The Unkindest Tide

by Seanan McGuire

  “Usurper Torin will lead us to blood and the battlefield,” spat Helmi. “He’ll leave us in pieces for the sharks to swallow, and cry that we died for the greatness of the Merrow. Who cares for the greatness of the Merrow? Titania is gone. There’s no reward to gain for following them into dark places. There’s only death, and we were made to be immortal. Maeve won’t praise us for laying our lives down in service to her sister’s descendants.”

  “Titania isn’t the only one missing,” said the man. “Maeve hasn’t been seen in centuries. If there’s no reward for what we do, then what we do must be its own reward. I would prefer to be rewarded with battle.”

  “Peter, stay behind me,” hissed Helmi.

  I stepped forward. “Yeah, no,” I said. “This is stupid, and I’m not playing.”

  Silence fell. The man slowly turned to frown at me, squinting as he realized he didn’t recognize me and couldn’t tell precisely what I was. I might be able to fool a casual onlooker with my vague air of Merrow-ness, but this Cephali had presumably been serving the Lordens long enough to look at me and know I wasn’t what I seemed to be. Without the gills, I could have passed for a particularly drab Daoine Sidhe. As it was . . .

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Sir October Christine Daye, Knight of Lost Words, sworn in service to Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, named hero of the realm by Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, here in the name of Duchess Dianda Lorden, rightful ruler of Saltmist, to recover her youngest son, who has been detained against his will by her brother, who has no claim to her demesne.” I somehow managed to make the recitation of my titles sound almost bored. Gold star me.

  Jutting one hip out to the side in a nonchalant posture that anyone who knew me well would have recognized as a sign of trouble to come, I folded my arms and looked the Cephali languidly up and down before lifting an eyebrow. “What are you supposed to be?” I asked. “The wall we have to scale to get to freedom? Because trust me, I’m not in the mood for rock climbing right now. How about you go do something else, and let us walk away nice and easy?”

  He sneered. Actually sneered. It was a pretty good display of arrogance and misreading the situation, if I did say so myself. “Out of my way, vermin,” he snapped. “This is between me and the traitors.”

  “Wow, ‘traitor’ is a moving target around here, isn’t it? See, where I come from, the people who are defending the son of the rightful regent aren’t the traitors, they’re the heroes of the hour. Quentin?”

  “Um, yes?” My squire sounded uncertain. I couldn’t blame him for that. I was so far off-script at this point that I might as well have been part of an entirely different production.

  That was the plan. If even my allies were off balance, the people who were supposed to be fighting me would have absolutely no idea how to handle themselves. “Can I have that big fork you took from the patrol we beat the snot out of?”

  The Cephali man glowered, his tentacles curling closer to his body in a move I could only interpret as enraged. They lightened at the same time, that inky shade of cobalt retreating to their very tips.

  “I bet they didn’t get the Smurfs down here under the Pacific, but trust me, you look like a giant angry Smurf right now, and it’s not helping you look impressive.” I stuck my hand out. To my immense relief, Quentin slapped the shaft of his borrowed trident into it. “How about we dance, big guy? Just you and me.”

  “I don’t honor vermin with my strength,” he rumbled.

  “I’m not vermin,” I replied. “I am a knight of the Divided Courts—which means, right, the Court that includes the Undersea. You’ve listed no titles, bucko, which probably means you don’t have any. I outrank you. If I am vermin, that means you’re below vermin. You’re less than the thing you sneer at. If I’m not vermin, maybe your honor survives the day. Either way, you and me, we’re going to do this.”

  He looked, briefly, confused. “You lack the authority—”

  “What I lack in authority, I make up for in big pointy things.” I leveled the trident on him. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  I could hear the others shifting behind me, uncertain about exactly what was happening. Quentin would catch on soon, if he hadn’t already. He’s been with me for long enough to understand that my seemingly suicidal actions almost never are—and that even if they were, it wouldn’t stick. I may not be unkillable, but I’m hard to put down for more than a few minutes.

