The Unkindest Tide

by Seanan McGuire

  The waves were high and the wind was good, and there were still Selkies in the world, for at least a little longer, and there were Roane in the waves again. The Luidaeg was laughing, and finally, the thin, jagged edge of sorrow that had always lingered beneath the sound was gone.

  Let that be enough. For here, for now, until tomorrow, let that be enough.

  Read on for a brand-new novella by Seanan McGuire:

  HOPE IS SWIFT

  True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings:

  Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

  —William Shakespeare, Richard III

  ONE

  May 1, 2014

  THE SHADOWS RIPPLED and separated as a skinny Cait Sidhe a few years younger than me stepped out of them. They were wearing human street clothes—blue jeans and a Pokémon T-shirt—and the glitter of a human disguise sparkled around them. The spell wasn’t very well-cast, and their hair was still gray streaked with white. Not a common color for a mortal teen.

  This is why we have hair dye. Just saying.

  “Well, Cal?” My tone was harsher than I meant it to be. I sounded pissed, which wasn’t great if I wanted them to tell me what I needed to know. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down, and asked, “Are they gone?”

  “They set sail for the Duchy of Ships an hour ago.” Cal let their human disguise wisp away, leaving the faint scent of pine hanging in the air.

  October would have sniffed once before rattling off a list of scents, like some sort of magic sommelier. Honestly, she’d be super annoying if I didn’t like her so much. She’s pretty annoying anyway. “Pine” was as much as I could manage, and even that was halfway guessing.

  Without their illusions, Cal’s hair was still gray streaked with white. Their skin was too pale, like they’d been dusted with chalk, except for the darker bands that slashed across in a pattern that seemed random on a human but would have made perfect sense on a cat. Their eyes were a bright yellow-green, and their ears and teeth were equally pointed. They grinned, clearly pleased and just as clearly waiting.

  “You did well, Cal,” I said, trying to emulate Uncle Tybalt’s imperious tone.

  They visibly preened. Cal has been trying to get close to me since we were kits. They decided a long time ago that we were going to be friends, and I was going to take them into my confidences. They’ve never quite understood that the reason we can’t be friends is because I’m going to be in charge.

  Uncle Tybalt doesn’t have friends within the Court. He has subjects, some more useful than others, but not friends. Friends make things complicated. Friends put themselves in danger without considering the consequences. I can’t have friends any more than he can. Not within the Court. Outside the Court, I have Helen, and Quentin, and Chelsea, and even Dean. Inside the Court, I have . . .

  Cal. Who never wanted anything more than they wanted to please me, and who couldn’t seem to understand that they were trying too hard.

  I sighed. “But if they left an hour ago, why are you telling me this now? ‘Go, follow them, tell me when they leave’ is a pretty easy job. Why did it take you so long?”

  Their satisfaction faded. I would have felt bad about that before I’d been required to take up my duties more devoutly, back when I’d been free to run around the city as I pleased, without anyone telling me to stop. Cal should have been able to get what they wanted. We should have been making mischief together, not held apart by the necessary formalities of my rank.

  As October is so fond of reminding me, Faerie has never once, in all its long and varied history, been fair.

  “You didn’t say to come straight back,” they said, watching me with suddenly wary eyes. “I watched them go, and then I went down to the Castro to pick some pockets. Then I bought dinner at Orphan Andy’s. They’re open all night and they make the best strawberry milkshakes. Then I checked the dock to be sure they were still gone, and so I could follow the trails of the people who’d come and left again without getting on the boat.”

  “Were there many?” I asked, managing to swallow my second question, which would have been less than helpful. “Why didn’t you bring me a milkshake?” is not an inquiry befitting a Prince of Cats.

  “Lots of humans after the fog they used to hide themselves wafted away; mostly homeless, a few drunk, two who smelled like law enforcement. A few changelings I figure wandered through the fog but didn’t know what it was there to hide. The Troll who drives the cab, and the thin-blood who spends time with your October.”

