“The way you travel now,” said Gerd. “Without making a gate. Does it still heal the traveler?”

“Yes, absolutely,” said Hermia. “So it gives me hope that the Great Gate enhancement will work, too. I just don’t know yet.”

“If there’s no actual gate,” said Alf, “how do you find it again?”

“I don’t,” said Hermia. “I won’t send things through a gate, I’ll take things with me when I go.”

Alf laughed. “So you’ll be hand-carrying jet planes and attack helicopters and tanks.”

“Maybe it won’t work,” said Hermia. “I don’t know. What do you lose by letting me try?”

“One big problem,” said Gerd.

“Only one?” asked Alf.

Gerd raised a finger. “Runways.”

“Oh now,” said Alf. “That is important. Airplanes need a long straight smooth wide road for takeoffs and landings. How much paved road do you think they have in all of Westil?”

“Cobbled? Many miles,” said Hermia. “Straight? None. Smooth? None. So maybe no planes after all.”

“Good,” said Alf. “Because it’s a lot easier to learn how to drive and aim and fire a tank than a jet. And if you screw up, you don’t fall thirty thousand feet.”

“You’re thinking of training locals, then,” said Gerd.

“As soon as we can.”

“So you’re thinking of doing this,” said Gerd, feeling herself slump inside.

“Hermia has a point.”

“Hermia also has a record of betrayal,” said Gerd.

Hermia only looked at her. Calmly.

“She isn’t arguing,” said Gerd.

“How can I?” she said. “It’s true. Danny gave me orders and refused to listen to my arguments. He assumed that because I stopped arguing, I would do what he said. But he was wrong. His plan was stupid and doomed to fail. Two mages per Family? While the Orphans would all get to go? My way, we aren’t actually at war with each other yet. His way, and the war would have been immediate. So I moved the only Great Gate I had access to and sent my family through. I made it all take time, so Danny had plenty of chance to respond and do the only thing he could do—take all the other Families through his own new gate. Don’t you think that was a better plan?”

“It was,” said Alf. “But you betrayed Danny.”

“I disagreed with Danny and failed to obey him,” said Hermia. “Please tell me, in all your lore of gatemages, whether you ever heard of an obedient one.”

Alf chuckled.

Gerd did not. “We will be totally dependent on her,” she said. “She can take us anywhere and leave us stranded.”

“I could do that right now,” said Hermia, “and you couldn’t stop me.”

Gerd wondered if a jolt of static electricity could stop Hermia’s heart before she could jump and heal herself. No, she would need to make that jolt strike Hermia’s brain, short-circuiting everything, including whatever part of her brain triggered jumps.