The Unkindest Tide

by Seanan McGuire

  “Sorry,” he said, moving to do as he was told. “Between my lessons and Toby’s hero stuff and hanging out with Dean, there hasn’t been time for visiting old people.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath. If I turned, I knew I’d see Dean Lorden, absolutely horrified by the flippant way his boyfriend was talking to the Luidaeg.

  If I’m comfortable with her, Quentin adores her. She was never his childhood monster. For him, she’s always been a friend of the family, someone who helps as much as her admittedly restrictive geasa allow. That’s my fault. I’m the one who introduced them, however accidentally, and also the one who kept dragging him into her presence. But it’s been good for both of them, and I’m not sorry. There will always be a thin edge of fear in my dealings with the Luidaeg. Quentin doesn’t have that. With Quentin, she can almost be normal.

  Dean, on the other hand, grew up in the Undersea, where the stories of the Luidaeg are less “scary sea witch” and more “unstoppable force of nature.” She’s the last of the oceanic Firstborn known to be alive and active, and she hasn’t been a part of the Undersea in centuries, not since Evening Winterrose arranged for the slaughter of the Roane. They were the Luidaeg’s descendant race. She still hasn’t recovered from their loss.

  Like I said earlier, there’s a lot of history around here, and sometimes it doesn’t summarize very well.

  The Luidaeg ruffled Quentin’s hair before letting him go. “This old person could cause a tsunami to take out this entire city if she feels neglected enough, so have some respect,” she said.

  “The worst thing about that sentence is that it’s true,” I said dryly. The Luidaeg never lies. She can’t. She can talk around things, she can deflect, she can even try answering a question that hasn’t actually been asked, but she can’t lie. I took a quick look around, noting Dean in the doorway and Raj a few feet away, watching the Luidaeg with unblinking eyes. I turned back to her. “We’re all here. What do you want?”

  “Are you sure?” She gestured to her nachos. “I could eat the rest of these. We could talk about things. The weather, maybe. I understand some people like to talk about the weather.”

  “Luidaeg.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You didn’t come here to eat nachos. Please. What’s going on?”

  “It’s time. That’s what’s going on.” She leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and tilting her face toward the ceiling, like this would be easier if she didn’t have to look at us while she explained it. “I made a promise—an ultimatum, more like—and now I need to keep it.”

  My stomach sank. I knew exactly what she was talking about, and yet I still wanted to hear her say it. Maybe if she said it, it would turn out to be something different. Maybe.

  Probably not.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, and was proud when my voice didn’t shake.

  The Luidaeg waved a hand, like she was brushing away a scrap of cobweb. “We have to deal with the Selkies. Almost three years ago, I told Elizabeth Ryan she had a year to notify the clans, and after that, their bill would come due. I didn’t specify a date. I could have, I suppose, but if I had, I would have needed to stick to it or pay the price, and honestly, I didn’t feel like taking that sort of risk.”

  “What bill?” asked Quentin. He glanced at me, confusion and curiosity in his face. “I wasn’t there when you went to see the Selkies, remember? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  My stomach sank even lower. “Luidaeg . . .”

  “No. They need to know, because everyone in this room is going to be touched by this, whether or not they’re directly involved.” She sat up and opened her eyes, rising from her seat so she could turn and address all of us at the same time.

  Her eyes had shifted colors while they were closed, going from deep blue to pure black, a darkness that filled them completely from side to side. She had no pupils, no irises, no sclera. Just drowning darkness, as deep and pitiless as the sea itself.

  “I am Antigone of Albany, known as the Luidaeg, the sea witch, and by other names, as they’ve suited those who would speak of me,” she said. “I am the daughter of Maeve and the mother of the Roane, who kept the storms, who saw the future in the tangled tides. They were beautiful, my children, and they were innocent of the great, slow, terrible war fought between my siblings and I, for we had sworn, all of us, to keep it between ourselves. We hated, how we hated, but even in our hatred, we knew this was not their fight.”

