The Gate Thief

22



THE QUEEN


When Anonoei arrived in Keel’s office, he wasn’t there. Nobody was.

Yet she could sense that Keel was near, now his dread was so strong it nauseated her a little. He was terrified for his life. Where was he?

She looked up.

He was hanging upside down from the rafters in the high-ceilinged room. His arms were trussed like the wings of a roasting fowl.

“When it all burns, won’t he make a delicious smell?” asked a woman’s voice.

Anonoei turned to see a woman standing in the doorway. She was simply dressed, like a peasant woman, and she was well along in pregnancy. Depending on how she carried, she might be two months from delivery, or the baby might be due right now. She smiled, and she was beautiful.

Anonoei recognized her then, though the pregnancy, the clothing, and the great length of time since Anonoei last saw her from a distance had delayed her.

“My Queen,” said Anonoei. She sent a calming influence to the Queen, only to realize that Bexoi was already calm. No agitation at all.

Or none that Anonoei could feel.

“I know what you are,” said Bexoi. “It’s not as if you tried to conceal it. Who but a manmage could interfere with so many of my most trusted friends? That is, without sleeping with them. And now I see who you are. You were pointed out to me, years ago, back when you still shared my husband’s bed and I did not. Anonoei, is it not?”

“It is,” said Anonoei. Now she tried turning Bexoi’s emotion to amusement, but again there was no change in Bexoi’s feelings. Until it dawned on Anonoei that Bexoi might have no feelings, not about little things like murder and torture to advance her cause. She wasn’t even angry, apparently.

“I’ve made a great study of manmages, because once I discovered what I was, I realized that only two kinds of mages could thwart me. Gatemages—but I knew the Gate Thief would take care of them. And manmages, because I feared that they would be able to overmaster me. So I learned all the lore about manmagery, especially what happened during the great war of Dapnu Dap, when the sandmages turned the steppe into a sandy desert in the effort to destroy the manmages of the far south. History is very important, when you prepare to defeat enemies you haven’t met yet.”

“I admire your scholarship,” said Anonoei. Through the shred of outself she had left in Wad, she called him urgently. Take me out. Get me away from here. Take me now. But Wad must have been caught up intensely in whatever he was doing, because there was no response. Not even a flicker of annoyance at the nagging doubt she knew she was causing him. Come to me, if you won’t bring me! But still he ignored her.

“Your pet gatemage hasn’t come for you yet,” said Queen Bexoi. “Whatever could be wrong?”

Bexoi couldn’t have had anything to do with the business with the Great Gate that had kept Wad from paying attention to her. But she clearly meant Anonoei to think that she had.

“We’re both on our own,” said Anonoei. “To match up head to head, so to speak.”

“Nose to pretty little nose,” said Bexoi, smiling slightly but without a trace of amusement. “Neither of us is particularly beautiful, though we’ve both learned how to appear more beautiful than we are. No doubt it came naturally to a manmage like you. But to me, it was painstaking effort to become a beauty. To know just what angle, just what degree of smile. Ambition is the great driver, but it lives on hope. I could persist in my study, in my solitary practice, in my hours before the mirror, because I had hope.”

“I’ve heard you’re a great firemage,” said Anonoei.

“I do well enough, in this decadent age of the world,” said Bexoi.

“A self-seeming clant that bleeds,” said Anonoei.

“Wad was so impressed by that simple illusion.”

Anonoei could not find any road into her. The woman had no emotions.

“I have no emotions,” said Bexoi. “I can see that you’re frustrated. What do you think my studies taught me? That when manmages send their outselves into a victim, they use the low road by preference—the deep emotions. So you block them by having no emotions. Feeling nothing. It came quite naturally to me, and helped me during the long years when my husband only desired you and ignored me almost completely.”

Anonoei knew of no road but the low road—no way into a person except by way of their emotions. But Bexoi must have learned of others. I should have studied more, thought Anonoei. But members of royal houses have better libraries than my father and his friends. There may also have been books in Gray that were lacking in Iceway.

She thought of the things that Wad had just remembered about Set, the Dragon, and how he possessed people completely, sending his very ka into their bodies, instead of using the insidious ba, the gentle outself.

“And still no rescuer comes for you,” said Bexoi. “I assumed I’d only have time to say a few words before you were gone. Or before dear Wad, my former lover—he did tell you that, didn’t he?—moved me to someplace else. Yet he does nothing. He must have sent you here. But he’s busy, isn’t he?”

