Диана Дуэйн - Games Wizards Play

“Two weddings, two funerals,” Dairine’s dad said. “I’ll be in here very early tomorrow.”

“Good thing I caught you now, then,” said Tom.

Dairine’s dad threw her a thoughtful glance as he reached for the water hose that ran from the work sink and started filling the first of a stack of tall plastic flower buckets. “Should I be scared to ask?”

“I did not do anything,” Dairine said in exasperation.

“Didn’t say you did,” said Tom.

She breathed out. “So if it’s not something I did, what is it?”

“Something you haven’t done yet.”

Her father and Nelaid stared at each other, and then Nelaid burst out laughing. “Have the Aethyrs installed a new, more efficient youth-disciplinary system then?” he said. “Will we now be sanctioning misbehaving wizards ahead of the fact?”

Tom laughed too. “I could see where it might save on paperwork. But no.” He looked at Dairine. “You haven’t checked your manual today?”

“I’ve been kind of busy. Not blowing things up ,” Dairine said with a glare at her dad and Nelaid, intent on getting just a little more mileage out of this truism if she could.

“Well,” Tom said, “we were thinking of giving you the opportunity—offering you the opportunity, anyway,” he said, with a sideways glance at Dairine’s dad, “to blow up something else.”

Dairine couldn’t help it if the look she turned on him was suspicious. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Take a look at the scheduling in the manual,” Tom said, “while I give your dad a bit more of a lowdown.”

She pulled her manual out, stared at the blinking page edges, and cracked it open in a hurry. “I take it you’re speaking figuratively,” Dairine’s dad said, pushing the last few stacked boxes into line and then turning to lean his back against the stack.

“I’m hoping I will be,” Tom said with a dry grin, “but with these things you can never tell.”

“These things being?”

“I’m having my manual functions copy a précis of this data to your phone,” Tom said. “But pending your approval, I’ve nominated both Nita and Dairine as potential mentors for a wizardly event that’s going to start happening in the next couple weeks. It won’t be dangerous; they’ll probably both be more closely supervised than they have been when doing almost anything since they became wizards. There’ll be a lot of senior personnel around for this—a lot of attention to what they’re doing. By adults.”

“Meaning you?” her dad said as he pulled the lever to crack open the door of the walk-in fridge.

“Strangely enough, no. Or not directly. I’ve got other duties during this period, and so does Carl. Though we’ll check in from time to time, since there are attendees we’ve nominated. The event’s educational; in a way it’s about training the next generation of consultant wizards. By publicly recognizing the talent of some of the up-and-coming generation, we’re looking to get some of the newer wizards to think about making the research and development end of wizardry the main thrust of their careers.”

Dairine’s dad tilted his head to one side, looking interested. “So this is like a jobs fair?”

“Yes, but more than just that. A lot of networking goes on, and a lot of, well, showing off.” Tom chuckled. “Any time you put a group of gifted teenagers in the same place, in a situation where it’s a virtue to show off what they can do—well, you can imagine.”

“Probably no, I can’t,” Dairine’s dad said. But she felt reassured to see him smiling when she glanced up from her manual.

“As I said, we’ve got a lot of safeguards in place to minimize the risk for everybody. Especially because some of the candidates will be working with spells at a very theoretical level, and it’s always smart to make sure that if the spell starts to execute in a way that its designer didn’t intend, the effects can be contained. Believe me, there’s a lot of attention on that, since most of the best spells, the ones that are the most useful tools for wizards in the field, have dangerous aspects.”

“How large is the intake, Advisory?” Nelaid said.

“Three hundred candidate entrants, plus or minus twenty,” Dairine said, already halfway through the pages that had been blinking at her. She was starting to break out in a sweat, she was getting so excited, but she was determined not to give any sign of how she felt just yet.

Tom nodded. “Assuming we get about eighty percent uptake on the invitations. Each entrant’s assigned at least one mentor a few years older than they are, or same age but smarter. We keep the ages close: candidates learn better from younger mentors than older ones.” He looked at Dairine’s dad again. “While we recommend assignments, the Powers do the final matching for the closest fit and the best results.”

“So if a candidate wants to dump their mentor,” Dairine asked, “they can do that?”

“Or the mentor can step away from the relationship with the candidate,” Tom said. “Though it doesn’t happen often. Even if there’s some initial tension, the pairings are sufficiently appropriate for each other that they normally make it through to the final stages of competition.”

The word “competition” got down the back of Dairine’s neck and just buzzed there in her spine, very pleasantly. “What’s the prize?”

Her dad and Nelaid and Tom exchanged an amused look. “A year’s coaching relationship with Earth’s Planetary Wizard,” Tom said. “You remember her, Harry. She came to the barbecue at your place after the Mars business. Irina Mladen.”

“The nice blond lady with the baby and the parakeet? Of course.” He smiled. “She made sure she had my burger recipe before she left.”

“There you go,” Tom said. “That’s her.”

Dairine dropped her gaze back to her manual, thinking, Yes, the woman who could destroy the earth with a couple of sentences’ worth of the Speech and a word or two with the planet’s core . . . ! She closed her manual, resisting the urge to slap it shut in a fury. “How is it,” she said, trying not to sound too tightly angry, “that I never got to be in a competition like this as a candidate?”

“Bad timing, I’m afraid,” Tom said. “Experience has shown that it’s not all that productive to hold the Invitational more than once every eleven years. So that’s how it’s done. Anyway, even if you were eligible to compete in this cycle, that’s no guarantee that you’d be chosen as a candidate.” He gave her a look that was maybe just a little too knowing. “Even for the most successful candidates, this isn’t just about winning. It’s more about getting to know more wizards than just your local circle. Wizardry as it’s practiced on Earth is a very networky business; the sooner you learn how to get quickly into contact and work effectively with people you’ve only known for a very short time, the better it is for everyone. There are years when the stuff that goes on around the edges of the Invitational turns out to be more important than the events themselves. There’s no way to find out unless you play . . .”

“So what you’re telling me,” Dairine’s dad said, “is that she’s going to be riding herd on someone else to make sure they don’t blow something up.”

“Could very well be,” Tom said. “Candidates tend to be matched with mentors who’ll know, or recognize, how they’re most likely to screw up, and can keep it from happening.”

“Well . . .” Dairine’s dad folded his arms over his chest.

Dairine’s insides immediately went cold. No, no, he’s going to say no and I need this , I have to go to this—! “Dad . . .” she said, and then stopped herself.