deal! So we should get started . . . But I want to make sure you’re good on the verbal presentation, because everything else is in great shape.”
“You truly think so?”
“Do I have to say it in the Speech? What did I tell you about me not wasting my time saying stuff to you that wasn’t true?”
“I know,” Mehrnaz said, looking shamefaced. “It’s just that . . . I’m used to hearing a lot about it when I get things wrong. Not so much when I get them right.”
Dairine shook her head, put Spot down on the floor, and let him get out of the way of where the spell circle was going to wind up. “Well, we’re changing that, aren’t we. So come on—let’s get it out there.”
Mehrnaz’s pink diary-manual was on the back of the sofa in front of the entertainment center. She caught it up, twirled around, flipped her manual open, and pulled the spell diagram off the page. Once again Dairine shook her head to see that smooth and elegant cast of the beautiful, tightly structured array of glowing Speech-words and symbols across the floor, like a fisherman gracefully throwing a net. “I’ll never get tired of watching you do that,” Dairine said, seeing no point in disguising her admiration as the diagram spread itself out faultlessly one more time. “That is so cool. I’m trying to think of a way we can make sure there are judges around when you do it.” She snickered. “We need a name for that move.”
“If you like,” Mehrnaz said, “I could pick it up and put it away at the end of every presentation, and then wait for people to come around before I put it out again.”
“Spell casting,” Dairine said. “That’s the name for it. Once people see it, they’re gonna start asking you to do it.”
Mehrnaz suddenly looked concerned. “Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, like showing off?”
Dairine laughed. “You’re kidding me, right? The Invitational is showing off. You’ve been invited to show off.” She grinned. “And I mean, sure, flinging a spell out there like that’s kind of stagy, but getting people to notice the wizardry is part of the business here. There’s all this competition to be noticed; you have to stand out! And it doesn’t mean the spell’s any worse for being shown off. It’s not like anybody can make a shoddy spell better by doing a big song and dance over it.” Dairine looked over the beautifully structured diagram. “Anyway, you’ve done such a great job on this, it deserves to have people pay attention to it! That way word’ll get around about it; people will look for it in their manuals to use it. Wizards with more experience will have a chance to improve on it. It’ll have a chance to save more people’s lives.”
“That would matter so much,” Mehrnaz said softly. “To have a chance to do that . . .”
Her intensity made Dairine shiver: that intention she understood. “You’re going to have more than a chance,” Dairine said, but before she could finish the thought, the door next to the entertainment system opened. Through it a small, pretty woman came hastening in: dark-haired, dark-eyed, round-faced and round-bodied, with a sweet smile and a button nose. She had a big, brightly patterned paisley scarf over her head and around her shoulders, and she was wearing long, soft shimmery cream-colored trousers and a tailored, amber-colored coat-tunic like Mehrnaz’s that went down to the knee. The effect was made more interesting by the Nikes she was wearing under the pants.
“Is this your friend?” she said to Mehrnaz as she hurried toward them. To Dairine she said, “I’m so glad to meet you! Isn’t your hair wonderful!”
That hadn’t particularly occurred to Dairine, but she smiled. Mehrnaz looked embarrassed, but not mortified. “We don’t get a lot of redheads around here,” she said. “Mama, this is Dairine Callahan—she’s my mentor.”
Mehrnaz’s mother bowed slightly to Dairine, with her hands folded in front of her. “Salaam alaikum!”
Dairine bowed back a little more deeply, having been used to this kind of thing for a while now with Nelaid. “Alaikum salaam,” she said, knowing enough to do that at least. Mehrnaz’s mother positively beamed at her.
“This is my mama, Dairine,” Mehrnaz said. “Dori Farrahi.”
Nelaid’s constant insistence on getting the greeting right on meeting another, possibly more senior wizard suddenly came up for consideration. He did keep saying, It may seem worth nothing initially, but politically it can make a difference later . . . “Elder sister,” Dairine said, “our paths crossing here on errantry’s business, I greet you!”
“And such lovely manners! Come sit down now and have some tea.” She paused as Spot clambered up onto the sofa cushions beside Dairine. “And who’s this?”
“My colleague Spot,” Dairine said.
Spot trained some eyes on Dori and then did a kind of squat on all his legs, his approximation of a bow or curtsy. “Charmed,” he said out loud.
Mehrnaz’s mama beamed at him too. “And aren’t you handsome,” she said, admiring the stark matte black of his carapace and the Biteless Apple glowing on his lid. “Wouldn’t you like something like that, Mehrnaz? Or someone, I should say!” And Dori giggled. It was a funny sound coming out of a woman her age, but cute in its way.
Mehrnaz threw a slightly apologetic look at Dairine and said, “He’s a one-off, Mama; Spot is unique. A being and a manual.”
“That’s so wonderful,” Dori said. “And how marvelous that he should come here! Come now, let’s have some of this lovely tea.”
That was the way things went for a while. Everything was lovely, or gorgeous, or wonderful, or so tremendous, or very exciting—that was the Invitational—and so on, endlessly. Dairine was beginning to wonder if it was possible for Dori to run out of superlatives, especially at the speed with which she spoke. Assessments and opinions fired out of her as if out of a machine gun. A very sweet machine gun, Dairine thought. But it’s like she thinks that if she talks fast enough, and doesn’t stop, she can keep everyone else from saying anything she doesn’t want to hear . . .
“. . . and this is all so exciting—would you like another biscuit? Try one of these pink ones, they’re lovely—but of course you know
we would have had some concerns about Mehrnaz taking part, very general ones of course. It’s not exactly that we have any worries about her—”
Yes it is exactly, Dairine found herself thinking.
“—she’s been very strictly brought up, she always knows the right thing to do, but she’s led, well, something of a sheltered life here and of course even though there are so many wizards in our own family, she hasn’t got out that much into the wider community . . .”
And why’s that, I wonder? For the moment Dairine kept on smiling and nodding through the stream of chatter, occasionally making useful or encouraging neutral noises. But something about the way Dori’s monologue had started was bringing a submerged part of Dairine’s mind to an alert state.
All kinds of things routinely came up for discussion while she was doing her stellar management training with Nelaid. Some of these issues Dairine hadn’t mentioned to her dad, as she didn’t know how far down that road Nelaid had gone with him yet—notably the ones revolving around how, in a place like Wellakh, where a planet’s people were in an uneasy and ambivalent relationship with the wizards they’d chosen to lead them, life wasn’t necessarily always safe.
So much of what people say is coded, Nelaid had told her one evening while they leaned on that high baluster before Dairine went home at the end of the day’s work. They know what they mean, but unless in great danger or stress will not say it to you straightforwardly. People will couch their meaning in such a manner that you will never be able to say to them, when their truth is finally revealed, ‘You never told me that.’ They will be able to say, ‘But I did tell you, just not in so many words! I can’t believe you didn’t understand what I was talking about!’ And in their own eyes they will be blameless, while you are not. So always look for the code to see what it is truly saying. It will always be there.
Now, as she kept on nodding and held her cup out to have more tea poured for her, Dairine was realizing that nearly every word that came out of Mehrnaz’s mother’s mouth meant something else. And what it’s all about is that she’s not sure that I’m a safe person to take her baby away. She wants me to prove that I am!