The Hammer and the Blade

CHAPTER ONE

Rakon strode the halls of the manse, worry tearing a ragged edge on his emotions. The few servants who were allowed in this part of the dilapidated manse must have heard his approach and scurried out of his path, for he saw none. Floors creaked under his tread. Dust misted the air. He climbed the circular staircase of the manse's western tower until he reached the thick wooden door of his summoning chamber. He spoke the infernal words that suspended the protective wards, opened the door, and walked through into the room beyond.

The roof on the corner of the house had been removed generations ago to expose the room to the elements, lay it bare to the sky and the lines of the world's power. The bare beams looked like ribs, as if the house were decomposing, though Rakon's sorcery preserved the wood and tile and plaster from rot.

A waxing, gibbous Minnear peeked over the horizon line, casting the world in viridian. Kulven, the larger pale moon, managed only a waning crescent high above. Stars and planets winked in the vault of the sky, their relative locations a map of time and place to those, like Rakon, who knew how to read them. And they told him the Thin Veil was near. When Minnear turned full, the walls between worlds would be at their weakest.

And still no herald.

He looked to the sky-behind-the-sky and found Hell, a distant, blinking red dot in the central eye of the secret constellation, Vakros the Feeder. He stared at it in worry for a long while. The Pact would fail if not consummated during the Thin Veil. And he could not allow it to fail.

On the wood-planked floor at his feet, inlaid lines of lead formed glyphs of power, the symbols with which he did his work: a thaumaturgic triangle, a pentacle, a source-oval for elementals, a binding circle. He walked over the arcana, heedless in his worry.

In the center of the round chamber stood a stairway, supported by elaborate scaffolding. Thirteen stairs led up to a raised octagonal platform, atop which sat a simple metal lectern, rusted from exposure to the rain. He ascended the stairs, speaking in Infernal the number of each stair as he stepped over its riser. The recitation gathered energy to his locus. The wind picked up, gusted.

He stepped to the lectern, took a candle and a stick of incense from a compartment beneath it. The incense, made from the mottled brown leaves of the flesh flowers of Hell, felt greasy in his fingers.

A word of power and a minor cantrip ignited the candle, though he held the incense in reserve. He incanted the thirty-nine verses of an abjuration, a demand of the King of the Air to send him a sylph, a spirit of the air who trucked in the information carried by the winds of the world.

The wind swirled around him in response to his incantation, collecting his words and carrying them to the outer reaches of Ellerth, to the pillars that held the world aloft in the vault of night. The King of the Air would heed the call, backed as it was by the Pact with the Thyss.

He ended his incantation, waited, and soon the wind gusted more strongly, buffeted his robes, his hair. The candle flame flickered and danced, but his power kept it lit. Behind the wind's rush, he heard the faint titter of an invisible spirit.

"The King has heard your call and sent me for answer," said a high-pitched voice.

"You are fortunate, then," Rakon said, and held the flesh flower incense aloft.

The sylph gave a greedy gasp. The wind keened.

"You know what this is, then?" Rakon asked.

"Burn it," said the sylph, excitement in its tone, the winds swirling. "Let me taste its aroma."

"Only after I've had truth from you."

"Truth you shall have, Rakon Norristru. Ask! Ask!"

"The Thin Veil is upon us and no herald has arrived from Hell to prepare the way for Vik-Thyss. Why?"

The wind died to a breeze and the sylph's voice fell to a whisper.

"Vik-Thyss? Vik-Thyss is dead. His death has been in the wind for many days."

Surprise stole Rakon's speech. Finally, he stuttered, "You… you promised truth, sylph! This-"

"Is truth! I swear it! Vik-Thyss is dead, or so say the Afirion winds. Now burn it!"

