No, of course they didn’t. And apparently the Greek girl who stole the mouth of the Wild Gate didn’t think to come through herself and make sure everyone returned.
So Wad retrieved the gate he had used to send Anonoei, made it into a large public gate, and placed it directly in front of the inbound gate, setting it so it would transfer people immediately to the outbound one. That used up four of his eight gates. He used another gate to pop each of the loiterers to the mouth of the outbound Great Gate.
Just a matter of tidying things up.
It was fortunate that no one on Mittlegard had the slightest experience with gates. They would no doubt think that any glitches were just a part of the process, and if they suspected someone caused them to return immediately with no chance to look around, they would doubtless blame the Greek girl, and if they were angry it would serve her right.
If he still had even a serious fraction of his original gatehoard, he could have swallowed up the whole Wild Gate himself and had done with it. But he didn’t have the power, and Danny, who most definitely did, lacked the knowledge and skill to overmaster the formerly captive gates. Nor was Wad interested in teaching him-the last thing he needed was for the boy to acquire serious deftness. He was dangerous enough as it was.
Through it all, he kept feeling a nagging worry about Anonoei. It got more and more intense. You’re just being a fool, he told himself. She really can take care of herself.
Only when it was clear that there were no more mages coming through the Wild Gate did it finally dawn on Wad that it was not like him to worry overmuch about someone else’s safety. Not with the kind of nagging, pestering concern that had been bothering him.
If Anonoei wanted to call for his help, and if she really did have a slice of her ba inside him, wouldn’t it feel just like that? What if that worry was actually Anonoei screaming for help?
But the feeling was gone now. So apparently she had dealt with it.
He gated back to the room they had shared, in a house whose owner was away for the season. It was only as he stoked the fire to warm the room for Anonoei’s return that he realized that there was another reason why her calls for help might have stopped.
The sickening dread he felt now was nothing like the feeling that had nagged him while he supervised the transfers at the Great Gate. It was so obvious, when he had genuine personal dread to compare it with. She really had been nagging at him, shouting at him to get her out of there.
Wad made a gate to Keel’s office and nearly went through it at once. Until he remembered that Anonoei, too, had been confident that she could deal with any problem that might arise.
He shrank the ends of the gate until it became a mere viewport, and brought it to his eye to look through it.
There was no one in the room.
He looked around twice until he thought to lower his gaze to the floor.
It was the gown Anonoei had been wearing when she left. It lay on the floor, discarded.
No, not discarded. It was filthy.
No, it wasn’t filthy. It was soaked in ash and bodily fluids, which also extended out from the gown where the head and hands and feet should be.
She had been burned to death. But not by an external fire, for the dress wasn’t even singed. In his life on Mittlegard before he closed the gates, Wad had seen what murder looked like when a Firemaster heated someone’s body from the inside until it was utterly consumed. It was Anonoei’s dress, and what was left of her dead body was still wearing it.
Keel had been partly right, when he thought he was spied on. When Anonoei went to talk to him, it wasn’t a spy who waited to intercept her. It was Queen Bexoi herself. Bexoi the Firemaster.
21
Danny knew that his parents expected him to come back to the compound after everyone got back from their instantaneous trip to Westil. There was a war about to start, using magery with a scope and intensity that had not been seen in Mittlegard since the seventh century.
But Danny had no intention of taking part in the war-not the way they would expect him to. They would hold councils and plan strategies. They would be practicing to see what they could do with their newly enhanced magery.
Danny also knew that he couldn’t just go back to high school and sit it out. He would have to be involved in this war, like it or not.
But war or no war, he was not going to drop out of high school.
He had not slept in thirty-four hours when he came back to Parry McCluer just as school was letting out. Nobody noticed him, in their rush to get to the buses or the parking lot or just plain out.
That is, they noticed him enough to not bump into him, but few of them realized, as they passed him in the halls, that he had been absent all day. Whatever their normal response would be to seeing this normal kid on a normal day, they did. A wave, a nod, nothing.
He didn’t see any of his friends. Had they all ditched? Had something happened to them?
“Danny,” said a girl. Someone touched his back.
Danny turned. It was Nicki Lieder.
“Dad was so worried when you didn’t come to practice this morning and then you weren’t at school and nobody answered your phone.”
“Sorry,” said Danny. “Family emergency.”
“I was sure it was something like that.” Her hand was resting on his waist. He almost hadn’t noticed it, the move had been so subtle. But it was a girlfriend thing, he knew that-a possessive gesture that communicated to anybody passing by, “He’s mine, I have the right to do this.”
He didn’t want to hurt her feelings by removing her hand. So he turned partly away, then back again; it broke the contact. “I should have called,” he said.
“I understand completely. So will Dad. He’s so gruff, people don’t realize that he’s really very concerned for all his athletes.”
Yeah, and he’s a complete asshole to anybody who isn’t one of “his athletes.” But Danny didn’t say it.
The hand was back, except that because he wasn’t facing her, she was touching his waist right at the top of the zipper, her thumb hooked onto the waistband. It was a surprisingly intimate place to touch him. Maybe if he didn’t wear his jeans so low-but he had always worn hand-me-downs that were a little small on him, or way too big. The former had to ride low so there’d be room in the crotch; the latter rode low because they were on the verge of falling off. Now that was where pants felt comfortable to him. But it also put her hand very low on the front of his body and for a long moment that’s all he could think about.
And in the silence between them, he knew that’s exactly what she intended.
Innocent little Nicki wasn’t all that innocent. Whatever it was that had led her to kiss him that time, it was still there. She hadn’t given up. She was still offering.
Or was she demanding?
This didn’t seem like the same girl he had talked to that day in the Lieders’ kitchen, when he had healed her and changed her life. By not letting it end, of course, but also by restoring her to strength and health, and by talking with her like a normal person instead of an invalid. Apparently he had made much too great an impression on an impressionable girl.
He could just remove the hand, but the lingering presence of her hand so near his groin was obvious enough now that he felt the need to say something aloud. “There’s only one woman who has the right to touch me there,” he said, “and it isn’t you.”