  The Cephali continued to look unsure. So I stabbed him in the nearest tentacle.

  He bellowed, raising his own trident and jabbing it toward me with a speed and force born entirely of fury. Reasonable fury, even, since he hadn’t come here expecting a strange woman from the land Court to stab him. I dodged his blow, wrenching my own trident free, and stabbed him again.

  “You can do better than that!” I shouted. “What are you, a guppy?”

  He didn’t look like he understood the insult. Oh, well. Guppies are freshwater fish, but I’d still considered it to be pretty good. He stabbed for me again, and I danced backward, keeping his attention on me.

  “Do they not teach you to fight here in the Undersea?” I jeered. “Have we been worried about invasion all this time for nothing? Gosh, wait until I go home and tell the Queen. She’ll be so relieved.”

  He howled and stabbed for me again. This time, I didn’t dodge fast enough; one of the tines scratched my upper arm before I could get out of the way, opening a line of pain along the slope of my bicep. I didn’t yell. I refused to give him the satisfaction. Instead, I danced away again, glancing to the side as Helmi swarmed up the wall, Peter clutched firmly in her arms.

  Cephali don’t think about gravity the way most people do. They don’t consider it optional, like the air fae, but they do consider it negotiable, and are equally happy sticking to the floor or the ceiling. If my unwitting opponent wanted a chance of beating me, he needed to stay on the floor—an attempt to go up the wall would end with him getting my trident in the side. But that meant the ceiling was clear.

  Helmi and Peter dropped down behind him as Kirsi and Quentin started up the wall. They had less of a size difference between them. Quentin clung to her neck, and she kept one arm around his waist, keeping him from throwing her too severely off balance as they climbed. I swallowed my smile and stabbed at my opponent again.

  “Hey! Asshole! That the best you got?”

  He roared, fury and embarrassment and confusion all warring for ownership of his tone, and stabbed at me again.

  Maybe it was carelessness or maybe it was exhaustion, but either way, this time, I didn’t get out of the way. The trident caught me right below the rib cage, slamming into the soft tissue of my body with sufficient force to pierce multiple internal organs. The pain was immense and dizzying, making the entire world flash momentarily white. I made a startled, agonized sound, unable to stop myself.

  Above me, Quentin tensed. The Cephali man gloated, openly gloated, and began to twist his trident hard to the right.

  “Not so cocky now, are you, vermin?” he asked, grinning widely enough to show me every single one of his teeth. “You should have known better than to challenge a Cephali warrior. You should have known better than to think that you were worthy.”

  Things inside me were ripping and tearing. Behind the man, Peter stood, drawing himself to his full, if still-diminutive height. His eyes sparked, the air around him growing heavy with undefined magic, and for the first time, I could see the echoes of his mother in the lines of his face. If Dean was Patrick’s son, Peter was Dianda’s, perfectly matched to her quiet fury and unrelenting willingness to break the world to get her own way.

  “Remember, Sir Daye,” he said, and every word was quiet, and every word carried down the hall like a proclamation of the end of days. “We’re at war right now.”

  The Cephali man twisted his trident harder, so that I felt thin
gs rip and come loose inside of me. I ground my teeth, tasting blood, and did the only thing I had left to do.

  I’m sorry, I thought, and shoved my trident into the Cephali’s throat.

  He stopped moving, eyes going wide with a combination of shock and pain. Blood gushed from the wound, spilling everything he was and could ever have been onto the hallway floor. He made a strained gurgling sound before twisting his trident again, with less force this time, like he was determined to take me with him. Like he knew there was no winning, not anymore. There was only the chance, however slim, that he wasn’t going to lose alone.

  Pain flared from the wound in my stomach, and before I could fully consider what I was doing, I twisted my own trident, opening the wound in his throat even further. He gasped, unable to get sufficient air to scream.

  Then he collapsed, hands sliding off the shaft of the trident, leaving it embedded in my gut.

