The Gate Thief mm-2 Read online

  “Whomever you blamed and whomever you hated there in your prison cells, and whomever you feared, I was your captor, your jailer, your torturer. What does it matter that I despised myself for what I had done to you? I continued to do it.

  “So let me give you some consolation. Queen Bexoi got the King to sleep with her. You were gone, and so were your sons. He believed that my boy was his own, and now he came to love the Queen, and he wanted to give her a baby. So he begot a child upon her. And then she didn’t need my little bastard anymore.

  “My son, whom she called Oath and I called Trick, was now a danger to Prayard’s true son. He was also the only person that I loved, once I understood that Bexoi had used me, had never loved me. So she murdered my boy and tried to murder me. On the day I released you from the cells where I had kept you, that was when she killed my son.

  “If she had killed me as she meant to, I couldn’t have saved you, and you’d be dead as well. But I escaped from her, and I rescued you. But don’t imagine that I had repented of my crimes against you. I meant to let you out someday, and I tried to make your imprisonment more bearable, but I was not about to let you go. It was Bexoi’s monstrous murder of her own child, of our child, and her open try at killing me that finally made me let you go.

  “You see that I don’t pretty up my actions. Bexoi is a monster, but so am I. If I’m better than her it’s only because I kept you alive and didn’t murder you right out. But is that really better? Weren’t you just the prey that the spider binds up and hides away to devour another day? I kept you as a tool to use against her, when the time came.”

  Wad fell silent. Eko looked at him in a kind of fascinated horror. He doubted that the boys understood, though the younger one at least seemed interested. Anonoei, though … she understood all.

  “This is that time,” she said. “The time to use us as tools against her.”

  “No,” said Wad. “You’re far too weak, and so am I. I was once the greatest gatemage that the worlds had ever known, but now there is a greater one than I. He took all but a few of my gates. I am no match for Bexoi now, and you are most certainly no match for her. I came here to set you free of me, since I’m no use to anyone. I came here to tell you the truth so you would know your enemies. So you would hate the right people, when it was time to hate. Prayard had no hand in what happened to you. He searched for you and he grieved for you, but you were beyond his finding, and when he came to love Bexoi it was only in the firm belief that you were dead.”

  Anonoei shook her head and laughed bitterly. “Foolish boy-or are you older than you look? Don’t you know that Bexoi was not the only one to hide her magery? Like you, I am a mage, but of a kind forbidden.”

  Wad had to think for a moment, because if she had been a gatemage, she could have gotten herself and her sons out of prison any time she wanted.

  “A manmage,” he said.

  “Not a great mage by any means,” she said. “But yes, I realized my power when I came of age. When I could flatter people into doing anything I wanted. I began to realize that once I owned them, they were mine. I owned Prayard. Do you understand me? He didn’t fall in love with me. I decided to own him and I did.”

  Wad thought for a moment and then he laughed. “Well, it doesn’t make any of my actions better than they were, but it’s nice to know that I’m a monster among monsters. These boys, then-the sons of two mages and not just one.”

  “I imagine they’ll have some talent for this or that when they get older,” said Anonoei. “Maybe even the much-sought-after seamagery. Or maybe one of them will be a gatemage by and by.”

  “It’ll be me,” said the younger one, Enopp. “I’ll be a gatemage!”

  Eko clapped her hands together. “He spoke!”

  Anonoei rushed to her younger son and embraced him. “Oh, my baby, no, you can’t just decide, the power chooses you, it’s already inside you and someday you’ll find out what it is.”

  But Enopp kept looking at Wad. “A gatemage,” he said. “Because you can go wherever you want.”

  It was in that moment, in those words, that Wad first realized what he had to do. He had come to this place with no plan other than to tell the truth and then take them wherever Anonoei decided they should go. But he heard Enopp’s innocent words as if they were a recipe for how he might possibly redeem himself. How he might really help Anonoei. How he might get the power to undo Bexoi and destroy her root and branch.

