The Unkindest Tide

by Seanan McGuire

  “Basket, oil, herbs,” she said. “And a pony, but I never get that, unless you count the Kelpies, which I don’t. Kelpies are too naughty to count as ponies.”

  “They’re also horrifying and full of teeth,” said Patrick.

  “Like I said: naughty.” Marcia turned and walked into the herb beds, beginning to pluck sprigs of whatever caught her fancy.

  I wanted to go with her, to see what kind of marshwater charm was used to preserve a Selkie’s skin away from a living Selkie. I couldn’t. Marcia would probably feel like I was checking her work—the last thing I wanted to do right now—and more importantly, Peter was still glaring at his father, a look of heartbreaking betrayal in his eyes. I sighed.

  “I mostly know Dianda as my punchy friend who sometimes helps me out of nasty scrapes,” I said. “We don’t hang out, we don’t talk about our feelings, we don’t braid each other’s hair. But I know her well enough to know her family is the most important thing in the world to her. She wouldn’t want you to be fighting right now. Not each other, anyway. This is Dianda we’re talking about: she’d absolutely want you to be fighting everyone else.”

  Patrick actually cracked a smile at that. “My wife has somewhat militant ideas about conflict resolution,” he said.

  “Yet you married her anyway,” said Tybalt. “Fascinating.”

  “Don’t say bad stuff about my mom,” snapped Peter.

  “Believe me, child, I am not,” said Tybalt. “Even if I wished to mock your father’s taste in wives, he would need only to point at my own choice of bride as proof that I am a man living in the metaphorical glass house.”

  “Root and branch preserve me from men who think they’re clever,” I muttered. Louder, I said, “The Luidaeg has gone to find Captain Pete and see if something can’t be done about this whole ‘treason’ thing. In the meantime, I have at least one dead Selkie, and I no longer have the ability to go diving around under the duchy itself to look for more of them. Any suggestions about how to deal with all this would be greatly appreciated.”

  “Why do we care about dead Selkies?” demanded Peter.

  “Peter,” said Dean, appalled.

  “What?” Peter looked from his brother to me, hands spread, trying to make us understand. “Mom’s been arrested. For treason. She could die, Dean. She could be put to death because of lies Uncle Torin is telling about her. Selkies always die. They’re barely better than humans that way.” He suddenly seemed to realize he might have gone too far, because he glanced at me, grimaced, and added, “No offense.”

  “Oh, offense taken,” I said. “You don’t get to decide where the offense goes. But, please, continue.”

  Peter swallowed. “I—I’m sorry. I know you have more humans in the land Courts, and I know I’m supposed to be kind and . . . and forgiving of their faults, but they’re so weird. How can they be people and mortal at the same time? People aren’t supposed to die unless they do something stupid enough to deserve it. But changelings are mortal, and they’re people. And Selkies are mortal sometimes, and they’re people, too, and it’s all weird and confusing and I don’t understand it. They have my Mom. She’s locked up somewhere, alone and scared, and they’re going to hurt her, and I can’t let them.”

  “Dianda isn’t scared,” I said, trying to be reassuring. “She’s scary. Scary things don’t get scared.”

  “Sometimes they do,” said Patrick. His voice was very soft. “Sometimes they get so scared they can’t breathe. Peter’s right to be worried about her. We have to get her back.”

  “And we’re working on it,” I said.

  “How?” Peter asked. “What are you doing, right now, to save my mom?”

  I paused, long enough to count to ten and remind myself that Peter was still a teenager, and on the young side of teen at that, with all the impatience and insecurity of his age. Some things will never change.

  Once I was sure I could be calm, I said, “Right now? This second? I’m waiting for the Luidaeg to come back with the one person I believe can actually dispute the treason charges with any authority, and I’m not antagonizing your uncle more than I absolutely have to. We brought you here so he couldn’t use you as leverage to make your mother plead guilty to the charges he’s trying to levy against her. She’s brave, and she’s fierce, and she’s terrifying, but she’s still your mom. If it was your life or hers, I’m pretty sure I know which she would choose. I know this goes against everything the Undersea teaches you, but sometimes you have to be patient.”

