“I don’t know,” said Hermia, “but I doubt it.”

“I can’t do anything with wooden machinery,” said Alf. “Like the kind in water and windmills.”

“Anything that lasts will be metal,” said Hermia.

“Showing that you know nothing about the tolerances of cast iron compared with wood,” said Alf.

“So don’t go,” said Hermia. “I’ll go back and see if my Family wants to see if I can transport a fleet of ships to the oceans of Westil.”

“One good windmage or seamage would put them on the bottom of that ocean,” said Gerd.

“But we have mages to prevent them, and ours have been through a Great Gate. We’ll do well enough.”

“So why did you come to us first?” asked Alf.

“Because my Family thinks they own me, the way you stupidly thought you owned Danny. They held me prisoner on a miserable little Aegean island.”

“How do you hold a gatemage prisoner?” asked Alf.

“I was between gates,” said Hermia. “Danny had taken all of mine to punish me, and I hadn’t yet learned how to jump without gates.”

“It seems to me that every power you have is owed to Danny,” said Alf.

“And I’m grateful to him. I taught him a lot as well. I think we’re even,” said Hermia.

“I have an idea,” said Gerd. “Take one of us to Westil right now and let’s see if we even have anything to talk about.”

“One of us?” asked Alf.

“If her plan is only to get us out of Mittlegard, then she can’t do it to both of us at once,” said Gerd. “You’ll be here to destroy her Family and continue to keep these weapons working until you bring Mittlegard into obedience and the other Families into submission.”

“She would just come back and kill me. Or take me wherever she wanted. Gatemages of any kind are uncontrollable,” said Alf.

“Except by other gatemages,” said Gerd.

“Good call,” said Hermia. “If I betrayed you by stranding his mother on Westil, Danny would take steps.”

“He could kill you whenever he wants, I think,” said Gerd.

“Well, I’m hard to kill, even for him,” said Hermia. “But he isn’t the killing kind. No, he would simply bring you back to Mittlegard and stop me from doing anything to either of you. So there it is—you have a guarantee that this particular trickster god won’t bother trying to trick you.”

Gerd held out her hand. “Take me,” she said.

Hermia took her hand, then looked at Alf. “You can bear to be separated from the woman you love?”

“It won’t be for long,” said Alf.

“I think you both need to see Westil long enough to judge for yourselves what you might accomplish there,” said Hermia.

“You’ve never been married,” said Gerd.

“We’ve worked in close partnership for decades,” said Alf. “Gerd will see anything that I would see. She will know anything that I would know. And I know she’s safe with you, or my vengeance will be terrible.”