Finally Set relented and made a gate. Danny let him draw on one of the captives and then, the moment the gate had passed over Danny and he felt no more pain in his head, Danny gave the gate to itself and it was gone.
“What are you doing!” his own voice demanded. “I don’t know what you’re doing. How can the gate be gone?”
But my head feels so much better.
“Until you learn who is master in this house, I will make your life pure hell,” said Danny’s mouth.
I’m sure you can do that, thought Danny. What you can’t do is make gates that I don’t approve of. And when we run out of captive gates, then you’re done, because none of my gates belong to me anymore, and so you can’t use them.
22
When Anonoei arrived in Keel’s office, he wasn’t there. Nobody was.
Yet she could sense that Keel was near, now his dread was so strong it nauseated her a little. He was terrified for his life. Where was he?
She looked up.
He was hanging upside down from the rafters in the high-ceilinged room. His arms were trussed like the wings of a roasting fowl.
“When it all burns, won’t he make a delicious smell?” asked a woman’s voice.
Anonoei turned to see a woman standing in the doorway. She was simply dressed, like a peasant woman, and she was well along in pregnancy. Depending on how she carried, she might be two months from delivery, or the baby might be due right now. She smiled, and she was beautiful.
Anonoei recognized her then, though the pregnancy, the clothing, and the great length of time since Anonoei last saw her from a distance had delayed her.
“My Queen,” said Anonoei. She sent a calming influence to the Queen, only to realize that Bexoi was already calm. No agitation at all.
Or none that Anonoei could feel.
“I know what you are,” said Bexoi. “It’s not as if you tried to conceal it. Who but a manmage could interfere with so many of my most trusted friends? That is, without sleeping with them. And now I see who you are. You were pointed out to me, years ago, back when you still shared my husband’s bed and I did not. Anonoei, is it not?”
“It is,” said Anonoei. Now she tried turning Bexoi’s emotion to amusement, but again there was no change in Bexoi’s feelings. Until it dawned on Anonoei that Bexoi might have no feelings, not about little things like murder and torture to advance her cause. She wasn’t even angry, apparently.
“I’ve made a great study of manmages, because once I discovered what I was, I realized that only two kinds of mages could thwart me. Gatemages-but I knew the Gate Thief would take care of them. And manmages, because I feared that they would be able to overmaster me. So I learned all the lore about manmagery, especially what happened during the great war of Dapnu Dap, when the sandmages turned the steppe into a sandy desert in the effort to destroy the manmages of the far south. History is very important, when you prepare to defeat enemies you haven’t met yet.”
“I admire your scholarship,” said Anonoei. Through the shred of outself she had left in Wad, she called him urgently. Take me out. Get me away from here. Take me now. But Wad must have been caught up intensely in whatever he was doing, because there was no response. Not even a flicker of annoyance at the nagging doubt she knew she was causing him. Come to me, if you won’t bring me! But still he ignored her.
“Your pet gatemage hasn’t come for you yet,” said Queen Bexoi. “Whatever could be wrong?”
Bexoi couldn’t have had anything to do with the business with the Great Gate that had kept Wad from paying attention to her. But she clearly meant Anonoei to think that she had.
“We’re both on our own,” said Anonoei. “To match up head to head, so to speak.”
“Nose to pretty little nose,” said Bexoi, smiling slightly but without a trace of amusement. “Neither of us is particularly beautiful, though we’ve both learned how to appear more beautiful than we are. No doubt it came naturally to a manmage like you. But to me, it was painstaking effort to become a beauty. To know just what angle, just what degree of smile. Ambition is the great driver, but it lives on hope. I could persist in my study, in my solitary practice, in my hours before the mirror, because I had hope.”
“I’ve heard you’re a great firemage,” said Anonoei.
“I do well enough, in this decadent age of the world,” said Bexoi.
“A self-seeming clant that bleeds,” said Anonoei.
“Wad was so impressed by that simple illusion.”
Anonoei could not find any road into her. The woman had no emotions.
“I have no emotions,” said Bexoi. “I can see that you’re frustrated. What do you think my studies taught me? That when manmages send their outselves into a victim, they use the low road by preference-the deep emotions. So you block them by having no emotions. Feeling nothing. It came quite naturally to me, and helped me during the long years when my husband only desired you and ignored me almost completely.”
Anonoei knew of no road but the low road-no way into a person except by way of their emotions. But Bexoi must have learned of others. I should have studied more, thought Anonoei. But members of royal houses have better libraries than my father and his friends. There may also have been books in Gray that were lacking in Iceway.
She thought of the things that Wad had just remembered about Set, the Dragon, and how he possessed people completely, sending his very ka into their bodies, instead of using the insidious ba, the gentle outself.
“And still no rescuer comes for you,” said Bexoi. “I assumed I’d only have time to say a few words before you were gone. Or before dear Wad, my former lover-he did tell you that, didn’t he? — moved me to someplace else. Yet he does nothing. He must have sent you here. But he’s busy, isn’t he?”
“There’s a Great Gate open between the worlds,” said Anononei. “Soon the lands will be flooded with mages more powerful than you.”
Bexoi’s face flared momentarily with excitement, but before Anonoei could exploit the emotion it was gone. “The Great Gate turns a needle into a bludgeon, even though a needle is so much more subtle and piercing. I will face whomever he brings here. No longer the Gate Thief, is he? Now he makes Great Gates.”
Anonoei did not correct her. Let her think Wad was still capable of making a Great Gate. Let Bexoi keep her fear of Wad, even if she had no fear of Anonoei.
“And yet the Gate Thief does not come to retrieve you. Do you think he sent you to me as a love offering? ‘Here is your enemy, Bexoi. I give her to you, so that your child can be born into a world at peace.’ Or did you think he really loved you? He loves no one.”
If Bexoi was gloating, she gave no sign.
“But the longer I delay, the more chances Wad will have to change his mind and come to your rescue. So I’ll kill you now, I think, and use the heat of your body to ignite the wood of this building. Keel can see how powerless you are before the flames roast him. I’m betting he’s still alive when the rope breaks and drops him down onto the burning floor. I really wouldn’t want him to miss any of this. When servants choose the wrong master, it’s very important that they understand their mistake. But then, did Keel ever have a choice? Manmages like you don’t let them. And here I go, talking more. But it’s important to me that you understand just how thoroughly you have been lured, trapped, defeated.”
The gloating showed that there was some emotion in play here. Anonoei probed for it. Not an emotion of the body. Pride and ambition were emotions of the ka, so they followed different rules. But it still offered a road in, and now Anonoei had it.
She made a move, sending her outself to turn Bexoi’s vanity into complacency, and her complacency into unwariness.