  Go wherever I want, the boy said, but Wad knew that he could not. He did not have gates enough inside him now to make a Great Gate, so he could not go to Mittlegard. But then he realized that he could. That there was a Great Gate, a wild one, controlled by no mage now. Danny North could not lock it and so anyone who knew of its existence could make use of it. Wad could pass through that Wild Gate and go to Mittlegard and back again, restoring what power he had left to its full strength. It would not get him back his gates-Danny North still had those safely locked inside a place where Wad could never go against the young Gatefather’s will. But it would sharpen his faculties, bring him back to the state he had once been in, when he saw all the gates in the world, even the gates of the Semitic gods, and he ate them all.

  Unlike Danny North, he had not been fool enough to try to use the captive gates, but he had found them and held them. He could make himself that strong a mage again. He could restore his own vision, the range of his seeing.

  And if he could take himself to Mittlegard and back again, he could take Anonoei as well.

  But perhaps not. Wad was a gatemage who knew how to rule over the lost and disobedient outselves that were woven into the Wild Gate. Anonoei could not resist them. Manmage that she was, she would know that they were there, but not the form they took. They might entice her out of herself. They might entwine her in the Great Gate. And because she was a manmage, they would only be fulfilling the law by taking away her power.

  No, if Wad were really to strengthen her so she might be a match for Bexoi, he would have to get Danny North to help him hold the Great Gate open for her. He would have to teach him what to do, to train the man who bested him so that he could never be defeated and Wad could never get his lost gates back.

  How could he give even more power and wisdom to the mage who had shattered him?

  Because I deserved the shattering, thought Wad. He was an instrument in the hands of spacetime and so I got what I deserved. I misused my power and so I lost all but a tiny shred of it. And I will have to go as supplicant to Danny North, to get him to help me make amends for how I raised the monstrous Bexoi to be mistress of Iceway.

  All of this came to him between Enopp’s words and Wad’s answer to him.

  “I see that your outself may indeed be divisible,” said Wad. It was true enough-the outselves of all children might be divisible, and those that were going to be gatemages would be the most divisible of all. But there was no way to tell at such a young age. “But things like that take time. No one knows what you’ll become.”

  Anonoei looked at Wad. “For you he speaks,” she said.

  “He sees my power,” said Wad. “He’s too young to understand my wickedness.”

  “The wickedness of all the mages,” said Anonoei. “What did I ever do but seek to advance myself?”

  “And love your children.”

  “Look at the danger I put them in,” said Anonoei.

  “Their very conception was dangerous,” said Wad. “But all children are born into a world of danger, where they’re bound to die.”

  “Listen to the two of you,” said Eko.

  They looked at her, surprised that such a quiet, mousy person would speak to mages of their kind.

  “Bragging about who is most monstrous,” said Eko.

  Was I bragging? Wad asked himself.

  “Monstrous or not,” said Anonoei, “I want revenge.”

  “I came here so you could have it,” said Wad. “Against me, if you choose. I will not gate away.”

  “And what
then?” asked Anonoei. “Without your help, what vengeance can I have on her?”

  “Promise me this,” said Wad. “That you will not harm her baby.”

  “This from the man who-”

  “I know what I did to your sons,” said Wad. “I’m telling you now that if you harm her baby, you will not be able to live with it. I know what I’m talking about. No matter how you rage against her, her baby has done nothing. Your children did not deserve to suffer, even though their existence posed a danger to my son. My son did not deserve to die, even though his existence posed a danger to this new child of Prayard’s and Bexoi’s. And their son does not deserve to die.”

  “So this is the root you’ve found for your morality?” asked Anonoei. “Do what you want, just don’t hurt the children?”

  “For lack of any deeper root, that will have to do for now,” he said. “Agree to that, or kill me now, because I’ll never help you get revenge against a child. I’ve gone down that road and it’s too terrible to travel on again.”

  “There’s no way that we could hurt her more,” said Anonoei.