  She paused, tilting her face toward the ceiling as she took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, if no less formal.

  “People wonder sometimes why my father, who was never fond of dictating our lives and ways, set down the Law. He thought, you see, even until the day he left us, that we’d eventually find our way to peace without intervention, as he’d done before us. He was an . . . idealistic man, my father, and I hope he still is, because that’s a rare gift. Even rare gifts can cause pain, when improperly used. Some of my brothers and sisters had children with teeth and claws, who were equipped to defend themselves. Others had children who could melt into the water or fade into the sky. And I had the Roane, and they were sweet, and kind, and even seeing the future couldn’t convince them to be anything else. My father made the Law to protect the Roane and others like them from the cruel hands of Titania’s brood, who would have slain all the children of Maeve purely to make their mother smile.”

  Another pause. She kept staring at the ceiling. A single tear escaped her eye, running down her cheek. It left a shimmering trail behind it, gleaming like mother-of-pearl. “One of my sisters hated me for reasons that had nothing to do with my children, and she hated my children because they saw the future and refused to share it with her. So one night, she put knives in the hands of people who saw Faerie as a land to plunder, and she told those people that if they slaughtered the Roane, they would find the secrets of immortality in the flensed skins of my sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, all the way down to the babes in their cradles. My sister looked at my descendants and saw them as sacrifices. And then she saw them sacrificed. Not all, but enough. Enough to take a thriving race to near extinction in a single night. Enough to break my heart forever.”

  Dean was the first of the boys to realize what the slaughter of the Roane actually meant. He swayed in the doorway, horror and sudden nausea written in the lines of his face. Good. The others would get there, and they were good boys; they had a strong sense of right and wrong. I had faith that their reactions would mirror his.

  “The children of the killers woke up the next morning—they woke up, when my children were never going to wake up again, when I was still ignorant of what had happened—and found their parents dripping with blood, wearing raw, freshly-flensed sealskins around their necks and shouting about immortality. They were going to live forever, they said. They were going to be powerful and unstoppable, just like the fae.” The Luidaeg’s lips curved in a cynical expression that could have been a smile, maybe, in another life, on another face. On her, it was the betrayed look of someone infinitely younger, infinitely softer, than the sea witch we knew and somewhat reluctantly loved.

  “I guess it never occurred to them that if the fae were all that powerful and unstoppable, their knives wouldn’t have been enough to slit my children’s throats.” She shrugged, almost shuddered, like she was shaking the memory away. “The children of those killers rose up against their parents, because they knew that when I heard what had happened, my wrath would be swift and absolute. They were thinking of their children. They killed their parents to try to appease me, so that some of them might be spared.”

  “Were they?” asked Quentin. His voice was very small, and very young. He sounded like the dandelion-haired boy he’d been when we first met, and not the almost-man that he’d grown into since then.

  The Luidaeg lowered her head and looked at him, and there was kindness in her eyes
that would have shocked most of Faerie. Not for the first time, I marveled at how such a legendary monster had become such an integral part of our strange and broken family.

  “Yes, and no,” she said. “I’m not my sister. I don’t kill children. If we handed down the sins of the parents without consideration for circumstances, we’d never have parents or children again, because all the babies would be dead in their cradles, unable to learn. But I punished them. I had to. For the sake of the Roane who were still alive, for the sake of all the other descendants of Maeve . . . and yes, for the sake of my own children, whose bloodied bodies sank to the bottom of the sea to be rocked to their rest before I could get to them.”

  “The Selkies,” said Raj.

  The Luidaeg nodded. “The Selkies,” she confirmed. “Their skins—didn’t you ever wonder where they came from? Who had to be flensed to put such power into a pelt?”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” murmured Dean.

