EPILOGUE - BONES IN THE SAND

The corridor was very narrow, and the floor had a distinct, downward incline. Beetle stumbled. Dealing with the slanting floor was better than stairs, but his knee still refused to cooperate. Being injured tested his patience. He'd been wounded before, but never so badly. Despite the best efforts of his phoenix feather, he was recovering too slowly.

"Are you all right?" One of the younger Sirsa asked. Her bright white robe, and the robes of her sisters were the only things visible in the faint light of his failing torch. It was down to red embers again, which made no sense to him at all. After his first torch had gone out, he'd soaked his second thoroughly in oil and made sure it was burning strongly.

"I can't see a blasted thing," Beetle grumbled. "My torch went out."

"It'll keep doing that. It's an enchantment, actually. An extra precaution," Hafizah told him. It seemed they had reached a dead end. Hafizah bowed her head and placed a hand on the wall. "Bones in the sand," she whispered.

The wall shuddered and the illusion dissipated. It was a door covered in hundreds of locks of all shapes and sizes. Hafizah produced a tiny black key and opened a lock only a few inches from the ground. There was a click, then another, and a third followed by a sudden barrage of noise, hundreds of tumblers all disengaging at once. The door slowly creaked open.

Beetle squinted. To anyone who didn't know the trick, the door might've taken days or weeks to sort out. The place the Sirsa had led him to ought to have been deep underground by his reckoning, but it was somehow bright as day. The walls were gold marble and there were beautiful tall columns, green climbing plants, fruit trees, and a fountain with fish and water lilies, though it seemed no windows or natural sun. The way his nose tickled, Beetle suspected enchantments, and lots of them. Shelves lined the walls, holding a worrying number of large pysankas and ornate lead lockboxes.

"Oh, Hafizah!" A voice exclaimed. "You didn't tell me you were bringing guests! I would've put tea on!" Beetle searched the room, his hand drifting towards the hilt of his sword.

He didn't see anyone, but then he realized he ought to have been looking down. A sphinx sat on the floor in the center of the room, working on something intricate and mostly made of gold. There were tiny tools all around him, and magnifying lenses carefully laid out on a clean white sheet. Obviously, this was the famous locksmith.

"Badhi Marebba?" Beetle guessed.

"Indeed," the sphinx replied with a toothy grin. "How can I help you?"

Beetle took a deep breath. "Queen Janessa sent me. She thinks that you could make this." He passed over Kisrel's smudged, filthy sketch.

"Oh?" The sphinx studied Kisrel's drawing, producing a small magnifying lens, and then another larger one, muttering to himself as he sorted out what he was actually looking at. "Mm. And just what do you intend to keep in this very complicated box, young man?"

"A necromancer's heart," a voice replied. A white light, bright as a star, illuminated the corridor behind Beetle and the Sirsa in a way no failing torch could ever hope to. Badhi Marebba's eyes widened, and Hafizah almost dropped her spear.

Beetle smiled. He did not need to turn around to know who'd found him.

"Hello, old friend," the Warrior said.

- The Sword of the Warrior, Elsinore Lovelace

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Master Beetle got a proper hero's funeral. He would've thought it was a waste of money, I suspected, but Tarran the Bold deserved no less. I felt like I'd done too much crying, but Plum put me to shame when she woke up and learned what had happened. Master Swift had done fine work, but it would take her months to recover completely, and like Dak, Ma, and myself, she would also have a nasty black scar.

I spent three more days coughing up seawater, bleeding through whatever bandages I wrapped around my hands, and having brief, brilliant flashes of pain caused by the necromatic burn on my neck. Dak was assigned to make sure I didn't start to die myself while everyone else did what they needed to.

Although I wasn't supposed to be on my feet at all, I made him drag me out to the desert so I could be there when James buried Miranda. Local superstitions about death were doubly strong where Necromancers were involved. James didn't say any words. All I could think was that Miranda had taken Master Beetle away from us, and tried to take Dak, Ma, and Plum as well. I didn't care that she'd almost killed me too.

You couldn't burn a Necromancer, I learned, when I asked why nobody ever just built a pyre and cast what was left to the winds. You could cut them to pieces if you had the stomach for it, but those pieces wouldn't ever completely rot, and even if you didn't bury them under heavy stones they would slowly come together again.

If a Necromancer was buried too close to any water, their corpse would poison it. Because they defied the natural order of the world, their remains stubbornly refused to return to it. All I could envision as Dak explained that to me was the piles of dead moths and roaches in Alice Graygate's greenhouse. If they couldn't rot, it made sense that they just piled up.

