A/N & Disclaimer: Well, here it is! The story was finished, really, but this epilogue made me write it …

The personalities and interactions of the children in this chapter are loosely based on those of my younger brother and me. Except, of course, we can't do magic. The characters' names, and Numair, belong to Tamora Pierce.

In an otherwise deserted palace courtyard, in late summer, two children are playing.

The elder, a tall, slim girl with a strong nose and long braids of glossy black hair, is darting about the courtyard, perhaps looking for a way out or for a place to hide. The younger, his eyes shut tight and his curly golden-brown head bent against a wall, is counting loudly.

"Eighteen … nineteen …"

The girl halts in the middle of the courtyard and looks around frantically. Her gaze alights on a small flock of sparrows gossiping on a windowsill. Then she darts behind a low wall nearby.

"Twenty-eight … twenty-nine … thirty!" the boy shouts. "Ready'r not, here I come!"

He turns round quickly, hoping to catch his sister in the act of concealing herself. She is nowhere to be seen. Slowly, patiently, he scans the courtyard. Then he sets out to explore it.

She is not behind any of the trees this time, nor does she appear to have climbed any of them. This is no surprise, really; they have been playing for hours, and he knows very well that she doesn't like to use the same hiding-place twice. He checks around corners, behind hitching-rails, under shrubberies, even, finally, in the rain-barrel.

The little boy is worried now. Has she grown bored with him and gone off to play with someone older and more interesting? He doesn't think she would do this without telling him, but he can't be sure. Similar things have happened before. He's only seven, after all, and she is already ten; she reminds him fairly often that she has more important, more grown-up things to do than play with him all day.

He stands in the centre of the courtyard, head tilted back, hands clasped behind his back, and thinks hard. His dark eyes are serious. He lowers his gaze and, very slowly, turns all the way around, studying every object carefully.

There. There is a low wall behind which he has not thought to look. He approaches it quickly but silently, grinning in triumph.

He heaves himself up so that his head is over the top of the wall, and his grin fades: there is no one there. But there is – almost, but not quite, concealed in a dark corner – a pile of discarded clothing: his sister's boots, breeches and shirt.

"Sarra!" he bellows, outraged. "No fair! That's cheating!"

The sparrows sunning themselves on the windowsill, startled by the noise, twitter at him angrily. (Most small birds would simply take flight in fear; but these are denizens of the Royal Palace in Corus, and generations of proximity to the kingdom's far-famed Wildmage have changed them in many ways.) He frowns and regards them suspiciously.

His dark eyes gleam.

Then, with no other warning, he lifts his hands; a gossamer-fine net of sparkling black fire encircles the birds. They cheep frantically, their voices blurring into a single ripple of sound.

"I'll let them all go when you tell me which one is you," he says.

One of the sparrows, managing somehow to look insulted, hops toward him and glares. Instantly he releases the net around the rest, but he keeps his sister prisoner.

She cheeps at him, her outrage as great as his. "Well, if you get to cheat," he says calmly, "then I get to cheat, too."

But, with a shimmer and a flurry of wings, she goes human again, and – though he tries valiantly – his spell is not strong enough to hold such a large being. "Ha!" she says, sticking out her tongue at him.

Then she shapes herself into a cat and leaps back over the wall.

"I'm telling," says her brother venomously. He looks pale and a little shaky.

"Fine." She is climbing out now, tucking shirt into breeches, boots in hand. "But I'm telling, too."

"Both of you are in very serious trouble," says Numair, glowering at his children from his full six-foot, five-inch height. "Do you see all these grey hairs? How many times have your mother and I told you that magic is not a toy to be played with? It can be dangerous. You, Sarra," shifting the glare to her (she squirms uncomfortably; she has, in fact, been told this more times than she can count), "are responsible for your brother when we aren't with you, and you know very well that tempting him to using such a powerful spell is a very poor way to exercise that responsibility. Besides which, I'm appalled that you would consider it appropriate to use magic to cheat against someone nearly three years younger than yourself."

Just as said brother is beginning to look smug, the icy black gaze turns on him. "You, Rikash, ought to know better than to attempt such a spell unsupervised – even if," he continues, holding up a large hand to still his son's protests, "your sister is cheating. You could just as easily have left her there and come home, could you not?"

"Well, I guess so," Rikash mutters. "But …"

"But?" Numair raises an interrogative eyebrow. This should be interesting.

His son scuffs a boot toe against the carpet. "But then I wouldn't have won the game," he says in a small voice, gaze fixed on the floor.

There is a brief, pregnant silence.

"Out! Both of you!" Numair roars. "Before you send me into an early grave!"

They scurry away, exchanging fearful glances; he has the look of someone barely maintaining control.

As soon as the heavy oaken door has shut behind them, he collapses on the sofa, howling with laughter.

"This is all your fault, Sarra!"

"Is not! You told on me first!"

"You cheated first! You didn't have to cheat. That makes it your fault!"

"Well, you didn't have to cheat back. You could've let me win for once."

They are silent for a moment, glaring. Then, "Sarra?"

"What?"

"What d'you think he'll do?" Rikash sounds worried now, his bravado vanished. He has been picking wildflowers for his mother by way of apology – he is given to such gestures – but the drooping bundle looks, he now thinks, rather inadequate.

"He won't do anything," Sarra reassures him. "He won't be mad anymore by suppertime, you'll see."

"How do you know?" Suspicious.

"I listened with bat ears," she explains, "after he sent us out. A little trick I learned from Ma – don't tell. And he was laughing."

"But he said we were giving him grey hairs!" her brother protests.

"That's nothing," says Sarra loftily. "Hasn't anyone ever told you what he did when you were born?"