"Silence," Rakon said, and tried to control his beating heart. He clutched at the lectern in a white-knuckled grasp. Vik-Thyss's death put the Pact at risk. And if the Pact failed…

In his mind's eye, he saw the family's power foundering, saw House Norristru losing what wealth it still possessed, its seat on the Merchants' Council. He saw himself losing his position as Adjunct to the Lord Mayor, saw his many enemies emboldened, coming for him. He had ordered murders over the years, many murders. He had bound spirits and elementals, destroyed some. Absent the Pact with House Thyss, he would be quickly dead and his house annihilated. His own sorcery would not be enough to preserve them.

"How did this happen?"

"I don't know," the sylph answered, and Rakon heard the truth in it.

"Find out," Rakon said. "Now."

He needed to know if one of his enemies was moving against him by trying to destroy the alliance with Hell.

The sylph keened with frustration, swirled around the incense, and was gone.

Rakon remained on the platform, the air still, but his thoughts chaotic. Vik-Thyss had sired Norristru offspring for centuries. The matings had consummated the Pact and provided heirs to both the Norristru and the Thyss. Without Vik-Thyss…

He looked off to the east, toward the city that housed his many enemies. The Norristru manse was built atop a tall escarpment, and from that lofty perch looked down on Dur Follin's crumbling walls from more than half a league away. The moonlight afforded him a clear view.

The city straddled both sides of the wide, torpid River Meander. The glowing dots of the city's street lamps blinked at him like fireflies. The temple domes of Orella, the narrow spires of the Lord Mayor's extravagant palace, and the great water clock of Mad Ool jutted into the night sky, their height unusual among the otherwise one- and two-story patchwork decrepitude of Dur Follin's urbanscape.

Minnear's light reigned viridian over the city. Barges and scows clustered along the city's countless piers, torches and lanterns glowing on their decks. Above all towered the Archbridge, an ancient stone expanse that stretched across the river, linking Dur Follin's two halves, the origin of its construction lost to the ages. Only Ool's clock compared. Master masons made pilgrimages across Ellerth to see the Archbridge.

Orange and green pyrotechnics exploded in the air off the side of the bridge, some nameless cult celebrating this or that, the whistles and pops audible even at a distance. Scores of churchless cults and apostate philosophers held worship on the Archbridge, littering its length with the detritus of belief. The monumental size of the bridge, its awe-inspiring construction, seemed to draw the faithful. Common parlance called it the Road to the Heavenly Spheres.

The pyrotechnics left a fading afterimage in the sky, a few puffs of smoke, the ghost of a celebration. A westerly wind blew, brought with it the faint stink of the Deadmire, the expansive, ruin-haunted swamp south of the city.

Rakon eyed the city for a long while, the maze of its buildings and politics a puzzle for him to solve. His mind moved through the faces of the men and women who'd kill him if they had the chance. He realized quickly that they'd become too many to count. They blurred in his thoughts into one collective countenance of hateful vengeance.

A sudden thought gave him pause. Might the Lord Mayor himself have moved against Rakon? Could Rakon's mind-numbing spells on the Mayor have weakened enough to allow the fat fool independent thought?

Before he could chase the thought further, the wind picked up and the sylph's voice gave him a start. "There are corpses in the breeze. The Deadmire is awash in bodies. Ancient bodies and old memories."

Rakon glared at the empty place in the air from which the voice had originated. "Tell me what you've learned."

"An ancient breeze in Afirion had the tale of the devil's death. Vik-Thyss was slain by Egil Verren of Ebenor and Nix Fall of no god, whose names are known on earth, in the air, and to the knowledgeable in Hell."

Rakon knew the names too, though only vaguely. He'd heard them in tavern tales and gossip, along with many other such rogues, adventurers, and tomb robbers who sometimes called Dur Follin home.

"Continue. Were they hired to kill Vik-Thyss? If so, by whom?"

"I think not. They killed Vik-Thyss while robbing the tomb of Abn Thahl. They triggered a binding even older than the Pact you hope to preserve, a binding that summoned Vik-Thyss, whom they subsequently slew."