  “Not everything,” said a voice from behind me. I managed not to scream as what I’d taken for a bush unfurled and straightened, changing colors as it did, becoming Kirsi. She looked at Peter with frustrated sympathy. “Merrow are hot and fast and angry. They lead us in part because letting them lead is easier than fighting with them. But when a Merrow and a Cephali go fishing, the Cephali will come back with the greater catch, because we know how to be still. We know when to be still. Have faith and keep your peace, young lord. Sir Daye hunts as a Cephali does. She will have her quarry, or she will make them pay for denying her.”

  “I think I’m flattered,” I said.

  “You are,” said Tybalt.

  I returned my attention to Peter. “The situation sucks, okay? I’m juggling too many things at once, and as soon as we have Isla’s skin preserved, I need to go find the first mate and ask him whether there have been any other mysterious deaths. This may have been personal. It may also have been part of some kind of plot to panic the Selkies right before they’re supposed to repay their debts to the Luidaeg. I don’t know. I can’t know until I find out whether we have any more missing skins. So right now, I am helping your mother by not making things worse for her. All right? It’s the only thing I can do.”

  “Fine,” muttered Peter sullenly.

  Patrick put a hand on his shoulder. “We trust you.”

  That was nice. I wasn’t sure I trusted me, under the circumstances. I was tired and sore and the memory of almost drowning was far too fresh in my mind. I was going to have nightmares the next time I tried to sleep, and poor Tybalt was going to be lucky if he didn’t wind up getting smacked in the face. Repeatedly. Sometimes love leaves bruises, no matter how hard you try to prevent it.

  “Good,” I said gruffly, turning away. “Marcia? How’s it going over there?”

  “I have almost everything I need.” She straightened to show me the bundles of green in her hands. A few of the stalks were crowned in tiny starbursts of flowers. I didn’t recognize most of them. “Once the basket gets here, I can put the skin in stasis indefinitely.”

  Marshwater charms can be surprisingly effective when woven the right way, and Lily had been an excellent teacher. “All right. Can you keep things under control here?”

  “You’re leaving before Quentin gets back?”

  With the Beacon’s Home Selkies running around recognizing him, leaving Quentin in the courtyard seemed like the only way to avoid a truly awkward situation. I nodded. “We’ll move faster this way. Once we’re back and René’s done paying his respects to his sister, we’ll walk him back to the beach. Tybalt?”

  “As my lady wishes,” said Tybalt, sounding quietly relieved. He fell into position next to me, and together, we walked out of the courtyard, away from the people I was still struggling to save, out into the Duchy of Ships.

  EIGHTEEN

  “PLEASE DON’T THINK ME ungrateful, or that I wouldn’t follow you to the very ends of the Earth if given the opportunity, but where, precisely, are we going?” asked Tybalt.

  There are no true days or nights in the Summerlands, which exist in an eternal, tangled twilight, but time still passes, and we’d been in the Duchy of Ships long enough that most of the people who’d been awake when we arrived were in bed by now, leaving the docks and byways largely deserted. Not entirely: there’s always someone awake in Faerie, no matter what the cloc
k tries to say. Humanity has their night owls, and the fae have their morning people.

  Some of them looked at us curiously as we passed, but none reacted as if they knew who we were. Either the news of the Luidaeg’s presence—and entourage—had failed to spread, or they simply didn’t think it mattered. Interesting.

  “Pete’s quarters,” I said. “She’s not there, but she didn’t give me the impression of being a lady who likes to live alone. She’s a pirate queen, right? Well, they have crews. I want to talk to her crew.” Specifically, I wanted to talk to Rodrick, her so-called first mate. If anyone would know what was going on, it would be him. With Pete gone, news of any mysterious deaths would land squarely in his lap.

