One Salt Sea od-5

by Seanan McGuire

  I needed to focus. I pinched the skin between my left thumb and forefinger until it turned white and I had to bite my lip to keep from exclaiming at the pain. It was enough to snap me out of my growing despondence. According to the night-haunts, the children were probably being held in an underground room with stone walls, one where the air smelled like redwoods, old earth, and spices. None of those things were as much of a lead as I wanted them to be. Redwoods aren’t as common in the Bay Area as they used to be—the humans cut down most of the old forests when they moved in—but there are still enough of them around that I couldn’t go: “A-ha, they must be in this one specific place.” If they were in a shallowing, they wouldn’t need to worry about earthquakes, which meant the room could have been dug almost anywhere, even right above an earthquake fault. As for the spices . . .

  I sat upright, eyes widening. I was still sitting that way, frozen, when Marcia walked over and set a mug in front of me. “Here,” she said. “Coffee, two sugars, no cream. I’ll have your sandwich in a few minutes.”

  I reached for the cup without thinking about it, raised it to my lips, and took a large gulp. The near-boiling coffee hit the back of my throat. I immediately started coughing.

  Marcia looked alarmed. “Toby? Are you okay?”

  No. “Yeah, I’m fine. The coffee’s just a little hot.” I put the cup down gingerly. “I’ll let that sit for a minute. Marcia, have you ever met a man named Dugan Harrow? He serves in the Queen’s Court.”

  “Um . . . he’s Daoine Sidhe, right? Blue hair, sort of snooty?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I’ve met him a few times.” She didn’t try to hide her disdain. “He came around the Tea Gardens once.”

  That was news to me. “Really? What for?”

  “He was trying to convince Lily to swear to the Queen of the Mists. He promised her anything she wanted, if she would just be the one to crack open the door keeping the Queen out of Golden Gate Park.”

  “I hope Lily told him to shove it up his ass.”

  “Not in those words, exactly, but that was the sentiment.” Marcia walked back to the counter, picking up my sandwich. “I don’t think he even realized I was there. He never looked at me.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” As a quarter-blood, Marcia was too close to human to really be protected by the rules of fae etiquette. If Dugan wanted to ignore her, no one was going to get angry at him for it. No one but Marcia, anyway, and maybe Lily, when she was alive. “Did he use any magic in your presence?”

  “Yeah.” Marcia walked back over, handing me the plate with my sandwich. The strawberry juice leaking around the edges looked uncomfortably like blood. “He removed his human illusion as a courtesy when he came into the knowe. He had to put it back on before he could leave.”

  “Do you remember what his magic smelled like?”

  Her cheeks reddened. “You know I’m not very sensitive to that sort of thing.”

  “I know. I just want to know what his magic smelled like to you.” I’m good with magical signatures, but I’d only been around once or twice when Dugan was actually casting spells. I wanted outside confirmation.

  “It was . . . I don’t know. Spicy, I guess. Like cinnamon.”

  “Cinnamon and cardamom?” I asked.

  Marcia blinked, once, before she smiled brightly. “That’s exactly it! Cinnamon and cardamom. He smelled like Finnish sweet bread.”

  “Uh, I guess so. I’ve never smelled Finnish bread. What he does smell like, definitely, is spices.” I took a bite of strawberry-and-chicken sandwich—a surprisingly tasty combination, despite the fact that the bread still looked like it was bleeding—and swallowed before glancing to the door. “Where are they?”

  “Knowing May? Possibly at the bottom of the Pacific by now. You have to give them time to get here.”

  “Time is something we don’t have enough of at this point.” Rayseline wasn’t working alone. Rayseline couldn’t be working alone, because she didn’t have the skill for it—and someone hit Margie from behind. I put my sandwich down, pulling out the phone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Walther.” I raised the phone to my ear, and waited.

  I didn’t have to wait for long. “Professor Davies speaking. How can I help you?”

  “Hey, Walther. You alone?”