“There’s a Great Gate open between the worlds,” said Anononei. “Soon the lands will be flooded with mages more powerful than you.”

Bexoi’s face flared momentarily with excitement, but before Anonoei could exploit the emotion it was gone. “The Great Gate turns a needle into a bludgeon, even though a needle is so much more subtle and piercing. I will face whomever he brings here. No longer the Gate Thief, is he? Now he makes Great Gates.”

Anonoei did not correct her. Let her think Wad was still capable of making a Great Gate. Let Bexoi keep her fear of Wad, even if she had no fear of Anonoei.

“And yet the Gate Thief does not come to retrieve you. Do you think he sent you to me as a love offering? ‘Here is your enemy, Bexoi. I give her to you, so that your child can be born into a world at peace.’ Or did you think he really loved you? He loves no one.”

If Bexoi was gloating, she gave no sign.

“But the longer I delay, the more chances Wad will have to change his mind and come to your rescue. So I’ll kill you now, I think, and use the heat of your body to ignite the wood of this building. Keel can see how powerless you are before the flames roast him. I’m betting he’s still alive when the rope breaks and drops him down onto the burning floor. I really wouldn’t want him to miss any of this. When servants choose the wrong master, it’s very important that they understand their mistake. But then, did Keel ever have a choice? Manmages like you don’t let them. And here I go, talking more. But it’s important to me that you understand just how thoroughly you have been lured, trapped, defeated.”

The gloating showed that there was some emotion in play here. Anonoei probed for it. Not an emotion of the body. Pride and ambition were emotions of the ka, so they followed different rules. But it still offered a road in, and now Anonoei had it.

She made a move, sending her outself to turn Bexoi’s vanity into complacency, and her complacency into unwariness.

Instead, Bexoi’s eyes widened. “Is nothing sacred?” she demanded. “Are there no bonds between women?”

Anonoei thrust with all her might. And now Bexoi grew afraid, alarmed. The emotion touched her body. I have her now. I will win.

At once she felt her body grow hot. A fever beyond any she had ever felt.

“The trick,” said Bexoi, gasping, “is to heat all the body except the head, so that you can remain conscious through the entire process of burning alive.” Bexoi was hurrying, heating her body quickly, trying to distract Anonoei from her probe. And it was working, Anonoei knew, because it grew harder to concentrate on her outself. Her inself was screaming: I’m going to die!

In that moment of desperation she thought of Set, the manmage who never dies, because his ka is free of any flesh. But that’s because he has never fully bonded with a body. I have. This body, this burning body.

Flames erupted from her skin. But she could still see. Her muscles still, for this moment, responded to her will. So she leapt forward, threw her arms around Bexoi, embraced her.

“Don’t you know that I can keep the fire from touching me?” said Bexoi scornfully. “Now die, whore.”

The sudden surge of heat destroyed Anonoei’s whole body in an instant.

But in that instant, Anonoei followed the road she had found into Bexoi’s mind, and then on into her body. I am not dead yet, she thought—but, lacking a mouth, could not say. I am here in you, Queen Bexoi. Not as a visitor, not as a beastmage partnering with his heartbeast. I am here as a ka that knows how to fully possess a body of flesh and bone.

Anonoei felt the cool skin of the new body, the Queen’s body. Suddenly she could see again—through Bexoi’s eyes, because they were now Anonoei’s eyes. She willed herself to move, and she moved.

Moved, and in the movement became the master of this body. She could still feel Bexoi inside her, struggling to control the body, failing, failing.

Anonoei’s dead body was still brilliantly hot, and the bones, not yet crumbled, still held it up. The arms were still wrapped around Bexoi. But Anonoei had no skill as a firemage and did not know how to control it. Nor did Bexoi have access to the body’s ability to command the fire.

So the heat of the fire suddenly passed the boundary between the charred corpse of Anonoei and became an agony of burning flesh in Bexoi’s body, whose pain both women felt.

Anonoei screamed and thrust the burning mass away, but too late. Her own—Bexoi’s own—clothing had been charred in the instant, and the skin of this unfamiliar new body was burning. Anonoei had no knowledge of how to put the fire out. Bexoi knew, but if Anonoei let her have enough control to block the flame, Bexoi’s strong ka would take her body back.