At that Rakon felt some measure of relief. VikThyss's death had been chance, not the result of the machinations of his enemies. He could still salvage the situation if he could find a way to honor the Pact before Minnear waxed to full and Kulven waned new.

"I need another true son of House Thyss," he muttered, more to himself than to the sylph.

"Indeed you do," the sylph said, tittering. "One of the half-breeds born in this house, perhaps?"

Rakon made a dismissive gesture. "A true son of the Thyss. Not a cambion. Name the other Thyss sons, sylph. There's where preservation lies."

A soughing wind, then, "House Thyss is empty of males."

"What? That… cannot be. You lie!"

"I spoke truth, Rakon Norristru." The spirit giggled. "The air around you stinks of terror. Do you fear for your life?"

Rakon swung his hand through the air, a futile gesture that only summoned more giggles from the sylph. He reined his emotions and replayed all he knew, considered with care the sylph's exact phrasings. The spirits of the air enjoyed toying with sorcerers.

House Thyss is empty of males.

"The incense, Rakon Norristru!" the sylph entreated.

House Thyss is empty of males.

The answer was right there.

"You said House Thyss is empty of males. But do any Thyss sons live elsewhere?"

The wind blew and the sylph giggled. "I am caught!"

Rakon glared at the empty sky. "Speak, sylph! Tell me all you know."

"Abrak-Thyss, brother to Vik-Thyss, was imprisoned on Ellerth long ago, summoned by the Great Ward. He is not dead. But neither is he free. He is the only true son of the Thyss that still lives."

Rakon grabbed at the words, his hope renewed. "Imprisoned where, precisely?"

"What matter? He knows nothing of your Pact. It was made long after his imprisonment."

"He'll honor it, sylph. His blood requires it. Now tell me, where is he?"

"Alas," the sylph sighed. "There are no winds old enough to tell the specifics of Abrak-Thyss's fate. I hear only echoes in the wind and I've told you all they say. I don't know the location of his prison."

Rakon raised a fist. "If you are lying, sylph-"

"I promised truth, Rakon Norristru, and truth you've had, though bent to my amusement for a moment. Now, burn the incense as you promised."

Rakon figured he'd learned all there was to learn from the sylph. He'd keep his bargain. He always kept his bargains.

"Very well."

Absently he put the candle's flame to the stick of incense. Foul, thick smoke spiraled into the air, collected in a cloud around the sylph. For a moment, Rakon glimpsed an outline of the sylph's current form in the smoke: a large sphere covered in hundreds of thin tendrils, flailing in the smoke.

"I may need to speak with you again, sylph," he said. "Answer when I call."

The sylph, lost in the odor of the incense, made no answer, but the breeze hummed with delight.

Rakon left the sylph to its ecstasy, turned and descended the stairway, heavier with worries than he'd been when he ascended them. He tried to focus his mind on what he must do. He would pore over the tomes in his library, consult with every spirit in the spheres, and discover the location of Abrak-Thyss's prison. Knowledge of it had to exist somewhere. He'd find it and do whatever was necessary to preserve the Pact.

He had fifteen days.

He hurried through the dusty halls of the manse, the floors creaking under his feet. Years of filth stained the faded, peeling paint and cracked plaster. Trappings of the family's once-great wealth decorated the hall, the foyer, the library — lush tapestries, sculpture, thick carpets from Vathar — but the age of it struck him now, all of it old, tattered, tarnished. The house had fallen far, its wealth spent on tithes to Hell and the exotic ingredients and creatures needed to further magical pursuits through the generations. Under Rakon's stewardship the house had finally gained the power its patriarchs had sought for generations, but in the process he'd emptied it of wealth. He'd turned it into a shell.

Portraits of previous Norristru fathers hung from the walls in the grand hall — all of them similar in appearance to Rakon: narrow faces, overlarge mouths, thin lips, and deep-set, accusatory eyes that stabbed holes of envy into whatever they looked upon.

