16

FROSTINCH

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?”

In that instant Frostinch’s pose of languid unconcern evaporated. “What do you know of that?”

“I know that your aunt has the power to create a clant so vivid that when he stabbed the clant, it bled. He believed he had succeeded.”

“No one can make a clant that…” Then he concentrated on refastening his breeches. “You saw this?”

“My friend saw it. After he stole the poison Luvix had intended to use and gave it to Bexoi.”

Anonoei watched him process the fact that she had known of the poison.

“And you have been spying on me?” he asked.

She repeated his conversation of the day before with one of his agents, whom he met in a garden, pretending she was a woman he desired. He did not understand that no one believed any more that he had the slightest interest in women.

He listened, nodding. “So either you have been spying through a gate, or my dear and trusted friend has betrayed me.”

“She has not betrayed you,” said Anonoei. “But by all means have her killed. Destroy another of your own weapons. Make yourself weaker. I’ll wait till Bexoi has trapped you and made you her puppet, and then you’ll be ready to listen to me. But alas you’ll also be completely useless to me by then. So you’ll betray me, in order to curry favor with Bexoi, hoping she’ll drop you a crumb of power. Only she’ll laugh at you. ‘Anonoei is dead,’ she’ll tell you.”

“You?” asked Frostinch. “Anonoei? Prayard’s mistress?”

“Not as dead as everyone assumes,” said Anonoei.

“And your sons?”

“Alive and out of your reach,” said Anonoei. “Just as I am out of your reach.”

She knew before she said it that he already had his hand on the dagger he kept in the back of his trousers. Now he whipped it out to slash it across her body. But she stepped back into the gate Wad had prepared for her, reappeared directly behind him, and shoved him forward. Already overbalanced by his own lunge, he toppled over. It gave her time to pick up his chamberpot and pour it out onto his body, spoiling his clothes.

“You are nothing, Frostinch, compared to mages with real power. I have passed through a Great Gate.”

“Impossible,” he said. “The Gate Thief allows no—”

“Don’t you know how to think?” she demanded. “It does not occur to you that my friend is the Gate Thief?”

He laughed nervously, getting up, reaching for something to brush the foulness from his clothing. Then he pulled off his tunic and unfastened his trousers, standing naked and completely uninterested as he regarded her. “My body is washable,” he said, “and I can get my clothing cleaned. These efforts to humiliate me are pointless.”

“So was your attempt to slash me with your dagger,” said Anonoei. “I came to offer you our help against your aunt. But you remain too stupid to realize how much you need our help.”

“Has Bexoi passed through a Great Gate as well?”

“If she ever does,” said Anonoei, “she will rule all of Westil. Without passage through a Great Gate, she is the most powerful mage of our time. Even with my passage through a Great Gate, I doubt that I alone am any match for her.”

“If she’s no Sparrowfriend, what then is her magery?” asked Frostinch.

“Why should I tell a fool?” asked Anonoei. “You are the Sparrowfriend, the weakling. Couldn’t you see how she mocked your pathetic magery?”

“I’m a Hawkbrother,” said Frostinch.

“Hawk?” asked Anonoei. “Oh, so I’ve heard. But the birds that come to you, the birds you ride, the birds who spy for you—all I’ve seen you use are crows.”

He grinned. “Crows are little noticed. Alone, they steal whatever I need them to steal. In a pack, they can tear the meat off an enemy in minutes.”

“I don’t disparage the many talents of crows,” said Anonoei. “What I despise are people who pretend to be nobler than they are. Hawkfriend.”

“I have ridden hawks,” said Frostinch.

“They shuddered at your presence, and tried to kill themselves to be rid of you.”

For the first time, he was genuinely angry and humiliated. “How could you know that! It was years—”

“I have spied on you for days, but the Gate Thief has watched you for years. When you’re dead, who will be Jarling of Gray?”

His face went ashen. “Is that her plot?”

“She has high hopes for her son by Prayard. Your father and you think you have nothing to fear from the baby, because you imagine that she has no talent to pass on to him. Here is the power she has: power to rule in his name. Once you are dead, have no doubt that your father will name this baby in her womb to be his heir. Then, when he is born, both your father and Prayard will die—very differently, but die they will—and she will rule in the baby’s name. Have you any doubt that such a plan would work?”

Frostinch walked to the window. His skin was covered with gooseflesh, though it might be the bitter cold from the window. He kept his closeroom cold, the windows uncovered. To kill the stink perhaps. Or to make him feel that he was strong and hardy, a true man of war, instead of the man of crowlike cunning that he was.

