“Exactly,” said Danny. “Instead of holding them as captives, offer them what Set never could: a bond with a living person. And not just a bond like the cells of my skin are bonded to me. They’d be important, part of my power, my magery. They’d become part of my ba.”

“You realize that means they’d become gates?”

“I’m a gatemage. That’s what the prets of my ba do.”

“You’ve already made a Wild Gate.”

“It was wild because they were part of the ba of another mage, a dead one. They were lost, angry, frustrated. They’d been captives for centuries.”

“And they weren’t part of your actual ba,” said Pat.

“I don’t know if this can happen,” said Danny. “In the natural order of things, this is a bond that happens when a pret leaves Duat to be born. That was a long time ago for me.”

“Seventeen years,” said Pat.

“That could be a quarter of my life. No less than a fifth. That’s late in the process. I already walk and talk and feed myself. So maybe Thoth will allow it, and maybe he won’t.”

“Thoth?” asked Pat.

“I can’t just keep calling him ‘This One,’” said Danny. “We got the name of Duat from Egyptian lore, along with ‘ka’ and ‘ba.’ And Thoth is the Egyptian god who best fits what This One seems to do.”

Pat was already reading from the Wikipedia listing on her phone. “‘Thoth played many vital and prominent roles in Egyptian mythology, such as maintaining the universe’—OK, that fits—stuff about Ra’s boat, yadda yadda, ‘the arbitration of godly disputes, the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead.’ OK, yes, if the name fits…”

“The Sutahites aren’t dead, because they never lived. They’re still unborn. Preborn. So while Thoth is busy maintaining the universe, maybe he’ll allow a late birth-bonding between the Sutahites and a living human ka.”

“You,” said Pat.

“If they’re attracted to strength,” said Danny, “I must have been strong because I came here with a lot of gates.”

“Big-time clouds of glory,” said Pat.

“But why should they only have one choice? My way or the highway? Why not you, if they feel like it? Or … Veevee. Or Eluik and Enopp. Anonoei.”

“The people who are aware of their prets.”

“Loki too,” said Danny. “He saw what I did with Anonoei and Bexoi. He knows, he just hasn’t tried to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Live as a pret. Move from place to place, and trust our body and anything attached to us to come along. That’s not the only power we have.”

“Maybe we have the power to invite free prets and bond with them.”