And you honestly think you do, Nita thought. That’s the problem. Or part of it.
“What you want is to loosen up and let the whole place see how you really feel about me—”
Nita swallowed, as this was beginning to get on her nerves. “That could be interesting,” she said, “except we’d probably wind up forfeiting our cleaning deposit.”
He wasn’t even listening. “—instead of wasting your time talking to spooks in the corner!”
“That was not a spook. He was nice,” Nita said. As if that could begin to sum it up.
Penn clutched his heart histrionically. “Oh, Nita! Are you two-timing me?”
Nita’s jaw dropped. “What? Penn . . . In your dreams.”
“I mean it! I’m wounded! That you could even look at anybody else right now . . .”
Wounded is exactly what he’s going to get if he’s not careful—She took a few seconds to finish the Cel-Ray and turned to drop the bottle in a nearby bin, reminding herself about her teeth again as a brief cool breath from the air-conditioning caught her from behind and helped her settle herself. “Penn,” Nita said. “I hate having to say this in quite this way—”
“But I cleaned those guys out,” said Kit’s voice from directly behind her, “and thought I’d come over to see if you wanted to help me celebrate. You busy?”
Nita’s eyes went wide as he came up beside her. Not the air-conditioning, then. Wow. “Not at all,” she said.
“Good,” Kit said. “Penn, we’re off the clock right now. Was there anything you needed to talk to us about?”
“Nothing,” Penn said, “nothing at all.”
And he sailed off past the dance floor without another word.
“That,” Nita said, “was the quietest beam-in I have ever seen you do. You barely made a breeze.”
“You do a spell for as long as I’ve been doing that one,” Kit said, “and you’re likely to pick up some expertise.”
She sighed, smiling at him. “Well, thanks.”
“I nearly said ‘Is this guy bothering you?’ Except that it’s such a cliché, and also it’s obvious that he is bothering you. You okay?”
“Yeah.” Nita shook her head. “Kit, seriously, you shouldn’t worry about it; I can handle him. Life’s given me way too much experience with idiots.”
“Maybe so,” Kit said. “But you know what? Let’s give the idiot some experience for a change.”
“What?”
Kit reached out and took her hand. When they started moving, it took Nita a moment to realize that he was leading her toward the dance floor as the music cross-faded from the hip-hop beat into something significantly slower.
Nita’s stomach did that flip again. “I might step on you . . .” she said.
“Somehow I think I’ll survive,” Kit said.
It was amazing the noise that could erupt in your head over so short a walk. I look stupid I should have worn something nicer everyone’s going to get the wrong idea everyone’s going to get the right idea but too soon what’s the matter with me I wanted this but I didn’t know if he wanted this or if he wants this for the right reasons and what if I’m bad at it what if he decides this was a bad idea what if what if what if . . .
The introduction to the slow-dance song was already playing, something Nita didn’t recognize: not too slow, with a soft-rock eighties kind of backbeat and a female vocal. But that was all she could deal with at the moment, as they were out there now on the wood-tiled dance floor, and she didn’t know what to do with her hands, and it felt like the entire planet was staring at her, actually several planets, because she was sure both Jupiter and Pluto were still onsite, leaning quietly against one wall or another and watching the humans do peculiar human things. I wonder what they’ll make of this, she thought as Kit lifted up the one hand he’d taken and put his other hand on her waist. He put his head down by her ear and said conversationally, “You might try grabbing hold of my belt to keep me from running away.”
“Yeah, right, makes perfect sense,” Nita said, struggling to sound slightly snarky even though she knew she was babbling. Nonetheless it was a good suggestion, and once she’d managed that, they began to move together. Nita was glad to let Kit handle this part of the process, as she wasn’t entirely sure where any of her limbs were at the moment; her body seemed almost to belong to someone else, she was in such a state of wonder and shock. This is happening. I can’t believe this is happening. In front of all these people. Oh God.