  “The first Selkies were the ones who brought the skins of my children back to me,” said the Luidaeg. “They had blood on their hands, but they weren’t the ones to shed it, and they said they were sorry. They said they’d do anything to assuage my wrath. So I made them my own. I draped them in sealskin and set them to the sea. I made them fae and less than fae in the same breath, because their children were still human, still mortal, and if they didn’t want to suffer the way I’d suffered, they knew they would have to pass those skins along. Conditional immortality. The first generation of Selkies thought they could stand the pain. They couldn’t. They’ve been passing the skins along ever since, sacrificing the sea for the sake of their children over and over again, always waiting for the day when I would come and tell them their time was up, their penance was paid, and now it was time for them to settle the final bill.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Quentin.

  “Meaning a daughter of Amandine’s line has finally stepped up to do her damn job,” said the Luidaeg. She turned to face me, and her eyes remained as dark as drowning. “Meaning I didn’t give them time because I wanted to. I did it because I didn’t have a choice. A hope chest wasn’t enough. My own father’s blood magic might not have been enough, even assuming he’d be willing to intervene on my behalf—and I couldn’t count on that. I was already half-broken. I was already halfway to becoming the monster my sister wanted me to be. But they saw the future. The Roane saw the future. They saw you.”

  The blood rushed out of my head, leaving me faint, and incredibly grateful for Tybalt’s closeness. He must have felt me wobble, because he slipped an arm around my waist, holding me upright.

  “Oh,” I said. “Is that all?”

  The Luidaeg smiled, very slightly. “Liar’s daughter, come to turn back the tide. That’s what they called you. You’re a living hope chest. You have the blood magic I’ve been waiting for. Oh, it could have been August—could even have been your mother—but neither of them stepped up. So it’s on you. I have what I need to finish this. I told Liz to spread the word, and then I tried to wait until you’d gotten comfortable with what you had the potential to become. I really did.”

  “I know,” I said. “You can’t lie.”

  “I can’t,” she agreed. “But three years ago I told Liz the Selkies had a year, and I’m pushing the limits of that statement. You’re ready. You’re strong enough. I need to act, or I’m going to make a liar of myself. The consequences of that would be . . . bad.”

  “How bad?” asked Quentin.

  “Bad enough,” said the Luidaeg, eyes still on me. “You know what happens now.”

  I sighed deeply. “Yeah. I do.”

  The Luidaeg lifted an eyebrow. “You’re not going to argue? Try to run? Any of that bullshit?”

  “No. Even if I thought I could get away with it—and I know enough to know that I can’t—I wouldn’t do that to you.” I looked at her as levelly as I could. “This is your family. You deserve to stop mourning for them. Go ahead and say it.”

  “Very well, then.” The Luidaeg took a deep breath. The air around us slowed until it became perfectly still, like the air right before some terrible storm rolls in. It grew colder and full of static at the same time, crackling around us, heavy with the memory of lightning. The Luidaeg never took her eyes off me.

  “Sir October Christine Daye, Knight of Lost Words, daughter of Amandine the Liar, sworn in service to Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, hero of the realm in the Mists, there are debts between us,” she said, and her voice was cold and hollow, and filled with ancient echoes. “Do you deny this?”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  Tybalt said nothing.

  “I would have them settled,” she said. “I would see you free of me.”

  “For five minutes, tops,” muttered Quentin.

  The Luidaeg shot him a look that was somewhere between amused and annoyed before she focused on me again. “Do you accept my right to demand repayment of your debts?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Then in two months’ time, when Moving Day arrives, you will come with me to the Duchy of Ships, and we will finally put paid to the debts that lie between us. By the tide and the tempest, it is said; by the water and the wave, it shall be done.”

  A pulse seemed to flow through the room, striking us all, making the hair on my arms stand on end. Then it was gone, taking the chill and the electric charge in the air with it. I shivered, allowing myself to lean against Tybalt, keeping my eyes on the Luidaeg.

  “That sounded fancy, but what did it mean?” I asked.