  A warm feeling suffused my chest when they called her “my October.” She’ll never be to me what she is to my uncle, and I’m glad: I don’t have a thing for self-destructive changeling women four times my age, especially not when they’re engaged to someone who could kick my butt around the Kingdom without breaking a sweat. But she’ll never be to Uncle Tybalt what she is to me. Mentor, teacher . . . knight. I’m her squire as much as Quentin is, even if we can’t make it official. Cait Sidhe aren’t knighted by the Divided Courts. It isn’t done.

  But maybe it could have been, for me. If Uncle Tybalt hadn’t fallen quite so in love with her, quite so quickly, we might have been able to make my squiring official before he agreed to give up his throne. She could have been my knight in name as well as deed. I could have been the first of our kind to kneel and pledge myself to the root and the branch, the rose and the thorn. I could have shown those arrogant fools who call the Cait Sidhe honorless beasts that we’ve always been as good as they are.

  Guess somebody else is going to have to be the first. I should be happy with what I have—I have so much more than most of my kind can even dream of—but it’s the nature of cats to want more than we can have. If we were content to be content, we’d be little better than dogs, and what’s the use in that?

  “The thin-blood’s name is Stacy,” I said, keeping the pleasure from my voice. “Her oldest daughter is chatelaine to the Queen in the Mists, and her middle child is as good as apprenticed to the sea witch. Treat her with respect, or the allies of her children might move against us.”

  Cal rolled a shoulder, clearly unconcerned by my vague threats. “I’ve done as you’ve asked, my Prince. Is there anything else?”

  This was where I was supposed to praise them for doing a good job. All I could manage was a vague wave of my hand, dismissing them. Cal gave me an amused look, all too aware of my mood, and vanished into the shadows, leaving me alone. Again.

  Alone. It’s the lot of Princes to be alone. The lot of Kings is much the same, if not worse, since the whole Court rests on their shoulders. They’re going to make me a King sooner than I ever thought they would. I’m going to be fenced in for the rest of my life. I’ll never be a wild thing again, if I was ever a wild thing in the first place.

  My mother—may she rest peacefully among the night-haunts—named me Rajiv in honor of her father, a man I never knew. My father, may he never rest peacefully, recognized the power in me the first time he held me, a mewling infant with my eyes stuck shut and my ears plastered against my head. My mother’s magic was never strong enough to let her transform. She lived, loved, and left us, all in her feline form, and so I’d been born the same way, growing through the early stages of infancy as fast as any kitten.

  Sometimes I liked to tease Quentin about how, even though we were technically the same age, I was actually older than he is since I was walking and talking by the time I was four months old, and he was still a helpless burden on his family. He usually responded by hitting me. That was how I knew we were friends.

  My father saw what I could be, what I would be, and set out to benefit from it. He changed my name, shortened it to “Raj,” which means “king,” and contacted every Court of Cats in North America that didn’t already have an heir. I could have gone anywhere—could even have grown up in Quentin’s backyard, detesting the secretive Crown Prince of the Westland
s—but I ended up here, in San Francisco, in the Court of Dreaming Cats.

  Father used to say Uncle Tybalt had offered the best arrangement of any continental monarch, and that he had no interest in traveling abroad. I think, considering my childhood, that it was more a matter of Uncle Tybalt being willing to tolerate my father’s presence. Most Kings of Cats wouldn’t do it; they’d view the presence of another adult male in their new heir’s life as a threat to their sovereignty. After all, had Father killed my uncle after I was named and known as heir, he could have claimed the throne as my regent—the closest he could have come to being a King in his own right.

  He tried. After Mother died, when Uncle Tybalt became too openly enamored of October, finally admitting what the rest of us had known for ages, my father attempted to stage a coup. He failed, and I guess I was never as good a son to him as I’d always wanted to be, because I didn’t mourn for him. Not when he died, and not now.