  “But what good is it to hurt her, if we destroy ourselves in the process?” asked Wad.

  “Listen to the two of you,” Eko said again. “All your power, and all it is to you is a means to get revenge.”

  Wad looked at her sadly. “I tried to save the world, once upon a time, but what I was saving it for I still don’t know, and in the end I failed.”

  “Then try again,” said Eko. “The world’s as much in need of saving as it ever was, and somebody ought to try.”

  Anonoei put her arms around her sons. “This is all the world I care about now.”

  “If that were true,” said Eko, “you wouldn’t be plotting vengeance on a queen, a firemage. You’d be looking for a place to take your sons where they’d be safe.”

  “I thought I had that here,” said Anonoei.

  “We’re in Iceway, and your enemy’s the queen,” said Eko. “And by the way, Man-in-the-Tree, thanks for bringing the king’s missing mistress to our house. That will help us prosper, you can be sure.”

  “I didn’t know anywhere else to take them,” said Wad.

  “Well, I’ve done what you wanted. And I’m not turning them away even now, though if it’s discovered who they are, her enemies will happily kill me and my whole family, don’t you think?”

  Wad slumped down to sit on the floor of the tiny house. “I think that I’m the puppeteer, pulling strings, but then I trip on them and find that someone else has hold of my strings.”

  “Who?” asked Enopp.

  “Fate,” said Wad. “Unintended Consequence. That’s the only god that’s real.”

  “Do you have an actual plan?” Eko asked Wad.

  “Yes,” said Wad. “As of this moment, yes, I do.”

  11

  REUNIONS

  Danny hadn’t had enough sleep, but his inner clock woke him at exactly the time required for him to make it to Coach Lieder’s house for a special practice. Now that Danny had capitulated and ran his fastest for Lieder’s stopwatch, he found that he enjoyed it. Showing off, not competing.

  Danny was human enough to like being admired, and one thing about Lieder, when he was working with an athlete who was really trying, he knew how to show respect and give encouragement. It was a side of Lieder Danny had never seen, and never would have seen as long as he was with the slackers and geeks.

  He was still with the slackers and geeks, but he was also running for the Parry McCluer track team, and even though it was a while before any of the meets would begin, and for all he knew he wouldn’t live long enough to compete in any of them, it was fun to get to Lieder’s house before sunrise, running the whole way in the dark, and then see how Lieder had laid out fixed courses for him on the streets of Buena Vista, so that he would know just how far Danny was running in a given amount of time.

  Now that his friends were all enlisted in the Great Gate project, the only way that Danny still connected with high school life was his running. He had come here to get away from magery and live a normal life; he had brought the magery with him, and running was the only normal thing left for him to do.

  This morning, though, Coach Lieder wasn’t alone. Nicki, his daughter, was with him, and though she seemed a little sleepy, she didn’t have that wan look. That dying-nymph appearance. Her passage through a gate had healed her of whatever she was dying of. Lieder may not know it, but Danny had prepaid him for all the private track coaching. And yet it had cost Danny nothing. The effortless gift of a god. Need healing? Well here it is, because why not.

  But just because it cost Danny so little didn’t change the fact that she was dying, and now she would live. Maybe that had something to do with why Lieder was more encouraging than Danny had expected. After all, he had so much less to feel angry and bitter about.

  “Do you mind if Nicki watches?” asked Lieder. “She was up anyway, so…”

  Did he think he was good at lying? Danny knew that Nicki must have asked him to waken her especially for this. And maybe Lieder was simply indulging his little girl. Or maybe he thought Danny would perform better with a girl watching. Or maybe he hoped something might happen between Danny and his daughter, though why Lieder should wish for such a thing Danny didn’t know.

  It had to be the first one. Nicki liked Danny-and what’s not to like? — and when a daughter who had been this close to death now had a crush on a boy, what father wouldn’t indulge her? Especially when he was right there to supervise any interaction between them.

