Then Danny explained what he had done to the Sutahites.

Wad looked at Danny and shook his head. “You still don’t have any gates.”

“I said it was like eating gates,” said Danny. “That doesn’t turn them into gates.”

“I can’t see anything like that,” said Wad.

“You couldn’t see Set himself, either,” said Danny.

“And you can.”

“More easily and clearly now that he’s inside Hermia,” said Danny.

“Not shaped like a man. More like a flyspeck.”

“Less than a flyspeck. A geometric point. No dimension to him. Just location, persistence across time, the ability to move.”

Wad watched as Danny got a momentary faraway look.

“He’s never been human, so it’s hard to evaluate his character. But he seems to be a creature of pure ambition. Fearless and strong, without a scrap of empathy.”

“Sounds like a gatemage,” said Wad ruefully.

“But we’re funny,” said Danny.

“Not very,” said Wad. “Not lately.”

“I think Hermia poses less danger than she would have, before I took the Sutahites.”

“How long will you live?” asked Wad. The boy was still so young; he didn’t think things through.

“Oh,” said Danny. “Of course. When I die, the Sutahites will be released. So even if Set doesn’t have them now, he will.”

“And don’t imagine that it will help if you climb inside a tree,” said Wad. “That only postpones the day.”

“A lot can happen in fifteen hundred years,” said Danny. “More to the point, a lot can not happen.”

“We need a permanent solution.”

“Set and the Sutahites have never been alive,” said Danny. “So they can’t exactly die.”

“They don’t have bodies that can die,” said Wad. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t be destroyed.”

“Prets can’t be extinguished,” said Danny.

“And you know that because?”

“Because that’s what I was told in Duat,” said Danny.

“And everything you learned there is absolute truth,” said Wad.

“If you had been there,” said Danny.

“I’d believe everything?” said Wad. “Quite probably. All that means is that liars can do a better job of deceiving people when they’re physically present.”

“There was no lying in Duat,” said Danny. “There was no language.”

Wad didn’t answer.

“All right,” said Danny, “I know you can deceive without language, but what I got there, it was pure knowledge. It wasn’t told, it just was.”

There was no way for Wad to dispute the point. And it might even be true. “There’s plenty of lying here,” said Wad.

“You have to pick something to believe or you could never do anything,” said Danny.