He walked past doors behind which foul things had occurred in years past, until he reached the door to his sisters' chambers, his accursed, dangerous sisters.

He stopped, stared at the door a moment.

What was he doing there? He had work to do, knowledge to gain. His feet had carried him to his sisters unbidden.

The need to see them had crept up on him like a slow fever, but now had firm hold. He licked his lips and skulked down the hall, hoping his sisters were asleep. He hadn't the strength to fight with them again. He just wanted to make certain they were there, confirm that his grip was not slipping from everything, that he still controlled something.

As he neared the door he walked with a furtive tread, as if approaching a sleeping beast. He put his ear to the enspelled wooden slab but heard nothing from within. After composing his mental defenses, he took the charmed brass key from the folds of his tunic, whispered a word of awakening over it, and with it opened the lock. When he heard the soft click, when he felt the wards subside, he pulled it open.

Fetid, organic air wafted forth. He imagined it loamy with ideas, carrying thoughts on unseen currents, freefloating notions waiting for someone to bump into them and think them their own. Sometimes after leaving his sisters he wondered whether the thoughts he carried with him were his own or something they'd pushed into his mind.

Could they even do that? He didn't know for certain.

And how would he know? Did a thought of theirs in his head feel different than a thought of his own?

He shook his head to clear it of such thinking.

He leaned into the room and could have touched the back of the enormous, bald eunuch who stood guard just within. The barrel-shaped man wore tentsized pantaloons and a shirt and leather jack stained with sweat. A wooden truncheon hung from his belt, a large curved knife, and a reel of thin line.

The eunuch did not acknowledge Rakon's presence, though he must have heard the door open. His eyes stayed on the room, as they should. He was a jailer, his sole duty to ensure that Rusilla and Merelda neither left their chamber nor harmed anyone or themselves.

A slit at the base of the eunuch's skull still seeped pink pus, the wound a consequence of Rakon's chirurgy. Perhaps it would never heal. After scalpel and spell had severed the eunuch's brain from body, Rakon had filled the fleshy shell with a memory eater. The incorporeal spirit controlled the body with intangible tendrils while it made a slow meal of the eunuch's memories. In exchange for a captive feast, the eater allowed a binding that made it a perpetual guardian for Rusilla and Merelda, its alien intelligence immune to their mind magic.

Rakon wondered in passing how much of the eunuch still existed. He hoped none, though he could not help but imagine the eunuch's consciousness caged in the cell of his own mind, railing at his captivity. He could think of few worse fates than a magical bifurcation, the slow death of a mind in a body no longer controllable by it.

"Are they asleep?" he whispered in the eunuch's ear.

The huge man did not turn. The memory eater caused the eunuch to shrug.

Embers from the large hearth cast the windowless chamber in soft light and deep shadows. Furs and polished woods abounded: twin beds, wardrobes, overstuffed chairs.

He did what he could to provide for their comfort.

The aftermath of a chess match sat on the small gaming table, the white king toppled. Rusilla always played black, and she won nine games of ten. Rakon hadn't played her in years. He'd given up trying to beat her when she'd still been a precocious adolescent.

His sisters lay in their beds, their backs to him, their forms lost in a mound of pillows and blankets. Rusilla's long hair made an auburn cloud on her bolster. He watched them for a time, noted the steady breathing that suggested they were asleep. He let himself relax, and the moment he did he tasted cinnamon and his thoughts scattered.

Why had he come to see his sisters anyway? He could not remember. In truth, he'd been unfair to them over the years and should His adrenaline spiked.

Those weren't his thoughts.

How long had he been standing in the doorway?

He recovered enough of his wits to recognize the velvety caress of Rusilla's mental touch in his mind.

She hadn't moved, her breathing hadn't changed, but her mental fingers were sifting through his mind, pulling on the threads of his thinking, searching his memories.

He grimaced, clutching his head, and took an involuntary step backward.

