The Unkindest Tide (October Daye)

by Seanan McGuire

  “And if they were a Selkie, or a human?” I asked.

  “A human, we’d drown.” Liz scowled at me before draining the last of the purple liquid from her glass. “Is that what you wanted? To be sure we were killers? I could have told you that in a much less roundabout manner.”

  I wasn’t so sure of that. For all that being a Selkie meant she’d spent at least a portion of her life as a human, Liz had been a part of Faerie for much, much longer than she’d belonged, even in a sideways manner, to the mortal world; she thought more like a pureblood than I did. And purebloods are notorious about refusing to give a straight answer where death is concerned.

  “What if it were a Selkie who killed one of your human kin?” I asked.

  Liz bared her teeth in what might charitably have been called a smile. I knew better. I’d been sharing my bed with a King of Cats for long enough to know a threat when I saw one.

  “One nice thing about being partially outside the law: no one interferes when we choose to take it into our own hands,” she said. “I’d skin them myself if that was what it came to.”

  “Good,” I said. “I need to talk to you about Isla Chase.”

  FIFTEEN

  ELIZABETH LISTENED IMPASSIVELY as I explained how I’d stumbled over Isla’s body: the way she’d been tangled in a net, fixed to a pylon, in a way that seemed more accident than intent. How her hair had floated in the current, giving the illusion of motion.

  How she’d drowned, and what that meant in terms of both the Luidaeg’s permission to rob each other and the Law.

  When I was done, Liz tilted her head and said, “It’s not that I don’t believe you—I’m not quite stupid enough for that—but why were you in the water?”

  Quentin and I exchanged a glance. Telling Liz exactly what was going on with the Lordens seemed both unwise and unkind. Their problems weren’t hers, and she had plenty of things already on her plate. Still . . .

  “Duchess Dianda Lorden of Saltmist is currently indisposed, due to a challenge posed by her brother,” I said, as diplomatically as possible. “Her husband, the ducal consort, was concerned about their younger son, who had been left home with his caretaker when they came to witness the Convocation. I agreed to go get him. As that meant traveling to an Undersea Duchy, it was necessary to allow the Luidaeg to make a few small changes. They’re temporary.”

  I reached up and swept my hair aside with the back of my hand, showing her the slits of my closed gills. Liz blinked, slowly. Then, to my surprise, she started laughing.

  “Of course you let Annie transform you into something you’re not supposed to be; why in the world would you tell her ‘no, that’s all right, I’d rather be myself and rent some SCUBA gear,’ when she could just,” she made a swirling motion with her hands, “whizz-bang and you’re a mermaid? Oh, October, I wish I’d known you better when Connor was in love with you, so I’d have a better idea of how far you’ve fallen.”

  I bristled. I couldn’t help it. It was blazingly obvious that she was trying to push my buttons, but that didn’t make it any harder for her to do. “Fallen or not, we brought Peter back to the Duchy of Ships to be with his parents, and I’m missing their reunion because I thought you might want justice for Isla.”

  “Justice? For Isla Chase? That woman was mean as a moray and half as principled. She’d have slit my throat without a second thought if she believed it would get her another skin for her clan. She tried to do essentially that. Why would I want justice for her?”

  “Because she drowned. Because someone stole her skin and threw her into the element that had been hers for her entire life, and they thought they’d get away with it, because she was human when she died. Humans deserve kindness, too. She was ours. She belonged to Faerie. She deserves answers.”

  Liz still looked like she didn’t get it. I silently reminded myself that throttling her, while not a violation of the Law, would probably be considered impolitic at best, and really rude at worst. No matter how nice it would be in the moment, it wasn’t worth the long-term ramifications.

  “If someone’s decided that having permission to steal skins means permission to go around killing your human kin, they need to be stopped,” I said, as clearly and patiently as I could. “This is not the sort of person you want to step into immortality with, and Isla deserves better, no matter how awful she was. No one should die cold and frightened and alone. Now will you help me?”

