“WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?” Sally asked, putting her arm around Chibo.
“Locked in my room,” Ji said. “How about you?”
“Locked in the stables.”
“Where’s Roz?”
Sally jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “In the carriage.”
“Thank summer,” Ji said, feeling a wash of relief. “Was she locked up, too?”
“I hope not. She’s born for better than sleeping on a hay bale. Where are they taking us?”
“We’re serving at the rite,” Ji told her, then saw movement on a rooftop down the block.
Smoke curled from chimneys. A flock of parrots swooped over treetops. And there, Nin’s purple cloak fluttered in the morning light.
Ji pointed to the ground furiously, trying to indicate, Now, now, it’s happening now.
Nin’s cloaked head nodded, and he bounded down the roof toward Ji. Like he thought Ji was saying, Come here now.
Ji made a shooing motion. No, no! Run away.
Across the canal, Nin made a shooing motion back at Ji.
“No, you buttonhead,” Ji mumbled, shooing even more shoo-ily.
Nin scrambled closer, making huge, two-armed shooing motions back toward Ji.
“Go!” Ji mouthed. “Go away!”
Nin paused, then disappeared behind a canal-side tree. Maybe he’d gotten the message and maybe he hadn’t, Ji couldn’t tell. Ogres were weird.
“I wonder what we’re serving at the rite,” Chibo said.
“Proctor and Brace, I guess,” Sally said.
“No, I mean, like, tea? Or appetizers? Or—”
“I don’t think we’re serving a meal, Chibo,” Sally said.
“Well, we can serve all sort of things.” Chibo blinked happily at a silver-trimmed coach that whooshed past. “We’re servants.”
The carriage rattled toward the mountaintop, along tree-lined boulevards with shrines and parks. Chibo chattered nonstop, thrilled by everything he heard and smelled and almost saw. Then the buildings fell away and the carriage stopped at the outer wall of the Forbidden Palace. After soldiers spoke with Proctor, the journey continued. The road zigzagged through steep parkland with boulders and wildflowers. Ji thought he saw another flash of purple in the trees, but he wasn’t sure.
“Look at that!” Sally said, pointing to a meadow.
“What are they?” Chibo asked, squinting. “Flowers?”
“Peacocks,” she said.
“Ooh!” He beamed in almost the right direction. “What else? Tell me!”
Sally described bridges and prayer flags and carp ponds as the carriage rumbled higher. Finally, they rattled into the parade grounds: long plazas where the queen’s troops marched and sparred. The clatter of weapons and the sound of military chants filled the air.
“There’s a couple hundred soldiers,” Sally told Chibo, in awe. “They’re training with swords and woldos and atlatls.”
“What’s a lalala?”
“An atlatl,” she said. “A dart launcher. You load one end, then fling it and— Ew!”
“‘Ew,’ what?” Chibo asked. “What, ‘ew’?”
“Goblins,” Sally said, peering to the side.
A crew of goblins hunched along a side street, bowed under the weight of buckets filled with dirt. The collars around their necks were brightly polished, but their mole-feet were bare and dirty.
“I guess the palace needs stuff dug, too,” Ji said.
Sally tugged her leather bracelet. “They remind me of what happened to Butler.”
“Yeah,” Ji said, and a commotion rang out from behind a barracks.
First shouts, then the clang of weapons—and screams. Ji frowned toward the sound but couldn’t see anything.
“I hope that’s not Nin,” he said.
“The cloaked lady Chibo told me about?” Sally asked. “Red Mask?”
Ji looked at Chibo. “You think Nin’s a girl?”
“Sure,” he said. “Don’t you?”
Before Ji could answer, a shadow fell over them. The massive inner wall to the Forbidden Palace rose in front of the carriage. Guards in plumed helmets lined an open gate. On the other side, dozens of halls and temples faced the queen’s tower, like servants kowtowing to a monarch.
“There are banners everywhere,” Sally told Chibo after the carriage rumbled through. “And lords and ladies strolling around, and— Look! I mean, don’t look. I mean, over there, the Royal Menagerie.”
“The zoo?” Chibo bounced with excitement. “No way!”
“Yeah, there’s boa constrictors and—are those raccoon dogs?”
“What I want to know,” Ji said, peering toward the front of the carriage, “is what’s that?”
A grand pavilion towered in front of them, draped in tapestries. Windmills spun in the breeze, turning bronze cylinders that sparkled and whirred. Shapes moved across the tapestries, like the spreading branches of a silver tree.
Ji gawked in amazement as the carriage stopped.
“It’s like watching a thousand-year-old tree grow,” Sally told Chibo, “except it’s made of silver and—”
“You lot, follow me,” Mr. Ioso grunted, then raised his voice. “You too, Miss Songarza.”