The vocalist had started singing, but Nita couldn’t make head or tail of it right now, because her hands were sweating and she could feel Kit’s muscles moving and it was all a little bit too much and he was looking down at her—
And then she blinked, and laughed.
He was still looking down at her, but the look changed, softened. “Something funny?”
“You’re looking down at me. I can’t get used to it.”
“No?”
“No. Not yet. You were shorter than me for such a long time.”
“Stockier than you too,” he said. “I wasn’t wild about that . . . Didn’t think it was a good sign.” Kit’s smile went very wry. “My dad used to say, ‘Either you’re going to favor my side of the family, where we all get to be six feet tall, or Mama’s side of the family, where they specialize in diminutive-but-fierce.’ And every night when I was praying I would say, ‘Fierce is good. Diminutive, not so good.’” He made a face. “I mean, I didn’t want to order God around or anything, I didn’t think that would help my case . . .”
“I don’t think you have to worry about the diminutive anymore,” Nita said. “You’ve got that handled.”
She was relaxing now, the noise in her head pretty much on its way to dying back to nothing: at least enough to start hearing the vocalist as the two of them rocked gently back and forth. I don’t know why I was worrying about stepping on him, Nita thought; we’re not exactly doing the tango. But they didn’t need to be. This was nice enough . . .
It’s kinda funny,
you were always near,
But who’d have ever thought that we would
end up here?
And every time I’ve needed you,
You’ve been there to pull me through;
Now it’s clear
I’ve been waiting for you—
Could it be you and I?
I never imagined—
Could it be suddenly
I’m fallin’ for you?
Could it be
you were right here beside me
and I never knew?
Could it be, could it be that it’s true . . . ?
Nita gave Kit a look. “You set this up,” she said.
Kit blinked, all innocence. “What?”
“The song. You set it up.”
“Me?”
“One of the most basic principles of wizardry,” Nita said. “‘There are no accidents.’”
After a moment, the corner of Kit’s mouth twisted upward. “It’s possible,” he said, “there was some kind of agreement with the DJ. Who may or may not be part of a gaming group who’s going to be playing Ronan’s group in a couple of months, and wanted to see some of our planning notes for the last campaign.”
Nita’s eyebrows went up.
“They’re not classified or anything,” Kit said. “Ronan knows. In fact, he may have tweaked them a little.”
All Nita could do was shake her head at him. “You have no shame.”
“That’s what the Transcendent Pig said when I ran into it in the practice spaces, back when your mom was sick. Or something like that.” Kit looked thoughtful. “It also called me a twerp.”
Nita laughed. “Did you deserve it?”
“Probably. But I was looking for someone right then, and I needed it to tell me where they were. So maybe I got pushy.”
“Okay,” Nita said. “But that worked out all right.”
“Yep.”
“Good.” She smiled. “Twerp.”
/>
Kit chuckled. Nita put her head down against his shoulder, feeling him hug her a little more tightly, and found that she didn’t mind a bit.
The song was gradually reaching its end, and to her surprise Nita found that though when they’d first started dancing she’d wished it was already over, now she was wishing very much that it wouldn’t stop. Make up your mind, she told herself.
—The rest of our lives,
I can see it in your eyes . . .
And it’s real, and it’s true,
It’s just me and you,
Could it be, could it be
that it’s you? . . .
As the song came to its end, Kit bent his head down to Nita’s, touched the side of his nose very gently to the side of hers. And then he looked at her, not moving; waiting. His eyes weren’t just brown, she saw: there was gold in them. So close.
“Here?” he said.
She breathed out. She could feel him do the same. “Not here,” she said. It was stupid, and she wasn’t going to say it, but somewhere out in that crowd she could feel Penn watching them. “Not the right reason. Not for this.”
But still he leaned his forehead against hers, and they smiled at each other.
“Home?” he said.
“Home,” Nita said.
