It was dawn on the next day by the time we arrived there, wending tiredly through the network of folkways crisscrossing Tír na nÓg like invisible tunnels in an anthill.
My first sensation was one of warmth. Although it was spring in both Folk and human realms, the rain was still cold and the nights brisk. This breeze teasing the short hair off my nape whispered of nights so warm you had to kick the blankets off, days so hot you longed for shade.
A sun golden as a coin was rising over fields shimmering with grain. Atop a green-grass tor, huge trees with full canopies of leaves towered, and when I peered closer, I saw bridges strung like necklaces between their trunks, windows carved in huge bolls along branches, balconies hemmed in bark looking out over the plains.Tents like burnished gems spangled the hill toward the dell where we’d emerged, like a lady’s jewel box spilled across green velvet.
We hadn’t walked twenty feet before we were accosted by Gentry guards. Encased in lightweight armor the color of bronze, they shone resplendent. Helms glowed with crests of golden leaves; mantles of emerald were embroidered with recursive patterns of sunbursts, vines, and blooming flowers. Weapons lowered toward us—swords blazing like sunfire, spears tipped with crystalline points, arrows nocked on bows strung with threads of sunlight.
“Yield,” said their captain, a willowy woman with hair so golden it hurt to look at. “Or die.”
Irian made no move to draw his sword, though it hummed plaintively at his side.
“You will know me as Irian of the Sept of Feathers.” His voice, though mild, was threaded with command. “We wish not violence, only sanctuary. We come seeking our friends.”
The captain squinted at Irian before turning her glance to me. Although she did not seem to particularly like what she saw, she motioned for her fénnidi to lower their weapons.
“You are known to me, tánaiste,” she said. “As are your compatriots, already arrived. In fact, they have caused quite a stir. Come.”
Leaving her guards to their posts, the captain led us out across the plain, where bejeweled tents fluttered like earthbound kites in the hot wind. Freshly woken Folk peered out as we passed, beautiful and uncanny even rumpled and bed weary. I saw eyes like garnets and teeth sharp as knives and hair like rushing water. But this was no moonlit revel—these Folk were not here for pleasure. Stacked outside the tents were racks with armor like the bristling carapaces of poison beetles; weapons that called out my name as I passed, or hummed with menace, or seemed slicked with black blood although I knew they must be clean. Tension and violence sang through the Gentry host gathered here in the Summerlands, shivering me.
It occurred to me thatthiswas what Eithne Uí Mainnín hadfought when she incited the Gate War all those years ago. These were the people she had made her enemy and had somehow nearly defeated.
But the thought of the queen conjured something raw and wretched inside me and made me think of all the violence I was desperately trying to forget.
The warrior led us into the city of trees. It was a marvel—partly grown, partly constructed, the two fusing into something not quite either. Boulevards of lightweight stone climbed vast pines, alleyways and lanes branching off toward residences and shops tucked away in hollow trunks or balanced on platforms between sturdy branches. Ladders meandered upward; ropes dangled in complicated pulley systems. Resembling something between a bee’s hive and a spider’s web, the city crawled with Gentry and lower Folk alike.
At last we came to the biggest tree of all, a colossal conifer rising a hundred feet above the rest. A road spiraled its trunk; we climbed until we glimpsed golden spires and glass domes peering from spiked needles of sunlit green. The palace—for it could be nothing else—was craftsmanship and nature in harmony, its architecture rising seamlessly from the living wood. The tree’s canopy cast warm-hued mosaics over balconies and balustrades; vines and blossoms adorned curved walls and open plazas.
“Welcome to the Summer Palace,” said the guard as she ushered us before the bardaí.
The throne room was more an atrium than a chamber—a broad alcove nestled between two great branches, enclosed by a faceted glass dome. Layers of foliage were sealed within the glass, casting shifting patterns of color and light like a living kaleidoscope. Upon matching hardwood thrones sat two Gentry.
Siobhán and Seaghán were not what I had expected. They were, like all Gentry, unconscionably beautiful—Seaghán, tall and lean, with a mop of curling black hair falling over his diadem; Siobhán, petite but visibly strong, with dark golden curls croppedto her chin. They wore the raiment of their position—glossy silks in greens and golds, mantles embroidered with leaping stags and creeping foxes in threads of shimmering bronze.
That wasn’t what surprised me. I had met a few of the bardaí—each more terrifying than the last. All, to my knowledge, had tampered with the warped wild magic released from the destroyed Treasures—the power that had bought their positions. But the Summer Twins had no visible alterations, no overgrown teeth or yellow eyes or fur-striped arms. The smell of carrion did not waft from them. Indeed, they seemed altogether normal.
Perhaps they were the best of the bardaí after all.
Or—it occurred to me belatedly—perhaps in reforging the Treasures, we had removed the corrupted magic and its effects from Tír na nÓg altogether.
“Irian of the Sept of Feathers,” Siobhán said, her melodious voice carrying a sharpness I wasn’t sure I liked. “Come at last to bend the knee, after all these years? Seaghán, tell me why we oughtn’t make him grovel?”
“Because grovelers must lick boots,” Seaghán said silkily. “And these shoes are my favorite. I’d hate to have them sullied byhismouth.”
“No.” I almost surprised myself by shouldering past a glowering Irian into the center of the throne room. The golden-haired guard lurched toward me, but I held up a faintly glowing hand without looking at her. She faltered, then fell back. “We’re not doing this. Not today.”
The Summer Twins stared at me, outrage and distaste and curiosity rustling in the silks they rearranged upon their thrones. I could only imagine what they saw—a nameless changeling girl with ragged short hair, wearing dirty clothes that did not fit her as she faintly glowed.
Finally, Seaghán said, “Not doingwhat, pray tell?”
“The song and dance.” I twirled my finger. “You’ll insult us, we’ll insult you, violence will be threatened, blah-blah. We’renot doing it.” Siobhán opened her mouth, but I held up another forestalling hand and watched as her gaze darkened with affront. “Here’s what we are going to do. You’re going to welcome us into your lands and give us quarters near our cohort—Laoise of the Sept of Scales and Wayland, king of Emain Ablach. I know they’re here, and I’m frankly a little shocked they’ve allowed you to continue sitting on those adorable little chairs.” The twins’ indignation slithered toward outright offense, but I wasn’t done insulting them. I’d hardly begun. “Then you will send ravens or pigeons or whatever birds you use as messengers to the bardaí. Not just your allies—allthe bardaí. You will summon them here. You will find some common ground where we may have a council of war. Tomorrow, if possible. In a few days, if not. Trust me when I say, there is no time to lose.”
My pronouncement was met with ringing silence. At last, Siobhán gathered her composure enough to point a finger at me and hiss, “And who are you to command such things from us?”
I stalked forward, so fast both bardaí jerked back against their thrones. In my periphery, I saw the golden-haired guard lunge toward me again, only for Irian to step neatly into her path and body-slam her into the glass wall. I planted each of my palms on the arm of a different throne and stared at each twin in turn. Starshine spilled from my visible flesh, and I grinned as they shrank back from me.
I must seem a feral thing.
“I am Fia.” Although I did not speak loudly, my voice rang in the domed chamber, dropping golden pine needles and waving fronds of ferns curling around the base of the thrones. “I am the daughter of a human king and a Gentry heir—the first changeling in a thousand years. I was suckled on magic, schooled on violence, and fledged upon love. I have battled monsters, bargained with gods, destroyed islands, and watched monarchs die. I was made of bloody wars and stolen magic and the pattern etched between the stars. I was made to bring balance back to our realms.”