  Maybe sending the Luidaeg—our biggest threat, and biggest dissuasion for anyone who wanted to make trouble—to find Pete had been the wrong call. But Pete wasn’t Evening. Pete had promised to minimize her impact on Faerie, and that meant leaving when Dianda and the others showed up. And without Pete, we weren’t going to get Dianda’s name cleared, and if Torin successfully seized Saltmist, it would destabilize the region. The Mists had enjoyed multiple centuries of relative peace. A war would risk everything. Our people, our ability to hide from humanity, everything.

  The thought hit me with such force that I actually stopped walking, eyes going wide as I stared into the middle distance. I was dimly aware of Tybalt also coming to a halt, turning to look at me with bemusement and no small amount of concern.

  “October?” he said. “What is it?”

  “I think we’ve been looking at this the wrong way,” I said. “I think it’s not about the Selkies at all, except for the part where it’s entirely about the Selkies. Who knew—”

  That was as far as I got before a fist slammed into my jaw, sending me reeling. My assailant hit me again before I could do anything more than see stars and blotches of vivid blackness dancing across my vision, like my head had suddenly become the site of the most exciting rave in the Westlands.

  Tybalt roared, rage and—I suspected—relief: here was something he could deal with. Here was something he could hit. I took another step back as I heard the distinctive sound of an enraged Cait Sidhe slamming into whoever’d been foolish enough to attack me. My jaw felt broken. I touched it gingerly, trying to will the bone to knit back together faster, before the situation got worse.

  Pain is not my friend. Neither are broken bones, which may bleed, but mostly do so internally, where it doesn’t do me any good. My body is full of blood all the time, and it never helps. Only blood in the open air helps me.

  Tybalt snarled again. The flashes of light and darkness were clearing, enough that when I raised my head, I saw him duck a blow from Torin. The burly Merrow had a wicked-looking knife in one hand, a jagged thing clearly designed for gutting whatever it hit. His other hand was empty, although I was living proof that he didn’t need a weapon to do damage.

  He and Tybalt seemed to be evenly matched. Tybalt was faster, and technically better armed, thanks to his claws, but those claws didn’t give him the ability to split his opponent open with a single blow. Torin was already bleeding from several minor wounds, none of which seemed to be slowing him down. He looked like he could do this all day. So did Tybalt.

  I had my own knife. It wasn’t enough, especially not with that fishing knife in play. Being gutted wouldn’t kill me. It would definitely slow me down.

  Sometimes the right answer is not to play. “Tybalt! Come on!” I shouted, and ran toward the end of the dock.

  Did he understand what I was doing? Maybe. Maybe not. It didn’t matter, because as soon as he saw me running, he ran after me, moving fast enough that he caught up before I could go over the edge. He grabbed me by the shoulders, spinning me around, away from the water.

  “What in the world are you trying to accomplish?” he demanded.

  “You can—” I began.

  The knife hitting me in the back stopped me.

  I saw Tybalt’s eyes go wide and his mouth go slack, hands starting to lose their grip on my arms as he realized what had happened. I grabbed his wrists, keeping him connected to me. Blood was filling my mouth, bitter and bright as a new penny. It hurt, oh, how it hurt, but I was grateful for the pain. If Tybalt hadn’t moved me to keep me from falling, the knife would have hit him in the chest.

  “Run,” I whispered, and pitched forward, slamming into him, sending us plummeting over the edge. I was getting really tired of falling.

  Come on, Tybalt, I thought, unable to convince my mouth to do any more heavy lifting. Figure it out.

  His arms closed around me. There was a rustling sound, like a curtain being thrust aside, and instead of falling through the open air, we were suddenly falling through freezing cold and absolute blackness. I smiled despite myself, closing my eyes and relaxing as he slung me up into his arms. We were on the Shadow Roads. We’d be fine.

  There was a jolt as his feet found whatever passed for ground here, and I focused on holding my breath, staying still, and bleeding as little as I could. The last of those wasn’t exactly within my control, but as I felt my wounds ice over and struggle to heal at the same time, I felt reasonably confident I wasn’t going to be leaving a gory trail through the dark for the next Cait Sidhe who came along to follow.