  Danny felt her eyes on him the whole time. He ran short sprints today-Lieder was keeping him close to the front porch so he was never out of Nicki’s sight. And if the idea was that Danny would work harder to impress a girl, it wasn’t exactly wrong. He certainly made his best times in the various dashes. And this despite having run the whole way here, and not having had enough sleep the night before.

  Last night I was this close to pledging my undying love to Pat, and this morning I’m showing off for Nicki. I’m such a teenage boy. Which is to say, I’m such a fickle jerk.

  Well, running in front of a girl wasn’t kissing her. There was a difference and he’d keep it well in mind.

  Even in the cool of an autumn morning, Danny was dripping with sweat. He had really given it his all, and he knew that sweat wasn’t unattractive to girls, not when it had been earned by real exertion, not when the guy doing the sweating had an athletic build. It was only sweaty fat kids and geeks that turned high school girls off. Danny had learned this from his reading of young adult novels during the years he was studying to prepare to be a normal high school student.

  “Hi,” he said to Nicki when Lieder beckoned him to the porch. She gave him a little wave and a shy smile.

  Lieder ignored the exchange between them and began reading off the times. “And you ran here, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Danny.

  “So the idea is to have these sprints in you at the end of a long race. To pace yourself so that you stay in contention but you don’t have to lead.”

  “You know that I don’t care about leading,” said Danny.

  “But the team needs you to win. To rack up points. So not for yourself, but for the team. You stay close enough to be in contention, but sprints like these are still inside you.”

  “Why not just have me run the sprints?” asked Danny.

  “I’ve got guys who can do the sprints. They’re not as fast as you, but they win enough. I need you in long distance. You’re a coin I can only spend once or twice in a meet. I’m not going to use you up on the short stuff.”

  “You want me to be a quarter, not five pennies, is that it?”

  “Yeah, smart guy,” said Lieder. “I want you to be a damn Susan B. Anthony dollar.”

  “But fifty cents will do,” said Nicki. “He wants you to try for the dollar so you might make the fifty cents.”

  Lieder reddened. If any other kid had said such a thing, he
would have been angry. But it was his daughter, so the redness went away quickly. “She thinks she sees through her old man,” he said with a smile. “But I want the buck. I want a buck fifty.”

  “Well, I better get home and shower,” said Danny.

  “Oh,” said Nicki. She looked disappointed. Then, realizing that Danny was looking at her curiously, she stepped back and turned away, embarrassed.

  “Nicki’s going back to school today. She was kind of hoping you might ride with us.”

  Danny indicated his dripping shorts and tee-shirt. “I can’t go like this.”

  “You could shower here,” said Nicki. Then she covered her mouth as if to keep more words from coming out.

  “And put these back on?” said Danny, laughing.

  “Look,” said Lieder, “Nicki’s right. I’ve worn you out with sprints. Now if you run all the way home and shower and change you’ll be late to school.”

  It was true. They had gone long.

  “You shower, and throw on something of mine. It’ll be baggy on you, considering that you’re made of toothpicks, but we’ll swing by your house and you run in to change. We’ll wait.”

  Danny considered for a moment. It was a very generous thing. But could he afford to arrive at high school in Lieder’s car?

  “How about if you drive me home and drop me off? Then I can walk to school on time.”

  “Well, I’m not letting you get in my car as sweaty as you are right now,” said Lieder. He laughed, but … was it really so important that he shower at their house?

  Danny shrugged and stepped up on the porch. “Whatever I do, I gotta do it now.”

  Nicki rushed ahead of him and showed him to the house’s one bathroom. It really was an old place. But the tub was modern enough-it wasn’t sitting on claw feet, it was molded to the floor, and instead of a shower curtain there was a glass door.

  He turned on the water and heard Nicki close the door behind him. He got his shoes and clothes off as soon as the door was closed and by then the shower was steaming a little. He got in and was washing his hair with regular soap when he heard the door open.