Chapter 137: The Strange Gate

Theo had not even known Nischov was in the house. It was a large house, after all, and the man did not live with them, only came round for his regular checkups.

Even so, Theo had no time to think any further about any of it. His body tried to go two ways at once and got nowhere.

Down the lawn there was a mouth of purple light standing over a crater with his sword pointed at it. Up the hall behind him there was a flight of stairs with a doctor at the top of them and a woman at the bottom whose hands had been cold every single day since they carried her down there.

’Which one. Which one, which one—’

"Theo."

Estea had not raised her voice at all, and that was what got through.

"Look at it."

He looked at it.

"It has been open for a minute and a half. It has put nothing on my lawn. It is not a Gate behaving like a Gate, and whatever it is doing, it is doing slowly, which means it can be watched by someone who cannot run."

Her hands settled on the wheels of her chair and turned it a quarter, until she sat square to the water.

"Nischov. Go back down, do not leave that room, and come up the moment the line changes."

"Lady—"

"The moment it changes, Doctor. Not the moment you have an opinion about it."

Nischov went.

"Odette. Sesan goes upstairs, west side, away from the glass, and you sit with her. Uthed, the steps. Not the grass, the steps, and if you go past the bottom one with that hand I will have Odette take your sword and hide it. Asterion, forty yards inside the treeline, and nobody shoots at it."

Asterion was already off the boards.

He was ten paces gone when she said it again, to his back.

"Nobody shoots at it."

"Understood."

Then she looked up at Theo, and her voice dropped a register, so slightly that he nearly missed it.

"You are going to your wife. That thing out there has done nothing in ninety seconds. Thall has done something in ninety seconds. Go and find out which of them you should be frightened of."

Theo went.

The stairs to the sublevel were cool all the way down, the way they always were, and the air changed before the door did. By the time he was through it, Nischov was already back at the monitors with his glasses pushed up into his hair.

The doctor gave him the report without being asked for it.

"The same. No change in respiration, no change in the line, and she has not moved."

Theo did not go to the monitors. He went round the bed to the side he always sat on, hooked the chair over with his foot, and took her hands.

They were warm.

He had held those hands the day he came back. He knew their exact weight and their exact temperature, the way the left one sat heavier in his palm than the right, and how long it took the cold in them to stop feeling like something he had done wrong.

Now they were warm, and warm the whole way, through the wrists and up under the cuff of the gown, and Theo sat there with a dead woman’s warmth in his hands and let himself want one single thing for about four seconds.

Then he opened the eyes and asked properly.

[Condition: Mana Heart — malignant, Grade S]

[Suppression array: active, nominal]

[Core activity: rising]

[Duration: four days]

[Note: this is not the malignancy]

’...Four days.’

"Doctor. Four days ago, when the other Gate appeared. What were you doing? Did you notice anything?"

Nischov answered at once.

"Standing exactly where I am standing now, with four hundred kilos of Association machinery between me and a great deal of noise, wondering whether I was going to have to explain to you how she died."

Theo looked down at Thall’s hands in his own.

’You’ve been warming up since the first one opened, and nobody noticed because nobody in this house holds your hands but me...’

He laid them down on the blanket, carefully, the way you put down something breakable, and went back up.

It was full dark on the lawn by then. Odette had brought the storm lantern out of the boat store before she went up and set it on the rail, and Uthed was on the bottom step with his sword across his knees and his splinted hand resting on the flat of it. Out past the reach of the lamp, the purple mouth hung over the crater and hummed.

Estea had not gone inside.

Theo came and stood at the rail beside her.

"Right. What do you want?"

"A stake and a mallet."

He got them from under the porch.

"Now walk down to where the dead grass ends and drive it in there."

He waded down through the brown collar with the lantern swinging off his fist, drove the stake in at the line and came back up, and only at the fourth step did he realise what his hands had just done without being asked.

’I learned that somewhere.’

He did not go any further into that.

"Throw something in."

