“Lawsy me,” Ced intoned, clearly imitating a woman’s voice. “You a capitalist, Wad.”

“What dialect is that?”

“The old black woman who took me in when my mother died,” Ced answered. “And that wasn’t her real dialect. She was born and raised in Seattle, for pete’s sake. That was the voice she put on when she was being sarcastically black.”

“Dialects interest me more than soap,” said Wad. “But that’s natural for a gatemage. I’m just trying to think what soap has to do with wind.”

“Nothing at all. I’m human before I’m a mage, Wad. Unlike you and your kind, my life isn’t about power.”

“Tell that to the—”

“This training you sent me to, it worked, Wad. I’m not the self-indulgent stormbeast I became when I first passed through a Great Gate. I’m myself again. But who will you be, when you get over being a gatemage? I think that’s all you are. I think that without gates, there’d be nothing left.”

Ced’s words stung, because they were so obviously true. But Wad couldn’t blame himself for it—there were only a few times when windmagery was useful or even possible. Whereas gates were a part of every moment of Wad’s life. Ced could do tricks with wind. Wad’s magery was as much a part of his life as walking. As breathing.

But if he couldn’t. If Danny North had completely stripped him instead of leaving him his last eight gates … what then? Who would he be?

The kitchen monkey in Prayard’s house? He had learned how to make a dough that passed Hull’s inspection. Would I bake bread for a living? Or learn how to make noodles or fine pastry or …

“Got you thinking, didn’t I?” asked Ced.

“Yes,” said Wad. “I’m also a little hungry.”

“Suppose I go with you to Drabway, and I’m making soap, and you come to me and ask me for something. What would it be?”

“A little demonstration. Power of a kind they haven’t seen in fifteen centuries.”

“You don’t want me to kill somebody, I hope. Because I’m not really interested in doing that.”

“I’ve seen you drive a twig through a sheet of metal. If they see something like that, and then imagine what the same twig might do driven through a shirt or a shield, they might become more interested in preparing to unify against the threat from Mittlegard.”

“Why do you assume it’s going to be a threat?” asked Ced.

“Because look what you did when you first came through the Great Gate.”

“So you’re not expecting an invasion. More like a plague of locusts.”