PART TWO
War was a hit with Mauger and Lancelot. It was easy to learn, for one thing. Everyone turned his top card face up. Whoever had the highest card won all the cards in play. On ties, you tossed out more cards to break the tie. You played until someone won all the cards. The boys liked the suspense. They loved the winning. They also enjoyed the moaning and groaning that went with losing a hand. They thought it was cool that Hippo had them set up on the floor, because this inspired them to think of themselves as Indian braves who were playing War, except when they were playing at being soldiers in a trench playing cards, except when they were kings in a cave gambling for one another's kingdoms (etc., etc., etc.). Stolemaker sent an envious Conan over to join them.
Vincent fell asleep at the table, a clay dog in his hand, a smile on his face.
Dennis gathered stray bits of clay and incorporated them back into the main ball, put the clay away, and set to work on the mind teasers. Dennis was, it turned out, a past master of wooden puzzles. It took a bit of practice, but soon he was putting on a magic show, turning stacks of odd-shaped pieces of wood into solid blocks, and dismantling them again, not to mention turning solid chains of metal into separate links, and putting them back together again.
Lancelot was first man out at War. Rather than sit there being the loser, he invited himself over to apprentice with Dennis.
Mauger and Conan were soon telling Lancelot how to do what he was doing. He openly resented their advice, which provoked Mauger and Conan to abandon cards to take up backseat puzzle solving fulltime.
Vincent slept on. The smile had faded. He'd lost his grip on the clay dog, which he'd bent out of shape and broken into pieces while dreaming. Dennis patched the dog back together, in Vincent's style and not his own, and set it in front of the boy so he'd see it, whole and hearty, when he woke up.
At some point in the proceedings, Janice realized that the boys were learning as well as playing: numbers, language, rules, and possibly other things as well. Somewhat later, it occurred to her that everyone around her was laughing frequently. And interacting. And quite likely bonding, too; although that, of course, was harder to measure.
Without understanding how she got there, she found herself Dennis's new apprentice, seriously trying to figure out three-dimensional puzzles.
She barely noticed when Hippo left, Vincent cradled in his arms and the others trailing pack-like and half asleep behind. Nor did she notice when Hippo helped a pain-wracked Stolemaker off to his bedroom.
Dennis, wrapped up in teaching Janice, pretty much missed the other proceedings, too.
Not Exactly Allies Page 46