Danny looked at each of them in turn. Aunt Lummy and Uncle Mook, the two he knew best and trusted most. They looked worried and stern. Auntie Uck and Auntie Tweng and Uncle Poot and Uncle Thor seemed much more relaxed, but Danny imagined that was because they didn’t actually care what happened to Danny-or they had such rage toward him that they felt a greater need to disguise their feelings.
Baba and Mama were smiling. And oh, yes, there were Danny’s half-brother Pipo and half-sister Leonora. They weren’t important in the council, so they must have been brought in to create some kind of cozy family atmosphere. As if they had ever given Danny the time of day.
“If Zog and Gyish don’t sign off on this, it won’t happen,” said Danny.
“Hello to you too, Son,” said Baba.
“I’m not here as your son, sir,” said Danny. “I’m not here as a North. I’m here as the only person in Mittlegard who can make gates.”
“Is that still true?” asked Mama. “Your Keyfriend and Lockfriend haven’t picked up any new skills?”
“I’ll be back when Gyish and Zog are here,” said Danny.
“Wait,” said Baba. “We didn’t think you’d want to see them, but they’re just outside, you don’t have to go.”
“Of course he wants to see them,” said Auntie Tweng. “He wants to rub their noses in it.”
“In what, exactly, do you think I want to rub their noses?” asked Danny.
“In the fact that you’re a mage,” said Auntie Tweng, “and we all know that the reason you didn’t send one of your little drowther friends as a messenger was so you could come here personally and gloat.”
“Do you know that?” asked Danny. Of course it was true, at least a little bit, but it wasn’t the whole reason and it galled him that anybody in this room thought they knew Danny. “I can’t imagine why any of you thinks you know me at all. With the possible exception of Uncle Mook and Aunt Lummy, none of you ever cared enough to find out what kind of person I was when I lived here.”
“Yes, this is just the tone we expected from you,” said Uncle Poot. “Self-centered and arrogant as always.”
“We know what power does to a person,” said Thor.
“And how would you know that?” asked Danny. “None of you knows what power is. There hasn’t been any real power in any of the Families for fourteen centuries. And as far as I’m concerned, it can stay that way.”
He thought of disappearing right then, leaving them to stew on it for a while. But that would be childish, and Veevee would tease him and Hermia would yell at him and so he stayed where he was.
“You can’t hear the arrogance in your own tone?” said Auntie Tweng.
“He’s always been like that,” said Zog as he entered the room. “Vain about his schoolwork, vain about everything, even when he had nothing to be vain about.”
“Shut up, Zog,” said Baba.
“Oh, you think you’re still head of the Family, is that it, Alf?” said Zog. He stressed Baba’s original name instead of calling him Odin.
“Of course he is,” said Mama.
“No,” said Zog. “He is, now.” He thumbed toward Danny.
“The only way I could be head of this Family,” said Danny quietly, “is if I were a member of it. But I’m not. I never was.”
Mama began hotly: “Our blood runs in your-”
“The best of your blood is buried in the dirt of Hammernip Hill,” said Danny. “Whatever genes I have can’t be helped. But as you made very clear, blood means nothing if I don’t have some tangible value to you. And right now, the only way to keep the whole world from erupting in war is for all the Families to know I don’t belong to any of them. Nor am I one of the Orphans.”
“Those drekka,” said Grandpa Gyish. “Bastards and foundlings.”
Danny wanted to make a tiny gate to make him trip and fall on the floor, but he restrained himself. “Making bastards has always been a favorite sport of the Westilians,” said Danny, “but the genes tell true, and the Orphan mages are as powerful as you.”
“Are you sending Orphans through the Great Gate, right along with the Families?” asked Thor, sounding alarmed.
“Oh, come on now, don’t you understand how this works? I send whoever I want through the Great Gate. I’ve already sent four Orphans through a Great Gate.”
“It already exists?” said Zog eagerly. “The new gate?”
“Not for you it doesn’t,” said Danny.
“So you aren’t going to let me through, is that it?” demanded Zog. “Even if the Family chooses me.”
“With only two places to fill,” said Danny coldly, “there is no chance that they’d send a Clawbrother like you. They’ll send Mama and Baba for exactly the reasons you made Baba the Odin and let him marry Mama. Because they’re the most powerful mages in the Family. All the Families will send their most powerful mages.” It took all Danny’s self-restraint to keep from reminding Zog just how far down that list he was.
From the hatred on Zog’s face, Danny knew he didn’t have to.
“The little boy is still pissed off because you bruised his shoulder,” said Grandpa Gyish.
“That injury healed the moment I went through a gate,” said Danny. “Just because you base all your choices on spite and vengefulness and fear, Grandpa Gyish, doesn’t mean that I do. You never had the power to cause me any pain that lasts.”
Then Danny pointedly looked at Baba. “But you did,” said Danny. And he looked at Mama, too. “So I want you to know that I’m past all that. I’m giving the North Family equal access to the Great Gate, when I make it. No more than any other Family, but no less, either. If it’s the two of you who are chosen to represent the Norths in the passage to Westil, that’s fine. But if not, so be it. I don’t really care.”
“Of course it will be them,” said Auntie Uck. “It’s already decided, as soon as we learned of the terms you were giving the other Families.”
Danny looked at Thor, who was head of the Norths’ network of spies.
“No, I didn’t find out,” said Thor. “Do you think the other Families would let my drowther informants get close enough to know anything? They all contacted us at once. To find out whether we’d gotten an invitation from you and to see if you were treating us equally.”
“What did you tell them?” asked Danny.
“We told them nothing!” said Zog savagely.
“Telling them nothing,” said Danny, “was the same as telling them everything-that I hadn’t spoken to you yet, that you didn’t know yet what would happen.”
“We knew,” said Uncle Mook. “Zog and Gyish guessed wrong about the motive, but we all knew you’d come here. Because however much you may hate and resent us, you don’t want us dead.”
“Don’t count on that,” said Gyish. “Spiteful little bastard.”
“If he wanted us dead,” Aunt Lummy pointed out gently, “we’d be having this meeting inside Hammernip Hill. He could have put us there whenever he wanted.”
“Do you accept the terms?” said Danny. “Assuming you’ve heard the three promises I’m demanding from everybody.”
“We’ve heard them,” said Uncle Mook. “For some of us, the terms will be easy to swear to.”
“Which is why Zog and Gyish had to be here,” said Danny. “They not only have to say the words. I have to believe them.”
“Or what?” asked Zog. “You’re not sending me through the Great Gate anyway, so what can you do to hurt me?”
Now it was time for a demonstration of power. Danny made a gate that swallowed Zog and dropped him from the ceiling. He landed sprawling on the table, the breath knocked out of him.
The sheer surprise of it shocked everyone, and most of them jumped up or pushed back. Thor tried to do both and ended up knocking down his chair and then falling over it.
“What can I do to hurt you, if you break your oath?” asked Danny quietly. “Why, anything I want.”
Danny rose to his feet. The others sat down, except for Tweng and Uck, who were helping Zog get off the table and back to his chair. “As with all the others, I’ll expect your answer tomorrow.”