Either die now by being thrust out of this body by its evil owner, or die later from these agonizing burns. Nobody could burn like this and live. I will have died twice by fire, Bexoi only the once.

But then she thought: fall to the floor, smother the fire.

It worked to put the fire out. But it restored nothing. Her flesh was charred. Her bodily fluids were flowing out of the entire front of her ruined body. The pain was so agonizing that Anonoei knew she would faint.

But she could not faint. If she did, Bexoi could take her body back.

Then, to Anonoei’s surprise, she felt something else: Bexoi’s inself was retreating, fading, ceasing to reach into every corner of this half-burnt body. It had never occurred to Anonoei that Bexoi might surrender. It had to be a trick.

No. Not a trick. It was death. Bexoi’s body, the ape her ka had once controlled, was dying, and Bexoi knew it, not intellectually, but deep in the core of her being. It was time to shed the body and move on. Bexoi was no manmage. She did not know how to attach herself to a body and hold on. But Anonoei did.

I will be alone in here.

For a moment that felt like triumph. In the next moment she realized it was failure.

Only if Bexoi’s ka remained in this body was there any hope of having access to her firemagery—not to mention her role as Queen, the love of Prayard, and …

The baby.

The baby, thought Anonoei. The baby! she screamed inside her mind.

If Bexoi heard the thought, she did not respond. She continued receding, dying.

Stay! It was Anonoei’s will, her demand that Bexoi refuse to die.

Here, thought Anonoei, I give you a place to remain. Here are the hands and feet, here is the mouth, the eyes, the groin, the belly with a baby in it. See? I invite you back. No, I will not leave to make room for you. There is room for both. We can both control this flesh, this tortured and dying flesh.

Only half understanding what she was doing, Anonoei drew Bexoi’s ka more firmly and fully into the dying flesh. You will stay through all of it, thought Anonoei. Just as you were going to make me stay conscious until I burned to death—you will stay here in this body until it dies.

But Anonoei knew that was not what she meant at all. For she had not despaired. To her, this body was not dead, was not going to die. For the flake of ba that she had put in Wad was still there, still calling, still demanding that he come. And if he came soon enough, if he came now, he could still pass her through a gate and save this flesh, save even the baby.

That was when she felt the vibration in the floor. Someone standing there. No door had opened. No one had heard the talking or the shouting, or if they heard, they didn’t want to intrude. So only one man in all the world could be standing here, though Anononei had no power to raise her head, no voice with which to speak, no strength to move.

“You killed her and then you burned for it. Justice.” Wad’s voice was quiet. She could feel the grief and rage. “Everything I love you take from me.” So he did love her. It was not just any-bed-when-the-need-comes-on.

And then she realized: He is talking to this dying body on the floor as if it were Bexoi and only Bexoi. He has no intention of healing her. He is going to watch her die.

Save her! Anonoei shouted through the bit of her ba that dwelt in Wad’s mind. She did not try to control him; she did not dare use more than this small bit of her attention, lest the distraction give Bexoi a chance to either slip away entirely, and die, or to wrest control of her body back again.

She could feel Wad’s torment as he wrestled against the impulse she was sending him.

I am Anonoei! Yet how could her wordless ba make such a strange thought clear in Wad’s mind? The ba dealt only in emotions and kinetic memories.

It was emotion, not identity that she needed to send into him. All her love for him.

The trouble was that she did not love him. Not so very much. Enough, yes, to share his bed. But he was also the torturer who had damaged her children. She had managed to thrust her rage into another compartment in her mind, to save it for another time, when it might more usefully be expressed. But it meant that she could not thrust into Wad her love for him because there wasn’t enough of it. Nor could she control him enough to remind him of his love for her, because she knew that he did not love her so very much, either.

But she loved her children. And she knew that he had loved his own child. And there was a living child—still, for one moment more—in the belly of this woman. A child who did not deserve to die, whatever the mother might have done.

Love of a child. Anonoei’s love for Eluik and Enopp. She also reached for his own memories of holding his son, Trick, of playing with him, talking to him. Anonoei had no idea what Wad had said to his son, but she knew that he had talked to him, and she could touch those memories and rekindle them. And she could make him think of the belly of the dying woman lying on the floor of Keel’s office.

She felt his decision at the very moment he passed a gate over her body—for it was hers now, as surely as it was Bexoi’s. The gate did not drive her out of the body; nor was Bexoi any longer trying to die.

“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.