Theo threw a stone. It went into the purple and did not come out, and made no sound going in, and the hum did not change. After a while it became obvious that nothing was going to happen at all.

"Again. Underhand, so it goes slowly, and tell me if it slows down before it reaches the surface."

"It doesn’t slow. It just stops existing when it touches."

"And the grass?"

"Going in. All of it, all the time, every blade that comes loose."

"Nothing coming out."

"Nothing coming out."

Estea sat with her fingers laced in her lap.

"Then it is not a door."

Theo came back up onto the boards.

"It’s a Gate, Estea. I’ve got something in my eye that says Gate."

"You have something in your eye that says it is a Gate and refuses to tell you which kind, and you have been treating those two halves as though they were one sentence."

’That’s fair.’

He opened the eyes again and put everything he had behind them, and the corner of his vision filled up.

[Gate]

[Category: —]

[You do not have access to this information]

This time there was one more line underneath, one that had not been there before.

[Note: This is the same door]

"Estea."

"I heard you go quiet. Say it."

"It says this is the same door. Not another one in the same place. The same one."

For a moment there was only the hum and the water and Uthed shifting his weight on the step.

When Estea spoke again, her voice came out flatter than before.

"Try it with your relationship with the dark."

"With my—"

’Wait...’

"You have an entire Class you have used almost exclusively for hitting things. Put some of it near that and tell me what it does."

Theo went down the lawn to the stake and stopped there, put his hand out over the dead ground, and let a foot of the dark come up out of the grass the way it came up for him anywhere.

It came up.

Then it leaned.

Not toward his hand. Past it, out over the collar toward the light, the whole of it bending off true like a curtain in a draught, and when he pulled it back it took a long moment to be his again.

’It wanted to go...’

Theo stood in his own garden with the lantern at his feet and his dark trying to leave him for the first time since the night it had chosen him on a mountain.

He came back up and told her.

Estea said nothing for long enough that Uthed looked round.

"A hundred and nine came out running. Nine of them stronger than the rest, with no Warden and no Commander over them."

She put the next part to the water rather than to him.

"Do you know what that means, or has nobody told you what a Warden is for?"

Puffing himself up slightly, Theo explained:

"Because things don’t come out of a Gate or exist in a Dungeon on their own initiative. They’re brought and led. There’s always something over them, and it’s always the last thing through, and it’s the thing you kill to make the rest fall down."

Estea was silent for a moment. Then she turned her face away, and very nearly hid the small smile on it.

"At least you are not going to the Tower to cheat on me."

Theo chuckled.

"You wouldn’t know that."

Estea’s hand went still. For a moment Theo wanted to take it back, but then she spoke, and he changed his mind.

"Nothing was over the ones that came here. Every one of them was scattered, and the nine answered to nobody but themselves."

Theo worked it through.

"And then the big one came out and shut it."

"And then the big one came out and shut it. Behind itself. From this side."

"Estea, what is it?"

She looked at the purple for a while.

"I want to be certain."

"You’ve been certain since the second stone. You said ’then it is not a door’ and you didn’t even change your face."

"I want to be certain."

Theo crouched beside the wheel of her chair, which put his eyes lower than hers and had always got more out of her than standing ever did.

"Why won’t you say it?"

And Estea, who had insulted him every single day since the afternoon she married him, did not insult him.

"Because if I say it and I am right, you will go into it."

Behind them the front door came open and Odette’s voice went up in the hall, saying a name twice, the second time badly.

Theo was on his feet before the second one finished.

Sesan came out onto the boards between them with her hair loose and her feet bare. She did not look at Estea and she did not look at him. She went down the porch steps past Uthed, who put out his good hand and then did not dare close it.

She walked out onto the dead grass and kept going.

Behind her heels the brown collar went white, frost running out from every step in a widening plate, and out over the crater the slow drift of dead grass into the purple stopped all at once and hung in the air.

Theo called her name.

"Sesan!"

She did not stop.