The Lost Gate (37 page)

Wad did not know whether to be happy or horrified that his beloved was as cruel as he. He laughed.

But he did not kill Anonoei or her sons, and he did not tell Bexoi that he would not kill them. He owed her no obedience.

We are gods, thought Wad. All the great mages are. And gods make no apologies or explanations.

Be silent, he said to the many voices deep inside himself, as they cried out against his arrogance. If you had any power, he said to them, then you would stop me. But you are weak and I am strong. Be still.

16

W
ARDEN

How long can you behave monstrously before you become a monster? The first rage that Wad had felt toward Anonoei and her sons had long since passed. Hull was still dead, Eluik and Enopp still posed a threat to Wad's and Bexoi's baby, but the grief and fear had faded with time, as they always do. Humans, even great mages, get used to anything.

Yet the tedious work of pushing food into their hellish cells continued, day after day. Ashamed of what he was doing to children, Wad soon changed their fare from slops to bread and cheese, which he gated out of the locked pantry every day. It was driving the new Hull—a man this time, who had once been her apprentice Hatch before he got the night cook job and the night cook name—mad with frustration that his count was always off by three loaves and a fair-sized cheese.

Wad also sent his prisoners clean jars filled with water, which they returned to him empty, and open bowls for their bodily wastes, which they returned to him foul. He cleaned them himself, with his own hands, as penance for the terrible thing that he had done and continued to do.

Meanwhile, Bexoi's belly grew, and when King Prayard's frenzy over the loss of his lover and their sons faded—as all such feelings fade—he began to notice that the woman who was his lawful wife was with child.

But was it
his
child? Wad watched, of course, as Bexoi explained to him how she had pushed his seed into herself again and again.

“That doesn't work,” Prayard repeated.

“It only had to work once,” said Bexoi. “And think of it—this baby is of the hardiest seed of his father, the most determined, the most ambitious. The luckiest.”

“You say ‘he,' ” said Prayard. “Will this baby be a son?”

“It might be,” said Bexoi. “But if it's a girl, we can try again. Now that you know I'm not barren after all.”

“I never thought you were barren,” said Prayard.

“But you made sure everyone else thought so.”

“And you never told anyone that I was preventing it,” he said.

“Because I didn't want to start a war,” she said. “I wanted to start a baby.”

At last the day came for the baby to be born. Wad, of course, was not officially present, though he watched closely. There was a while when the baby's head seemed to be stuck, unable to press forward to emerge. So Wad made a little gate, and the baby seemed to shoot forward into the midwives' hands. “It was like magic,” said one of them to the other. “Did you see?”

“Born to be a great mage, then, do you think?” asked the other.

What Wad cared about was Bexoi. Once the baby had passed through the narrow gap in her bones, she was bleeding profusely and the healer attending her was unable to do anything. “At times like this,” the healer said, “we can be consoled that at least she left her child behind her when she died.”

Wad just shook his head at such a thought. He made a gate that swallowed Bexoi whole and then returned her to a spot a tiny fraction of a fingerwidth away. Nobody noticed the movement, or thought it only a momentary twitch; at least no one remarked on it. And suddenly she was not bleeding. Suddenly she was happy and tired and perfectly healthy in every way.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The healer assumed that Bexoi was speaking to her, and said, “But I did nothing, your majesty.”

“I know,” she murmured kindly. “You did your best, and I am well, and that's enough. Give me my son.”

“His name will be Oviak, of course,” said the healer, “after his father's father.”

“Naming is not your business,” said Bexoi softly. “And I will not give my son the name of a man who lost a war. His name will be Oath, for by his birth a covenant was kept alive.”

But hearing this, Wad thought: By his conception the sham of marriage between Prayard and Bexoi was utterly broken by me. So that will never be his name in my heart. I will call him Trick, for that is how he came into this world, and what his life will always be—a trick that Bexoi and I played on everyone.