  “Toby? What’s going on?” He sounded surprised and tired. I felt a small pang of guilt. I wasn’t just running myself ragged—I was doing the same thing to my allies.

  I’d apologize later. When we weren’t dead. “Have you had a chance to look at that needle I gave you yet?”

  “Not in any detail. I’ve been trying to figure out the base for that sleeping potion you found. I think I’m almost—”

  “Was it brewed by a Daoine Sidhe?”

  He paused. Then, slowly, he said, “It could be. What makes you ask?”

  “I don’t want to say until I’m sure. Can you check?”

  “Normally, I’d say no—if it were one of the standard apprentice recipes, it could have been anyone with a little skill for alchemy. But it’s unusual enough that I may be able to deduce the nature of the brewer from the compounds that were used. How soon do you need to know?”

  “As soon as possible. It’s important.”

  “ ‘Life and death’ important, or ‘it would be nice’ important?”

  Dugan had access to all the Queen’s resources. To her dungeons, her guardsmen, anything he could take control of while her back was turned. “Life and death,” I said, without hesitation. “I think I know who Rayseline is working with. But I have to be sure.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Walther said. “Call if you need me.”

  “Don’t worry. I will.” I closed the phone, sliding it back into my pocket before meeting Marcia’s wide-eyed stare. “What?”

  “You think Dugan is working with Rayseline?” she asked.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t need to.” She shook her head, looking profoundly uncomfortable. “If he is . . . Toby, he’s got a lot of pull at Court.”

  “Yeah, he does, as long as he stays on the Queen’s good side. How happy do you think she’s going to be when I tell her he’s been trying to instigate a war she can’t possibly win?” The “can’t possibly win” part was really the important thing. I was pretty sure the Queen of the Mists would be more than happy to get involved with a war if she thought she’d be leading the winning side.

  “Not very,” admitted Marcia.

  “Exactly my thought. All I have to do is prove that he’s the one who’s been providing Raysel with magical support. She can take things from there.”

  “So why not tell her now?”

  “Because if I’m right, and he’s behind all this, he could lead her to the children. I don’t want that to happen.” I shook my head, reaching for the coffee. “I’m supposed to stop this war, not give the Queen a bargaining chip she can use to force Saltmist to surrender. I don’t want anyone to surrender. I just want this whole thing to be over.”

  “You and me both,” said May. I turned to see her standing in the kitchen doorway. Quentin was behind her, looking a little green around the edges, like he’d just taken the worst roller coaster ride of his life. “Your car’s out front. You should probably get your brakes checked.”

  “The brakes would be fine if you ever drove under seventy,” muttered Quentin.

  “What was that?” asked May.

  “Nothing,” he said quickly, and pushed past her into the kitchen, staggering over to collapse on the bench next to me.

  I gave him a comforting pat on the back with my free hand, asking, “Where are Jazz and Raj?”

  “Jazz had to go to work, and Raj decided to take the shadows,” said May. “He didn’t want to ride with me for some reason.”

  “Lucky jerk,” said Quentin.

  “I’m not that bad of a driver,” said May. She lobbed my keys to me, underhand.

 
I caught them and stood. “Yes, you are. But that’s okay, because you won’t have to drive again any time soon. Call Danny when you want to go home. He can come and pick you up.” I glanced toward Quentin. “You want to come with me?”

  “Yes,” he said fervently, scrambling to his feet. “Please.”

  “No,” said May, just as fervently. I raised an eyebrow. She glared. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what happened. Where’s Gillian? Is she here? Is she . . .” She stopped, no more capable of finishing her sentence than I would have been.

  “I don’t know where she is, but I know who has her,” I said. “Raysel took her. Just went right into the house, and took her. I have to get her back.”

  “So what, you’re going to drive all over the city?”

  “Not quite. There was a Selkie named Margie. Raysel took her captive down at the docks. I’m hoping there might still be a blood trail for me to follow.” And while I was down there, I could pay Bucer a visit—there was no way he’d skipped town already. Maybe he’d be able to tell me about a stone room in a shallowing where redwood trees grew. He might not want to tell me, but I can be very convincing, when I have to be.

