But as she stepped back into the corridor, Kashkari came out from his room.
“Shall we go then?” he asked amiably.
She was caught.
CHAPTER 11
TITUS RAN.
He hated unanticipated events. The unanticipated should happen only to the unanticipating. It was not fair that he, who spent all his waking hours actively preparing for everything the future could lob at him, should be caught short like this.
Yet from the moment Fairfax burst into his life, he had lurched from one unforeseen event to the next. He should have told her to walk around with a limp, well enough to attend school but not eligible for sports.
It had come as a shock to him, his first Summer Half at Eton, hearing Fairfax discussed as a cricketer. But with the popular consensus already formed, it was too late for him to intervene and convince the other boys that Fairfax was instead a rower.
He had meant to give her a few surreptitious lessons in cricket, but there had not been time. And damn it, Wintervale was not supposed to call a practice today.
His lungs hurt, but he forced himself to run even faster. She had no idea what to do. She would flounder and betray her ignorance.
Wintervale might begin to question things. Of course he would not immediately conclude that Fairfax had never existed before yesterday, but it was dangerous to have anyone question anything.
When the individuals on the pitch became distinguishable, he saw that it was Kashkari bowling. Kashkari took a short run, wound his arm, and bowled. The ball flew fast, but Wintervale, at the crease, was ready for it. He knocked it low and straight, toward the exact middle of the gap between the mid-wicket fielder and the square-leg fielder.
It was a good hit. The ball would zip past the fielders and roll out of bounds, giving Wintervale’s team an automatic four runs.
A white blur: someone sprinting at tremendous speed. That someone dove to the grass. When he again stood straight, he lifted his hand to show that he had scooped the ball out of midair.
Fairfax! And by catching the ball before it had landed, she had dismissed Wintervale, one of the best batsmen in the entire school.
Wintervale emitted a jubilant shout. “What did I tell you? What did I tell you? All we needed was for Fairfax to come back.”
Titus belatedly realized that Wintervale was addressing him. He had stopped running at some point and was staring, agape. He gathered himself and shouted back, “One lucky catch does not a cricket prodigy make!”
This earned him a disdainful glance from Fairfax. For some reason, his heart beat even faster than a minute ago, when he had feared that his entire scheme would be going up in smoke.
The practice resumed. Not even two overs later—each over being a set of six balls bowled consecutively—she dismissed Sutherland by striking one of the bails above the stumps while he was still running.
Wintervale was beside himself. He had Fairfax replace Kashkari as the bowler and set Kashkari to bat. The moment the ball left Fairfax’s hand, everyone on the field knew that the team at last had the bowler they desperately needed: she threw with an astonishing velocity.
Kashkari, not expecting the ball to hurtle at him so swiftly, barely managed to hit it. A fielder near him quickly scooped up the ball, and Kashkari could not score any runs.
Wintervale shouted directions at Fairfax. “Higher!” “Lower!” “Put some spin to it.”
She spun the ball very decently for someone with such attack to her throw. Kashkari wiped his brow as she readied herself to bowl again.
“Take him out, Fairfax,” Titus heard himself yelling, enthused beyond what he had ever thought possible for cricket. “Take him out!”
She did, by knocking off one of the bails above the stumps of the wicket. The team roared with approval. Titus shook his head in amazement. She was gifted: fast, strong, and marvelously coordinated.
Of course she was. How could he have forgotten that elemental mages were almost invariably great athletes?
She turned around to face Titus, raised her right hand, and, with her forefinger and middle finger pressed together, passed her hand before her face.
It was a boasting gesture. But there were boasting gestures and there were boasting gestures. She had just told him to go bugger himself.
He laughed, then his laughter froze. Had Wintervale seen the gesture, by any chance? It was emphatically not one used in the nonmage world, at least not in this country.
No, Wintervale was behind her, thank goodness. She turned to shake hands with Kashkari, that most gracious of sportsmen.
The practice resumed. She continued to excel, so much so that when the teams switched sides and she took her turn at bat, she could laugh off her otherwise grievous mistake of using the wrong side of the bat—the side with the slight V in profile rather than the flat one—as the result of too much excitement.