“Screw the gate,” said Danny. “Protect the kids.”
“You say that because you don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Loki.
“He says it because he’s a better man than you,” said Anonoei.
“I don’t deny that,” said Loki. “But Danny North doesn’t understand the monster that we’re at war with-not the Families, but Belgod. I would rather see these two boys torn apart by dogs than let Belgod pass through a Great Gate.” Before anyone could do more than gasp or groan at his heartlessness, Loki raised a hand. “If you knew what I know, you’d feel the same. A terrible enemy is poised to rule both worlds with irrevocable power, forever. It would never, never end. Do you understand me? Especially if he ever got control of Danny. To keep that enemy from achieving that kind of mastery, that infinite evil, I would let any of you die. I would die myself, if by dying I could be sure of stopping him.”
He looked so fierce that the others remained silent.
“That’s hypothetical,” Danny finally said. “You want the boys safe, and you want the gate safe. So do we all. But you don’t get to decide what Mom and Dad do, if push comes to shove. They decide. So the question is-are you going to trust them with the boys? Or not?”
Loki put his hand to his forehead. “I can’t expect any of you to understand what I know. How could you believe it, even if you understood?” He rose to his feet. “Anonoei, if I can give my gates to Danny North, you can give your sons to these good people.”
“He took your gates.”
“I did,” said Danny. “But then he gave them to me. I’m not sure how he did it-but they’re obedient to me.”
“Either give your sons to Marion and Leslie, or stay here with them,” said Loki. “With you or without you, I’m returning to Westil now.”
“If I let you,” said Danny.
“You couldn’t stop me if you tried,” said Loki.
“I could eat that Wild Gate,” said Danny.
“If you could, you already would have,” said Loki.
“Can you?” asked Danny. “Because if you can, do it.”
“Three-fourths of that gate is yours,” said Loki. “I don’t have the power to swallow any gate of yours. But the quarter of that gate that isn’t yours-you don’t know how to disentangle it. You don’t know how to swallow an active gate that isn’t your own.”
“Teach me,” said Danny.
“It can’t be taught,” said Loki. “It can only be learned. I can’t even demonstrate, because I don’t have enough outself to make a Great Gate and show you, and besides, I would never be so arrogant as to make a Great Gate with angry captive outselves bound up in it.”
“In other words,” said Danny, “you never thought of it, you never tried it, and now you want me to feel stupid for doing it.”
Loki stared at him for a long couple of seconds. “Gatemages all think they’re so smart,” he said.
“You’d know,” said Danny.
Loki reached out a hand to Anonoei. “Are you coming with me or not? I’ve been in the same world with the Belgod longer than I should. He knows me. And I’m in no shape to meet him now. So I’m not waiting any longer.”
Anonoei gave her sons one more agonized look. “Eluik, Enopp, I love you,” she said. “I promise I’ll come back. Please obey these people. And above all, find a way to separate and become yourselves again.”
“Now,” said Loki.
Anonoei took his proffered hand.
In that instant, they were gone.
Danny felt the gate that Loki made, and felt it disappear the moment they had passed through it. Loki had gated to the barn, and no sooner had he and Anonoei got there than Danny felt them pass once more through the Wild Gate, back to Westil.
“Is Mother going to die?” asked Enopp.
“No,” said Leslie.
“Let’s not start by lying to these boys,” said Marion. “We don’t know what she and Loki are going to do or how well they’ll do it. But I believe she does mean to come back for them, if she possibly can.”
“I wasn’t lying,” said Leslie. “I was encouraging.”
“Loki is the oldest, wisest mage in either world,” said Danny. “And he’s looking after your mother.”
Enopp nodded. “And are you going to teach me how to be a gatemage?”
“If that’s what you turn out to be,” said Danny. “Which we won’t know for at least a few more years.”
“Is that a promise?” asked Enopp.
“It’s an honest statement of my intentions at this time,” said Danny. “But since I don’t know the future, I’m not going to make any promises I might not be able to keep.” Danny spoke over Enopp’s head, to Marion and Leslie. “I have to get to school. Are you all right?”
“Our lives just got a little more complicated,” said Leslie. “But what could possibly go wrong?” She gave him her sweetest, most sarcastic smile.
“That’s why I love you,” said Danny.
He gated back to his little home. Only as he looked at his own kitchen did he realize that he was so stupid, he hadn’t taken any of Leslie’s bread with him to eat for breakfast.
14
Keel was as loyal a servant as a king could have, or so it seemed to everyone but himself. But Keel knew that it was mere coincidence that created that illusion.
In his twenties, he had been called Plank, because he was master of refitting of the King’s ships. His own father trained him to the task, for he was Plank son of Plank son of Plank, three generations of master shipwrights, who could heal a damaged ship and make it whole again.
Unlike his father, who was a grumbler and griper, Keel-when-he-was-still-Plank had never uttered a word of complaint. After the war with Gray ended badly, and the treaty forbade Iceway to have more than six small fighting ships, suited only for subduing pirates, Plank never criticized the treaty, nor said a word against King Prayard’s father for having started and then lost the war.
Instead, he quietly set about repairing all the ships that managed to limp home from the war. Five of the smallest and fastest he refitted for speed, to skim lightly across the water in pursuit of pirates.
The others-the great warships-he refitted so that even the most suspicious inspectors from Gray would see nothing but cargo vessels, suitable only for trade, ships that wallowed in the water, sluggishly lurching from port to port.
When Prayard became king, he came himself to see what Plank had done. He stood on a tower overlooking the harbor and watched the clumsy cargo vessels that once had been proud warships, as they bumbled up the Graybourn to the docks, or yawed their awkward way downstream, barely manageable from the helm. Prayard did not complain, either. “You have kept my father’s word,” he said to Plank. “It is a good servant who preserves the King’s honor.”
“I am the King’s true servant,” said Plank. Then, most softly, he said, “Return at night and see my obedience.”
Five days later, Plank was wakened by the hand of his youngest son, Knot. “A visitor who has no name,” said his son, and Plank knew it had to be the King.
No word was spoken, and only the most shaded lamp was used, casting a tiny bar of light whenever Plank raised the shield. He led his hooded visitor onto the most sluggish of the former warships. He dismissed the watch and took the King down into the belly of the ship, one deck above the bilge.
Then Plank lifted a hatch, handed the lantern to the King, and plunged down into the bilgewater. Rats squealed and scurried, but Plank paid them no attention. “Cast the beam here,” he said softly.
The King raised the shield and aimed the beam at Plank’s hands. Plank gripped a lever that was snugged up under a deck joist and pulled it toward himself, moving it through an arc that was one-eighth of a circle. Where the lever had been invisible, now it was plain to see.
“What does it do?” asked the King softly.
“This lever is attached to a baffle under the hull. When the lever is parallel with the joist, the baffle is extended. It catches the water and makes the ship move slowly and awkwardly. It’s a home for barnacles. But at sea, far from shore”-he did not say, Far from the observing eyes of the Grayfolk-“a captain could send a trusted mate down into the bilge, to wade his way along the whole length of the keel, turning all these levers one-eighth of a circle, and then the baffles are drawn up snug against the bottom.”