"Show me again," Marina said.

Edric looked at her across the flat stone they were using as a work surface. He had been showing her for three hours. The morning had gone and the afternoon was going and his old hands were tired from the repeated gestures the ritual required, the specific positioning that activated each component of the Pact's structure.

He showed her again.

Marina watched with the focused attention she gave to things that would determine whether people lived or died. She had been this way since she was young, he suspected. The kind of person who learned by watching until they had the complete shape of something...