Chapter Forty-Five Fia #3
As afternoon pressed toward evening, I donned a hastily made gown I’d basically coerced from a poor seamstress in the Underbrush.
Luckily, the greens and golds of the Summerlands suited the role I knew I must play—the resentful darrig had bolts of emerald silk and forest-green satin already in her shop.
The gown swept low to the breastplate of red leather I’d wheedled off Laoise, exposing the Heart of the Forest like a beacon on my chest. I wore chain mail over my arms and belted the skeans I’d bought off a Gentry armorer at my waist. Chandi—still thin, still mostly wordless, but with a little color in her cheeks—helped me smooth my short hair until it lay like a blade against my throat.
I painted my face to match my mood—blood, for my lips.
Ashes, for my eyes. Fury, for my cheeks.
In the late afternoon, the Summer Twins paraded from the city toward the council table they’d erected beneath a vast tent in the center of the golden plain. I let them have their moment—as if they’d called this convocation, instead of me. As if they had any authority here at all.
Let these bardaí think they still had power. Let them think they had a chance of surviving the aftermath of this war.
When the sun grew low and the feasting and drinking were well underway, I mounted Linn in the Underbrush, sweeping my long train over her haunches.
Irian swung onto Abyss behind me, with a long, searching look.
I smiled, then urged Linn into the amber sunlight spangling over the plain.
She cantered with a coquettish cadence, bannering her dark tail and arching her exquisite neck and flinging her graceful legs out long.
An obedient breeze caught my skirts and my hair, swirling them like pennants against the massive trees at my back.
Attention collected on me, until every bardaí and attendant and fénnid on the vast plain watched me, rapt.
I rode to the council table. Clucked to Linn, who reared up and launched herself with effortless ease onto the broad, oaken surface.
She pranced the length of the table with willful, wanton slowness, her hooves shattering glassware and shoving plates to the ground as the revelers reeled backward with cries of outrage, tripping over benches and colliding with one another in confusion.
At the center of the table she gave another pretty rear before planting her hooves, lowering her head, and chattering her shark teeth in warning.
I let my eyes travel over the assembled guests.
The Summer Twins—seated at the far end of the table and nearly purple with rage—had been true to their word.
They’d invited every bardaí. And every bardaí had come.
Some I recognized—Dualtach of the Ivy Gate, whose grandchild Irian had cursed; Almha of the Elder Gate, whose daughter I had slaughtered. Many more I did not recognize.
Soon they would all be at my mercy. Not that I intended to give them any.
“Friends. Enemies. And all who dare stand in the shadows between. Hear me now.” I owed Irian the well-placed breeze that carried my voice in all directions.
“The hour of our reckoning is nigh. A foe waits beyond the Gates to the human realms—a foe we have faced before and, if we are not definitive in our victory, will surely face again. The name of our foe is Eala, she who they call the Deathless Queen… Grave Mother… or the Rotten Princess.” A murmur rose from the host—some must not have heard these names before.
“The time has passed for diplomacy—our only option now is war.”
“Who are you to call us to war?” The voice was strident, grating—its owner hugely muscled and russet-haired.
Although he had lost the vulpine cast to his features, I recognized him—just as ugly to me now as on the night of the Nameless Day, when he’d tried to assault me.
If he recognized me as I did him, he did not show it.
“If I wanted to follow a girl into battle, I’d play swords with my niece. ”
Linn sallied beneath me, my fury simmering against her own. But I held her in place, raising my voice to be heard by all.
“I will not tolerate derision, mutiny, defiance, or insubordination. This is not rule by many. There will be one general—me. There will be one battle plan—mine. Anyone who cannot tolerate that should leave now.”
Half the bardaí and their retinues immediately stood and walked away, grumbling in disgust. I smiled and fished Wayland’s Gate Key prototype from my pocket.
A circular pendant on a long chain, it glinted in the late afternoon sunlight, swirling with fragments of red, blue, green, and silver.
Blood. The blood of all four heirs, combined.
The chain bore Cathair’s incantation etched upon its metal.
Wayland had described the other geasa he’d forged into the object, but the important thing was this: He believed it would work.
It would temporarily open a Gate. Any Gate, from dusk to dawn beneath a full moon.
“To those who stay, I offer this: a Gate Key. The price of your obeisance is low when compared to the reward I offer in return—victory over Eala’s shambling hordes and true control over the Gates, which you have so long coveted.
” Those who had retreated all returned. I held the attention of the bardaí rapt, as I’d known I would.
A finger of guilt slid around the contours of my ribs when I remembered Wayland’s warning about the bardaí.
But Eala’s voice suddenly echoed through me, cool and conniving.
Among the many lessons our mother taught me was this gem: Alliances mean nothing.
They are a means to an end. If Eala could bend the bardaí to her purposes, so could I.
And if I meted out a little of the punishment they deserved for all the harm they’d done?
So be it. “It is a simple exchange. Swear your swords to me, and each of you will go into battle on the Bealtaine moon with a key around your neck. But you must swear now.”
For a long, aching moment, the only sound was the wind sighing over the plain.
A clatter of steel—a barda I did not recognize threw her scabbard upon the oaken table.
Farther down, another heaved off his mace and slammed it on the polished wood.
One by one, the bardaí wordlessly promised me their swords, swearing a loyalty I wholeheartedly mistrusted.
They had butchered the Septs. Destroyed the original Treasures. Planned to execute innocent human maidens for access to the Gates. And betrayed existing alliances with my sister, in favor of me.
I did not trust them as far as Donn’s black gates.
Which was, coincidentally, exactly where I planned to lead them.