“No!” Dee shouted. “I have already claimed it! By the rules of Deep Magic, it is mine!”
“Is that true?” Rose asked Samaranth as her face fell. “Is it his?”
“Yes,” said Samaranth. “It is. But the box can only be opened with a Master Key, and the Master Key may only be turned by an angel, or,” he said, pointedly not looking at Madoc, “by a Dragon.”
“Hah!” said Uncas. “You really blew it then, Dee. We got the only Dragon left, an’ he’ll never help you.”
Dr. Dee ignored the badger, instead focusing his attention on Rose.
“I was there, in the City of Jade, before the deluge,” Dee said, his voice soft, and his eyes glittering. “I went there for two purposes. The first was to find a Master Key—one of the keys the angels used to unlock anything in creation—and the second, to find, and bind, an angel.”
He stood and picked up the box. “Time to go,” he said, smiling at Samaranth, and then at Rose. “Be seeing you.”
Madoc, Charles, and Edmund all started to move for Dee at once, but a shout stopped them in their tracks.
“No!” Sycorax said sternly. “This is the last of the Free Houses, and no violence may be committed here.”
“In other words,” said Charles, “ ‘take it outside.’ ”
“Just so,” said Sycorax. “He still has sand in the glass and may do as he wishes.”
Rose looked at the other three glasses on the table. “But you can’t, can you?” she asked, already knowing the answer. “I think I understand. All of you here—you’re already . . .”
“Yes,” Samaranth said, nodding. “We are already on our way to the final death, where we will cross over into the next stage of being.”
“I waited,” the girl said, speaking for the first time, “so that I could meet you, the daughter of my heart.”
“Who are you?” Rose asked.
“The one who built the bridge, but could not finish it,” the girl replied. “Perhaps someday, you will finish it for me. I hope you will.”
“I just didn’t want to be alone,” the bearded man said. “I have been here a very, very long time.”
“I can tell,” Jack said, looking more closely at the man. “Someone hurt you, didn’t they? Hurt you badly.”
“I don’t think he meant to,” the man said. “He was my brother. I think he was just sad, and I think it was my fault. I’ve waited here, in case he comes, so I can tell him I’m sorry.”
Jack didn’t respond, but instead reached out and gave the man a hug, which, after a moment, he returned.
“Oh . . . oh no,” Uncas wailed, looking at Tummeler and suddenly understanding the meaning of the empty hourglass in front of Samaranth. “Does that mean . . . ?”
The old badger nodded. “It’s all right, young one. I did good, helping Mr. Samaranth. And I got t’ see you, and Fred, and Scowler Charles. That’s a lot. In fact, that’s everything.”
“Not everything,” Dee said as he stepped out the door, “as everyone in your precious Archipelago is about to discover.”
Before anyone could stop him, Tummeler let out a loud howl and threw himself at Dee.
Samaranth jumped to his feet. “Tummeler, don’t! Don’t cross the threshold!” But it was too late.
The little badger fell to the ground, just outside the door. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his breathing stopped.
As the companions all cried out and moved to attend to Tummeler, Dee walked across the front of the island to where the black ship waited. Outside the inn, he returned to his usual appearance, but his face was still a mask of hatred.
At his approach, Mr. Kirke and Mr. Bangs stood and lifted the shipbuilder Argus roughly by the arms.
“Now,” Dee said to the shipbuilder, “do as you did with the Black Dragon, and release the Cherubim from the vessel. And then we will unlock the Archipelago and reshape two worlds in the image of order. In the image . . .
“. . . of the Echthroi.”
♦ ♦ ♦
By the time the companions who had arrived on the Indigo Dragon approached Dr. Dee to reclaim the Amethyst Box, Argus was nearly finished with his task.
When the shipbuilder bonded him to the hull of the Black Dragon, Grimalkin had still resembled a Cheshire cat. But when the process reversed, Grimalkin emerged, shaken but whole, as a very different sort of creature.
In the same way that releasing Madoc had reverted him to a more human state, the way he had been before he became a Dragon and then allowed himself to be bonded to the ship, releasing Grimalkin reverted him to being what he had been before he was bound by Dee to serve the Echthroi.