“Oh,” Kit said, “you mean all the times you nearly killed Penn?” Already the teasing was climbing into his voice.
“Yeah, those, apparently,” Nita said, somewhat annoyed with herself. Me and my temper . . .
“The time when you charred all those pancakes?”
“Look, you know that was the burner, it’s got a short in it somewhere, we need to—”
“Or the time after the Cull when you were freaking out on the dance floor?”
So close. And the gold in his eyes . . .
He was laughing now. “Or no, wait, I know, the time when—”
She turned around and grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him.
Kit shut up. His eyes went wide. Then they closed.
Some seconds later Nita pulled back and regarded him with shivery satisfaction. “That worked,” she said.
“Uhh,” Kit said. It was the sound of someone who’d briefly forgotten how to talk. He opened his eyes, and then they widened again at the sight of something behind Nita.
“What?” she said.
From behind her there came a soft throat-clearing noise. Kit made a face that suggested that Nita needed to sort herself out and turn around.
She put a little air between herself and Kit, and turned. Irina was standing there looking at them, jiggling her baby in his sling. Her parakeet was sitting on her head, looking behind her and far above at where that shape of fire had been. “You know,” Irina said, “I don’t know if we should let you participate in any more group projects. Things keep happening.”
Nita blushed. “Look,” she said, “I’m sorry, everything sort of all came together and—”
“If you’re sorry,” Irina said, “I’m not sure I understand why. The Simurgh has been missing for a long, long time; it’s kind of nice to discover where it’s been.”
Nita and Kit stared at each other. “It’s not like stars can’t do without a soul fragment,” Irina said. “Lots of them do. There’s even a technical term for it, because some stars just have it in them to wander, and the attempt to repress that tendency is usually counterproductive. Sooner or later the star Exhales a soul-fragment and lets it go wandering around for a while, and eventually, after getting the urge out of its system, it makes its way back home. Sometimes these stars go a long way away first, and sometimes they get lost. But this is the first case I’ve ever heard of where an Exhalation got lost inside a human.”
“Really?” Nita said.
“Yes,” Irina said. “And by the way, do you know the Chinese name for that star-bird in the old stories?”
They shook their heads.
“Peng,” Irina said. “Usually these days Anglicized to ‘Penn.’” She paused a moment to let that sink in. “Anyway, the Simurgh used to have a fairly regular schedule—it would journey for twelve thousand years or so, a ‘Simurgh year,’ and then come home to roost. But then it went missing. At least now we know where. And there are those who’ll use today’s events to suggest that one of the reasons the Sun has been behaving so unpredictably of late is that it was starting to suffer ill effects from its Exhalation being gone so long. Or from being in the very near neighborhood but never coming home.” In his sling, Sasha moved a little and made a plaintive noise; Irina jiggled him a bit harder.
“Oh,” Kit said.
“Yes,” Irina said with an air of great patience. “So we’re going to have to wait a while to see if that’s the case. In the meantime, we’ve got to recess for a couple of hours and clean this place up enough to do the remaining two demonstrations. And since the live demo of your mentee’s spell has revealed a serious functional flaw, he’s going to have to revise it and submit it for testing before the manual steering committee allows it to be listed for public use. When he’s up to it, anyway.” She glanced over toward where Penn was sitting, being checked over by the medical staff and looking thoroughly shattered. “In the meantime, I’d appreciate it very much if in the next few days you two would make time for me to debrief you, again—” She gave them both a stern look. “And after that, please go home and try not to do anything destabilizing for the next month or so, all right? I have a family holiday planned.”
“My dad’s going to want to barbecue for you again,” Nita said.
At that, Irina smiled. “That I won’t mind,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you did a pre-debrief report for me in your manuals. Nothing too detailed . . . five or ten pages each will do.”
Nita and Kit both groaned.
“Sorry,” Irina said. “If you’re going to routinely be a force for good, you’d better get used to the paperwork.”
And she disappeared without even a puff of dust to mark where she had stood.
Kit heaved a long breath of relief.
“Yeah,” Nita said. She rubbed her face. “Come on, let’s go see if Dair’s recovered a little.”
But one more thing apparently wanted to be handled before she left. Matt extricated himself from among the crowd of medical people, and with him, Penn stood up. The two of them, bouncing very shallowly so as to stay stable, made their way over to Nita and Kit.
“Gonna take this one back to San Francisco,” Matt said, “and let him get some rest.”
“But I . . .” Penn was rubbing the back of his neck in a way that seemed to have nothing to do with trying to put his hair to rights. He looked mortified. “I feel so different.”
“I bet you do,” Nita said. “After having what you had stuck inside you for all your life get out all of a sudden . . .” She shivered. “It has to leave behind, I don’t know . . .”
“A lacuna?” Penn said.
Nita had to laugh at that. But the laughter trailed off as she realized Penn was looking at her as if he’d never really seen her before.
“Yeah,” Penn said. “My head feels, I don’t know, a lot less—crowded.”
“I think you need to talk to our buddy Ronan,” Kit said. “He’s been through something, well, it’s not just like this, but he might be able to shed some light on what it’s going to be like for you now.”
Penn nodded, looking around him in an unfocused way. Then he looked back at Kit and Nita with an extremely unnerved expression. It was like the face of a person of exquisite taste and coolness who had suddenly realized he’d left the house wearing nothing below the waist.
“Have I, uh,” Penn said, “have I been a complete jerk?”
Nita and Kit traded glances and then turned back to him. “Every waking minute,” Nita said.
“To both of us,” said Kit. “But mostly to her.”
“No way, more to him!” Nita said. “You provoked him into a duel!” Then she sighed. “I guess some of your trouble’s been secondary to having a frustrated Exhalation stuck inside you. But I wouldn’t blame her for everything. She had to have some raw material to work with . . .”
A little dejected, Penn looked back and forth between the two of them. “Does this mean you’re not going to mentor me anymore?”
Nita gazed at him in shock and wasn’t surprised to see Kit doing the same. For his part, Kit burst out laughing. “Penn,” he said, “you don’t need us now! You’ve got the full attention of the Invitational’s finals panel, and they’ll put you in touch with wizards who’ll be way better than us at helping you debug your spell for the manual.” He raised his eyebrows at Nita. “Maybe they can set you up with Dairine.”
“Nooooo,” Nita said, glancing sideways at the small crowd around her. “I think Dairine is going to be busy. Better talk to Irina and see who she recommends.”