  “How?” asked Liz. “And why? You’re here to put an end to us, and a Selkie without a skin is no concern of Faerie’s. Why in the world would you be willing to do this—why do you want to? You should be glad to know that there’s one more possible security flaw patched over and left to be forgotten.”

  I took another deep breath. “Were you this terrible when you were living with the Luidaeg?” I asked. “Because if you were, I’m sort of amazed she didn’t turn you into something nasty and leave you for the seagulls.”

  “She turned me into a bitter, broken-hearted drunk when she refused to tell me why she wanted me to turn away the birthright I’d been dreaming of for my entire life,” said Liz. “Is that crime enough, or should I go looking for something more direct that made me the way I am now? I gave her everything. I wanted to spend my life with her.”

  “You gave her everything but the courtesy of leaving your back bare of her dead child’s skin,” said Tybalt mildly. “I have no living children: I’ve never been so fortunate. But if you appeared before me with my dead daughter’s pelt around your shoulders, I’d make you something other than a drunkard. I’d make you a corpse.”

  “Okay, there’s going to be blood on the floor in a minute if we keep going down this road, and while that’s sadly tempting right now, it’s probably not the best thing for us,” I said. “Why do I care, Liz? Because when someone turned me into a fish and took me away from my family for a decade and a half, the Law said no crimes had been committed, and no one came to save me. The places where Faerie rubs up against the mortal world are unpoliced and unprotected, and Isla deserved better. You all deserve better. The fact that the Luidaeg is willing to let the Selkies steal each other’s skins for the chance to become Roane doesn’t mean she wants anyone slaughtering the defenseless.”

  At least I hoped it didn’t. I didn’t think it could. The Luidaeg was one of Faerie’s oldest, weariest monsters, but she wasn’t cruel, not to children, not to the defenseless. The fact that she’d been able to love Liz before the other woman had draped herself in sealskin proved that. It was only the Selkies themselves who broke her heart, not their human kin.

  Liz closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Finally, opening them, she said, “We should speak to Mathias. He isn’t my biggest fan—he’s always believed I owe my position to having been Annie’s lover, and maybe he’s right; maybe this was the best punishment she could think of for my many, many sins—but he knows I care for my clan, and he had reason to be well-inclined toward Isla. He’ll want to see her, and he’ll want to find the person who did this.”

  “Excellent.” I hesitated, looking around the room, before I asked my next question. “Where’s Gillian?”

  “I told you, she’s with the children,” said Liz. “They like her. She’s charmingly ignorant by their standards, and they get to feel clever when they teach her the things she doesn’t already know.” She looked at me levelly. “I’d strip that skin from her shoulders in a second to give to one of them, if she didn’t have Annie’s protection, and if she wouldn’t drop dead without it. Your girl doesn’t know how lucky she is.”

  “Given the number of times Faerie has ruined her life, I’d say she knows exactly how lucky she is, and one day we’re all going to burn for it,” I said. “Take us to Mathias.”

  Liz cast one last, longing look at her bottle of purple liquid. Then she sighed and started for the door. We followed.

  The beach outside was as empty and silent as it had
been when we approached. Even our footprints were gone, stolen by the wind blowing off the sea. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the place had been deserted for years—as it would be, after the time of the Selkies ended. Their human children would grow old and die even if they stayed here in the Summerlands, unable to ever truly touch the sea, and the strange, liminal culture the Selkies had crafted for themselves in the gap between humanity and the fae would be lost forever.

  Had the Luidaeg known this was going to happen when she’d chosen to preserve the last pieces of her lost children by binding them to living bodies? Had she even suspected she was going to create a population in exile, not quite human, not entirely fae? She was a monster, by her own admission and by her sister’s design. I’d never really considered her cruel. If she hadn’t known, if she hadn’t been able to wrap her immortal mind about the fast, impatient way that mortal beings lived their lives, that was one thing. But if she had done this on purpose . . .