  “Was a Selkie?” asked May, slowly.

  “She’s dead. Raysel killed her. It was an accident.”

  “The Law doesn’t care about accidents,” said Quentin.

  May, on the other hand, was staring at me with a new type of fear in her wide gray eyes. “If you haven’t already found the blood trail, how do you know about the Selkie?”

  “I called the night-haunts.”

  She stiffened. Only a bit. I probably wouldn’t have noticed, if I didn’t know her so well. “What did they say?”

  “That Gillian isn’t with them. Neither are the Lorden boys. There’s still time, but that doesn’t mean that we should be wasting it.”

  “That’s a relief,” said May.

  “Yeah. It is.”

  May was trying to keep her expression steady. It wasn’t working. She’s at a disadvantage when it comes to hiding her emotions from me—I grew up with her face, after all, and I know it better than I currently know my own. Her face held an odd mixture of fear and resignation, like she expected me to start yelling at any second. That look hadn’t been there before I told her I was meeting with the night-haunts.

  Her apprehension put some of the things they’d said to me into a new context, one that almost made sense. Maybe we’d talk about it later, and maybe we wouldn’t. It was only going to matter if we made it through alive.

  “We—” I began . . . and stopped as Raj came running into the room. He wasn’t wearing a human disguise, and his pupils were thin slits against the glass-green of his eyes, broadcasting his fear.

  “Raj?” I took a step forward, hand instinctively moving to my knife. “What’s wrong?”

  “There are people coming up the beach!” he said, stumbling to a halt a few feet in front of me. “I came out of the shadows down near the cliff, where nobody would see, and they were there, coming out of the water! They’re on their way here.”

  “Undersea?” I asked.

  Raj blinked, briefly looking at me like I was an idiot. I guess asking if they were from the Undersea when he’d seen them coming out of the water qualified me. “Yeah,” he said. “And they have Connor with them. He doesn’t look happy.”

  “Well, then, he can join the club.” I grabbed my coffee off the table, downing its contents in one long, fortifying gulp. “Looks like we’re going to have guests before anything else gets done. Anyone who doesn’t want to meet with the Undersea, this is your cue to exit. Everyone else, come with me.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Raj.

  “The throne room. If we’re going to be receiving guests, we’re going to do it like civilized people, not like, well, us.” I put down my mug. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  May looked at me dubiously. “Fun?” she echoed.

  “Isn’t everything?” I shrugged, starting for the kitchen door. To my relief, the others followed. I’d been happy to let them duck out if that was what they really wanted, but I had to admit, I hadn’t been quite as enthused about the idea of facing the Undersea delegation—whoever it included—by myself.

  Our footsteps echoed as we entered the throne room. I frowned a little, looking at the empty dais. “I should probably get a chair,” I said.

  “Wait right here,” said Marcia. Gesturing for Raj and Quentin to follow, she started down the hall toward the solarium.

  I folded my arms across my chest as I watched them go. “Do I want to know what they’re doing back there?”

  “Probably not,” said May. “Do you have anything you need me to do?”

  “Yeah.” I glanced her way, quirking a faint smile. “Get the door.”

  May raised an eyebrow before looking down at her knee-less jeans and glittery, rainbow-striped T-shirt. “Because what, I have ‘impressive’ written all over me now?”

  “Because you’re who’s available to do it. Now go.” I pointed to the door. “See if you can stall them long enough for us to get some sort of seating in here.”

  “I’ll juggle,” she deadpanned.

  “That’s a start.”

  May rolled her eyes, and went.

  Marcia came back out of the hall with Raj and Quentin behind her, the boys struggling to hold up a big oak chair that I didn’t remember seeing when we were first cleaning out the knowe. “Put it on the dais,” she said, waving helpfully in the indicated direction. “And try not to drop it again.”

