Queen of wands sc-2

by John Ringo

  “I hope you climbed out,” Bran said.

  “I did,” Doris said, dimpling. “With some help. I ran into a girl named Daphne…”

  “Pirate costume?” Bran asked. “Big hat? White feather?”

  “Yes,” Doris said.

  “Did that costume,” Bran said, smiling.

  “You did that?” Doris asked. “It was awesome!”

  “Hey, I do this for a living,” Bran said, shrugging. “Lots of pictures?”

  “Oh, everybody loved it,” Doris said, pulling the pins out of her hair. She’d taken the time to get most of the makeup off in the bathroom. “Daphne convinced me to climb out of my corner and it was just picture city. She made like I was her captive and everybody just ate it up. We stayed in the Hilton and just talked and got pictures taken until, well, now. It was great! I never thought I’d enjoy attention so much!”

  “It’s called ego-boo,” Bran said. “Ego boost. Duncan can lecture on it for hours. It’s about status, basically. If people are giving you positive attention it feels like a rise in cultural status. Generally it means there is a rise in status. I’ll let Duncan complete the lecture and go on about how the gene is selfish.”

  “The one thing that kept throwing me was that there was this enormous black guy in a Blade costume that, like, followed us around. He wasn’t acting…stalkerish. He didn’t actually spend that much time watching us. But every time I looked around, there he’d be, usually with his back to us. Actually, it sort of looked as if he was watching out for us. Which is weird. And he totally ignored people taking his picture. If we moved, he moved, pictures being taken or not.”

  “Yeah, that would be weird,” Bran said. “Going to do the same costume tomorrow?”

  “I could,” Doris said, frowning. “I don’t want to put anyone to any more trouble…”

  “But you’d rather do something else,” Bran said, nodding. “Makes sense. Come to the panels tomorrow and we’ll see what we can come up with. You should think about showing more skin. You’re probably going to have to when the Dawn contest comes, and you need to get used to it.”

  “After tonight I think I can get my head around that,” Doris said. “One guy did try to grope me. I don’t think his wrist is broken.”

  “Glad to hear you’re getting some assertiveness,” Bran said, yawning. “You’re going to need it. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m actually getting tired again.”

  Doris smiled and then shrugged.

  “I was half expecting a come-on,” she admitted.

  “You’re…not really ready for that, unless I’m mistaken,” Bran said. “Maybe later in the con.”

  “Until then, then,” Doris said, standing up.

  “Have a good rest of the evening.”

  Doris knew she should be tired; she hadn’t slept at all last night and it was after midnight, but she was still charged up from the evening. She wandered down to the lobby of the Hilton, but most of the costumers had packed it in and everything was closed up. The Marriott wasn’t much better.

  However, the Hyatt was still going strong. She flashed her badge to the security on the back steps and found that the “smoking area” outside the back door was just about packed. There were still vendors out there but she wasn’t going to spend her limited amount of cash on drinks.

  However, besides the various people, in various clothing ranging from street clothes through corsets and miniskirts and schoolgirl outfits to one guy in a leather thong and body paint, there was a group of people banging on drums down at the far end. And girls doing belly dancing in the middle.

  Intrigued, she walked over to watch. The rhythms were catchy and pulled at something in her. She knew she liked to dance, she just wasn’t usually someone to do it in public. Her dancing was all done in her room to the radio. This was different. Different dancing and a completely different environment.

  Could she, maskless, walk out there and join in?

  No, but she didn’t have to be maskless. She considered her location then walked to the nearest ladies’ room.

  “Is that her?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” the man at her side answered. “We should kill her, I tell you.”

  “And risk the penalties?” the woman asked scornfully. “She doesn’t know who she is or where she is. She is no risk to us.”

  “Her friends search for her. They’re gone now. But when they find her, that is a much larger issue.”

  “She has to win the crown to defeat us. There is no chance that that dormouse can beat me.”

  “Let’s hope so. I am tired beyond words of this prison.”

  “I’m tired of these losers. Let’s go find a party.”

