He stood silently for a moment, trying to think of how to say no without further enraging Trademaster.
“Wait! I’m going to add something!” The man leaned even closer.
Gabe didn’t reply.
“On the fine teak deck of this superior sailing vessel? Seated there, her hair blowing in the wind, smiling at you, looking at you very affectionately—extremely affectionately—as you sail your craft, maybe leaning forward to offer you something . . . Let me think. An apple—she has just peeled a fine round apple and she will offer you a bite, she being, of course, someone you care about deeply, maybe that freckle-faced girl named . . . Deirdre?
“Want it?” Trademaster put his mouth to Gabe’s ear and breathed the question hoarsely.
“No,” Gabe said. “I don’t.”
Trademaster laughed cruelly. “Of course you don’t,” he rasped. “You’re waiting for something more? Let’s do it, then! Still the boat. You can have the boat and the lake and the sunshine. And she’ll still be there, leaning forward, offering you food and sustenance and affection—but it’s not silly little Deirdre at all. Know who it is?
“Got a guess?” he hissed.
Gabe did. But he refused to say it. He tightened his hands on the smooth wood of the paddle. When he did, he felt the curved indentations, the places carved here and there with names: Tarik. Nathaniel. Simon. Stefan.
“It’s Claire,” Trademaster murmured to him. “Sweet, young Claire with the long, curly hair. She could be there with you. You know who Claire is, don’t you?
“Want it? Want her?”
Gabe felt the place where the name Jonas had been carved. The sweet cedar of the paddle was infused with all of them: the ones who cared about him, the ones who at this moment were sending strength to him. As his hand lingered on the wood, he suddenly felt something unfamiliar beneath his fingers. The paddle had been smooth in this spot. Now, to his surprise, it had been carved. He felt the rounded curve of a C. An L. And then the four letters that followed.
“Don’t you dare to speak my mother’s name,” he said fiercely. “I don’t want your trade.”
Trademaster stared at him with his hostile, gleaming eyes. Gabe remembered what he knew, what Jonas had told him, of Einar, who had refused an offered trade and been mutilated so hideously. He saw that Trademaster was glancing now at the weapons near them on the ground.
Frantically he tried again to remember what Jonas had told him. Use your gift. That was it. Use your gift!
He was very frightened, but looking directly at Trademaster, he concentrated and willed himself to veer.
Thirteen
The silence came, lowering itself on him as if a curtain had been drawn. The rush of water behind him disappeared. The leaves on the surrounding trees still moved in the wind, but without sound. Gabe entered Trademaster. He found himself whirling through eons of time, destroying at random, screaming with rage and pain.
He became Trademaster. He was sick with searing hatred, and in the endless vortex through which he whirled, there was no comfort.
He understood Trademaster, and the deep malevolence that inhabited him. It was true, what he had earlier sensed, that Trademaster was inhuman. He was not a man but simply disguised as one. He was the force of evil, of all evil for all time.
Gabriel floated and spun within the veer, being part of evil, feeling the anguish and loneliness of it, of having been cast out again and again throughout history. Of gathering strength once more. Gaining power. Weaponry. Treachery. Cruelty. The feelings were strong enough to destroy one human boy, but he fought through them, concentrating on the knowledge of himself and his task. There must be something within the gift of the veer that would help him now when he emerged to face Trademaster for the final time.
Jonas was startled out of his fitful doze by a sound.
Claire was sitting up. The room was still quite dark, but he could see that she had pushed her coverlet aside. Her eyes were bright, and her shoulders, once frail and hunched, were now straight and firm.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
Suddenly, within the simmering wrath and agony of the veer, Gabe felt hunger. It startled him. Such a small and unimportant feeling—one he had felt himself often as he headed home to dinner.
But this, he realized, letting himself go deeper, to feel it completely, was not a yearning for a bowl of soup or piece of bread. Trademaster was starving.
Gabe remembered what Jonas had told him about this kind of evil—that it is fed by its victims.
He wants to know how his tragedies play out, Jonas had said. He likes to see how things end. He gloats. It nourishes him.
It came to him quickly and was so simple. Those who aren’t nourished will die. Those who starve will die.