That’s great! the answer came back. My mama’s here and she wants to meet you before she goes out.
“Oh great, parents,” Dairine muttered, and dashed back down to her room to have one last look at herself in the mirror. She’d dug up another longish tunic like the one she’d worn the other day, this one dark blue, and had wound her mom’s scarf around her neck again in case she needed it. Better keep it conservative, she thought. But this looks okay. She made one concession to her own preferences and rolled the tunic’s sleeves up to below the elbow, then wondered if she should roll them down again.
No one is going to care about your sleeves, Spot said.
“You can never tell,” Dairine said. “Especially when you’re not sure you’ve done enough research yet.” She made a face and rolled the sleeves down. Then she picked Spot up. “Do the circle and let’s go.”
Their transport diagram flared blue around them and they vanished.
It was an entirely different kind of day in Mumbai this time. The sky was a misty, unrelieved gray, and a faint damp drizzle spattered the big windows. But the heat was almost certainly the same outside. Even in here, with the air-conditioning going, Dairine could feel the stickiness in the air as she climbed up the stairs into that great acreage of marble and greeted Mehrnaz. “Sort of a change from last time . . .”
“Yes it is,” Mehrnaz said, leading her over to the table in front of the entertainment center; tea was waiting on a tray. “And a surprise. We don’t normally get much rain this time of year. But when June comes . . .”
“There’s a monsoon, isn’t there? You get most of the year’s rain at once.”
“Hundreds of millimeters every month,” Mehrnaz said, “until the season’s over. We’re not there yet, though! Which is good. I hate that time of year, nothing ever dries out . . .”
“Then you should go somewhere else,” Dairine said. “You want dry? There’s always the Namib Desert. Or that one in Chile. Even, I don’t know, Arizona or New Mexico . . .”
“Um, well,” Mehrnaz said, “I don’t go off by myself that much. The family doesn’t like it.”
Dairine put up her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything for the moment. “Well,” she said, “we’ve got more to keep us busy right now than the weather. Though the weather report says it’s going to be nice and dry in New York the next few days.”
“This is going to be so wonderful,” Mehrnaz said, dropping her voice to a confidential murmur. “I simply can’t wait to go. I’ve never been to New York before!”
“You’ll like it,” Dairine said. “If we can find time to get out. There’ll be so many super people there, and so much going on—and that’s just around the Invitational itself. Wizards from all over are coming in to see the pre-Cull judging, and all the presentations. It’s a big deal! So we should get started . . . But I want to make sure you’re good on the verbal presentation, because everything else is in great shape.”
“You truly think so?”
“Do I have to say it in the Speech? What did I tell you about me not wasting my time saying stuff to you that wasn’t true?”
“I know,” Mehrnaz said, looking shamefaced. “It’s just that . . . I’m used to hearing a lot about it when I get things wrong. Not so much when I get them right.”
Dairine shook her head, put Spot down on the floor, and let him get out of the way of where the spell circle was going to wind up. “Well, we’re changing that, aren’t we. So come on—let’s get it out there.”
Mehrnaz’s pink diary-manual was on the back of the sofa in front of the entertainment center. She caught it up, twirled around, flipped her manual open, and pulled the spell diagram off the page. Once again Dairine shook her head to see that smooth and elegant cast of the beautiful, tightly structured array of glowing Speech-words and symbols across the floor, like a fisherman gracefully throwing a net. “I’ll never get tired of watching you do that,” Dairine said, seeing no point in disguising her admiration as the diagram spread itself out faultlessly one more time. “That is so cool. I’m trying to think of a way we can make sure there are judges around when you do it.” She snickered. “We need a name for that move.”
“If you like,” Mehrnaz said, “I could pick it up and put it away at the end of every presentation, and then wait for people to come around before I put it out again.”
“Spell casting,” Dairine said. “That’s the name for it. Once people see it, they’re gonna start asking you to do it.”
Mehrnaz suddenly looked concerned. “Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, like showing off?”
Dairine laughed. “You’re kidding me, right? The Invitational is showing off. You’ve been invited to show off.” She grinned. “And I mean, sure, flinging a spell out there like that’s kind of stagy, but getting people to notice the wizardry is part of the business here. There’s all this competition to be noticed; you have to stand out! And it doesn’t mean the spell’s any worse for being shown off. It’s not like anybody can make a shoddy spell better by doing a big song and dance over it.” Dairine looked over the beautifully structured diagram. “Anyway, you’ve done such a great job on this, it deserves to have people pay attention to it! That way word’ll get around about it; people will look for it in their manuals to use it. Wizards with more experience will have a chance to improve on it. It’ll have a chance to save more people’s lives.”
“That would matter so much,” Mehrnaz said softly. “To have a chance to do that . . .”
Her intensity made Dairine shiver: that intention she understood. “You’re going to have more than a chance,” Dairine said, but before she could finish the thought, the door next to the entertainment system opened. Through it a small, pretty woman came hastening in: dark-haired, dark-eyed, round-faced and round-bodied, with a sweet smile and a button nose. She had a big, brightly patterned paisley scarf over her head and around her shoulders, and she was wearing long, soft shimmery cream-colored trousers and a tailored, amber-colored coat-tunic like Mehrnaz’s that went down to the knee. The effect was made more interesting by the Nikes she was wearing under the pants.
“Is this your friend?” she said to Mehrnaz as she hurried toward them. To Dairine she said, “I’m so glad to meet you! Isn’t your hair wonderful!”
That hadn’t particularly occurred to Dairine, but she smiled. Mehrnaz looked embarrassed, but not mortified. “We don’t get a lot of redheads around here,” she said. “Mama, this is Dairine Callahan—she’s my mentor.”
Mehrnaz’s mother bowed slightly to Dairine, with her hands folded in front of her. “Salaam alaikum!”
Dairine bowed back a little more deeply, having been used to this kind of thing for a while now with Nelaid. “Alaikum salaam,” she said, knowing enough to do that at least. Mehrnaz’s mother positively beamed at her.
“This is my mama, Dairine,” Mehrnaz said. “Dori Farrahi.”
Nelaid’s constant insistence on getting the greeting right on meeting another, possibly more senior wizard suddenly came up for consideration. He did keep saying, It may seem worth nothing initially, but politically it can make a difference later . . . “Elder sister,” Dairine said, “our paths crossing here on errantry’s business, I greet you!”
“And such lovely manners! Come sit down now and have some tea.” She paused as Spot clambered up onto the sofa cushions beside Dairine. “And who’s this?”