  “You just want to find someone to torment.”

  “That’s what we do, precious.”

  Once in the ladies’, Doris entered a stall and pulled off her shirt. Going shirtless was out. That, she couldn’t quite handle yet. But it was an old shirt and worn. And she had a small pen-knife in her bag.

  Five minutes later she walked out. It wasn’t a great costume but she at least could be a tad anonymous. Call the costume “The Dread Pirate Roberta.” She sort of remembered a movie with a character, ‘The Dread Pirate Roberts,’ who always wore a black mask. The sleeves were gone from the ratty old shirt, and it was now a midriff shirt. The lower part of the shirt was the mask.

  All the girls in the circle were in such beautiful costumes, she didn’t want to get in there in her holey jeans and beat-up running shoes. So she chose a quiet corner off to the side and started dancing.

  Just the hips at first, warming into the rhythm. What was that line about “Dance like nobody is watching?” She knew almost from the first that, ratty clothing or not, people were watching. Men were watching.

  And she liked it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Have you had any sleep at all?” Duncan asked as Doris sat down at his table in the restaurant.

  “Nope,” Doris replied, grinning. “I’ve been having too much fun.”

  “Is that a faint sheen of glow about you I detect?”

  “If you mean am I pregnant, no!” Doris replied, hotly.

  “Horses sweat, men perspire, and women glow,” Duncan said. “You appear to glow. Your hair is wet.”

  “I was dancing,” Doris said, shrugging.

  “This early?” Duncan replied, chuckling. “Shouldn’t you at least wait until the sun is over the yardarm?” He paused and looked at her. “You don’t mean you were dancing all night?”

  “Until about an hour ago. The last drummer gave up, the loser.”

  “Good God, woman!” Duncan said. “Pace yourself. No sleep, and dancing all night? Were your shoes on fire? What happened to the little wallflower?”

  “I am the little wallflower,” Doris said, shrugging. “Until I can put on a mask. Then I get to be the mask.”

  “Well, seriously, you need some rest,” Duncan said. “Food, at least. My treat.”

  “I accept,” Doris said. “I feel sort of bad about the fact that I’m living on charity. But I sort of got over it, partially, last night. Guys kept giving me bottles of water.”

  “I hope you only took those that were sealed,” Duncan said, signaling for a waiter.

  “I was careful,” Doris said. “It sort of bothered me at first. But they seemed to like it and they really seemed to like my dancing. One of the drummers asked if I was going to be there tonight. I said probably. I know I have to sleep sometime, and I’m tired, but not the kind of tired where you can go to sleep. You know?”

  “Yes,” Duncan said, nodding. “But you have to rest sometime. And, frankly, you could probably use a shower after dancing all night.”

  “Do I smell?” Doris asked, looking panicked.

  “No,” Duncan said, grinning. “But you still could probably use a shower. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Doris said.

  “I’m not using my room for the next couple of hours,” he said, handing her a key. “Feel free to av
ail yourself of it. Get some sleep if you can, wash up if nothing else. Remember the rules of the con. Drink, Eat, Sleep, Game. Or costume, in your case. What are your plans for today?”

  “More costuming panels,” Doris said. “Then I’m going to see if I can figure out how to make a harem-girl costume for tonight. I don’t think I can. There’s too much involved. And I need to figure out what costume I’m going to do for the contest.”

  “If you’d like another suggestion…?” Duncan asked.

  “Sure,” Doris replied. “You’ve been on the money so far.”

  “Don’t spend all your time in costuming. There are a thousand things to do at this con. No person is all one thing. Or if they are, they’re called obsessives. You might try looking in on some other panels. I’m going to a demonstration by a friend of mine at one, over in the Marriott. You might want to look that up.”

  “Damn, you’re up early.”

  Doris looked up, then up again, at a tall, thin man with a straggly beard and long, frizzy hair.

  “Ah,” Duncan said, grinning. “It’s Kelly. Kelly Lockhart, Doris Grisham. Doris, Kelly. Join us for breakfast?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Kelly said, grabbing a chair. “It’s not often that I get to eat breakfast with a beautiful lady.”