For everyone's sake, Ma did the nasty business, cut Miranda's heart out, and quietly delivered it to Badhi Marebba who put it in a little box for safekeeping.

As it turned out, Chief Minister Marebba was a surprisingly pleasant person, for someone with a massive collection of Necromancer hearts and other inconceivably evil things locked inside lead boxes and pysankas. He was very excited to meet all of us, but particularly Plum, being a sphinx himself. Plum didn't seem to know what to say to him, and I learned later that she'd never met another of her own kind before. I hoped they would become friends.

The old Enchanter was almost suffocatingly friendly, but he clearly knew his Art. It seemed worthwhile to come back and spend some time studying under him, when I wasn't on a mission for the Guardians.

James spent most of our visit talking Badhi Marebba's ears off and I could scarcely get a word in myself. I would've found that annoying under normal circumstances… but it was the first he'd spoken in days. I was still angry at him for hiding things, but I couldn't hate him. He was just as overwhelmed and out of his depth as I was. I couldn't imagine trying to piece my life together after losing fifty years… and then discovering that someone I loved had done something unforgivable.

I wondered, if it had been Allen... would I have been able to accept that he had to be stopped? I hoped I would never have to answer that question.

Life slowly returned to Dun Ibak. Another ship arrived in port, bound to the Floating Market, and from there to Donander. Kharim paid for our passage, and gave us a substantial reward on behalf of the people of the South.

I gave all of the money to Plum. "I don't need this. It doesn't feel right to take it," I told her, wondering if that was the Seeker in me, bowing to the Guardian's rule of equivalent exchange. "I think it'll be enough to get the Golden Sands Company started again. If that's what you want."

Plum nodded. "I… I'll have to think on that. For now, I'm staying here with Amon and Mirazel. Raz has a spare room. Actually, she has a lot of spare rooms, although none of them have ceilings and all of them are filled with sand," Plum admitted, laughing slightly.

"Oh?" I wondered.

"Your friend has petitioned the Council to re-form the Sirsa, and they've accepted her proposal. So now, that begins with clearing out and rebuilding the palace," Mirazel explained. "We'd like to tear the whole building down, honestly. Build a new place that no one will need to be afraid of. With a monument to all the Sirsa. And also, to Tarran the Bold."

"Now, that would absolutely be a waste of money. The old wog would never allow it. You're going to do it, aren't you?" I smiled slightly.

"Absolutely," Kharim nodded. "I can already hear him cursing at me from the Gardens. But if these last few years have taught us anything, it's that there are still villains out there. It's time for us to put a little shine on our swords once again. That means reforming the Sirsa. Tying on the Blue and rallying the Tessars. Electing a new Queen. A strong and vigilant Queen, who will protect the South."

I noticed that an awful lot of people, including Amon and Dak, were looking at me. I finally had new clothing. I'd managed to avoid most of the blue things Ma wanted to dress me in, settling on a simple gray robe that stopped at my knees, and a good pair of boots. I hadn't considered how the plainness of my attire would draw everyone's eyes to Master Beetle's Tessar scarf looped through my belt, and my bandolier.

"What's the matter, Hazel?" James teased, smiling slightly.

"I don't want to be a Queen," I told him.

"No one would force that upon you," Mirazel shook her head heavily. "But the House of Arjun isn't like the House of Wells or the House of Donander. It's not built on royal blood, although you do have that. Queen Janessa the Great adopted all of her children, and her children adopted children too, even when they did have their own. That's why the Sirsa were created. To provide opportunities for the worthy, regardless of their blood. And for others who've done a great service for the South, there is also the Order of the Daystar."

I almost didn't notice that Kharim was trying to put something around my neck. It was a sun-shaped medallion, like the one he wore. Ma was wearing one too. Dak looked very surprised when Kharim also approached him. After he managed to get the chain over his huge head, he stared at the medallion for a long while.

"So, how does it feel to be a hero?" I asked him quietly.

Dak didn't have an answer for me, but he looked very solemn.

"When this quest of yours is done," Mirazel said. "Come back and visit."

Amon and Kharim both nodded in agreement.

"I've packed you enough paper that you have no excuse not to send us Wrens," Raz added. "But if they catch fire flying into my shop..."

"I'll be careful," I promised.

"You'll have to tell us all about your adventures. The four of you are all going to be magnificent Tessars. And that's a good thing, because you're terrible merchants. The worst," Plum smiled slightly. It was a little bit like how everyone called my father a terrible king.

"Thank you," I said.

As we boarded our ship, I waved goodbye, trying to seem hopeful and resolute. That wasn't how I felt at all.

The story will continue in Book 3 – Wizard