12
Mumbai / Shanghai / Elsewhere
THE MORNING SUN was streaming in the windows of Mehrnaz’s upstairs flat. Everything looked bright and cheerful; tea was laid out on the table before them, along with a basket of sweet breads and two or three plates of cookies and—set aside, as if someone didn’t want the more posh and proper foods to suffer by contagion—a brown paper bag of onion bhajis. It was the best breakfast imaginable, except that Dairine knew that the early morning sunlight meant that for her it was really just past midnight. Her stomach was growling, and her head ached, and she didn’t understand everything that was going on—which was worst of all.
Next to her on the couch, Spot flipped his lid open to display the restructured Invitational schedule. “By the final count,” Dairine said, “they threw out two hundred and eighty of three hundred and thirty projects. That leaves only fifty or so, which is a semifinal kind of total. This was one of those years where the judges seem to have come down hard on everybody. It’s happened often enough before, but not in the last few decades.”
“What made them do that?” Mehrnaz said.
Dairine shrugged. “Bad catering? Insomnia? Sunspots? No idea. Check the manual, you’ll see all kinds of theories about why over-deselection might have happened before. But theories are all anyone’s got.”
She leaned back against the sofa pillows. “So what the Intervention management committee is doing,” she said, “is removing the quarter-final stage entirely. We’re going straight on to the semis. They’ll be happening on the original schedule, which is good, because it gives you more time to prepare. Five extra days, in our case. And since this is the first time you’ll be going in front of a live judging panel and having to defend your spell instead of laying it out for examination and talking it up, the extra time is good.”
Mehrnaz, sitting cross-legged on the sofa across from Dairine, shook her head. “It still doesn’t seem like a lot of time . . .”
“But it’s a better schedule,” Dairine said.
Mehrnaz didn’t say anything, just reached out for her cup of tea and drank some of it in silence.
“So you should take today off,” Dairine said, “because I’m sure going to. You did a great job yesterday. You were brilliant, you had everyone eating out of your hand, they couldn’t get enough of you. But in the next stage what you’re going to need is the ability to describe your spell in very fine detail, to be questioned on it by experts and not panic . . . and to make absolutely sure that it’s structurally sound. They are going to test it everywhere that it could be weak, and if they find anything significant you’ll be out on your butt.”
Dairine stretched her legs out. “I told you about the aschetic space that my sister has access to, didn’t I?”
Mehrnaz put the teacup down. “Yes, you did. It sounds intriguing.”
“Well, I think the best thing we can do for you is take you and your spell in there and reproduce the very worst earthquake conditions we can find, and test the spell against them. I know yours is kind of regionally specific, because you designed it to intervene in earthquakes around that one slipstrike fault in Iran, and the spell has its historical behavior and tendencies built in. But if we test it against a bunch of other sets of conditions—against San Francisco and Wellington and Tokyo, say—then we can both improve the spell and probably impress the judges, because their intention’s always going to be to see how useful this spell is in more than one place.”
Mehrnaz nodded and poured more tea.
Dairine took a breath and reached for the bag of bhajis and a couple of the paper napkins sitting by it. “I love these things,” she said “but they are so greasy . . .”
She fished a bhaji out of the bag, doing her best to look casual, as she’d spent the last few hours trying to work out the best way to approach the problem. I’m going to have to come at this sideways, or I’m not going to find out what’s happening here. “There’s one thing we have to sort out first,” she said. “It would seriously help if you could tell me more about what your problem was last night. Because I get the feeling that we’re going to need to handle whatever was going on there before we go much further.”
Mehrnaz put her face in her hands. “I panicked,” she said into her hands.
Dairine was tempted to believe her. Though at the time, she’d found herself possessed of the feeling that Mehrnaz was prepared for this panic.
Mehrnaz dropped her hands now, looking extremely embarrassed. “Maybe it was the time zone lag,” she said. “Maybe it was blood sugar, or fatigue, or too much excitement. Or all the people around. Everything just seemed to be too much to bear, all of a sudden. I had to get out . . .”
