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sisters, Rakon."
      "I know that," Rakon said. He clasped his hands behind his back. "And I'm sorry. But you're Norristru. And this is the Norristru house, the Norristru line, and I can't let it fall." He put finality in his tone. "The Pact preserves us all. You'll both do what you were born to do."
      "It's not what I was born to do!" Merelda said, stirring under her covers.
      "It is," Rakon insisted, and tried to put brotherly affection in his voice, though even he heard the falsity in it. "It's what must be. You both know that. You've both known it for years."
      "You confuse what must be with your wishes," Rusilla said. "You enjoy the power that comes with your position. Lord Adjunct to the Lord Mayor."
      She made his title sound like an insult. How did she even know his title? He'd never told her and she hadn't left the manse in over a decade. It occurred to him that the entire exchange could have been taking place only in his head.
      "Sit up," he said. "Let me see you when you speak."
      They ignored him.
      "I said sit up."
      "We heard you," Merelda said. "But we defy you."
      He stared at their beds, at their backs.
      "Will you punish us now, brother ?" Rusilla said.
      He shook his head, bewildered by their intransigence. "I can't understand you, either of you. The Pact is everything. You must know that."
      Rusilla's voice dripped scorn. "The Pact was made by Norristru men for Norristru men. Yet it's the women who are asked to understand."
      "And made to suffer," Merelda added.
      Rakon had heard it all before, sometimes filtered through tears, sometimes through anger, sometimes through threats, sometimes in his dreams. As always, he remained unmoved.
      "If you force me to take harsher steps, I will. I don't want to, but if I must, I'll manacle both of you to your beds. I'll drug you. You need only be alive, nothing more. You know I'm capable of it."
      "Oh, I've been in your head, brother," Rusilla said. "I know quite well what you're capable of."
      The memory eater inhabiting the eunuch found Rusilla's words amusing, or perhaps it devoured something funny in the eunuch's past. The great body shook as it chuckled.
      "Try what you will," Merelda said. "We'll fight."
      "The first time is always the worst," Rakon said, repeating words he'd heard from someone or other since childhood. "It will go easier after that."
      "How would you know?" Rusilla said.
      Rakon'd had enough. He'd come to see them to remind himself, and them, that his grip over them was still strong. But he was leaving with it weaker than it had been before he'd opened the door. They were more dangerous than he'd realized.
      "Go to sleep now. It's late."
      "Yes, it is," Rusilla said.
      "When you do your duty, I'll reward you. I promise."
      "Words," Rusilla said, dismissively. "Mere words."
      He backed out of the room, closed the door and relocked it from the outside. He spoke the words to the master charm to reactivate the wards.
      His hands were shaking. The headache remained. He was sweating. He rested his brow and hands against the smooth wood, worry rooting deeply in his gut.
      The sylph's words replayed in his mind, the wind articulating a problem he must solve lest all of them die.
      But he didn't know how.
      Or did he?
      An idea bubbled to the forefront of his mind and he was taken with it immediately. He should have thought of it before.
      Hope buoyed his spirit. There was much work to do, and very little time, but he could do it in fifteen days. He could.
      His mind made up, he lifted his head from the door, turned, and was startled to find himself face to face with the scarred, wrinkled visage of his mother. His startled gasp embarrassed him.
      "I will put a bell on you, Mother. Don't sneak around so."
      The clumps of his mother's gray hair stuck out in all directions from her veined, spotted scalp. Her left eye, drooping under the weight of an old