  I mourn my mother. I will for years yet, if I ever stop. But my father got what he deserved, and when he’s forgotten, I won’t be sorry.

  I slid from my perch—a pile of old orange crates with peeling paint—and stalked deeper into the court. If I had a tail when I walked on two legs, it would have been lashing. Uncle Tybalt says it’s improper for a Prince to look more bestial than necessary. Shade—the Queen of Cats in Berkeley—agrees, so I guess he’s right. Again. It’s annoying how often he’s right about things. Just once I’d like to be the one with the correct answer, while he’s left standing confused on the sidelines.

  Shame followed the thought; I hunched my shoulders and walked faster. He’d be standing on the sidelines of the Court of Cats soon enough, when Ginevra judged me ready and told him to come back so I could challenge him. Or when he came back for his throne, let the Court see that his heart wasn’t in it anymore, and I challenged him. Every path ended with claws bared and blood on the floor. Every future led to me sitting on his throne, his crown on my head, his subjects bowing down before me and calling me their King.

  I don’t know what else they’ll call me. Princes and Princesses take new names when they claim their rightful places, to make it perfectly clear that we aren’t the children we used to be, that we have to be respected and obeyed even by the people who used to wipe our noses. I don’t know what they’ll call my uncle, either. “Tybalt” is his King-name, and he’ll have to set it aside when he forsakes the crown.

  All these changes and choices gave me a headache. I stalked on, down a hallway lined with patches of plywood and through a room filled with bolts of fabric. Some of them looked like they were decades old. I paused to note the room’s location. Helen had a fondness for vintage clothing, and her sewing machine saw more use than anything else she owned. She might appreciate a few bolts of fabric, call me her thoughtful boy and reward me with kisses that tasted like mint tea and sugar cookies. I might not be as good at identifying magic by scent as October, but I could recognize the taste of it on my tongue.

  Helen’s kisses tasted like coming home.

  That was a problem. I mean, it wasn’t like I was planning to propose or anything—we’d been dating for three years, and we’d only recently reached the stage where she let me touch her breasts sometimes, below the shirt but above the bra. They were very soft. I liked them. I didn’t want to give them up, or stop dreaming about the day when she agreed that maybe the bra could go.

  And that was the shallowest, most hedonistic way of considering my relationship. I liked her. I liked that she had no respect for my position, not because she thought the Court of Cats didn’t count—she respected it as much as she respects any other form of nobility—but because she felt it was time for Faerie to set aside kings and queens and move into a more modern, more enlightened era. She would abolish all monarchies if she could, bringing about free elections across the Summerlands.

  She was not going to like it when I told her we had to break up because I was going to be King. It wouldn’t matter that the rules were the same for Princesses as they were for Princes; she’d call it patriarchal bullshit, and probably several worse things, and then she’d cry, or throw things, or tell me never to speak to her again. That last was my deepest fear. She was my friend. I didn’t want her to stop being my friend just because we were never going to be lovers.

  When I married, if I married, I’d have to marry another Cait Sidhe, to avoid the conflict of interest that was costing my uncle his throne. Kings of Cats rarely breed true; eventually, I’d have to do as my uncle once did, and spread the word that I was ready to adopt an heir. The cycles repeat. The cycles always, endlessly repeat.

  The last hall ended in a chasm. I stepped lightly over the edge, landing in a pit filled with carpet remnants. Wading to the edge, I pulled myself free and bowed.

  “Lady Ginevra.”

  “Prince.” My uncle’s regent smiled at me, tolerant and amused. “You sure know how to make an entrance.”

  I straightened, looking down the length of my nose at her, and said nothing.

  Ginevra’s father, Jolgeir, has been King of the Court of Whispering Cats in Silences for more than a hundred years. When he fell in love, it was with a human woman. Somehow, that wasn’t considered a conflict of interest, maybe because she didn’t come home covered in blood as often as October does. Together, they had three daughters. Three changeling daughters.

