“Somebody will be in there,” said Wheeler. “Every hour of the day and night.”
“My house,” said Hal. “You can shower at my house.”
“My clothes?” asked Wheeler. “It’s not like any of yours will fit me.”
Without another word, Danny gated with them to Wheeler’s bedroom. “Pick out some clean clothes,” said Danny.
Wheeler did.
Danny gated with them to Hal’s house. “Shower here?” he asked.
“Fine,” said Wheeler.
“I don’t know why you were sweating,” said Hal. “It’s not like you actually did anything.”
“I worked my ass off,” said Wheeler.
Hal just looked at him.
“Compared to regular me I was digging my ass off,” said Wheeler.
“I’m going back now,” said Danny. “Thanks. You saved me a couple of hours of solo digging.”
“Not to mention how we got to see all the sights of Egypt,” said Hal.
“I’ll take you back there someday,” said Danny. “In daylight.”
“No way,” said Hal. “It’s just a desert. I’ll look at pictures on Google Images. Give me a break.”
Danny gated back to Egypt and sat down in front of the hermit’s cave and let Loki’s memories flow back through Loki’s gates.
16
Anonoei had never been in Gray, though the shadow of that kingdom had darkened her entire life. Or perhaps brightened it. If Gray had not defeated her homeland of Iceway and imposed harsh terms upon it, including the loveless marriage of Bexoi, the sister of the Jarl of Gray, to Prayard, the heir to the throne of Iceway, would she ever have become Prayard’s mistress and mother of his sons?
No. She would have become his wife.
Once she understood that her power over men was far greater than the ordinary allure of women, she knew she could pick any man in the world to be her husband and win his undying devotion. Prayard-handsome, kind, intelligent, powerful in magery, and heir to the throne of the only kingdom she knew-would have been her choice.
But he was already tied to Bexoi when Anonoei came to understand her power. So yes, it was due to Gray that she became Prayard’s mistress instead of his wife.
Prayard’s former love for her might have been achieved through her illegal, immoral, indecent manmagery; but her love for him was genuine, and still was. Anonoei wanted her vengeance on Bexoi, of course-enough that she would use the power of her cruel captor Wad to achieve it. But she also truly wanted what was best for Prayard, despite the fact that once he was torn away from her influence, he fell in love with the Gray bitch.
And Anonoei had learned enough about men in general and Prayard in particular to understand that his true happiness did not depend on which women inhabited his bed and bore his children. For him, happiness would be the liberation of Iceway from Gray.
And since that would also happily coincide with Anonoei’s vengeance on Bexoi, she was content.
That was why she had watched through the tiny windows Wad made for her, spying on the Jarl of Gray and on his son and heir, the beautiful, conniving Frostinch. With him, no sexual allure would be believable-he seemed to have no interest in sex of any kind. If Anonoei knew anything about manmagery, it was that whatever she got other people to do had to be the kind of thing they already tended toward, or other people would suspect some kind of ensorcelment.
It was power Frostinch hungered for, and so she would use his lust for domination as the tool to bring Bexoi down.
She was ready now. She knew enough about Frostinch to speak the language of his heart. And now that her magery had been so vastly magnified by passages through a Great Gate, he would be unable to doubt her.
So it was that as he sat on his chamberpot-one of the few times he was ever alone-she appeared in his closeroom. She wore nothing magnificent or revealing. She had dressed herself carefully in undyed homespun, with her hair drawn back in a severe bun. It was the garb of what passed for holy women in Gray.
As she expected, Frostinch took her presence in stride. The only sign of his surprise was that his bowels loosened in that instant, filling the small room with the fetor of his troubled digestive system.
“So there is a gatemage in Westil,” said Frostinch softly.
“There is,” said Anonoei, “but I am not that mage.”
“What are you, then? My assassin?”
“If I were here to kill you, I would have come in behind you, or simply pushed a knife through the gate,” said Anonoei. “I am the enemy of your most dangerous enemy.”
“Yet you speak with the accent of Iceway,” said Frostinch. “And Iceway is my most dangerous enemy.”
“Neither of us is fool enough to believe that your most dangerous enemy is a land your father subdued years ago, a land that lies under his heel,” said Anonoei. “Your greatest enemies are Grayish by birth, and of the royal house.”
“My father is not my foe,” said Frostinch, “and there is no one else in Gray powerful enough to aspire to be my enemy.”
“Pay attention,” said Anonoei in her most contemptuous voice. Instead of letting him be angry at her, she turned his immediate resentment into a grudging respect. If this woman spoke to him with contempt, then perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps she was wise. Perhaps she could be used. And if she regarded him with contempt, then perhaps he could turn that against her.
Let him think he was superior to her, and simultaneously wonder if she might be superior to him. That would keep him listening, weighing all she said.
“Born of Gray, I said, not in Gray.”
Frostinch gave a single contemptuous laugh. “If you mean my Aunt Bexoi, then your gatemage has chosen the wrong emissary.”
“Your disdain for her is proof of your stupidity,” said Anonoei, “if more proof were needed. All your plotting, and it never dawns on you that she has outmaneuvered you at every step.”
“My aunt the Sparrowtwit? She got pregnant by Prayard, that’s all. It complicated things but it didn’t change anything important.”
“She blocked all your father’s spies from access to Prayard-which means that the spies that secretly served you are also blocked.”
“She did nothing,” said Frostinch. He washed his backside-something his father used servants for, but Frostinch trusted no one enough to allow them to stand in that position. “You’re wasting my time.”
“No, you’re wasting mine. I told my friend you were too arrogant and stupid to save. He won’t listen to a woman, I said.”
“I won’t listen to a fool,” said Frostinch.
“You don’t even know your aunt,” said Anonoei. “She left for Iceway before you were fifteen.”
“I sat with her while she told me stories, and watched how she couldn’t even get sparrows to obey her, no matter how much she fed them.”
“And it never occurred to you that the disobedience of the sparrows was proof that she was not a birdmage at all?”
“Why would anyone claim to have such a pathetic power if…”
His voice trailed off. It was a pleasure to see him realize that he had indeed been stupid. He dried his buttocks. “You claim that she had so much foresight that she thought a child was worth deceiving?”
“The heir to the Jarl of Gray? A boy who had already shown himself to be an ambitious little monster? No offense intended, of course.”
Frostinch smiled. Anonoei had understood him well-“ambitious little monster” was no insult to him. “So she was deceiving me then in order to blind my eyes today.”
“And until this moment, it worked, didn’t it? You thought she was a tool you could use, and that when that tool was taken from you, it was Prayard’s doing, not her own.”
“You have no evidence of anything like that.”
“Fool,” said Anonoei. “I’m here, am I not? After spying on your every conversation for days. And you think I wasn’t able to spy on her before? That I do not know exactly what I’m speaking of? That I don’t know how she arranged to deceive your agent Luvix when he tried to murder her?”