I told Dante everything before noon. He listened with the focused stillness that meant the operational mind was running at full capacity beneath the controlled surface. When I finished he was quiet for a long moment. Then he stood from the desk and walked to the window and stood there with his hands in his pockets and looked out at the estate grounds. "Three hundred years," he said. "At minimum," I said. "Possibly longer. The First showed me Lyra's record and the record began when Lyra became aware of Voss. Lyra did not know how long Voss had been there before that." "And Marcus was a tool," he said. "The same way Graves was a tool. The same way the council corruption was a tool." "Yes," I said. "Which means the thirty year project Marcus believed was his own work," he said. "Was Voss's work through Marcus." "Possibly," I said. "Or Marcus found the Threshold independently and Voss recognized the usefulness of some
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