  And then October came along and offered Jolgeir’s daughters a chance so many changelings never got. She could give them the Choice for real, not just as a formality. She could bring them fully into Faerie, if that was what they wanted, or turn them fully mortal. All three of them had chosen Faerie. The eldest and youngest are Cait Sidhe now, learning their new place in the structure of their father’s Court, elevated and empowered. The middle daughter . . .

  Ginevra is a Princess of Cats, her father’s heir, and one day, she’ll be Queen.

  Her hair was a delicate shade of cream-white, trending to a richer orange at the tips; her eyes were very blue. She was attractive enough, in an irritating sort of way that had enchanted half the occupants of the Court. I think they’re infatuated with novelty. Her powers were still new to her—I was teaching her as much as she was supervising me—and her grasp on her bipedal form was sometimes questionable. As now, when two fully-formed cat’s ears poked up through her hair.

  None of our shared subjects were in attendance. I allowed myself a smirk.

  “Far be it from me to question a lady’s choices, especially a lady as refined as your lovely self, but it’s the custom to keep our ears to more refined dimensions here in the Mists.” I tapped the point of my own ear in illustration. “Does my lady intend to set a new fashion trend? Should I be modifying my own default forms?”

  Ginevra reached up with both hands, grimacing as her fingers found the furry slopes of her ears. “Oh, dammit,” she said. “I thought I got it right this time. Raj, can you . . . ?” She let go of her ears and gestured helplessly.

  Sometimes the fact that she was in San Francisco to supervise me felt like some vast practical joke on the part of the universe. But unless I wanted to challenge my uncle for his throne immediately, which I didn’t, I needed a regent. Ginevra was unquestionably powerful. It radiated off her, crackling in the air like electricity before a thunderstorm. She’d learn to mask it eventually, concealing her potential behind polite illusions, but until then, she was like a signal flare on a dark night. No one was going to challenge her. Not when she could vaporize them for trying.

  Sadly, this didn’t make her good at the delicate things, and that’s where I’ve always excelled. I stepped forward, offering her my hands. She took them gratefully, the points of her claws pressing against my palms.

  “Close your eyes,” I instructed, waiting for her to obey before I did the same. I breathed out, and when I breathed in again, I reached for her magic, tangling it with my own.

  I couldn’t have done it wi
thout her consent. She was too strong for that: if she’d decided to fight me, we could have battled each other to a standstill, all without moving or letting go. My magic brushed hers, and hers surged forward, until they were a braided chain suspended between us, her power and mine in perfect balance.

  It was foolish of her to trust me this much. It would have been even more foolish of me to abuse that trust. I slid my awareness forward, finding the space where she kept her image of herself. It was still malleable. She’d known how to be a changeling for her entire life, unable to control how much of the cat and how much of the woman she wore. I could see the shadow of her former self in the open spaces around the image she was crafting now: she’d been one of the unfortunate changelings born with a fully proportional tail, as well as the fluffy ears that currently graced her head. No adornments befitting a Queen, those.

  But then, why not? Why do we feel the need to style ourselves after the Daoine Sidhe, who will never see us as their equals, no matter how carefully we imitate them? We should be free to choose our own destinies, and the forms we wear as we approach them.

  “Relax,” I said, and pulled on her magic, guiding it away from who she’d been and into the space opened by who she was trying to become. My magic flared hot in my hands. I let go and stepped back, opening my eyes.

  Her ears were shaped more like mine now, pointed and proud, but not animal. Her teeth were smaller. Her eyes were no less luminous, and her coloring was no less outside the human norm. She would have been an ornament in any Court of the world, pretty and perfect, suited to any royal table. A pang of melancholy regret mingled with my regard. She looked lovelier to me now because she looked less like a Cait Sidhe.

  How much of our potential is spent on the endless, aching need to hide?