The Unkindest Tide

by Seanan McGuire

  Something wet touched my foot. I glanced down. A runnel of water was snaking its way across the perfectly level floor, moving like something with purpose and intent. I danced to the side, almost stepping in another runnel. It was joined by another, and another, until tiny streams were pouring in from all directions, pooling together at the base of the dais.

  They flowed into a small pond, shimmering silver as it accumulated. Then, as if gravity held no relevance at all, the pond flowed up the dais steps, joining with still more runnels that had come down the walls and through the open windows. I glanced to the side. The Luidaeg was smirking, seeming tolerant and . . . amused?

  If she thought this was funny, it was probably nothing to be too alarmed about. Probably. She found some pretty upsetting things funny, but she liked Quentin, and she was very firm on the idea that she’d eventually be the one to kill me. It was going to be okay. It was.

  The water on the dais pulsed once, twice, and finally twisted upward into a column. I realized what was happening just before it started sculpting itself into the vague outline of a woman, naked and statuesque and gorgeous, from her broad hips and swelling bosom to the sturdy pillars of her thighs. The water surged upward and then burst, cascading down over the form of Captain Pete—of Amphitrite—in a final mighty wave.

  Because this wasn’t the pirate queen, no, not at all; this was no figure from a storybook or play. This was one of the Firstborn, standing revealed with no illusions, no constraints. Her dress, such as it was, was a sheet of dark and living water, wrapped around her like a lover and slithering as sinuously as an eel, giving us glimpses of scaled, shark-belly skin, enough to tempt, enough to terrify. Her hair was braided with black pearls and small white beads that I suspected were bone, and her throat was exposed, revealing the gills I’d suspected she hid behind her hair.

  There was a soft thudding sound as two of Torin’s former guards lost consciousness and tumbled to the floor. Amphitrite smirked and settled in her chair. At least the way she moved hadn’t changed. She still swaggered, still sauntered, still walked through the world like it owed her several favors and she had come to collect. What she wasn’t doing anymore was making any effort whatsoever to dull down the sheer volume of her presence. She had weight in the world. The world was damn well going to acknowledge it.

  “Each of you is a guest in my home, a passenger on my ship, sailing on a starless sea,” she said. Her voice was low, even intimate, but it spread to fill every corner of the room, like ink curling through clear water. Her legs shimmered beneath their watery gown, feet unfurling into fins as her lower body transformed into sinuous twinned tails. “Some of you, however, have been rather impolite. Not behavior befitting a guest.”

  Her gaze swung to Torin, making it clear to whom she was referring. He cringed but didn’t step away. I would have been impressed by that, if he hadn’t been standing in the middle of a field of heavily armed guards. Trying to run would have been a good way to wind up with a perforated kidney.

  “Care to explain?” she asked, leaning forward, resting her elbows on the gentle curves of sinew and scale that had been her knees. “I like it when my hospitality is respected. It makes me feel respected.”

  “I . . . I . . .” stammered Torin.

  “Yes, you,” she agreed. She looked toward Patrick, and then back to Torin. “Unless a closer member of your family than myself wishes to speak for you, you’ll do all your speaking on your own behalf.”

  “People think of my wife as the cruel one, because she wears her edges on the outside,” said Patrick. “I’m supposed to be the gentling influence on her anger. I’m not feeling very gentle right now. Maybe Dianda would speak for her brother, but I have nothing to say for my brother-in-law. He’s the man who tried to break my family. Let him drown.”

  “Hmm,” said Amphitrite, attention not wavering. “You haven’t been making many fans here, have you, great-great-grandson? Now’s the time when you tell me why you did what you did, and what you were hoping to accomplish. Maybe you’ll woo me with your words. Maybe I’ll understand why you chose to smash your ship against these shores.”

  “The sea witch is moving against you,” blurted Torin.

  Amphitrite’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” She turned to the Luidaeg. “Really?”