  I dropped my weapon and fumbled to get a grip on the blood-drenched wood of his, grasping it tight and yanking it out of me, along with a great gout of blood and some shreds of flesh I didn’t want to think about too hard. The pain of removal was almost worse than the pain of insertion; I dropped to my knees in the gore, bracing myself on my hands as I waited for the world to stop spinning. The characteristic itch of mending flesh came from the wound. I knew if I looked, I would see my own body industriously knitting itself back together, ready to take more abuse.

  Sometimes I wonder whether my general lack of self-preservation is a side effect of knowing that nothing can keep me down for very long, or whether it’s part and parcel of being Dóchas Sidhe. Even before I knew how powerful my body’s ability to heal itself was, I’d had a tendency to throw myself over the nearest cliff and try to pick a fight with gravity.

  Chicken and egg questions give me a headache.

  “Toby?” Quentin sounded awfully far away, but that was probably a consequence of all the blood loss. “Are you okay?”

  “I will be in a second,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. I have fortunately had a great deal of practice sounding encouraging while covered in my own blood. “Is anyone else hurt?”

  “You fought like a fool who thought themselves a sacrifice,” said Helmi. Somehow, coming from her, it wasn’t an insult. She sounded genuinely awed. “No warrior of the land has ever been willing to risk themselves so for one of the water.”

  “I want to be there when you tell Patrick that.” I pushed myself back to my feet, using the wall for balance when the world spun.

  Helmi scoffed. “The ducal consort is a good man and a better father, but he’s no fighter. He never has been.”

  “Semantics.” I took my hand off the wall. The world spun again, but this time Quentin was there to keep me from toppling over. Why did I ever resist having a squire? They’re so useful. “We need to get out of here.”

  “We’re at war,” repeated Peter, entirely too calm for a teenager who’d just seen a man stabbed in the throat until he died. Like mother, like son. “You haven’t broken the Law, Sir Daye. My parents will reward you for this.”

  “Okay, see, that’s a weird thing to say and I don’t like it, but that’s not why we need to get out of here.” I started moving, keeping my grip on Quentin’s shoulder. The wound in my stomach was almost healed, but the itching hadn’t stopped, for all that it was mostly beneath the surface now. That made it almost worse. When my skin itches, I can scratch it, even if I’m sensible enough to choose not to. When it’s my liver that itches . . .

  Complaining that my ability to heal from injuries that should be fatal isn’t comfy enough feels sort of like a jerk move. That’s never stopped me before.

  Together, we made our way down the hall to the storeroom where we had entered. It was thankfully still unoccupied; if any more of Torin’s forces had come down here looking for us, they hadn’t seen the signs of our arrival, and hadn’t decided to stop and lie in wait for our return. The surface of the pool that led to the outside was untroubled, inviting us back into the depths.

  I hate swimming. I eyed the water mistrustfully as I said, “Okay. Quentin and I don’t speak whatever language it is you use to communicate underwater; once we dive, we’re basically going to be incommunicado. You need to follow us to the gateway to the Duchy of Ships. The Luidaeg isn’t there right now, but she’ll be back soon, and she’ll be pissed if I come back without you after putting her to all this trouble. If you have any questions, ask them now.”

  Peter, Helmi, and Kirsi all stared at me, united in their stunned silence. Bands of color washed across the two Cephali, briefly tinting their skins in sickly pallor.

  Peter was the first to find his voice—there was his mother’s influence again, teaching him that rushing in was always better than the alternative. Eyes wide and round, he whispered, “You’re taking us to see the sea witch?”

  This thing where the Undersea was still radically impressed by her would have been charming, if I hadn’t been trying to get them into the water and out of the knowe before someone noticed the mess out in the hall. I’d just killed a man. Yes, he’d been trying to kill me at the time, and no, I wasn’t sorry I’d done it, but wow did I want to get out of here before the night-haunts came.

