The Lost Gate (22 page)

Danny covered his face with his hands. “Why don't I just wear a billboard.”

“Come on, Danny,” said Stone. “You're very good at concealing when you're lying. You're a natural con man, which isn't actually a surprise. But there aren't many males who can hide it when they're thinking of a woman.”

“Why isn't it a surprise that I'm a ‘natural con man'?” asked Danny. “That's not a talent I'm proud of, if it's true.”

“But it kept you alive and got you to DC.”

“Eric got me to DC.”

“Eric told you what to do. He didn't make you good at it—that's inborn.”

“Yeah, I'm a born criminal.”

“You're a born gatemage,” said Stone.

Danny froze.

“Relax,” said Stone. “You think I'm from one of the Families. That I'll tell somebody and they'll kill you. Or that I'll kill you myself.”

“It crossed my mind,” said Danny.

“How can I put this nicely? I don't give a flying fart about the Families and their treaties and their fears and their rules. When Loki closed the gates it wasn't just the Families that got shut out.”

Danny felt his world reeling. What was Stone
talking
about? How much did he know?

“The kitchen is not the place for this discussion,” said Stone. “Judging from what I'm smelling from the living room, several people are going to have the munchies before long.” Stone arose from the table. “Grab what you want and come to my room.”

Danny took a bottle of drinkable yogurt out of the fridge. He looked for a glass, and then decided he'd simply drink the whole liter himself. He followed Stone up the stairs to the room at the front of the house, the one with the best view and the least climbing.

Stone was sitting in a comfortable chair that looked out onto the street. Danny sat in the slightly less padded one beside him.

“You haven't killed me yet,” said Danny.

“If I tried, you'd just gate away,” said Stone.

“True,” said Danny. “You know about gates, but you're not in any of the Families, is that it?”

“That's it,” said Stone.

“So who are you?” asked Danny. “Why does somebody living in a townhouse in DC know about the Families and gates and
me
?”

“Come on, you know the Family history—or the ‘myths,' as anthropologists call them. Zeus and Eros and Ares and everybody else and his duck siring babies on mortal women, Aphrodite and Athena and even chaste Diana seducing whoever they wanted. And that's just the Greeks. How many stories about the queen of the teeny-weeny fairies drawing off mortal men to some secret kingdom where they hump like bunnies for a while till she gets tired of him and sends him back? What do you think happened to all the babies they made?”

“You?” asked Danny.

“Not me personally. A half-dozen distant ancestors of mine. All those demigods like Herakles—didn't you ever wonder about him? Wandering the Earth, not able to live on Olympus? Actually, there were about three dozen sons of about a dozen Zeuses who took the name of Herakles, which is why there are legends about him in so many places in Italy and the Balkans. There was a while there when being named Herakles and being able to raise a clant or some other little spark of divinity could get you laid even quicker than money.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty,” said Stone. “Don't get distracted by your own assumptions. You Families all talk as if you were the only wizards in the world. Pure Westilian bloodlines and all that. But there are a lot more of us—
way
more—who aren't part of any Family except whatever parents and siblings we happen to have. We didn't take part in any of your stupid wars, and mostly we stay out of your way. Thor from your family—you're a North, right? Perfect American accent and all that, though from a gatemage that doesn't really prove anything—your Thor has his network of bribed observers, but he's so sure of his own superiority that it never crosses his mind that most of us are not in awe of him and we'll tell him only what we want him to know.”

Danny leaned back in his chair. “And you just talk about this, right in the open?”

“I'm far more discreet than
you've
been. Now Eric knows what you can do, and you can bet it won't be long before Ced and Lana do, and anybody else who follows the smell of Westil to this house.”

“Smell of Westil?”

“The flowers I grow. Not native to this planet. I specialize in Westilian flowers—different species all year round. Their pollen calls to those who have the scent of it in their blood.”

“You're really a Rootherd?”

“More like a Meadowfriend,” said Stone. “It's one of the disadvantages of not being in a Family. I'm not quite sure
what
I am, because I'm mostly self-taught. Just the basic principles—love and serve the sources of your strength. If they prosper under your hand, you prosper from the association, too. But who knows what I might have become if I had been guided and taught? My father was a bit of a Puddlekin, my mother a Muckminder. What could they teach me? For all they ever knew, they were born to be Watersire and Claymistress, only they were as untaught as I was.”

“Nobody's taught me anything, either.”

“I know,” said Stone. “How could they? They're sworn to kill your kind whenever you crop up. Not that they wouldn't cheat if they thought they could get a decisive advantage from training a gatemage. The thing is, it doesn't work. It won't work with you, either, sad to say.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Gatemages don't last.”

“What does
that
mean?”

Stone paused, and it seemed to Danny as if he was choosing which lie to tell. “You're tricksters. You piss people off.”

“But we're great at the fast getaway,” said Danny. It felt odd, though, to say “we,” as if he knew so many other gatemages, as if he were a member of a vast fraternity.

“Danny, you need training.”

“Meadowfriends can train gatemages?” asked Danny.

“There are general kinds of training that work for everybody,” said Stone. “But no, I'm not the one to train you. I'm just the one to find you.”

“That's what bothers me,” said Danny, though he had only just realized it. “Out of all the houses in Washington DC, how did I end up in the one house where my disappearing and reappearing didn't send the owner into a tizzy?”

“I cast my net, and mages fall into it,” said Stone.

“Well, I wasn't the one who fell,” said Danny. “It was Eric who found this place. A friend of his knew about your no-rent policy.”

“A friend of his?” asked Stone.

“An acquaintance.”

“Think back,” said Stone. “Had Eric ever met Ced before?”