  My lungs burned. I was almost used to that, at this point, and this was just suffocation, not drowning. I let the warmth of Tybalt’s body soothe me, the smell of his magic hanging in my nose like a promise that this wasn’t going to last forever. The darkness could hold sway for a time, but it would have to pass eventually. It always had before.

  As if that had been the incantation to bring us back into the light, the atmosphere shifted around us, cold airlessness becoming ordinary heat. I could see flickers of brightness through my eyelids. I couldn’t open my eyes, since my lashes had frozen together, but that was fine; the warmth of wherever we were now would melt them soon enough.

  “October.” Tybalt sounded distressed. Tybalt usually sounds distressed when I’m wearing more than a certain amount of my own blood. If fae could get gray hair from stress, he would have been a silver tabby by now. “The knife is still in your back, and I’m afraid to leave it there; your body is trying too hard to heal, and may refuse to let it go later. I am so sorry, love, but I have to do this.”

  The ice on my lips cracked as I smiled. “It’s all right,” I said. “I would have asked you to pull it out if you hadn’t volunteered.”

  “The edge, it’s—”

  “Yeah.” I’d seen the spikes before they’d been sheathed in my body—in my spine, which definitely hadn’t been intended for this particular purpose. There was a reason I hadn’t asked him to pull it out before we ran. If he’d taken the time to work it free of my flesh, we might both be dead by now. And with my luck, being dead would have stuck with him and not with me, leaving me alone again. “It’s going to hurt like hell, and you’re probably going to see some pieces of me that you never wanted to. It’s all right. You’re not the one hurting me. Torin is. You’re the one helping me get better.”

  He hesitated before saying, “You’re awake and coherent. Could you remove it yourself?”

  “I don’t have the leverage.” The ice on my lashes was melting. I still didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t want to see the look on Tybalt’s face, which was doubtless unhappy enough to make me reconsider my stance on removing the knife from my own back. All I’d be able to do was hurt myself worse. No: this was the only way.

  “I’ll need to put you down.”

  “Where are we?”

  “I . . . believe . . . this is the local manifestation of the Court of Cats,” said Tybalt. “It’s small, and there’s no scent that would alert me to the presence of a King or Queen, but it’s stable all the same, and I believe we should be safe here, for now.”

  “Great. So get this thing out of me.” There was something wrong with the
knife. It wasn’t just the pain, which was coming in bigger waves now that the ice was melting and leaving my already raw nerves exposed to the air; it was the shape of it, the way it felt tangled with flesh and bone and . . .

  Oh. Oh, yes; that would be a problem. I squeezed my eyes a little tighter shut and added, in a small voice, “Please.” Silently, I added still further, Forgive me.

  There was a long pause, as if Tybalt could hear everything I wasn’t saying. Then, gently, I was lain on my side, stretched out on what I thought might be a pile of canvas sacks. The things that got lost in a floating Duchy would have to be different than the things that got lost on the land. Although maybe the Court of Cats here also had access to shipwrecks, vessels lost at sea and thus technically within their purview? They could drain the rooms they added to their slowly evolving architecture, and the dampness would fade. Or maybe they focused on air-filled rooms, or chambers that had somehow never been opened to the sea. Maybe—

  The feeling of the knife being jerked out of my spine was a pain like nothing I’d ever felt before or wanted to feel again. Pain has flavors, and I’ve become something of an unwitting connoisseur of the many terrible forms that it can take. The dull, aching throb; the pointed sear; the jabbing agony. This was something greater than any of them. This was something so big and terrible that it somehow managed to cross from pain into numbness and back again. I’d intended to hold my breath when the moment came, to keep back what air I could in case the worst happened. The pain was so big it knocked every bit of air out of me, leaving me wrung-out and gasping.

  And then I couldn’t breathe, because nothing below my neck was responding to my commands. Even the pain was gone, cut off so abruptly that it left a great, aching chasm in my awareness. It was like the sensation of having a rotten tooth pulled, only in this case, the tooth was my entire body.

  “Oh sweet Maeve.” Tybalt’s voice was barely more than a horrified whisper. “October, I think I’m holding a piece of your spine.”