“It’s the baby that I’m saving, not you,” said Wad. To her? Of course not. To Bexoi.
“I’m Anonoei,” she said.
But no sound came out.
Nothing.
For Bexoi’s ka was fully in this body, and so was Anonoei’s, and Bexoi would not let the body act on Anonoei’s intention to identify herself as present in this flesh.
Bexoi wanted her gone. Sole control of this body, that’s all that she would settle for.
I should have let her die.
But if I had, would I have been able to keep the flesh alive? Do I still need Bexoi to maintain my life? It doesn’t matter whether I do or not. She’s here, and the opportunity to let her die is gone, now that the body is healed. Does she choose to block me from speech? Then I choose to block her.
“A simple thank-you would do,” said Wad. “Or even a curse-I have no fear of your curses. Or are you trying to work up the strength to burn me to death the way you burned Anonoei? She was worth ten of you, you know. A better mother than you-and not just because she never arranged for the murder of her firstborn. Burn me if you can. See what happens.”
And then he wept.
Maybe Anonoei loved this man more than she had supposed.
Anonoei wanted to look at him. To use these eyes to see him, these hands to reach for him. But Bexoi blocked her.
The weeping stopped. Wad spoke again, whispered. “You knew that I couldn’t kill your baby, even though you killed mine. You knew there was a line I wouldn’t cross. But once the baby is born, anyone can nurse it. Do you understand?”
Anonoei understood, and so did Bexoi. If they did not manage to end their struggle and find a way to make this body speak aloud, then after the birth of the baby, she would die. They would die.
But there was still a little while before the baby was due.
Wad rolled the body over so it was lying on its back. He pried open an eyelid. The reflex for the eye to focus was under the control of the ape-brain, not the two kas that warred within it. So Anonoei saw and therefore remembered that Keel still hung, alive, from the rafter overhead.
Look up, she said to Wad. And then she filled him with the kinetic memory of looking up.
And so he looked.
“Keel,” he said.
In a moment he had gated himself to the rafter and the open eye watched as Danny untied the man, as he caught Keel in a gate so he landed on the floor after the fall of half an inch rather than ten feet.
I am not utterly helpless in this flesh, thought Anonoei. I am still a manmage, I can keep communicating with the portion of my ba that already dwells in him.
There were other splinters of her outself that connected her to Eluik and Enopp, and to the couple in Mittlegard who were looking after them. Her connection with the Gatefather Danny North, with Bexoi’s nephew Frostinch, with King Prayard-all these persisted, along with her links with the enemies of Bexoi. Bexoi would probably be able to block her from making new connections, but she could not interfere with the ones that still existed from before. They were part of Anononei’s self, her ka-and-ba, and Bexoi had no part in them.
So while Bexoi was fully trapped inside this stalemated, unmoving body, Anonoei could still influence the actions of dozens of people, could still reshape events, at least a little.
That’s a tiny bit of justice on my side.
23
Wad listened as Keel told him how Queen Bexoi and two soldiers arrested him and brought him to his office and hung him from the rafter. There was no explanation, no threat. Keel had kept quiet, expecting her to ask him questions, to accuse him of something, but not a word was said until Anonoei arrived.
“It was hard for me to concentrate on what they were saying,” said Keel. “The Queen called Anonoei a manmage, which is true enough. I don’t think the Queen knew that the manmage who was interfering with people like me was Anonoei until she appeared here. Bexoi said she had studied manmagery because manmages and gatemages were the only ones who posed a threat to her. Bexoi kept waiting for you to come. I think she was using Anonoei as bait.”
“I was busy,” said Wad. “I didn’t realize that Anonoei was calling me until too late.”
“Bexoi is a firemage.”
“I know,” said Wad.
“The way she burned up Anonoei, it was…”
Apparently there was no word in his mind for what it was.
Keel broke into convulsive sobs. “I thought I was going to die.”
“Why was Bexoi burned as well? Her fires never harmed her before.”
“Anonoei threw herself on her at the last moment and held her close,” said Keel. “That’s how it looked to me, at least.”
“That shouldn’t have made any difference,” said Wad. “Bexoi could stand in a furnace that would melt granite and the heat would never reach her.”
“Then Bexoi must not have burned,” said Keel.
“Getting some sarcasm back, I see,” said Wad.
“You’re the kitchen boy. Hull’s errand runner.”
“I am,” said Wad.
“And you’ve been a gatemage the whole time.”
“It made me a better errand runner,” said Wad.
“Why hasn’t the Gate Thief eaten your gates?” asked Keel.
“Do you really want even more of the kind of information that will make me need to kill you?” asked Wad.
“If you didn’t kill Queen Bexoi when you had her in your power, you won’t kill me,” said Keel.
“You don’t know what I’ll do,” said Wad.
“I know that if you’re Queen Bexoi’s friend after all, I’ll kill you if I ever get the chance.”
“I’m not her friend,” said Wad.
“She told Anonoei that the gatemage was once her lover. Was that you?”
“I put a baby in that belly once,” said Wad. “The boy that she named ‘Oath’ was mine.”
Keel’s body shook again, but now with laughter. “Poor Prayard. Cuckolded by a kitchen boy.”
“By a spy that he often resorted to himself.”
“So he knows you,” said Keel.
“And trusted me, once upon a time. The question now is, what should I do with you?”
“I’m now the open enemy of the Queen, known to her. If she lives, my life is as good as gone. I don’t know why she isn’t killing us both right now, but even if she chooses to bide her time, I’m a dead man. I doubt there’s anywhere that I can flee where she won’t follow, or send an assassin after me. So I will do whatever I can to kill her. Does that make us allies or enemies?”
“Not until her baby is born,” said Wad.
Keel nodded. “Yes, you told her that. You spared her for the baby’s sake.”
“And so will you.”
Keel nodded. “Unless she comes after me. I will defend myself.”
“Whatever is keeping her silent,” said Wad, “does not make her deaf. I think she hears us and she understands, even if she can’t give us a sign of it. Maybe pride alone holds her tongue. But I tell her now, in front of you, that if she harms you in any way, or Anonoei’s children, I’ll overcome my scruples about not killing her unborn child.”
“Thank you,” said Keel. “I can’t understand why I don’t feel any pain. I hung there for hours.”
“Passing through a gate restores your body to perfect health, maintaining the age and shape that you’ve achieved.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Keel. “So gatemages are all healers. Yes, I think I had some vague knowledge of that. Old stories.”
“Keel, I need your help.”
“I doubt you want a ship, you who can travel anywhere in the blink of an eye.”
“I have the body of the Queen, apparently in some kind of trance. But she’s in your private office. Surely this is not where she should be discovered.”
Keel thought for a moment. “Can you take her back to her own rooms in Nassassa?”