“Oh please, not you too, cut me some slack . . .” Dairine muttered. “And what about this?” She picked up a jar from the counter and shook it at him. “I wondered where all my coffee was going so fast!”
“Your coffee? And who pays for all the groceries, may I ask? Besides, Tom said I should try it. Blame him.”
It was so funny to have her dad using Tom as an excuse that Dairine broke up laughing, and mostly failed at keeping it quiet. And immediately she started to get upset with herself because she wasn’t sure Mehrnaz was finished. But right then Mehrnaz peeked in around the kitchen door, smiling, and said, “All done, and it sounds like a good thing too—what did I miss?”
“Absolutely nothing, just my dad stealing my stuff,” Dairine said. “Dad, Mehrnaz, Mehrnaz, my dad, now come on, we need to get moving or you’re going to get missed!”
She allowed Mehrnaz exactly thirty seconds of putting her hands together and bowing and greeting her dad and being greeted back and all the rest of it before hustling her out the door. Once out, they half ran back down the garden together, Dairine leading the way, for she was starting to get excited now and didn’t care who knew. “This is going to be the hottest thing. I cannot wait. Especially because we’re gonna make Nita’s guy look utterly useless—”
Merhnaz started catching the mood from her and began giggling. “Is your father going to come along later?”
“He said he wants to if he can spare the time from work.”
“Good. He’s so nice! And so handsome.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Dairine said. “Don’t say that in front of him whatever you do . . . he’ll never let me forget it. Anyway, there’s our spot. And there’s my Spot. You ready, big guy?”
All set.
“Then let’s go blow the Invitational open!”
The place was a zoo, as she’d expected. Near the cordoned-off space where Sker’ret or someone else from the Crossings had installed the mini-hexes for the beam-in space was a semicircle of cloth-covered tables: and around these tables easily forty or fifty wizards were crowded in together, checking diagrams and schedules on their manuals or handheld devices and asking the people behind the table for help. On first taking in the hubbub, Mehrnaz froze.
“It’s okay,” Dairine said, “nothing to worry about, there are still lots of people checking in, we’re not late. Go on!” She nudged Mehrnaz from behind.
Mehrnaz moved forward into the group that was gathered around the tables with the hesitant determination of someone walking into a tiger’s lair for a chat while uncertain whether the tiger was in a conversational mood. Behind her, Dairine found herself feeling unexpectedly upset on Mehrnaz’s behalf. Uncertainty wasn’t that much a part of Dairine’s makeup most of the time. She tended to plunge into things and deal with the coping part when she was in the midst of the situation; how other people managed their own nerves wasn’t normally an issue for her. But suddenly that seemed to have changed. She wants to be able to deal with this, but because of how her life’s been, she has trouble with it. And what made it worse was that Dairine knew it would be wrong for her to try to shield Mehrnaz from what was going on all around them. It was the Powers who dumped her into this, or got the Seniors to. And she said yes. So she’ll either cope or she’ll melt down. All I can do is what the people around her haven’t been doing: give her space to do one or the other . . .
The crowd closed in around Mehrnaz and blocked her from sight, and Dairine stayed where she was and gazed around, prepared for any impulsive screaming or fleeing that might ensue. None did, though, and she let herself be distracted by the unfolding craziness. In her arms, Spot wriggled.
“Want to get down?”
Yes, please.
Dairine glanced around again. “Don’t get stepped on.”
All Spot’s currently visible eyes rotated on their stalks in the gesture he used to simulate an eyeroll. If it happens, it won’t happen twice.
Dairine chuckled. Got an eye on something?
I can feel some computer-associated projects in here. Might as well have a look to see if there’s anything that might be of interest to the cousins at the other end of space . . .
“Go on,” Dairine said, and watched Spot spider himself away through the crowd, drawing the occasional curious glance from bystanders as he went.
A few moments later Mehrnaz slid out of the crush of people with a couple of badges on lanyards and handed one of them to Dairine. “They’ve got some fairly heavy-duty wizardries wound up in these lanyards,” she said, almost breathless with excitement. “The nonwizards outside will barely notice us if we go out.”
“Smart,” Dairine said. “Come on, let’s check the directory over there and get you set up.”
They found the location that had been assigned to Mehrnaz without too much trouble. Mehrnaz stopped before the empty space and looked from one side to the other at the wizards who were already set up; and as she did, Dairine saw her go several shades paler in the space of about a second.
Don’t let her freeze, Dairine thought. “Right,” Dairine said, “this floating table thing they’ve got, do you want to keep it? Or push it out of the way, or vanish it? And what about the sign over it? Is it too big?”
“I’m, I’m not sure . . .” Mehrnaz said, and she started wringing her hands.
“Well, who do we ask?” Dairine said. “Come on, we need to get this show on the road. Table, yes or no? And let’s have the text you want on the sign.”
Mehrnaz gulped and recited her project’s title, watching as the letters and characters in English and the Speech flowed into being on the surface of the hanging sign, then began to scroll sideways. Moments later the table was covered with the written description of Mehrnaz’s spell. And seeing this happening, people who’d been passing by now paused, and some started gathering around.
Dairine looked at Mehrnaz as more and more wizards stopped in front of her stand to see what would happen next. And Mehrnaz looked back at Dairine with an expression that was getting more scared by the second. It was as if she’d imagined everything else about this experience except this: real people, standing around and staring at her, waiting for her to do something.
Dairine held her breath, for that second or so as frozen as Mehrnaz’s was. I can’t help her past this. I can’t. She’s got to do it herself. But the moment kept stretching into a breathless strangled silence, as if everyone around the two of them was waiting for some kind of explosion to occur.
. . . And then Mehrnaz let that breath go. She reached out into the empty air and snatched her wizardry out of it in a tangle of light, whirled herself around once, and spun the complex webwork of the spell around her head as she did, letting it unfurl in air—then cast it outward in front of the first group of onlookers. They all made room and watched the spell-web spin out, settle to the floor, and start annotating itself, and they all went “Ooooo!” And there was a patter of applause from some of the older wizards standing in the back of the group.
Mehrnaz’s glance met Dairine’s, and Mehrnaz grinned. “Fellow wizards and other cousins,” she said, “here’s what I’ve got to show you today . . .”