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she’d had stirrups to stand in. She still had to hunch her shoulders slightly, though, because of how the almond-shaped passage narrowed. The ass kicked grains of sand before and behind. The hoofbeats echoed faster now, the walls so close there was no sense of the sound bouncing back.
    They came out of the tunnel into the great bowl-shaped amphitheatre of Erem. The ass stepped to one side and knelt, and Bijou—grateful to get the gouge of old bones out of her seat and thighs—stood. She was sore and stiffer than she’d realized. Too long out of the saddle. And too little saddle under her, for that matter.
    Although a bare sliver of moon had set as they left Messaline, here in Erem three moons burned full and round in a dark mauve sky. One was pale, one red as rust, and the largest a dark shape so sooty it was visible more as a smudge, a shimmer of schiller effect, and a gap in the stars than as a heavenly body in its own right. Beyond the moons, that sky—more twilight than midnight—lay speckled with a few handfuls of brilliant stars like those that showed through the gloaming, in Messaline.
    By the time Bijou had shaken the desert-mummified crumbs of leather from her trousers, Prince Salih, Maledysaunte, and Riordan were through the passage. Riordan walked slowly, tilting his head from side to side and then leaning it back to look up at the stars. As he cleared the passage, he glanced over at Bijou, his eyes vast and dark, his expression as placid as any statue’s in the shrouded glow of her torch.
    “Different stars,” Riordan said. “Different sky.”
    “You thought this was a protectorate of Messaline.” Bijou wondered what the sky of Avalon looked like. She’d read descriptions of its long evenings and skies as cobalt and indigo as the ocean—when the mist that normally shrouded them parted. She wondered what it would be like, a land so water-rich that people looked forward to sunny days rather than the rainy ones.
    “Isn’t it?”
    “Of course,” said the prince, shaking out his robes and stretching stiffly. “But Erem answers its own gods.”
    “And the gods of Messaline do not interfere?” asked Maledysaunte.
    “I wonder what those gods of Erem are,” Riordan said, as the two returning horse-corpses emerged from the tunnel again, now bearing Salamander and Kaulas. Just inside the gate, Bijou allowed the desiccated bodies to lie down and be delivered of their burdens.
    Maledysaunte’s jaw worked as if she were withholding something. Whatever it had been, she replaced it with, “Pray we don’t find out in person.”
    Bijou looked from the light to the sky, and flicked her torch off. It made little difference. She groped for her water-bottle and allowed herself a sparing sip. “The night was darker when we were here last.”
    “Perhaps it’s just after sunset,” Prince Salih volunteered.
    “Just so long as it’s not just before dawn,” Bijou said.
    Riordan looked at her curiously. But it was Maledysaunte who answered, “The midday suns in Erem kill.”
    She knew that, and Riordan didn’t .
    So what else was the foreign necromancer withholding from her team?
    “Not just at midday,” said the prince.
     

     
    Having regrouped, the party looked to Salamander. Salamander chewed her lip and rocked slightly on her heels, obviously stuck right on the edge of something. Uncomfortably, Bijou tried to find the words to help her, but empathy had never been one of Bijou’s particular gifts.
    She was half-surprised and half-not when Kaulas broke the uncomfortable silence to come to Salamander’s rescue. But it was not as if Bijou had ever fooled herself that she loved him. Well, maybe once, long ago. But how many men were there for a woman who was a Wizard and an adventurer both?
    “Well,” Kaulas said. “Do you know where to find her?”
    “Underground,” said Salamander. “If I am any judge. But that leaves us a lot of options.”
    Kaulas laughed, though the joke hadn’t been that