  “I won’t tell Star you said that,” Duncan said, chuckling.

  “Young lady.”

  “Or that.”

  “Redhead.”

  “There you go. Foot nicely extracted. Doris, Kelly is a feature of Dragon*Con I don’t think you’ve yet had the dubious pleasure of experiencing.”

  “Oh?” Doris asked, puzzled.

  “I’m the court jester,” Kelly said. “Which means that since nobody takes me seriously I can get away with things that would otherwise be outrageous.”

  “And people just say ‘Oh, it’s Kelly’ and shrug.”

  “There you go.”

  “Such as the fu…screw-up fairy?”

  “Don’t remind me,” Kelly said, wincing. “Okay, there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed.”

  “The problem is not crossing a line,” Duncan said. “It’s jumping across it butt naked. Or, perhaps, in the screw-up fairy costume.”

  “You have all these in-jokes,” Doris said.

  “Danger of an inbred community,” Duncan said, smiling. “The fu…screw-up fairy…”

  “Tech-ops says that whenever something goes wrong, it’s the…screw-up fairy,” Kelly said, by way of explanation. “So one year I decided to come as the screw-up fairy.”

  “Imagine yon large-hirsute, I might add-male in a size triple-XL Tinkerbell costume.”

  “Technically it was Texas small.”

  “Oh,” Doris said, grimacing. “Brain floss!”

  “Yes, yes,” Duncan said, grinning. “We all wanted economy-size brain floss.”

  “With condoms hanging from the belt,” Kelly pointed out. “Doesn’t make any sense, otherwise. I mean, it’d just be a guy cross-dressing if I didn’t do that.”

  “And there is far too much of that at Dragon*Con, anyway,” Duncan said.

  “I saw a great big fat bearded guy in a Sailor Moon outfit last night,” Doris said, shuddering.

  “Sailor Moon cosplay should be outlawed,” Folsom said, nodding. “Seriously. There ought to be laws with stiff penalties. Hanging on first offense, with successively higher penalties.” Duncan frowned as his breakfast was served, and pulled out his cell phone to check the time. “This is fun, but I think it’s throwing my schedule off. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make Ed’s demo. Kelly, Doris is going to avail herself of my shower. After that, do you think you could be a friend and get her over to Ed’s demonstration?”

  “Sure,” Kelly said. “I don’t have any plans.”

  “I’m going to wolf this down and then scoot,” Folsom said. “Doris, don’t let this trickster lead you astray. He’s renowned for it. Kelly, actually get her to the demo, okay?”

  “You just say that because you love me,” Kelly said, grinning.

  “Or something like that,” Folsom replied.

  “Eh, this is too effing weird,” Hjalmar said, looking at the crowds below. “If I’m getting this right, this is the next day, in the morning. And we were away for, what, two hours?”

  “We were here for one day in this reality and out-of-body for two,” Sharice said, biting her lip. “There’s a rule going on here that I can’t define. Time is way skewed. I came right back because I was afraid we were going to miss the entire con if we stayed away. Instead, we’re right back where we should be starting again.”

  “Rules of game?” Drakon said. “We rest and we restart at the proper time?”

  “But who is running the game?” Sharice said. “And what are the other rules? Most especially, who is running the game? Because if it’s certain entities, then it’s going to be rigged.”

  “Rigged or not, it’s the only game in town,” Hjalmar said as he threw on his mail. “What’s the plan? I take it I’m getting sentry again.”

  “Where have we missed?” Sharice asked.

  “It’s a huge con,” Drakon said. “We haven’t really hit the gaming areas. I covered the lower levels of the Hyatt yesterday. Ran into a fascinating guy in the anime room. He knew, like, every anime ever created and every martial arts movie ever. Even met Bruce Lee a couple of times.”

  “Costuming,” Hjalmar said, waving at his armor. “There’s a whole huge track on that over at the Hilton. And we didn’t really hit the Hilton much at all.”