  The Luidaeg looked suddenly weary. “It means on May first, you and I and whoever your Queen Windermere decides ought to be present will get on a boat and sail to the Duchy of Ships, where all the Selkies in the world will be gathering to have their skins permanently bound to their bodies. We’re bringing back the Roane, Toby. After all this time and all these deaths, we’re bringing back the Roane.”

  “Right,” I said slowly. “That.”

  “You knew this was coming,” said the Luidaeg. “You were there when I told Liz the bill was coming due.”

  “Yes, but . . . I sort of forgot a little?” I ran a hand through my hair. “It was always something that was going to happen, something in the future. Not something happening now.”

  “It’s still something happening in the future. It’s just that the future has a date on it.” The Luidaeg turned to Dean. “Tell your mother the sea witch is calling in the Selkies’ debt. She may or may not know what that means, but she’ll want to be there, since it’s going to be happening in her waters.”

  “I’ve never even heard of the Duchy of Ships,” protested Dean, awe apparently forgotten in the face of his confusion. That, or my general air of disrespect was rubbing off on him. Sweet Titania, I hoped not. “How can it be in my mother’s waters if I’ve never heard of it?”

  “Ask your mother,” said the Luidaeg, not unkindly. “I’ll send word to the Queen in the Mists. It’s an old protocol, but I suppose this as good a time to observe it as ever.”

  “Which protocol?” I asked.

  Surprisingly, it was Tybalt who answered. “When one of the Firstborn performs a major working within a royal protectorate, it is considered only polite that they should warn the local regents, to prevent accidental interference in their business. It was most commonly used when Rides were to be declared.”

  The Luidaeg nodded. “And this is a sort of Ride, if you cock your head and squint. So I’ll handle telling your queen, and spare you trying to explain it to her without spilling secrets that aren’t yours to tell. The origin of the Selkies has always been kept quiet, for their sake as much as for my own. My sister doesn’t get the satisfaction of knowing that people feel sorry for me because of what happened to my kids.” She glanced back to me. “You’re taking this better than I expected. I’m proud of you.”

  I frowne
d. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Slowly, the Luidaeg blinked. Then, in a careful tone, she asked, “You haven’t put together what this means yet, have you?”

  “Apparently not,” I said. “Why would I—”

  And I stopped.

  Gillian—my daughter, my baby girl, born one-quarter Dóchas Sidhe, turned human by my own hand, turned Selkie to save her life—was wearing one of the stolen skins of the Luidaeg’s children, and she couldn’t take it off for a hundred years, or she would die. The Luidaeg was preparing to use me to offer a choice to all the other Selkies: they could be permanently bound to their skins, making them Roane, fae forever, and shutting their mortal families on the other side of an impassable chasm, or they could pass those skins on and die human, letting their children secure an eternity in the sea.

  Gillian wasn’t going to have that choice. Time after time, Gillian’s choices had been taken away from her, and while I’d never done it to her on purpose, I had always, over and over again, been the architect of her loss. If she wanted to live, she would have to change one more time, from Selkie to Roane . . . and this time, there’d be no going back.

  The Luidaeg nodded gravely. “There,” she said, and there was no satisfaction in her tone. “You finally get it. I’m going to let you decide what you want to tell her, and—Toby? This may not mean much yet, but I’m genuinely sorry we didn’t take care of this sooner, so you wouldn’t have to tell her at all.”

  Part of me wanted to say not to be silly; if we’d taken care of this sooner, before the false Queen of the Mists had stabbed Gillian with elf-shot and left us with no choice but to turn her fae to save her life, there wouldn’t have been a Selkie skin to tie around my daughter’s shoulders. She would have died, and something inside of me would have broken beyond repair.

  The rest of me wanted to scream and keep screaming, possibly forever.

  The Luidaeg offered me a small, sad smile as she picked up her plate of nachos. “And with that, I think it’s time for me to go,” she said. “Nice seeing you all; I’m sure I’ll see many of you on May first. Quentin, visit me more, or you’re going to find something unpleasant in your bed one morning.”