The Gate Thief (Mither Mages) Read Free Page A

friend Hal. It was because Lieder was humiliating Hal that Danny had made a series of gates to help Hal get up the hanging rope to the ceiling of the gym yesterday. A series of gates that intertwined and turned out to be the start of a Great Gate.
    It was too easy, to think that a dying wife was the reason Lieder was a bully. It came too naturally to Lieder, a habit, an aspect of his personality. He was probably always a bully. Only now he’s a bully with something else to worry about.
    “It’s all right, Nicki,” said Lieder.
    “Why don’t you invite this boy inside?” asked Nicki. “He looks cold.”
    “I’m fine,” said Danny.
    “He’s fine,” said Lieder.
    “Come in and have some cocoa,” said Nicki.
    “He has to get to school,” said Lieder, “and so do I.”
    Danny had been willing to shrug off the invitation before, but the woman was insisting, and the trickster in Danny couldn’t help but enjoy the fun. Plus, he was tired and cold and pissed off at Lieder. “Actually,” said Danny, “I don’t have to be there till eight-thirty. I’m not on one of those teams that practices before school.”
    “But cocoa’s not good for my athletes,” said Lieder.
    “I think of it as an energy drink,” said Danny. “And I could sure use some warming up.”
    “Come on in, then,” said Nicki.
    As Danny came past him, heading for the door, Lieder gripped him harshly by the shoulder and whispered fiercely in his ear, “You’re not coming into my house.”
    “What?” said Danny loudly. “I couldn’t hear you.”
    Lieder didn’t let go. “You heard me,” he whispered.
    Danny gated himself just an inch away. Yesterday morning he couldn’t have done that—created a gate and passed it over himself so tightly that it took only his own body and clothing, and not Lieder’s hand. But the gates he had stolen from the Gate Thief last night consisted of the outselves of hundreds of gatemages, and every one of them had been a trickster during his life, and every one of them had had more skill than Danny. He had managed to contain them in his hearthoard—his stash—but wherever that was kept inside him, he was able to access some of their knowledge, or at least some of their experience and reflexes and habits and talents.
    He must have absorbed these things unconsciously, because he hadn’t thought of doing it, he had simply done it.
    If I had known how to do this last year, in Washington, I wouldn’t have had to drag that murderous thug with Eric when I gated him out of the back room of that convenience store.
    But there was something else that happened, something Danny hadn’t expected. When he gated himself an inch without moving Lieder’s tight-gripping hand, it moved his own body into space that Lieder’s fingers occupied. Lieder’s fingers were ejected from that space at such speed that the bones didn’t just break, they were pulverized.
    Danny heard the gasp of pain, then saw the limp and empty-looking fingers and realized at once what had happened. Before Lieder had time to turn the inhaled gasp into an exhaled scream of agony, Danny passed a gate over Lieder’s body, which healed him instantly.
    That meant Lieder no longer felt the pain, but he still remembered it, very clearly.
    “Don’t ever touch me like that again,” said Danny.
    “Come in and join us, daddy,” said Nicki from the other room. Apparently they were one of those married couples who still called each other mommy and daddy long after their children were grown. “You have time. The kids will just run laps till you get there.”
    Danny knew that the kids would sit around chatting or napping, but he had no reason to disabuse Nicki of her fantasy. He had to deal with Lieder, whose face was still showing the shock and horror of that pain.
    “Don’t you learn anything?” asked Danny softly. “When I tell you that there are some things I’m going to do, whether you like them or not, it’s a good idea to believe me and