After Oath had lived for seven days, he was presented to King Prayard, who declared him to be his son and heir. That very night he came to Bexoi, saying that he only meant to talk to her, for she was still recovering from childbirth. But she laughed and said, “I am well and whole and hungry for my husband,” and for the first time he acted as a husband should, and left his seed inside her.

Within the week, Prayard moved the Queen into his own chamber, to be protected by his most trusted men. The message was clear to all: Bexoi, not the lost Anonoei, was the woman who was sacred now to Iceway. She was the mother of the heir, and whoever raised a hand against her was the enemy of all.

Bexoi herself responded by cutting off the ambassadors and representatives and agents of Gray. They still lived in Nassassa and saw her every day—but only in a public room, with King Prayard's own ministers in attendance. There was never a word in private with the Queen, and they soon realized that this was not because she was being held prisoner, but because she wanted nothing to do with them. “I will not be used against my husband and my lord,” she said to them in one such public meeting. “When I was childless, and had no friends, my brother the Jarl and my nephew the Jarling and all of you conspired to use me as a pretext for war or as a means of humiliating Iceway. Now I am truly Queen, and my only care is that Gray and Iceway stay at peace, as equal allies against the enemies of both. I will not be used for any other purpose.”

Word of the Queen's change of loyalty was taken back to Gray, and while the Jarling Frostinch raged and railed about his aunt's “treason,” her brother the Jarl wept with joy. “She has set the example for us all. A girl without magery or beauty, with no weapon but her heart, has tamed the savage seamage. In their son will peace come to us all.”

Frostinch quickly saw that he must hold his tongue and pretend in every way to submit to his father's will. But he saw his father's acceptance of Bexoi's treason as a fatal weakness in the old man. As once he had plotted for his aunt's death, to provoke the war he wanted, so now he began to look for ways to help his father's reign reach a peaceful, happy, and swift conclusion. Then they would see how much peace the birth of Oath had brought between the kingdoms of Gray and Iceway.

In Iceway, the reclusive Bexoi began to venture out, not with nurses bringing the baby along behind her, but carrying Oath herself, and showing quite openly that she herself was giving suck to the baby. This astonished the people, but it reminded the old ones that this was once the way that all Icewegian heirs were nurtured in their youth. “What milk but royal milk should the royal baby drink?” they said. And she herself said, “I am not ashamed to show the breast from which Oath suckles, for this breast is Iceway's breast, and it is now and always will be from the people that he draws his food and drink.”

And still no one guessed that she had any but the feeble beastmagery of small seed-gathering birds, or that Oath, with his tiny waggling arms, was really the son of two great mages—both of them far more powerful and skilled than the seamage Prayard who thought he was the father.

To Wad, these changes were all to the good. He understood well enough that with Bexoi in the King's chamber every night, their trysts would be few—but now and then she used a gate he had made for her and joined him in one of the many secret rooms he knew of in Nassassa. For months they only talked; Wad asked for no intimacy with her body, and she offered none.

And then, during one such encounter, when the boy that she called Oath and Wad called Trick was ten months old, she took him to her body passionately. When he was spent, lying beside her on the pile of their clothing on the floor, she told him she was pregnant again.

“So soon?” said Wad. “I thought that when you nursed a baby—”

“Who knows what happened when you healed me there on Oath's birthbed? My body was made ready for Prayard's seed. I waited until I was pregnant with his body before I slept with you again. This new baby will truly be his. That is a kind of faithfulness to my husband, isn't it?”

Wad heard those words and smiled, but his smile was a lie. The Queen had long wanted Prayard's son. By having Wad's, she had finally won the attention, then the affection of her husband, and now had his baby in her womb. What did that mean for the future of little Prince Oath?

Now, when he fed his prisoners, Wad began to see that they had not been the only threats to Trick's inheritance—or, indeed, to his survival. Bexoi was a strong woman, he knew. She would do whatever she thought was necessary to achieve her ends. She had confided in Wad more than once that her nephew Frostinch was the greatest danger to Iceway, and that sooner or later it would come to war between them.