Dairine sat quiet. She wasn’t tempted to try to make Mehrnaz repeat any of this in the Speech. If you volunteered to speak so, that was one thing. Otherwise, it turned into a rather insulting sort of lie detector test. “Well,” she said, “that won’t be a problem the next time. You get a panel of seven expert wizards and a quiet room to present your spell and an associated intervention plan. Other than that, if you’re having trouble managing stress, there are steps we can take to help you get a handle on that.” She sighed. “So is your mom pleased? She should be.”
“Oh yes,” Mehrnaz said. “Frankly, I think she expected me to be knocked out.”
Dairine kept what she was thinking off her face. My money says she was hoping you’d be knocked out, she thought. And I don’t know where that comes from . . . but I think it has something to do with your meltdown. “Well, what we expect doesn’t always happen,” Dairine said. “So she’d better fasten her seatbelt, because I think things are going to get interesting.”
“You truly think I have a chance of making it through?” Mehrnaz said.
Dairine laughed. “After a Cull like that, are you kidding? I’m beginning to think the people who survived that could walk away from a meteor strike.” She folded her legs under her and fished another bhaji out of the bag. “The competition’s going to be tough, but all you have to do is beat four out of five of the people you’re up against. After that you’re in the finals, and whether you win or lose, you’re covered with glory.”
Mehrnaz shivered. “It sounds so impossible . . .”
“‘Impossible’ is a dangerous word around our neighborhood,” Dairine said. “Look, we’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you have a fair shot at getting into the finals. After that . . .” She took a breath. “One thing at a time.”
Mehrnaz nodded slowly. “Why is this next stage being held in Canberra?” she asked after a moment. “Was it their turn or something?”
Dairine shook her head. “You know, I looked that up,” she said, “and there was not
hing but a note that described it as ‘mandated.’”
Mehrnaz blinked. “Meaning that the Powers told them to do that.”
“I think so.” Dairine shrugged. “You could always ask Irina. I assume she knows.”
The look Mehrnaz turned on her was shocked.
“What?” Dairine said.
Mehrnaz sat there quietly for a few seconds before lifting her head. “You speak of her so casually,” she said. “It’s so odd. Like saying you’ll have a word with a thunderstorm, or ask the incoming tide to run down to the shops.”
“Well, we’re wizards, aren’t we? We have words with thunderstorms all the time. I don’t know that I’d ask the tide to do much of anything—mostly it seems to know about going in and out. But seriously, Mehrnaz, this whole thing is about winning a one-year apprenticeship with Irina. She’s powerful, yeah, but she’s not a force of nature. She’s about managing them. There’s a difference. Irina’s a housewife with a baby and a parakeet, and people walk up to her and talk to her every day! And if that’s something you don’t think you can do, your apprenticeship’s going to be kind of uneventful . . .”
Mehrnaz sat blinking at that. Then, slowly, she smiled. “You might have a point there.”
“Good,” Dairine said. “So what time should I come by tomorrow?”
“Well . . . if you’re not too tired right now, I had some thoughts about the intervention plan . . .”
Dairine wasn’t quite satisfied that she’d gotten to the bottom of what was bothering Mehrnaz, but at least this was a start. She smiled. “Let’s go.”
“Shanghai?” Nita stared at Penn. “What do we need to go to Shanghai for?”
“To see my Baba,” Penn said matter-of-factly. “He wants to see my winner’s token.”
Nita sighed. Okay, it is just after the Cull . . . But Penn had been using the word “winner” approximately once every ten minutes since she’d first laid eyes on him this morning.
It had occurred to Nita that things could be a lot worse. She’d been dreading this meeting, but she’d had no choice but to take it alone. It was a school day, and this was one of the two days in the week when her schedule and Kit’s got out of sync. But much to her relief, whatever had got into Penn last night—and it occurred to Nita that beer might have had something to do with it—he seemed to have left the oh-my-God-aren’t-you-gagging-for-me mood behind. This morning, downstairs in the working basement of his parents’ place in San Francisco, he was merely insufferably cheeky. That I can cope with. God knows, I’ve been getting it for long enough from Dairine.