Pat said nothing. Danny said nothing. Danny’s silence came from his fear of what Hermia intended to do next. He had heard her claim to serve his interests, and her assertion that Set was his most dangerous enemy. She could not possibly be so stupid as to try to take on Set directly … could she? Danny had been able to sense prets for long enough now that he not only knew where and how many they were, but also the nature of individual prets. They weren’t complicated. Either they were weak or strong. The strong ones were able to become human beings, because they could rein in the instinctive behaviors of the beast, and the most powerful also carried with them an entourage of lesser prets, which formed their outself.

The outself prets were not weak. Only strong prets could bind themselves to a human, either as inself or outself. And strength was not the only attribute that Danny could sense in them. He also knew which ones were bold, and which were fearful. That was what he always sensed in the Sutahites—fearfulness. At first this had struck him as odd. The Sutahites had nothing, so they had nothing to lose. What would they be putting at risk?

But then he had realized that their timidity was not situational, it was inherent, it was part of who they were. They were not timid because they had anything to lose; they had followed Set because they were timid, and he had promised to take care of them, tell them what to do, keep them safe.

Were they safe? Or were they nothing? They were not part of anything except Set himself, and he was nothing, except whatever human he could dominate. And now he wasn’t even dominating the human that he occupied. Danny had taken such firm control of his body that there was nothing now for Set to play with in order to manipulate him. What did the Sutahites think of that?

And there was another attribute of prets: the will to power. They all had some of it, or at least all of them that composed a part of a human being, ka or ba. But Set had a will to power that was insatiable. Perhaps it was this bright flame of ambition and pride that the Sutahites attached to.

Not for the first time, Danny wished he could sense his own pret, and see himself truly. But that was beyond his power, and Pat had told him that it was beyond hers as well. This meant that Hermia, too, could not see her own attributes. But Danny and Pat could. Hermia was very ambitious, and so bold as to have no inhibitions at all. Strength, though—she had little. Not enough to control her impulses, not enough strength to wait before acting.