The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [131]
The Long Study was a narrow room lined with windows along one side—more of a gallery, really. There was nothing obvious to study with there. There were no books, or desks, or furniture of any kind in the Long Study. What there was was Iris.
Baby-faced, chopstick-haired, Ivy League Iris, last seen breaking Julia down into her component parts back at the Bed-Stuy safe house. It was almost like meeting an old friend. On her home turf Iris went casual: jeans and a white T-shirt that showed off her stars.
“Hi,” Julia said. It came out a tad querulous. She cleared her throat and tried again. “How are you?”
“Let’s do it again,” Iris said. “From the top. Start with the flash.”
“The flash?”
“We’re going to run your levels. Start with the flash. You miss one, you go back to the beginning. You do them all, one to seventy-seven, no mistakes, three times in a row, and then we can start work.”
“You mean start leveling me?”
“Start with the flash.”
For Iris, meeting Julia again was not like meeting an old friend. For Iris meeting Julia was more like when the grizzled sergeant in the Vietnam movie meets the newbie private fresh from Parris Island. Eventually the private will lose his cherry and become a man, but first the sergeant is going to have to drag him through the jungle until such time as the private can unfold his entrenching tool without shooting his balls off.
Of course Iris had every right. That’s how the system worked. She was doing Julia a fucking favor. Babysitting the noob was evidently not considered a premium assignment at Murs, and she wasn’t going to pretend to enjoy it. Which whatever, but this did not oblige Julia to pretend to be grateful either. Really she ought to dog it a few times, she thought, just to piss Iris off. Show her that Julia had nothing to prove. See how long it took her to lose her shit. ışık her and her flash.
But in truth it was not necessary for Julia to dog it. She screwed it up the old-fashioned way, involuntarily, four times before she made it to seventy-seven even once. Twice she muffed the same spell, level fifty-six, a thumb-cracking affair rich in Welsh ll’s that was designed to toughen glass against breakage. Even averaging a bit more than two minutes a level, which was really machinelike efficiency, they were two and a half hours into it when she went down for the second time. Iris sat down cross-legged on the floor.
But Julia had decided that she was not going to swear or twitch or sigh in front of Iris, whether she muffed level fifty-six twice or two hundred times. She was going to be all sweetness and light. How do you llike them apples.
At two in the afternoon Julia spiked spell number sixty-eight on an otherwise perfect run-through. Iris rolled her eyes and groaned and lay down full-length on the wooden floor and stared up at the ceiling. She couldn’t even look at Julia anymore. Julia didn’t pause but went right back to the beginning, whereupon she stuffed level fourteen, a gimme spell that even Jared knew cold.
“God!” Iris shouted at the ceiling. “Get it right!”
By the time Julia rattled off two perfect runs, right through to seventy-seven, it was six thirty in the evening. They hadn’t broken for lunch. Julia hadn’t even sat down. The setting sun, angling in from the west, painted the long wall a chalky pink. Her feet were killing her.
“All right,” Iris said. “That’s it. Same time tomorrow.”
“But we’re not done.”
Iris levered herself up off the floor.
“Nope, we’re done. Finish tomorrow.”
“We’re not done.”
Iris stopped and stared at Julia through her nerd glasses. Maybe Iris was annoyed at having to babysit the new fish, but Julia had so much more anger than Iris did at her disposal. She was making a withdrawal from her stockpile now, spending a little of the principal, and it hardly made a dent. She walked over to a window and punched it. It would have broken if she hadn’t already cast level fifty-six on it three times that day.
“All right, Julia, I get it. I was tough on you. I’m sorry. Come on. Let’s get some dinner.”
“We’re done