"Get… out," he said through gritted teeth, but still she clung to his mind, a cognitive leech, violating him.

He fought for clarity, thought of arcane formulae that his sister would not be able to parse, flooded his mind with them, incanted in the Language of Creation. When he felt her recoil at the alienness of the words and formulae, he reasserted his mental defenses, strengthened them.

The cinnamon taste faded. She was out.

He winced at the headache the contact had left in her wake. Each beat of his heart put a knife stab of pain in his temple. He wiped his nose and the finger came away bloodstained.

"I will punish you if you do that again," he said, his words loud in the silence of the chamber.

Rusilla shifted her legs under the covers but still did not show him her face.

"What could you do that's worse than what you've already done? That's worse than what you already plan to do?"

He growled in response, low and menacing, massaging his temple with two fingers.

"You might be surprised," he said.

"He does, you know," Rusilla said. He still could not see her face and it discomfited him.

Rakon licked his lips and lowered his hand. "He who? Does what?"

"The eunuch, or what's left of him. He screams in his head. It's constant. He hates you for imprisoning him in his own body."

The memory eater caused the eunuch to turn his head, so Rakon could see him in profile, and smiled. The expression did not reach the empty, glazed eyes.

Rakon swallowed, looked away.

"Just as we hate you for imprisoning us in our own house," Rusilla said. "Would you like to hear them? The screams?"

Merelda giggled viciously from somewhere within her blankets.

"I don't need to hear them," Rakon said. "I did what had to be done with him and I'm content with that. I'll do what has to be done with both of you also."

"And will you be content with that, too?" Rusilla asked softly.

Concealed in the shadows and blankets, Merelda said, "We're your 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 scar, fixed on him. Her nightrobe hung from her emaciated frame as it might from a bundle of sticks.

"I was looking for a servant," she said, her broken voice like grating stones.

"They're not allowed in this part of the house," Rakon reminded her.

She seemed to have little interest in his words, and looked past him to his sisters' door. "They're restful in sleep."

"They're not asleep," he said, deflecting the point of her question. With the Thin Veil so near, Rusilla and Merelda should've been experiencing nightmares.

Her rheumy eyes turned vacant, seeing not the present but something in her past.

"The dreams started for me the month I first bled and continued through the first…" She visibly shuffled through her mind for the right euphemism. "… visitation."

She continued to stare off into space, living through her history, the wrinkles on her face a map of past pain.

"Mother," Rakon said. "Mother."

She snapped back to the present, her eyes fixing on him. "Yes, well. As I was saying, things are what they are. Norristru men sacrifice their seed, the women their wombs." She looked past him to the door, as if speaking to Rusilla and Merelda. "The first time is always the worst."

It comforted him to hear his mother echo his thinking, to hear her validate the history of their house. If she could accept the price of the Pact, why couldn't his sisters?

"I birthed six children before you and your sisters, Rakon," she said. "Did you know that?"

He hadn't known. The house bred secrets and facts unspoken. "Were they… stillborn?"

She shook her head. "They were born alive, but fiendish in appearance. The Thyss claimed them for… such ends as the Lords of Hell intend."

Over the years the Thyss had been claiming more and more of the offspring from the Pact. And yet House Thyss evidently had only one true son still living, and he was imprisoned on Ellerth. Perhaps their house was dying, too.

His mother's voice drew his thoughts back to the hall.

"The three children of human appearance that I bore are more than any women in this house has birthed in four generations. If your sisters are equally fertile, we'll soon be strong with heirs again."

Words exited Rakon's mouth as if of their own accord, his mother a magnet for his worry. "A herald has not come."

His mother's bloodshot eyes widened; her hand went to her chest. "What? A herald should have come to you days ago to prepare the way."

"Do you think I don't know?" Rakon snapped.

"What could be wrong? I don't understand, Rakon. Have you given offense to the Thyss somehow?"

"No, of course not."

