Free Dead Reign by T. A. Pratt Page B

yourself. You may not be able to rule as chief sorcerer, but you could become a sort of dictator.”
    Death smiled. “You may be on to something there, Ayres. Perhaps you’re worth keeping around, after all. I’ll go for her just before dawn, when she’s tired and unprepared.”
    “Just let me know if my—” He almost said servant. “My associate Mr. Booth and I can be of service. He has some experience toppling heads of state, if I recall.”
    “Sic semper tyrannis,”
Booth said agreeably.

4
    “S o who the hell was he?” Marla said, and Hamil shook his head, peering at his computer screen.
    “There’s nothing in the most recent edition of
Dee’s Peerage.
” Hamil scrolled through the digital database. The laptop was like a toy under his big hands. “The eight rings seem like a good unique variable, but no, I’ve found nothing.” The great compendium of notable magic users didn’t include every sorcerer in the world, but it damn sure should have mentioned someone capable of beating Marla in a fight, at least by an alias. Marla’s own name had appeared there as soon as she found her magical cloak in a thrift store, though at first the description hadn’t mentioned much
besides
her possession of the cloak. Her entry had grown considerably longer over the years. No one knew who updated
Dee’s Peerage,
but new editions appeared mysteriously on every sorcerer’s doorstep each year, once upon a time bound in paper that dissolved after twelve months, more recently on computer discs that decayed each year. Since the
Peerage
contained only widely known biographical information—no real secrets—no one was sufficiently motivated to track down its creator. It was also rather useful, usually, in cases like this.
    “Crap.” Marla leaned back in the leather chair. “Do you think…I mean, is there any chance…that he’s really
Death
? Come to reclaim his property? We’ve all heard the stories, that my dagger’s really a shard from Death’s scythe, or that some sorcerer won the blade off Death in a card game, but I always figured they were bullshit. Could they be true?”
    Hamil pushed his great bulk back from the computer. He had a specially designed high-end office chair that could have probably seated a polar bear comfortably. “The issue of the afterlife is a tricky one. There are plenty of stories of sorcerers going to the underworld—or places they believed to be the underworld. Ghosts exist, though most ghosts are just stuttering repetitive psychic stains, doing the same pointless things over and over. Persistence of personality after bodily death is also possible through magic—liches and the like. That proves there
is
something inside us, a soul or a spirit or a force of will, which can outlive the body’s death. For those of us who don’t become conscious ghosts…where does that spirit go? Some say to the afterlife, or to one of many afterlives, depending on the individual soul’s beliefs and expectations. Most necromancers claim to know the truth about the afterlife, but their truths all contradict one another. Some theorize there’s only a single underworld, a sort of malleable space that appears in whatever form the dead person—or, in rare cases, the living explorer—expects, consciously or subconsciously. If such a realm does exist, it’s reasonable to assume it has a ruler, some ancient being or series of beings that is—or at least styles itself to be—Death personified.”
    “Thanks,” Marla said. “That was nice and definite. Just what I needed.”
    Hamil shrugged. “It’s not my area of expertise, I’m afraid.” Hamil was a master of sympathetic magic, not corpses and ghosts. “You could ask the opinion of that necromancer who just got out of Blackwing. I know you have reservations about him, but he clearly wants to prove his usefulness. All necromancers interact with
something
that claims to live in the underworld.”
    “I’m not ready to eat my pride just yet,”