Диана Дуэйн - Games Wizards Play

His gaze, which had drifted in a vague, noncommittal way along the floor, now flicked up to meet hers. In his eyes Dairine could see the potential grin that he hadn’t let out onto his face as yet. “Well.” He shifted his gaze sideways to delay it. “Nel, what do you think? Can she be spared from her lessons for a while?”

Dairine held her breath. Nelaid’s face was always much harder to read than her father’s, for various reasons—chief among them his alien facial kinesics, or the carefully guarded mindset of a man who while in office rarely saw a tenday or half a month go by without someone trying to assassinate him. That gaze now rested very consideringly on Dairine. “What do you think, petech ? Do you think recent behavior warrants it?”

Apprentice, he’d just called her. Meaning that this was one of those trick questions. Dairine groaned inside. If she went humble and agreed with Nelaid, or said what she thought he wanted her to say, he was likely to kill this whole prospect. Which would be horrible , thought Dairine, since this sounds like the most interesting thing that’s happened since, well, since the world needed saving the last time! A whole bunch of new people—wizards I don’t know, people who’ll take me seriously . And maybe put me onto some spell or something that I’ve missed, something that’ll help me find out what I want to know about more than anything else, the one thing that matters—

“Spinning your wheels there?” her dad said. The grin was still not showing on his face, and Dairine knew it would be fatal to try to force it there. And her mind was still racing. She honestly did grudge any time away from the work she was doing with Wellakh’s star-simulator and with Thahit itself. Gradually she’d been reaching some possible conclusions about what might have caused Roshaun’s bizarre and untimely disappearance from the surface of the Moon at the end of the Pullulus War. But sometimes it makes sense to switch tracks. Especially when the one you’re on seems to go on forever and ever with no real results, just wishes and hopes and staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, missing his goofy face with the lollipop sticking out of it . . .

Nelaid said, “Harold, we are surely unkind to leave her in these agonies for so long.” He glanced at Tom. “If your Advisory has gone so far as to recommend you for this role, and the Powers have gone so far as to second the recommendation, or confirm it, then there is no point in second-guessing them. If you find this appropriate, Harold, then I daresay I can manage my star’s well-being for a few weeks until my apprentice is at leisure again.”

Dairine let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and grinned.

“How long’s this last, Tom?” Dairine’s dad said.

“Three weeks, give or take. There’s an informal plenary session to start, then a couple of orientation days for everyone to get to know each other. After that, informal spell assessments lead up to the eighth-finals, where spells are judged against each other theoretically for relative effectiveness. Quarter-finals are for ‘proof of concept,’ the demonstration of single elements of wizardries. That culls out another half of the competitors. All this time the mentors and candidates are working together—they sort out their own schedules and meet whenever they think they need to. After that, semifinals in front of a panel of twenty or so wizards at Advisory or Senior level. Two thirds of the competitors are set aside there. After that, three rounds of pre-finals go forward in groups of fifteen or twenty. And finally, five wizards do their full spell implementations at the big final session on the Moon.”

“Safer there, is it?” said Dairine’s dad.

Tom raised his eyebrows. “If something gets out of hand,” he said, “just as well that it happens over on the ‘dark side,’ especially these days. We have to work around the various lunar orbiters, and we usually put a stealth shield over the proceedings to be safe. Not that most of the spells even show, from space. But better to be sure.”

“And this can be worked around school, I take it?”

“Oh, yes. In your case, I see that your kids’ school has just gone to split sessions: that’ll make things easier for the three of them.” Dairine’s head came up again at that. “Oh, yes, Kit’s in it, too: he and Nita are a team on this as usual,” said Tom. “I have to go see his dad and mom after we’re done here. But otherwise, except for the big events, it’s up to the mentors and candidates how and where they meet. And of course worldwide worldgating travel’s subsidized for this, for the duration. It’s a bit of a perk.”

Dairine’s dad nodded. “So I get to go to this?” he said to Dairine. “When you make the final, or your candidate does.” And he grinned. Dairine grinned back.

“Sure you do,” Tom said. “You count as vital support personnel. No one would think of keeping you away.”

Tom dusted his hands off and picked up his jacket again. “So I’ll be on my way,” he said. “Unless there are any more boxes you need moved?”

“Nope,” Dairine’s dad said. “We’re sorted here.”

“Later, then.” And absolutely without noise, Tom vanished.

Dairine let out a long breath, staring at where he’d been. When she looked back at them, her dad and Nelaid were both smiling at her. “You two are so mean to me ,” she said. “You were always going to say yes! You just let me stand here and squirm. ”

Nelaid looked at Harold, arched an eyebrow. “Has anyone considered introducing the concept of gratitude to this planet?” he started to say, and then was cut off suddenly on finding himself wearing Dairine around his middle, hugging him hard. The whoof of the breath going out of him was satisfying.

Her dad was the next victim, but he had a few moments to prepare. “You’re going to love this,” she said into his chest.

“Just make sure you do,” he replied, hugging her back. “That’s the whole point.”

Not the whole one , Dairine thought. But it’ll do . . .

4

Antarctica / Knox Coast

“WHAT DO YOU WEAR for Antarctica?”

Carmela stood in the doorway of Nita’s bedroom, looking in with considerable confusion at the clothes hanging about in the air. In some cases they were literally hanging—like the ones that were floating about on their hangers because Nita hadn’t bothered to remove them before the clothes emerged from her closet. Tops and pants and skirts were so thick in the space between her and Carmela that Nita could hardly see anything of Carmela but her feet.

“Would it be out of bounds for me to pass a comment here?” said Kit’s partially unseen sister.

“You can pass a comment, you can pass go,” Nita said, pushing through a tangle of tops of various colors. “You can pass anything you like—and maybe you can pass me those pants. Yeah, those right there . . .”

Carmela moved among the floating garments like someone making her way through the down-hanging branches of a thickly grown forest. “These ones?” She plucked a pair of white Capri pants out of the air and held them up between her hands, turning them back and forth. “These are from last year , Neets.”

“I know.”

“And are you sure about wearing white to Antarctica this time of year? It’s getting on toward fall. We must be close to their version of Labor Day. Assuming they have that down there. But then again, no one owns the place, do they?”