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meetings between the Greeks and the Family council, and he wanted to hear them. He had never been old enough to understand anything when other Families had sent observers before. And since the Greeks would be most alert to any sign that a gatemage had emerged among the North Family—a “new Loki,” they would call any such—Danny wanted to be there to hear if there were any accusations. Because if there were, he would have no choice but to run, even though he still had no real plan for how he would get away and keep from being caught.
    Right now, though, they were still outdoors in the cold December air, being inspected by some of the people who had killed a lot of the Family in years not long past.
    The Greeks walked up and down the line of children, looking at everyone closely. Some of them—especially the middle-aged women—gave them all a look of disdain. And why not? The North cousins were mostly barefoot, even in the cold weather, with hair that only vaguely remembered having been touched with brush or comb. They were all suntanned and dirt-smudged, and their clothes were patched-up hand-me-downs or offerings from Wal-Mart or Goodwill, chosen by thrifty grownups guessing at the child’s size.
    By contrast, the Greeks were all dressed as if they were going to a rich man’s funeral—dark suits and dresses, all looking like they cost serious money, with hair perfectly coiffed and fingernails manicured. Above all, they were clean. Yet they wore their perfect costumes with ease, as if they dressed this way every day, and didn’t care if they got dirty as they walked through the mud of melted snow from the storm a week ago. They could always replace whatever clothes got mussed. They could buy a small planet, Thor had once said. Not that any amount of money could buy passage to the one planet where they all had wanted to go for nearly fourteen centuries.
    From time to time as they walked along the line, the Greeks would pause in front of a child and ask something in the ancient tongue of Westil—the original from which Indo-European sprang five thousand years before—and one of the Norths would answer. If they had spoken louder, Danny could have understood them; he was the only one of the lined-up cousins who had achieved real fluency in the language. But they spoke softly, so it was not until they came quite close that Danny realized that these murmured words were questions about what branch of magery a particular child was showing affinity for.
    It should have been Baba who answered them, but he was away buying new equipment. Danny suspected that the Greeks had waited until Baba was gone, so they could speak to others less accustomed to answering questions without revealing anything interesting. The result was that Auntie Tweng usually answered—she being the most taciturn of the adults—though sometimes Uncle Poot would answer, since he worked most closely with the children. One thing was definite: Every question was answered, and promptly, too.
    The little children directly in front of Danny were not interesting to anyone—they hadn’t shown any particular affinities yet, though of course they could already raise a bit of a clant. But the girl just to Danny’s right was Megan, Mook and Lummy’s daughter, just turned fifteen, and a very promising windmage. So there was some discussion of her, and Danny noticed that while Poot praised her highly, the particular feats he mentioned were actually things Megan had done when she was ten. So every word was true, but the impression Poot made was that the Norths were such a pathetically weak Family that they boasted when a fifteen-year-old did things that a talented ten-year-old should do.
    Danny wondered about this. Years before he had overheard an argument about whether the Family should appear strong, to deter attacks and insults, or appear weak, so that no one would feel envy or resentment. “They