"But the Thin Veil will occur later this month. If a herald hasn't come, then Vik-Thyss won't come-"

"Vik-Thyss is dead."

He might as well have slapped her. Her face paled. Her hand went to her mouth as the implications settled on her. She spoke in a small voice. "The Pact will fail, Rakon."

"I know. I-"

She lunged forward with surprising speed. Her bony hands closed on his robe and pulled him close. Her strength took him momentarily aback. Her breath, filtered through her rotting teeth, made him blanch.

"Our lives depend upon the Pact, boy! We have made too many enemies over the centuries, enemies much more dangerous than the members of the Merchants' Council — inhuman enemies. Even the spirits we use to do our bidding do so only because of the Pact."

"My binding spells also-"

"Your binding spells work on sprites and sylphs and trivial creatures! But the powerful spirits, the demons, they answer you only because of the Pact. And they are vengeful, Rakon."

"I know that, Mother!"

"You know it, you say? Then you know they will come for you, for me! They await only an opportunity! You must do something!"

"I'm going to," he said. "But right now I need to think. Go back to your quarters, Mother. Leave me be."

But she didn't go. She pointed with her chin at Rusilla and Merelda's door. "Do they know?"

"Of course not. I told them nothing."

"You don't have to tell them for them to know."

The accumulation of fear, frustration, and anger routed Rakon's self-control. He seized his mother by her stick-thin shoulders and shoved her against the wall.

"I know that, too! But remember that it was you who birthed them, you who brought mindmages into our house. They needn't even use the Language of Creation! Their thoughts are weapons!"

His mother sneered, her rotted teeth like old tombstones. She looked at him from under hooded eyes. "A woman's thoughts are always weapons. And all men are monsters in their hearts."

He snarled and steered her roughly down the hallway. "Leave me, Mother. I have plans to make if I'm to save our lives."

Rusilla lay on her side, staring at Merelda's back across the gap of fur-covered wood floor that separated their beds. Her head felt muzzy, thick, her thoughts ponderous. The throbbing beat of her heart seemed intent on pushing her eyes out of her face. Merelda rolled over to face her.

Your nose, Merelda projected, the thought sweet with concern.

Rusilla dabbed her nose and the knuckle came away bloody. It's nothing.

"It's not nothing," Merelda said aloud, sitting up in bed.

The eunuch grunted and shifted on his feet, tense at Merelda's tone.

"Are we not allowed to speak except in the presence of my brother, eater?" Merelda snapped.

The eunuch — the memory eater — grinned stupidly. His breathing sounded heavy, wet. The consciousness of the actual eunuch continued his screams, mental wails bouncing against the walls of Rusilla's mental barricades.

Speak only through our thoughts, Rusilla projected, though the effort intensified her headache. I don't want him to hear.

Merelda glared at the eunuch, her eyes narrowed with anger. The firelight cast her delicate features in shadow. With her pale skin, long neck, and short dark hair, she somehow made Rusilla think of a swan.

I have learned something from Rakon, Rusilla projected.

You read him? Merelda's mental tone held admiration.

She'd done more than read him. She'd copied memories from his mind, held them even now in her own. And she'd pushed, too, inserting thoughts into her brother's head.

As best I could. And I learned…

She had difficulty forming the thought, it seemed so implausible.

The Pact is endangered. Vik-Thyss is dead.

"What?" Merelda said, sitting up in bed and shedding her blankets in a cloud of linen.

The eater grumbled and Merelda sat back, her brown eyes never leaving Rusilla's face.

How? Merelda projected, her excitement palpable. What does this mean for us? Are we to be freed? Rakon did not Rusilla shook her head. Rakon hopes to honor the Pact another way. He plans to find another son of House Thyss.

She spared her sister any of the details she'd learned.

The faintly hopeful tingle that flavored Merelda's thoughts melted before renewed fear, frustration, and anger.