  If she had done this on purpose, she was more of a monster than I ever could have believed she’d be.

  Liz led us down the row of houses to one identical to her own, raised her hand, and knocked. A long moment passed before the door was cracked open, just wide enough for a man to peer suspiciously out at us.

  “It’s Elizabeth Ryan, René,” she said—snapped, really, with a hectic, impatient air that wasn’t going to make this any easier. “I need to talk to your husband. Let me in.”

  “There’s a war on, in case you missed the news,” said the man—René—in a mild voice. He had a French accent, as maritime as the winter is long, and a wary air about him, like he expected Liz to shove her way inside. Which maybe he did. I had no idea how she ranked among the Selkie clan leaders, whether she was considered one of the stable ones or whether she was the one the rest of them warned their children about. She was the unfriendly drunk who had mourned for Connor, who had loved the Luidaeg, who had gone to sea to get herself a daughter with eyes as green as an untouched forest. Everything else had been someone else’s problem.

  “It’s not a war so much as it’s a series of uncoordinated assassinations, and people are mostly being polite about it,” said Liz. “This is Sir October Daye from Shadowed Hills. She’s a hero of the realm back in the Mists, where my clan is unfortunate enough to rest our rookery, and she has something she wants to say to Mathias. Now are you going to let us in, or are we going to stand out here and make a scene until someone decides they can use the distraction to sneak through your window and steal a few skins?”

  Quentin leaned closer to me. “She makes you look like you have manners,” he murmured.

  “Quiet, you,” I said.

  The door opened wider, revealing a stocky man with blond hair streaked in Selkie gray, and the deep sea eyes characteristic of his kind. The sealskin around his shoulders was almost an afterthought. He could never have been anything but a Selkie.

  “You’re Toby Daye?” he asked, focusing on me. His eyes seemed to skip over Quentin, like he didn’t dare look directly at my squire. I swore inwardly. Beacon’s Home was in Halifax. I didn’t know enough about Canadian geography to say for sure how close that was to Toronto, but from the way René was trying not to admit he could see Quentin, I was willing to bet it was close enough that he’d seen the High King and his family at least a time or two. He knew what the Crown Prince looked like.

  If this was how Quentin’s blind fosterage was finally spoiled, I was going to laugh until I cried.

  “I am,” I said. “Hi.”

  “My name is René Lefebvre, but I was born René O’Dell,” he said. “Connor was my cousin. Second cousin, on my father’s side. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

  He sounded so sincere, and so genuinely sad about the man I’d mourned and moved on from, that I felt unexpected tears spring to the corners of my eyes. I swallowed my grief, taking what comfort I could from Tybalt’s proximity. Connor was gone. Connor was never coming back. But that didn’t mean I was alone, or that I was ever going to be alone again.

  “I appreciate that,” I said. My voice hardly shook at all. Something else to be grateful for, under the circumstances. “Is Mathias home?”

  “As if I’d allow him to be anywhere else, or he’d allow the same for me, given the circumstances?” His sadness faded, replaced by exhaustion. “Neither of us is leaving this house for any reason short of danger to the clan itself, and even then, we’ll go together. Why should we let you inside? Connor was a Ryan, by the end. You could be here because you want them to be the last clan standing, and help their leader strip the skins from our bodies.”

  “Okay, first, I’m not loyal to any specific Selkie clan; it’s not like Connor and I ever reached the stage of visiting his family for the holidays. Which is almost a pity, because Selkies throw amazing parties, but that’s neither here nor there. Second, I’m engaged, and my fiancé would be cranky if I let the memory of a man he wasn’t exactly friends with muddle my actions.”

  “Hello,” said Tybalt.

  René blinked. “The rumors are true? You’re really marrying a King of Cats?”

