'Come into my office,' Paet said.
Once everyone was inside, Paet closed the door behind them and locked it. He took a small wooden box from his desk drawer and opened it, revealing a simple metal ring lying on the box's velvet lining.
'Do any of you know what this is?' he asked. No one did.
'What does it do?' asked Sela.
'No one outside of this room knows of its existence,' said Paet, 'except perhaps for Regina Titania herself; the claims of her omniscience are, in my experience, not unfounded. This ring is part of what sets us apart from others, and a part of our strength.'
He held up the box to let everyone see it. There was nothing remarkable about the ring at all. It was just a band of iron.
'This,' he said, 'is a binding ring.'
Sela had no idea what this meant, but Ironfoot apparently did, because his eyes widened. 'Astonishing,' he said. 'I've read about these, but I never knew they truly existed.'
'The existence of things believed to be fictional is our stock-in-trade, Ironfoot.'
'What does it do?' repeated Sela.
'What its name implies,' said Paet. 'It binds us to one another, makes it impossible for any of us to betray the others.'
'But it's made of iron,' said Ironfoot. 'Are we supposed to wear one everywhere we go?'
'No. You only need put it on once and say the incantation.
'Does it hurt?' asked Sela.
'Oh yes,' said Paet. 'Quite a lot.'
'Well,' said Silverdun. 'We've come this far. What's one more bit of madness?'
Paet took a pair of bronze tongs from his desk drawer and lifted the ring out of its box. Beneath the velvet lining was a small slip of parchment, with the Elvish incantation sounded out in Common. Silverdun read over the incantation, practiced it a few times, then held out the forefinger of his left hand.
'I'll go first,' he said.
Using the tongs, Paet raised the ring over Silverdun's outstretched finger and let go. The ring fell into place and Silverdun screamed. He jerked backward, stumbling against the wall, wringing his hand in pain.
'Say the incantation!' said Paet.
Silverdun rasped out the words; as soon as he finished, his body jerked again. The witchlamps in the room dimmed briefly, and then Silverdun flung the ring onto the floor.
'That was extraordinarily unpleasant,' he said once his breathing slowed enough for him to speak.
Ironfoot was clearly none too interested to go next, but a quick glance in Sela's direction showed that some chivalrous instinct demanded that he precede her. Paet retrieved the ring from the floor with the tongs and repeated the procedure on him. Sela instinctively dropped the thread joining Ironfoot to her.
Ironfoot didn't scream; rather he growled low, like an animal, his face red, and he hissed the words of the spell through gritted teeth. Again the lights dimmed, and Ironfoot too flung the thing across the office, this time directly at Paet, who quickly dodged it.
Silverdun clapped Ironfoot on the back. 'Feels nice, doesn't it?'
Ironfoot grimaced. 'The really painful part will come when he admits that the bloody thing doesn't actually do anything.'
'My turn,' said Sela. Paet looked at her and hesitated. Then he offered her the ring. After seeing what her two comrades had just suffered, the anticipation was growing unbearable, and she simply wanted to get it over with.
She held out her finger, and Paet dropped the ring on it.
It hurt. Very much. She did what was required, and hurled the ring as far from her as possible.
'Are you all right?' asked Silverdun. She wanted to tell him that no, everything was not all right, and would he please put his arms around her?
'I'll be just fine,' she said.
Paet put the ring back in the box, and the box back in the drawer. He regarded them with satisfaction.
'Forget what Everess said. Now you are Shadows. Now we are brothers
