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Tarryn came in on Mahon’s arm, and Breen noted Keegan would have won his bet.
“Ah, what a pleasure this room is after all that. Well done, Breen. Neo, who can be difficult to sway or impress, was very taken with you. And I’ll say this, wearing that coat gave you the look of a woman who knows her business and means it as well.”
With an unmistakable smirk, Keegan drank some ale. “What’ll you have, Ma?”
“I’ll go with Breen and the wine. I expect Mahon’s ready for a tankard.”
“You know me.”
“I do indeed. Let’s sit or they’ll never bring in the food, and I’m half-starved. I missed tea, as I was listening to a pair of foolish females spatting over the wool of a sheep not yet sheared. Now they’ll each get half and be glad of any.” She sat, smiled at Keegan. “So it is done.”
“You’ve more patience than any cat ever born, and more wisdom than all the owls in Talamh.”
“He gives me sweet words so he doesn’t have to listen to foolishness.”
“Oh now, I hear plenty of it.” He set the wine in front of her when she sat.
“Come sit beside me, Breen, so you can give me news from the valley. Mahon’s proved a dry well when it comes to Brian and Marco and the weddings to come.”
It was easy, and quiet. Conversation flowed with family things and bright stories as they dined on roasted chicken and potatoes and vegetables fresh from a Sidhe farm.
Relaxed, Breen drank wine and felt the day melt away.
When the plates were cleared and a platter of cream-filled cakes offered, Keegan sat back.
“Sure I’m sorry to have to talk of it, but it needs talk between us before the council meets in the morning.”
“We’re here,” his mother reminded him, “not only because we’re family, but because we stand for the Fey, for Talamh, and all the worlds beyond it. We won’t shy from hard talk.”
“Then I’ll tell you that but for the Welcoming Tree and the Tree of Snakes, every portal in Talamh carries the shadow, the opening driven through by Odran and Yseult, and whatever other dark magicks brew there. And I won’t feel sure about the two until Breen’s had a look.”
“The Welcoming Tree?”
He shrugged at Breen. “I can’t see any way possible for a breach there. The magicks that protect it are older than Talamh, and to unwind them? More than he has, I think. More than you, or any.”
“There’s logistics as well,” Mahon added. “Where it stands is beyond him. He’d need a powerful force in Talamh or Ireland, one that could push through all protections to begin to unwind. And this we’d know. But the Tree of Snakes, well, he breached it once.”
“The seal’s stronger now.” But Tarryn frowned as she rose to pour tea. “What of the portal to the Dark World?”
“I want Breen to look there as well. What lies beyond it? None of the banished have power there, but if I’m Odran, there is where I would push, and hard. Find the way to release those who’ve already broken sacred laws, taken lives, those who followed him? They’d add to his numbers.
“All of this I’ll say to the council tomorrow,” he added. “And more. If it takes so much blood and power, weighing on this side of the scale”—he held one hand down to demonstrate—“and the benefit is a handful of spies giving and getting some information?”
He held his other hand high. “It’s foolish to spend so much for so little. But if the aim is to widen those breaches, and break through all at once?”
He reversed his hands.
“A small price to pay for an army flooding across Talamh from all directions. I think it may be the breaches—the South, the Tree of Snakes—served as a kind of practice for what’s to come.”
“Is it possible?” Tarryn reached out to lay a hand on Keegan’s arm. “What you’re saying, the power of it, the coordination, the numbers?”
“I can’t say, but I know he’d spill an ocean of blood to try. Worlds beyond the portals. How many in them might follow him for riches or the thirst to kill and conquer, how many might be true believers asToric and his ilk? So I say we move on as if he can and will. The Fey won’t be caught unprepared.”
“We’ll fight to the last breath, there’s no question. How do you want to prepare?” Mahon asked him.
“We’ll move strategically.” Keegan glanced toward Breen. “As we did in the South, as we failed to do until nearly too late here. We’ll be shifting some training grounds and placing the seasoned and the green near every portal. We need the green to ripen.”
“You don’t mean the littles, Keegan.”