  Raj muttered something. I couldn’t quite make out the words, but from the tone, I was comfortable assuming that they weren’t complimentary. Quentin did his furniture moving in stoic silence, as befits a squire. At least one of us was taking his training really seriously.

  “Where did you find that?” I asked.

  “It was jammed into the corner of the kitchen before we moved it to storage,” she said. Giving me a sidelong look, she added, “I figured you’d be happier with a nice-looking kitchen chair than you’d be sitting in Evening’s old throne.”

  The idea was enough to make my stomach do a slow flip. “You figured right,” I said, and walked over to help Quentin and Raj position the thing. Purebloods seem to build things according to two mutually exclusive camps of design aesthetic. Everything is either so fragile it can be destroyed by a stiff wind, or so sturdy that it could probably survive being hit repeatedly with a Buick. The chair fell into the second category. It felt like it had been carved so long ago that it had forgotten what it was to be a tree. All it knew now was being a chair, and it was good at what it knew.

  “This works,” I said. I pushed it a few inches to the side, centering it on the dais, and sat down. The chair had no back, but it did have sturdy arms, positioned at exactly the right level. I rested my elbows on them, looking toward the boys. “You good?”

  “We’re good,” said Quentin, taking a position slightly behind me, to the right. Raj mirrored him, taking up the same position on the left. I briefly considered shooing Raj off the dais—Quentin was my squire, while Raj was technically violating protocol by staying—and decided against it. Connor wouldn’t tell on us, and the rest of the Undersea wouldn’t realize there was anything wrong.

  Marcia moved to stand on the floor to the right of the dais, putting her on the same axis as Quentin, just lower. That was exactly right. Standing there marked her as my seneschal, and meant she’d be allowed to speak for me in matters regarding the land itself. It would also make it clear that she was under my protection. Just in case that mattered.

  There’s a reason that pureblood manners make my head hurt the way they do. I was saved from further contemplation of our placement as hinges creaked in the distance, and low, murmuring voices drifted down the hall. I sat up straight, composing my expression, and waited.

  May looked every inch the obedient courtier as she stepped into the room with her shoulders squared and her face grim. Even her glitte
ry T-shirt couldn’t spoil the effect. The group trailing behind her was a mixture of Merrow and Selkies, save for Patrick and a golden-haired woman with the uniformly blue eyes characteristic of the Roane. That made me sit up a little straighter. The Roane are practically extinct, and have been for centuries. I’d never seen a Roane pureblood before.

  The main group fell into a line halfway down the length of the throne room, leaving May to guard the door. Patrick and Connor continued toward me, stopping just short of the dais. I stood.

  “Your Grace,” I said.

  “Countess Daye,” replied Patrick, and bowed deeply, showing the proper degree of respect from a visiting noble. I returned the bow in kind before straightening and reclaiming my seat. “We received your message.”

  “Good. It seemed like a clever enchantment. It’s still always nice to know that things are actually showing up where they’re supposed to.” I frowned. “Forgive me for asking, but . . . why are you here? If you got the bottle, you know everything I do. I was planning to send another update as soon as I had something more substantial.”

  A murmur swept through the sea fae. They were keeping their voices too low for me to pick out individual words, but the overall tone wasn’t good. They sounded angry—and some of their whispers sounded almost like accusations.

  Patrick took a deep breath. “Someone took it upon themselves to remind us what was at stake in this conflict,” he said, voice measured, like he was trying not to scream. “In case we had somehow forgotten.”

  I blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, someone slunk into our knowe and left this outside our bedroom door.” Patrick produced a salt-crusted wooden box from his pocket. An unbroken golden ring was looped through the latch, connected to the corners of the box by thin gold chains. I had to admire the construction. Breaking the ring would snap the chains, making it impossible for someone to steal the contents without getting caught.

  Still, there had to be something I was missing. Good craftsmanship alone wouldn’t account for the bleakness in Patrick’s eyes.