Perhaps he won't do so in time? The Thin Veil is close. Merelda's eyes flashed to the ceiling, as if she could see Hell's dot in night's vault.

Even if he doesn't, he would still hold us, Rusilla said. If the house survives, the Veil will thin again in another five, and another five after that. He will try again then. He will never release us, Merelda. Not unless he breaks us first.

And Rakon would never break them. Never.

Then what do we do? Merelda said. I can't be like Mother, Rose. I can't.

Thinking of their mother turned Rusilla's thoughts black.

"It's only a few nights each year," Mother had once said to Rusilla, as she'd winced with remembered pain. "It's not awful. We must do our duty, dear, we Norristru women. If not, the house will die."

"I don't care about the line or the house," Rusilla had said.

The words had triggered something in her mother, dredged up some emotion or memory best left in the dark mud at the bottom of her soul. Rusilla had seen it coming, had tried to run, but too late.

Mother had shrieked, a wail of rage, and beaten Rusilla unconscious. She vaguely remembered Mother weeping throughout. It was after that when Rusilla's mind magic had first manifested.

We won't be like Mother, Rusilla projected. Don't worry.

The words felt like fiction, like something she'd tell Rakon, or stick in his mind for her own amusement.

She'd learned many things sifting through Rakon's thoughts. And she'd taken what she'd learned and manipulated his ideas, amplified his proclivities, but she'd had to act fast, and she hadn't thought it all the way through before Rakon had sensed her intrusion and forced her out. She dared speak her hopes aloud.

I think Rakon will soon take us from the house.

Merelda sounded shocked. What? Why? How do you know? He's never taken us from the house.

I just know, Rusilla projected. Be calm.

Merelda shifted on the bed. You pushed something into his mind, didn't you? Didn't you? How did you do it? His defenses… She shook her head. Reading is one thing, but to push…

The situation was unique. He was preoccupied with thoughts of the Pact. He is very frightened.

Good, Merelda said, and pounded a fist into a pillow. He'll drug us. Before we leave the house, he'll drug us insensate. He must.

I know. But we'll fight through it.

How? And even if we do, then what? How can we escape drugged?

Rusilla answered honestly. I'm not sure yet.

Merelda's legs shifted under the covers, as if she were already readying them to run. He's always planning, Rose. Plotting. How do we escape him?

Rusilla smiled, looked over at the chess game, the toppled white king. She'd never lost a game of chess to Rakon, though they had not played in many years. We plot, too. That's how. It's late, Mere. You should rest. We'll talk more tomorrow.

Long after Merelda fell into a fitful sleep, Rusilla lay awake in her bed staring up at the ceiling, planning, plotting. In time she quietly rose and went to her chessboard. There, she played a game against herself, formulating her thoughts the while. By the time black had cornered white, she had developed her plan.

"Check," she whispered.

The memory eater grunted, shifted on his feet, causing the wood floor to creak. Rusilla eyed him sidelong. He looked upon her without seeing her, his vacant eyes staring, his mouth half-open in a distant smile. Bracing herself, she opened her mind to the fragment of the actual eunuch that still remained within the shell.

The screams, rage-filled and terrible, hit her in an onslaught of emotion, a sleet of hate and terror and madness. She winced but did not otherwise move. Blood trickled from her nose. The eater defied her magic, but the fragment of the eunuch that still existed provided her a door into the mind, a reserve unoccupied by the eater's alien intellect. Her magic wrapped her consciousness around the eunuch's screams and followed them back into the dually inhabited mind. She perceived there the vast, empty spaces left in the wake of the eater's repasts. Into those, she pushed some of her own thoughts and memories, together with the memories she'd taken from Rakon, shoved them in deep, hoping they would avoid the eater's attention long enough for her plan to unfold.

When it was done, she pulled out and once more walled off the eunuch's screams. She dabbed her nose of blood, her heart racing, her head aching, and returned to bed.

The pieces were in place. There was nothing more for her to do except play them.