Danny thought back. Ced was just there, talking to them. On the street. But no, come to think of it, the first person he talked to was Danny. And what he said was, “Who the hell are you and what do you want?” Which he had said only because Danny walked right up to him and just stood there, close.

Why did I do that?

“You were serious about that pollen? From Westilian plants?”

“It clings to Ced's clothing, because he lives here. Let me guess. You didn't even know why you went up to him. Like that children's game, where the one who's ‘it' is searching for something, and the other kids tell him ‘warmer' and ‘colder' as he gets closer or farther. When you caught a whiff of that pollen, you felt like you were getting
safer.
On familiar ground in a strange city. And the closer you got to him, the safer you felt.”

“And that was the pollen?”

“It's worth keeping these plants alive. Especially since I can't get more,” said Stone.

“I honestly thought Eric knew him.”

“Ced has a way of talking to people as if he's always known them,” said Stone.

“So you found me. Your Westilian plants sucked me here with the illusion that I was safe. Why?”

“There's a group of us. Mages, of a sort. Lost Westilians. We call ourselves ‘the Orphans' because we aren't part of a Family, and we don't want to be—but we still want some of the benefits. Training, support, protection. We learn a lot from each other. We do research into the origins of magic. We try to understand why it works and why some people can do it and others can't. Everybody does what he does best. Me, I raise these plants, they thrive for me. And so I recruit. I bring in whoever responds to the pollen, I keep them around to see what kind of people they are, and if they seem to be decent folks then I offer them what I offered you. A teacher.”

“But not you.”

“I'm the recruiter. And I'm also pretty much out in the open here. The pollen that lured you here will draw any Westilians who are searching for you.”

“What about Ced and Lana? How did a couple of drowthers end up with you?”

“Ced is not a drowther,” said Stone.

“He's a mage?”

“He's a Westilian, an Orphan like me, and there's no way to find out where his ancestry branched off from one of the great houses. But from what he's told me since he got here, his mother was a pretty talented beastmage—she flew with birds, he said, though I suspect he's repeating what she
called
it. She certainly didn't fly herself, in her body—I assume she rode a heartsblood bird and told her son about it. He grew up knowing that such things were possible—he saw how certain birds came to her, how she served them. She died when he was about ten. He tried to develop his own birdmagic, as he called it. But it turned out, to his bitter disappointment, that he's not a beastmage at all.”

“What, then?”

“Wind,” said Stone. “He can do things with wind. Make little whirlwinds and dust devils and such. But he can also sustain a breeze. Dry the family's laundry on the line—he used that one when they were broke and couldn't afford a dryer. He's also useful to have when you're sailing.”

“And he can raise a storm?”

“Oh, no, not yet anyway.”

“Not much of a windmage, then,” said Danny.

“You have the Family snobbery,” said Stone. “But how many truly great mages do
you
know?”

Danny was taken aback, but when he thought about it, he realized that the total was pretty easy to calculate: Two. Baba and Mama. Nobody else had their power and their ingenuity to use it in the modern world. “Two,” he said aloud.

“And the rest of your Family? How many are at about the level of Ced?”

“Some.”

“And what level would the others be at without a speck of training, except the general things that a Meadowfriend can teach?”

Danny shrugged. “Okay, I'm sorry,” he said. Then his curiosity got the better of him. “What can Lana do?”

“Absolutely nothing,” said Stone. “I tolerate her here because Ced has taken her on. As his responsibility. The way I tolerate Eric for your sake.”

“But I hate Eric.”

“Not true,” said Stone. “He just scares you, because he's so absolutely selfish.”

“I don't want to do what he says.”

“Then don't do it. There are several places around the world where you could live with people who would mentor you, and where none of the Families would ever find you.”

To Danny, the idea of going to a safe place was infinitely appealing. He had not imagined there was any such thing as a safe place in the whole world.

Which is why the word “sucker” kept flashing in his mind.

“I don't think so,” said Danny.

“Why not?”

“Because I don't trust you enough to put my survival in your hands. How do I know that I won't be walking into a trap? Death, or a prison, or straight to one of the Families so they can use me as a pretext to restart the war with
my
Family?”

Stone sighed. “Your caution is admirable. Where was it when you were joining up with Eric? Here I tell you more than anyone else ever has about you and your power, but you can't bring yourself to trust the guy who tells you the truth, you'd rather trust that petty con man who wants to use you as a burglar.”

“I owe him,” said Danny.

“You already paid him everything you owed,” said Stone. “You're square with him.”

“I owe him,” Danny repeated.

Stone said nothing, just looked at him.

Danny sat there under his gaze a few moments longer. He wanted to explain to Stone about how Eric had mostly been patient with him, had taught him. Yes, Eric was a bossy jerk. But what was between them wasn't just a debt. It was an obligation of the heart. It could not just disappear because he realized now that he didn't like what Eric wanted him to do. But the feeling wasn't logical. He couldn't defend it. He had nothing to say.

Stone sighed. “You can leave my room now.”

“Are you mad at me?” asked Danny.

“I think you're a fool, but I'm also glad that at least you're learning some caution.”

“I've got to do one job with Eric so he has some money ahead when I leave.”

“Leave?” asked Stone. “Where are you going?”

“Like you said. To my new teacher.”

Stone sighed again, but now with relief instead of sorrow. “I'll find out who's in a position to take you,” he said.

“And I'll try not to burglarize a house with dead or dying people in it.”

“Remember what I told you—none of your swag comes here.”

“I made the deal, I'll stick to it.”

Stone nodded.

“And thanks,” said Danny. “For calling me here. For offering me a teacher.”

“It's nice to know you're not alone in the world, isn't it?” asked Stone.

But I
am
alone in the world, thought Danny. No other gatemage. Nobody I've known longer than a few days. The name of Stone's group was well chosen. Orphans.