  “If I am, I’m not aware of it,” said the Luidaeg. “I got out of the backstabbing and betrayals business when I lost the ability to lie. It’s hard to plot against people when they know you’ll tell them the truth if they just ask.”

  “Hmm.” Amphitrite settled in her seat, eyes once more fixed on Torin. “How, then, is the sea witch moving against me? Be specific. I don’t have all night.”

  “She’s planning to restore the Roane.” There was an air of triumph in his voice, like he’d just dropped the mother of all bombshells on us.

  “And?” asked Amphitrite. “I knew that. I told her she could use my place as neutral ground. How is she moving against me when she asked me before coming?”

  “They died for a reason,” spat Torin.

  The Luidaeg was suddenly very still.

  “I’d be careful if I were you,” said Amphitrite. “The sea witch doesn’t like it when people imply that her children didn’t deserve to live. Why would you say such a thing?”

  “Because it’s true! Lady . . .” Torin dropped abruptly to his knees. It was a bold move for a man whose hands were literally tied. He wouldn’t be able to get back up without assistance. “The Roane spread lies across the water and attracted the eyes of the land. Remember how it was in the days when they swam freely. The land Courts felt entitled to the gifts of prophecy. They sailed into your waters, they attacked our fiefdoms, and for what? For a glimpse of a future that could yet be changed? The Roane died to grant peace to the rest of us. Allow them to stay gone. Allow the waters to stay safe.”

  “Who told you this?” asked Amphitrite.

  Torin ducked his head. “She bid me not to say.”

  The Luidaeg stepped forward, stillness forgotten. “Did she have hair like the deeps during a storm, and skin like sun-bleached bone? Coral lips and seafoam eyes?” When Torin didn’t answer, only shivered, she spat and turned her face toward Amphitrite. “I should have killed her when I had the chance. My own death would have been worth it.”

  “Eira will have her reckoning, one day,” said Amphitrite. “Here, today, the reckoning belongs to Dianda Lorden, and to Isla Chase.”

  “Please, don’t say her name,” said Torin.

  “Why? Because you killed her? Poor boy. There’s a great deal more drowning in your future.” Amphitrite leaned back in her chair as she slowly, deliberately tilted her head to the side. Her hair was a black waterfall across her silvery shoulders; her eyes were unreadable.

  “I remember,” she said, voice soft. “I remember the day my sister the sea witch brought her firstborn child to our father, so he could see the boy. I remember the way my father, Oberon himself, raised that child up and called him ‘grandson.’ I remember how he smiled to see the waters so blessed. I remember many things, Torin, descendant and disgrace, who would see his own sister bleed for the crime of falling in love with a man who I have never found to be anything other than perfectly appropriate. I remember how the storms raged when the Roane died, until it seemed as if the very oceans wept. I remember blood in the water, blood enough to float an armada, and I remember that the killings didn’t happen out of any altruistic urge to make Faerie a safer place. They happened because another of my sisters was cruel as a tsunami and shallow as a cove, and she couldn’t bear to see any apart from herself happy.”

  She crossed her scaled tails at what should have been her ankles, eyes fixed on the now quailing Torin.

  “If I were my sister, if I had transformations in my fingers and curses in my palms, I would cast you out,” she hissed. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but still it carried to every corne
r of the room. “I would say the man you refuse to call brother is more Merrow than you could ever hope to be; that if you yearn to kneel at my eldest sister’s feet so badly, you should have that dubious honor. I’d strip my contributions from your blood and bones and give them to him, because I would much rather have him for a descendant. Let you go to bleed and break and beg a place upon the land.”

  Torin paled, until it looked like he might lose consciousness from the lack of blood in his face. For the first time, I thought kneeling might have been the right move. He couldn’t fall down if he wasn’t on his feet.