  “Drakon, you take gaming,” Sharice said. “I’ll take costuming. Link up with Hjalmar at two. I’ll spell Hjalmar so he can get some food and rest. Then we roam again.”

  “Works,” Drakon said, shaking his head. “Gaming. Why’d it have to be gaming?”

  “Would you rather sit through lectures on period fabric making?” Sharice asked.

  “Come to think of it, I really want to check out the gaming room…”

  “You look refreshed,” Kelly said as Doris exited the elevator.

  “I feel refreshed,” Doris said, heading to the lobby.

  “Let’s take the tubeway,” Kelly said, gesturing in the opposite direction. “This time of day it’s not too crowded, and it’s closer.”

  “I haven’t been this way before,” Doris said as they headed into the skyway. “I didn’t even know this was here.”

  “There are a half-dozen ways to get back and forth,” Kelly said. “Trust me, I know them all. And you can watch the crazies from up here,” he added, gesturing down to the street. “Like the guy in armor who looks as if he’s a sentry.”

  Doris stopped and considered the guy in period Norse costume.

  “He looks familiar,” she said.

  “That’s common,” Kelly replied, taking her arm. “And we’re walking…”

  “Lots of people in costume already,” Doris said.

  “This is when the con really gets going,” Kelly said as they proceeded on their way. “Most of the day registration is on Saturday. Which is why the day-reg line is so long. Tomorrow will be busy, too, what with the concerts and the Dawn contest.”

  “I’m going to do that,” Doris said, shyly.

  “Dawn?” Kelly said, surprised. “Well, you’re a natural for looks, but…What’s your costume?”

  “I haven’t really decided yet,” Doris said. “It’s going to be limited.”

  “Hmmm…” Kelly said, frowning. “Dawn’s not something to just jump into. I mean, not if you’re serious. It’s become almost a masquerade lately. People work all year on a costume for it. Just throwing something together? Good luck. And why Dawn?”

  “I’m trying to find out who I really am,” Doris said. “Dawn is about as far from who I am now as I can imagine.”

  “Then maybe it’s not who you really are,” Kelly said. “Maybe something like gaming is more your style. All that takes is brains and skill. You’ve clearly got the brains; all you need is the skill. And you c
an pick that up fast. If you just want to win something to prove something to yourself, well, one of the gaming contests is more likely.”

  “Hmmm…” Doris said, doubtfully.

  “Or, well, you’ve been doing costuming, right? Maybe something like the Iron Costumer contest. I wouldn’t suggest masquerade, that’s also something you work all year on. But there are more places to prove yourself, to find yourself, at Dragon*Con than Dawn. Just a thought.”

  “I’ll think on it,” Doris said as they exited into the food court. “Oh, I have been this way. I found the food court my first day. But I’ve mostly been eating in the con suite.”

  “Shane appreciates that, I’m sure,” Kelly said. “He goes to a lot of trouble to come up with solid meals even though his budget is really small for all the people he has to feed. And he never has enough staff. Most people aren’t willing to sell their souls to be con-suite zombies. But to get to the Marriott we go this way.”

  “I offered to help out,” Doris said. “In the con suite. But he said I had to have my brains removed.”

  “It’s not a con rule, it’s his,” Kelly said. “All con-suite staff must be zombies. I think it’s an African hospitality thing.”

  Doris giggled at that and then looked around in surprise as they entered the Marriott. “I never would have found this way if you hadn’t shown it to me.”

  “There are signs, but they’re more harm than help,” Kelly said. “There are a thousand paths around Dragon*Con. I like to try them all.”

  “Duncan said you can go anywhere.”

  “Dragon*Con is really about fifteen cons rolled into one,” Kelly said. “Media con, derivative con, anime con, lit con, fetish con. And each of those cons has dozens of little cliques. I try to fit in with them all.”

  “I imagine you mediate a lot,” Doris said.

  “Heh,” Kelly replied. “I’ll fix things from time to time. ‘Mediate’ would be a stretch. Most people would say the opposite.”