But Wad had finally come to see that she meant this in the fullest sense—that Frostinch would be Jarl of Gray, and that Bexoi would be, one way or another, the ruler of Iceway when that war came. Wad had given her a baby who was named the heir; Prayard had given her the position of the mother of the heir. Now another baby was coming, so Oath was no longer so essential to her plans.

Wad had seen enough now of the machinations of the court to know that Bexoi would never be content until she ruled as regent for a beloved baby king. The question was: Which baby would it be? Bexoi would have to choose between them.

Wad had only one pawn in this game.

Or three, if you added in the two elder sons of King Prayard, who brought with them a rival regent, Anonoei. This woman of Iceway had once had many friends and perhaps still had them, if she were to emerge from her hiding place.

Now Wad understood why he had been so reluctant to kill his prisoners when Bexoi insisted. He had known from the start that he could not trust Bexoi any more than Prayard could. He simply hadn't known that he knew it.

Wad, as their warden, began to give the prisoners food from the King's own table, pilfered gatewise from the tables and sent to Anonoei and Eluik and Enopp in fine bowls and basins. For Anonoei there was wine as well as water, and, for the boys, sweets as well as bread and cheese and meat.

He did not expect them to learn to love the jailer that they never saw. In part he gave this better food to them, and washed up the pans of their shit and piss, as penance for his crime of keeping innocent children as solitary prisoners in a terrifying place. But there was something else that he only now and then allowed himself to know—they were the answer to a question: Who will stand against Queen Bexoi, should there come a time when it were better if she fell? It was a question only he was asking, and so for now he kept the answer to himself.

17

B
IRTHDAY
P
RESENT

In the middle of the summer of 2010, Leslie and Marion sat Danny down in the living room with so much ceremony that Danny thought they were going to announce that they were fed up with his commuting from Yellow Springs to Naples and he was going to have to move out. Which he definitely did not want to do, since he delighted in Veevee, but only in small doses, while Leslie and Marion were the closest things to parents he had ever known.

“As you know,” said Marion, “your sixteenth birthday is approaching.”

“It's July thirtieth,” said Danny. “My birthday is September fourteenth. It's approaching in the sense that Christmas is approaching.”

“Some preparation is needed,” said Leslie.

“Preparation for what?” asked Danny.

“Your driver's license,” said Marion.

“We have to enroll you in driver's education right now,” said Leslie.

“Because we've decided that your birthday present will be a car,” said Marion.

“You're a very responsible young man,” said Leslie. “You work hard at everything you do. You're careful and skillful. We think you'll be an excellent driver.”

“I think my word was ‘adequate,' ” corrected Marion.

“It won't be a
new
car,” said Leslie. “Insurance is expensive for sixteen-year-old young men.”

“Again, my word would be ‘boys,' ” said Marion.

Danny was touched. He could imagine such a scene playing out in any normal drowther home. It made him feel like … an American. An Ohioan. A human being.

“You are so wonderful,” said Danny. “I wish I had grown up in your house.”

“You still are growing up,” said Marion. “And in our house.”

“Mostly,” said Leslie.

“But the thing I can't figure out is … why would I want a car?”

They looked at him, nonplussed.

“I even go grocery shopping by gate,” said Danny.

“We didn't appreciate the shopping cart in the kitchen,” said Marion.

“Now, it was just the once,” said Leslie. “And he took it back himself.”

“I always pay for everything,” said Danny. “I haven't stolen anything since I've lived here with you.”

“What about in Florida?” asked Leslie. “I suppose the rules are different there.”

“I made gates for Veevee to her favorite stores and malls, yes,” said Danny, “but always to a spot outside, so she still has to pay. More to the point,
I
always pay. Even to go into the movies. I want to live by drowther rules. I'm doing it better than a lot of drowthers.”