  “Sadly, and happily, I’m not my sister,” said Amphitrite. “I don’t have knots in my hands; I can’t tangle and tie you into something you’re not intended to be. But I can do these two things, Torin of Bluefish, and you had best heed them, or I’ll see you gone and gutted. I may not be able to cast you from my bloodline, more’s the pity. I can cast you from my sight. You shall find no favor from me. You can keep your demesne, for as long as you’re allowed, but I will not find in your favor if anyone does you harm, or if you bring complaints to lay at my feet. You are no descendant of mine.”

  “Lady,” said Torin, in a strangled tone.

  “And as to the other . . . you claimed the authority to arrest your sister, Duchess Dianda Lorden of Saltmist, on claims of treason, on the accusation that she had brought a king-breaker into these waters, where never such a thing should stand. But you lack that authority, because the Duchess Lorden committed no treason. The closest she has ever come is in her marriage to a Daoine Sidhe, which she did with the full blessing of Queen Palatyne and King Windermere, unifying land and sea. So here is the second part of your punishment. You have to watch what follows.”

  Amphitrite turned to face Patrick, smiling like the star that leads lost sailors home from sea. “Come to me, Patrick Lorden, ducal consort of Saltmist, and have no fear.”

  Patrick stepped forward. Amphitrite snapped her fingers. Another rush of impossible water flowed into the room, forming a column next to her dais before it shattered, revealing Dianda. She wore no chains; her dress was kelp and shining scale, and somehow managed to be beautiful, despite seeming like something that should have washed up with the low tide.

  Dianda gasped, running hands over her hips and torso, like she was reassuring herself they were still there. Then she saw Patrick, and without waiting for leave from her Firstborn, she flung herself into her husband’s arms. He let out a shuddering breath that bordered on a sob and buried his face against her shoulder, holding her like a drowning man holds a rope.

  “I’d cast him out for you, if he weren’t off-limits to me,” said the Luidaeg genially, seemingly immune to the touching scene unfolding in front of her. “I can tell Toby I’d like to see how he looks with broken kneecaps, if you want. There are ways to get around anything, if you try hard enough.”

  “A Merrow without the name won’t hold their fiefdom long,” said Amphitrite, giving the Luidaeg a tolerant smile. “He’ll be outcast and alone before the seasons turn, swimming the seas with neither shelter nor respite. The only post open to him will be ambassador to the land, where they neither know nor care about the specifications of our politics. It’s not exile. Exile would be too kind. It’s a room with only one door, and that door leads to voluntary isolation.” She turned the same smile on Torin. It had edges now; it had teeth. “He’ll have to be the traitor he accuses his sister of being if he wants to survive. It seems a fitting punishment for someone who’d betray his family.”

  “Please,” gasped Torin. “Lady, please.” He swiveled, turning his entire upper body at once. “Dianda, I beg you, tell her this is too much. Please.”

  “Excuse me?” Dianda let go of Patrick, enough to lean back and look blankly at her brother for a long moment. “You’d ask me for forgiveness? You, who swam away and never once looked back until it seemed convenient to you, who would have happily seen my husband drowned, my sons broken for the crime of being born of love, want me to say the Lady is being too harsh? I’d have your spine for jewelry if it wouldn’t make her angry. I’d make flutes from your bones and play them with my boys every time someone thought it would be a good idea to threaten us. She’s not condemning you. She’s sparing you, from me. You should thank her for her mercy, not look to me to save you from it.”

  “The Law forbids me from killing you, and far be it from me to threaten a man in front of his own Firstborn, but if my wife wanted to risk Amphitrite’s fury for the sake of spilling your blood in the tide, I wouldn’t tell her to stop,” said Patrick mildly.

  Amphitrite smiled again, more broadly this time. “You married well, little mermaid. If I’ve never told you that before, consider my blessing given now.”

  Dianda paled and said nothing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her speechless before.

  Amphitrite glanced to the Luidaeg. “He killed one of yours, sister. Do you demand any recompense?”

  “I have her skin,” she said. “Without demanding his life, I’m not sure what else I could ask for.”