  “I’m not taking you to see the sea witch,” I said, with as much patience as I possessed. Which was, admittedly, not as much as I might have liked it to be. “I’m taking you to the place where the sea witch is currently planning to be. She doesn’t have a lot of patience under the best of circumstances, and trust me when I say that these are not the best of circumstances. Are there any other questions?”

  There weren’t. Peter gave me a small nod, his jaw still clenched and his eyes still wide, and I stepped into the open circle of water in the floor, and let the ocean take me.

  THIRTEEN

  THE TRANSFORMATION WAS NO less nerve-racking the second time. It was still someone else’s magic dictating the shape of my body, pulling me into a new form and fixing me there, like a butterfly trapped under glass; it was still dropping me into the crystalline depths of my worst fears and leaving me there. I grasped the walls of the narrow tunnel, pulling myself toward the distant promise of freedom. Which, weirdly, helped a lot.

  When Simon transformed me into a fish, he’d gone all the way, leaving me without hands or arms or any way to communicate. Even here, silenced by the sea, I could gesture to get my point across. Quentin, at least, would recognize what it meant if I showed him my middle fingers. And that meant I wasn’t as cut off from the world as my increasingly panicked thoughts were trying to make me out to be.

  The journey through the supply tunnel seemed to take longer this time than it had before, maybe because the urgency was even greater. Time was short—the Luidaeg’s spell would have to wear off eventually, and I doubted we had more than a few hours left—and more, there was a mess in the hall that would tell Torin’s guards something was wrong. We had to hurry. I hadn’t come this far to fetch Peter only to lose him before I got him back to his father.

  I was the first to emerge from the hole in the side of the knowe. My flukes were still inside when someone grabbed me by my hair and whipped me around, slamming me into the coral wall. I began to push myself back into open water, ready to fight, only for my attacker to press the tip of a jagged blade against my throat. I froze.

  Blood in the water means sharks, means setting off alarms, and even if it won’t kill me, having my throat slit isn’t my idea of a good time. I stared, wide-eyed and furious, at the Cephali hovering over me. It was the man from before, pale yellow with blue rings, and his expression was unreadable, impassive and calm. Had he been waiting for us to return all this time? I suspected he had.

  Quentin came out after me, and froze when he saw the situation. I had no way to signal him, but he seemed to realize what he had to do, and whirled, clearly intending to block the others from coming out.

  He was too slo
w. Helmi pushed through, followed by Peter and Kirsi. All three of them stopped for a moment, staring at the Cephali man whose blade was still pressed—uncomfortably tightly—against the skin of my throat. Then, with a wordless sound that carried through the water, formless and echoing, Helmi threw herself into his arms.

  My attacker was good; he didn’t drop the knife. Instead, he transferred it to one of his tentacles while he caught Helmi, plucking her out of the current like she was a leaf blowing along on a stiff breeze. He gathered her into a complicated hug that involved at least six limbs on both their parts.

  Then she slapped him.

  He recoiled, looking startled and confused. She pulled back, pointing to me with one hand while three of her tentacles twined together in a complicated motion that couldn’t have been anything other than purposeful, an impression that was only reinforced when the man’s tentacles did something similar, if not precisely the same. Kirsi stayed where she was, holding Peter back while the two other Cephali argued.

  The man pulled the knife from my throat. I reacted immediately, bringing my tail up and whacking him in the stomach as hard as I could. The reason Dianda depended on that move so much was immediately apparent, as the blow shoved him away with surprising force. He tumbled, not losing his grip on Helmi. I pulled my knife, ready to fight—

  —and stopped as I realized he was laughing soundlessly. They both were, like this was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I narrowed my eyes, glaring. They kept laughing.

  Whatever. I’ve been mocked by better than a few octopus-people, and the longer I hung here having my feelings hurt, the less time we had to get back to the Duchy of Ships. I flicked my fins at him and spun in the water, taking advantage of the lack of gravity to return to Quentin and the others.