  “I’m going to ignore the part where they’re apparently gossiping about me in Halifax, of all places, and move on to my third point. Namely, it doesn’t matter if Liz is trying to trick her way into your house, because I’m not. I’m a knight sworn to the service of Duke Sylvester Torquill and a hero in the service of Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, and neither one of them would put up with me lying my way into a private home.”

  Well. Sylvester wouldn’t, anyway. Sylvester had always been very clear on the need for his knights to be honest, chivalrous, and true, and maybe if he’d done a little better of a job at living up to those standards himself—at least the “honest” part—we wouldn’t be functionally estranged. His lies weren’t the only things that complicated our relationship, but wow, had they been enough to do a lot of damage.

  Arden had spent over a century hiding in the mortal world, pretending to be a human woman, selling books and sitting for children and generally lying to everyone around her for the sake of staying alive. Her approach to the truth was probably a little more flexible than Sylvester’s, and for good reason.

  “Let them in, René,” called a voice from deeper inside. “It’s not as if I wasn’t expecting a challenge.” Mathias sounded . . . smaller, somehow, almost deflated, like all the fight had gone out of him.

  René’s fingers tightened on the edge of the door. But he nodded, and said, “Of course, darling,” as he pulled it wider open, and let us step inside.

  The front of the little Cape Cod was almost identical to the one where we’d spoken to Liz, which made sense: these weren’t their personal homes. These were temporary quarters maintained by the Duchy of Ships for the comfort of their Selkie guests and the human family members who traveled with them. Mathias and René probably shared a home that was filled with things only they would have chosen, touches and traces of the men they were, the life they shared with one another. This was . . . a motel, practically, a way station between home and harbor.

  Mathias was sitting on the couch, a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. It could have been part of the same set Liz was using, and her eyes locked on it almost instantly. His chuckle was both dark and bitter, like strong coffee served on a winter morning.

  “Don’t get too excited, Lizzy,” he said, and took a sip. “It’s apple cider. I prefer to keep a clear head when people are trying to do me ill. Although if you’d like something stronger, I can have René fetch it for you. A drunk enemy is a sloppy enemy, and I need all the advantages I can get.”

  “Feeling sorry for yourself, are you?” Liz spat. “This is your fault.”

  “I’m well aware, and believe me, I wish I felt as comfortable numbing the edges of the world as you do.” Mathias took another swig of cider before swinging his attention around to me. “Ah, the sea witch’s errand girl
is here for a visit, with her entourage. Come to issue more veiled threats against anyone who touches your child? Believe me, we got the message. She’s as safe as houses, at least until the deadline gets closer and people grow more desperate. Come back in a few hours if you feel the need to frighten someone.”

  “I’m not here about Gillian,” I said, and it was only half a lie. “I’m here because I need to talk to you about Isla Chase.”

  “Why not go talk to Isla herself? We’re not friends, no matter what you may have heard about our history. We simply do a better job of tolerating each other than many of our peers.”

  He sounded honestly confused. I couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t been involved with the plot that killed her, but . . . I didn’t think so. He had no reason to be that good of an actor.

  “Isla’s dead,” I said.

  There was a gasp behind me. I turned. René was staring at me, eyes wide, one hand clutching the front of his shirt, like he thought he could keep his heart from leaping straight out of his chest.

  “You were friends?” I asked.

  “She’s my sister,” he said. He moved quickly then, crossing the room to reach, not me, but the couch where Mathias sat. The other man opened his arms and René fell into them. He wasn’t sobbing; he was shaking, his entire body rocking with the force of his grief.

  Mathias looked at me over René’s shoulder. His eyes were cold. “You had best not be playing some sort of joke on us, or I swear, by Maeve’s grace, I don’t care if the sea witch sent you, I’ll have your bones for bangles.”

  “And since I’m a changeling, you wouldn’t be violating the Law,” I said. “I know.”

  “I would still gut him like the fish his seal-shape so resembles,” said Tybalt. “I would also prefer you not go around reminding people that your government, such as it is, cares so little for your life.”

  “You’re cute when you’re murderous,” I said.