  “And I won’t kill him for you,” said Amphitrite. There was genuine regret in her tone. “I’d cast him out if I could, but I refuse to go against our father’s wishes so completely.”

  “I know,” said the Luidaeg. “Antigone of Albany asks nothing more. Justice hasn’t been done, but sometimes justice is an impossible ideal. I’m as close to satisfied as is possible for me to be.”

  “Then the matter is closed,” said Amphitrite. She swung her attention back to the guards who stood, silent, behind the kneeling, now-sobbing Torin. “Take him away. Hold him until the Convocation is done and all who might still be . . . annoyed . . . at his recent actions have left these waters. I’d prefer not to taunt the sharks.”

  The guards hauled Torin back to his feet and dragged him away. Amphitrite turned back to the rest of us, looking thoughtfully across the group before settling on the Luidaeg.

  “You are my sister and I love you,” she said.

  “I sense a ‘but’ coming,” said the Luidaeg.

  “This is supposed to be neutral territory,” said Amphitrite. “It’s meant to be a place where all the children of the sea can come together without fear, belonging to none of the Three before the other two, held by no authority but my own. Do you understand why I might not be overly pleased about you deciding to give your descendants carte blanche to assault each other?”

  “It was necessary,” said the Luidaeg.

  “You and I have very different definitions of ‘necessity,’” said Amphitrite. She sighed and was Captain Pete again, glamorous and terrifying and ordinary and small enough to fit in her chair without seeming to fill the entire room. She was built to scale with the rest of us. It was comforting, and oddly unnerving at the same time. The way the Firstborn could diminish themselves on command would never fail to unsettle me.

  “You’re not welcome here for the next seven years,” said Pete. “Once you set sail, that’s it: no visits, no Convocations, no nothing. It’s the least punishment I can justify for breaking my rules.”

  “Rules matter,” said the Luidaeg. She shrugged. “I can’t say I’m thrilled to be exiled, but I also can’t say it’s not fair of you. Once I go, I won’t turn back.”

  “Excuse me,” said Quentin, and only flinched a little as Pete’s attention fixed on him. “Are we all exiled, or only the Luidaeg?”

  “Why?” asked Pete. “Were you thinking you want to become a regular visitor to my sandless shores?”

  “No,” he said. “I just like to know what’s going on. And, you know. Um. Prince Windermere was looking for someone, and I don’t think he’s found her yet.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I haven’t exactly provided him with a stable knightly environment. It’s left him a little anxious about certain things.”

  Pete, thankfully, looked amused. “I see. No, young squire, the rest of you aren�
��t exiled. Only my sister, who needs to grant me seven years of peace before she comes and disrupts everything again.”

  Seven years was nothing to the Firstborn. They weren’t just immortal, they were centuries old, measuring their lives in the slow rise and fall of nations, religions, continents. This was more of a show punishment than anything else. I still thought the Luidaeg looked sad as she turned away from her sister, like she hated to have even this one narrow door on her remaining family closed, for however short a time.

  “I appreciate the clarification,” said Quentin, and offered a shallow bow.

  “Finish your business soon, Annie,” said Pete. “The tide’s about to turn.”

  The Luidaeg nodded. I swallowed, hard. What I was going to do next . . .

  Well. No one ever said that heroism would be easy. If it were, everyone would have done it.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE DOOR TO THE Luidaeg’s temporary apartment closed with a soft click, quiet as a sigh. Poppy was sitting on the couch, dreamily twisting a length of ribbon through her fingers. She looked up, blinked, and frowned at the sight of us.

  “Is there a wrongness here?” she asked.

  “Not sure,” said the Luidaeg, cheerfully enough, although I suspected her overly bright tone was partially a reaction to the possibility that wrongness might be coming. She’d looked that way since I’d taken her elbow on the way out of Pete’s receiving room and asked if we could speak in private.

  I guess when someone’s been alive for as long as the Luidaeg, they get a sense for when things aren’t entirely going their way. Even when they’re powerful enough that things go their way more frequently than not.