As Proctor escorted Brace toward the front entrance of the pavilion, Roz stepped from the carriage, wearing her favorite pink dress and carrying her beaded handbag.
A knot of fear loosened in Ji’s heart, and he mouthed, “Are you okay?”
“I am now,” she said with a quick smile.
Mr. Ioso led them into the pavilion through a servants’ entrance. The scent of forest streams filled the tented corridor, where a dozen servants waited. They looked about Ji’s age, half of them wearing ponchos decorated with hibiscus flowers, and the other half wearing brown-and-blue livery.
“Who’s that?” Chibo asked, peering forward.
“Servants,” Ji told him.
“Oh!” Chibo smiled toward the other servants. “Hi! I’m Chibo, and that’s my sister Sa—”
“Shut your ricehole,” one of the livery kids snapped.
“Keep your voices down or I’ll cut your throats.” Mr. Ioso listened to the sudden silence, then said, “Now follow me. Eyes down.”
Roz walked beside Mr. Ioso, with Ji and the other servants trailing behind. A hush descended. Ji felt itchy with nerves. Fabric walls billowed to either side, and lanterns glowed on ornate jade stands. Deeper in the pavilion, a breeze touched Ji’s face, and the soft burble of water grew louder.
Then Mr. Ioso opened a flap, and Roz stepped inside and gasped.
Ji followed her into an enormous tented hall at the center of the pavilion. The peaked ceiling rose higher than a towering tulip tree, and the cloth walls stretched as wide as a meadow. A semicircular balcony swept across the hall, and a pond bubbled in the center of the floor.
A big pond. Maybe a small lake.
Overlapping carpets covered the floor, sloping down toward the glimmering white-sand shore of the pond. At Mr. Ioso’s gesture, all the servants headed for a carpet near the shore and knelt facing the water.
Ji scowled. He didn’t mind kneeling, but telling Roz to kneel made his fists clench and his jaw tighten. She was better than the nobles, and the fact that they didn’t realize it only showed how true it was.
He knelt beside Roz, just in front of Sally and Chibo, and was about to say something when he realized that the white shore wasn’t sand. It was pearls. Thousands and thousands of tiny pearls. Whoa. A couple of handfuls of those and they’d be rich. . . .
Without moving her mouth, Roz said, “Don’t even think it.”
A gong sounded, and stone chimes trilled. Fancy-dressed lords and ladies promenaded onto the balcony and perched on plush benches, no doubt being rewarded for loyal service with front-row seats.
And then . . . nothing happened. The lords and ladies chattered and the servants waited. The chimes trilled. Even more nothing happened. After a while, Ji could barely hear himself think over all the nothing going on.
Then the gong sounded again, and the servant kids around Ji kowtowed. Behind him, he heard Sally telling Chibo to bow low. Ji started to do the same when he caught a glimpse of the queen taking her throne on the balcony. She was tall and slender, with a crown that rose from her hair like golden flames—and in person, she shone with presence. She seemed more real than anyone he’d ever seen, more there. Even the briefest glance made his breath catch.
He gaped at her until Roz elbowed him. Then he lowered his forehead to the carpet.
“The queen!” he whispered.
“I know,” Roz said. “She’s so entirely . . . royal.”
Priests gave speeches from the balcony, but Ji couldn’t hear most of the words over the bubbling of the pond. “. . . only the crown of summer will save us from the hordes . . . ogres and hobgoblins, merfolk and . . . The ice witch and the winter snake never rest . . . pray that today, the Diadem Rite will choose an heir to the Summer Crown!”
The queen stepped to the edge of the balcony and silence fell.
Even the pond stopped bubbling. A few ripples spread across the water, and then the surface turned as smooth as glass.
“Every year for the past five,” the Summer Queen said, her voice as pure and strong as a blizzard, “the Diadem Rite hath tested possible heirs. None yet have passed. However, this day shows rare promise. Three young people strive for greatness. Three souls reach for the diadem, three hearts beat with the blood of nobles . . . yet only one shall be declared the true heir.”
She gestured to the floor below the balcony, where Brace stood with two other noble kids. One was a crabby-looking girl in a military-style brown-and-blue jacket and an awesome pair of combat boots. The other was a younger boy wearing a silken hibiscus-decorated poncho, with silken breeches and jewel-encrusted silk slippers.
The queen introduced all three possible heirs, but Ji forgot the other two kids’ names immediately.
“They just look like Crabgirl and Silkyboy to me,” he muttered.
“Hush,” Roz whispered.
The queen spoke for a few more minutes, too softly for Ji to hear. He kept staring at her, though, unable to look away. Then she lifted her arms—
A geyser rose from the middle of the pond. A pillar of clear water stretched toward the ceiling, as wide around as the trunk of an ancient oak.