“What about gatemage surgery?” asked Marion. “Those tracking devices inside Hermia—can’t you gate them out of her?”

“I have a map in my head of all the gates I’ve made,” said Danny. “But I can’t map the inside of a person’s body. Going through a gate heals people of any injuries or dysfunctions, but if I start making gates to remove bits of Hermia, it would only be by chance if I found the tracking devices her family installed in her.”

“At least now I understand why you want to gate up to the roofbeam to hang a rope—it’s something you know you can do.”

“Don’t you mostly do things you know you can do?” asked Danny, a little resentful now.

“Yes,” said Marion. “Tell me. If you took one end of the rope down here, then gated to the roofbeam, would the rope just follow you and string out from here to there, or would it get cut off where the gate began?”

“It would look cut off,” said Danny. “But it would still be connected. It would go up to the mouth of the gate down here, and the very next inch of rope would then emerge from the gate up there.”

Marion shook his head. “Stonemages like me believe in solid connections. Not sudden leaps through spacetime.”

“Where’s Mom?” asked Danny.

“Out scouting for anybody’s clant or heartbeast. You’re making a Great Gate again, which is exactly what all the Families want, not to mention rogue Orphans we might not even know about.”

“I can’t believe that passing through a Great Gate allowed her to sense anybody’s outself within a couple of miles,” said Danny.

“And I can feel all the disturbances in the rock, not to mention the flow patterns, for a hundred miles in every direction. There’s a reason why people had to go through Great Gates before the drowthers deigned to call them gods.”

“So that’s what you and Mom are now?” asked Danny. “Gods?”

“If I had already been a Stonefather, and then went through a Great Gate, then yes, I think I could put on a show that would make drowthers feel a strong desire to let me have my way. But as a Cobblefriend? Let’s just say that my affinity is much more useful. I have more to give the stone, and so the stone replies with greater strength. That’s all.”

Danny stood there, looking at the ground, thinking of how Marion had opened up the earth near Parry McCluer High School and swallowed a pickup truck. Thinking: What will I be able to do, after I go through a Great Gate? And Veevee and Hermia? What does it do to a gatemage?