“What do you hope to gain from me?” he asked. “If she’s so powerful and clever and dangerous, then she’ll succeed and I can’t stop her.”

“True,” said Anonoei. “She has already blocked you at every point. But there are things you could do that would prevent her plot.”

“I already tried to have her killed,” said Frostinch, “though not because I feared her.”

“No, you merely thought your father was coddling Iceway for her sake, and you wanted to have another bloody war and kill Prayard and wear the crown of Iceway on your own head.”

“Why should I be a mere Jarl when I might be a king?”

“Fool to care about the title,” said Anonoei. “Power is the only fact. Titles are decorations. Names are lies. Do you finally understand that until you see things as they truly are, you can accomplish nothing?”

“How are things, really, then!” he said defiantly.

“You’re naked and cold at the window,” said Anonoei. “I could push you out.”

“And then you’d have no use of me.”

“Exactly,” said Anonoei. “And Bexoi has not killed you yet because until she has a child that she can show your father, and use to win his heart, you are more useful alive. Only when he is already the doting uncle, impressed with Prayard’s loyalty to him, and his devotion to your father’s younger sister, only then will your tragic death lead to him naming his nephew as his heir.”

“So I have time.”

“A little,” said Anonoei, “if you know how to use it.”

“And what do you and your friend the Gate Thief—if that’s who he really is—intend for me to do with this time you say I have?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Anonoei. “Kill your father now and become the Jarl yourself.”

Then she stepped through the gate and returned to Wad.

The Gate Thief shook his head. “He used to be clever,” said Wad. “You made him stupid.”

“I made him believe that he was stupid,” said Anonoei, “and then told him how to be clever. I hardly need to be a manmage to do that—learned people do it all the time.”

“But I saw your manmagery all the same,” said Wad. “He practically worships you.”

“Most men do, if I want them to,” said Anonoei.

“Will he kill his father?” asked Wad.

“He’ll try,” said Anonoei. “And because he really is clever, he’ll probably succeed even without our help.”

“But you intend to help him.”

“Kill the man who defeated and humiliated Iceway? Yes, I think I will, unless you stop providing me with gates.”

“Remember how few of them I have,” said Wad.

“So passage through the Great Gate didn’t increase their number?”

“It increased how long they last, how strong they are, my ability to manipulate them, my sense of other gates and where they lead. But no, passage through a Great Gate does not add any new gates to my store.”

“Nor, apparently, does it make people any smarter.”

“It didn’t improve your intelligence or mine,” said Wad, “but we were already as clever as we needed to be.”

“As is Frostinch,” said Anonoei.

“Yet it didn’t occur to him that he should find out what your magery is.”

“I didn’t let him think of it,” said Anonoei. “That’s elementary. Whenever he became curious about me, I distracted him. Again, I barely needed magery to control him.”

“When he is Jarl of Gray, he won’t be any smarter.”

“I don’t want him smarter,” said Anonoei. “I’m not going to use him to defeat Bexoi. Manmagery doesn’t let me add new powers to my clients—they are what they are. He will be my puppet, but no match for Bexoi.”

“Who is?” asked Wad.

“You,” said Anonoei. “But I don’t expect you to face her down, either. You’re still too much in love with her.”

Wad recoiled at that. “She murdered my son.”

“The son you made with her. Remember what I am, and believe me, Wad. However much you hate Bexoi, you still have love enough for her that it will make you hesitate at the last moment, and she’ll destroy you.”

“How will you bring her down, then? How will you defeat her? Do you think that you’re manmage enough to make her your servant?”

“Watch and see,” said Anonoei. “When it’s over, you’ll be the only one who knows what I have done. But you’ll agree that my victory was perfect and complete. I could find no better way to punish her.”

“And you won’t tell me now?”

“You would prevent me,” said Anonoei, “even though you think you wouldn’t. I’m not controlling you, but I do need to use your talents. Not knowing, you’ll continue to help me, even though you know that if you knew my plan, you wouldn’t.”

Wad smiled. “Or so you think.”

“You think that you would approve, and so you help me,” said Anonoei. “I don’t have to use manmagery on people who are sure they’re wiser than they are.”

But of course she did use manmagery on him. She used it on everybody. She used it all the time. But part of the power of manmagery was the ability to make its victims believe that they were freely doing what she manipulated them to do. That would be her vengeance on him, for those years of torment in captivity. For the damage that he did to her sweet son Eluik. But because he had also saved them, and because of all his help to her, she would never tell him of how she controlled him. So he would not suffer. She could enjoy her triumph over him, and enjoy the fact that he so ignorantly enjoyed it too.