“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.
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 . . .