The Unkindest Tide Read online

  Poppy is Aes Sidhe—as far as I know, the only Aes Sidhe left. They died out centuries ago. Turns out, they don’t have a Firstborn: they’re made when pixies give up their inherent magic in exchange for something bigger and more complicated. Poppy gave her magic so the Luidaeg could wake Simon Torquill from an enchanted sleep. Now Simon was out there somewhere, doing Maeve-knows-what, while Poppy was stuck in a size that wasn’t natural for her, living with the Luidaeg because she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  No matter how good your intentions are, there’s always the possibility that someone is going to get hurt. Someone innocent, who didn’t do anything to deserve it. Poppy was a clear illustration of that unfortunate reality.

  The Luidaeg looked at our group, a frown growing on her lips. “Where’s your daughter?” she asked.

  “She’s coming,” I said.

  She eyed me suspiciously. “Are you sure?”

  “I sent Danny to pick her up. She’s coming.”

  “She knows she has to come alone?”

  “She knows.”

  The Luidaeg opened her mouth like she was going to say something. Then she caught herself, closed it, and shook her head.

  I wanted to tell her not to cast aspersions on Gillian. I couldn’t. I didn’t know Gillian well enough to know whether she was the kind of person who kept her word. Maybe she was halfway to Canada by now, passport in her hand and bag over her shoulder, unwilling to take the step that would commit her to Faerie forever.

  The Luidaeg, meanwhile, had found another target. “What are you doing here?” she asked Marcia, more curious than cruel. “Where we’re going . . . if something happens, you’ll be a long way from human medical care.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Marcia. It was impossible to tell whether she was being brave and talking to the sea witch like it wasn’t a big deal, or whether she simply didn’t know what she was doing. I hoped for the former. If she didn’t know, someone would eventually tell her, and once that happened . . . .

  There were very few things I could think of that would make being in the middle of the ocean even less fun. Trying to talk Marcia down from a panic attack while we were there was on the list.

  Blithely, Marcia continued, “I’ve been in Faerie for so long that I wouldn’t know what to do with a human hospital, and I’m sure the Undersea has healers. They have such a warlike culture, there’s no way they could survive without someone to set their bones.”

  “A lot of them don’t survive,” said Dean glumly, looking at the water. “A lot of people think of Saltmist as this provincial little nowhere, because the land Courts are so strong here that the Undersea has never really wanted to force the issue of coastal and surface territory. We—I mean, they—maintain a presence. There has to be some reminder that the Undersea isn’t to be trifled with. But in the deep waters, where land’s just a legend . . . a lot of people don’t survive.”

  “The ocean is not and has never been a toy,” said the Luidaeg. Dean cast her a nervous glance. She ignored it. “Forget that at your peril.”

  “What are we calling you?” I asked.

  She looked at me levelly. “Whatever you want. The time for pretty illusions is over.”

  Understanding washed over me. I swallowed my gasp. She wouldn’t have appreciated it. The Luidaeg’s gaze didn’t waver. Her eyes were deep blue, drowning blue, like the entire ocean had somehow flowed into them and been trapped there.

  The Luidaeg hated the Selkies for what they represented to her and to her family, but she loved them at the same time, because the Selkies had continued, through the long march of years, to treat her like a person. She existed in their eyes, as she existed in so few others. She was their Cousin Annie, and being Cousin Annie had been her escape from the pressure of being the sea witch. And now she was giving that away.

  The smell of crushed blackberry flowers broke me out of my introspection. I turned to see a portal open in the air, disgorging a tall, dark-haired man with mismatched eyes, and—

  “Cassandra!” I rushed over and swept my honorary niece into an embrace before I could think better of it, lifting her off her feet. She laughed and slung her arms around my shoulders, hugging me back. “I didn’t think you were coming!”

  “Yeah, well, Her Highness didn’t want her brother traveling alone.” Cassandra let go long enough to hook a thumb toward Nolan, who bore her uncouth pointing with a stoically tolerant expression.

  The Luidaeg didn’t look nearly so calm. “I wasn’t aware Queen Windermere was intending to send a contingent,” she said frostily.

  “Aunt Birdie, put me down,” murmured Cassandra. I did as I was told. She took a step toward the Luidaeg before sinking into a picture-perfect curtsy, head bowed, neck an elegant, vulnerable line. “I beg your forgiveness, Luidaeg. My liege intended no offense.”

  “Sometimes I really miss the old forms,” muttered the Luidaeg. “You should have come to me with a raw salmon in your hands, its gills still heaving, and been apologizing before you were even close enough to look at me. You might as well stand up. You’ve already insulted me as much as you’re going to.”

  Cassandra straightened. She wasn’t wearing a human disguise, but she didn’t need one as much as some of us; she could have passed for human in the right light, as long as no one looked closely enough to realize that her hair wasn’t dyed. It grew in a natural gradient, blonde at the crown of her head tapering into black at its tips. Her ears were dully pointed, topped with tufts of hair in the same gradient, like she was some sort of humanoid lynx.

  I’ve known her since she was born. She’s Mitch and Stacy’s eldest daughter, and I’m not thrilled about the part where she’s somehow ended up as Arden’s seneschal.

  “My sister Karen sends her regards,” said Cassandra. “She told me to say that she’s been practicing her dream-walking just like you told her to, and you should be nice to me because I’m her favorite sister.”

  The Luidaeg actually looked amused at that. “Did she, now? Well, I guess I have to listen. It wouldn’t do to piss off the only oneiromancer we have on hand.” She turned to Nolan. “You, on the other hand, were distinctly not invited to this party. What are you doing here, Prince Windermere? Don’t you know what happens to nobles who sail too far from familiar shores?”

  “I stand as diplomatic emissary for my sister, Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, long may she rule in peace and in plenty,” said Nolan stiffly. I couldn’t blame him for that. He wasn’t accustomed to being interrogated by the literal sea witch.

  He was a striking man, despite his somewhat old-fashioned clothing and his plummy, outdated accent. He looked and sounded like something from an Underhill production of The Great Gatsby, and while I wasn’t sure having him along with us was necessarily a good idea, it was nice to see him outside the knowe. He’d spent the better part of the twentieth century in an elf-shot coma, and he was still adjusting to the way the world had changed while he was asleep. This was, so far as I was aware, the first time Arden had allowed him out of her sight for longer than a quick trip to the store. Which meant . . .

  “Nolan, have you been to the Duchy of Ships before?”

  He turned to me, eyebrows lifted. Then he relaxed, and smiled his prince’s smile, and said, “The informality of this era is a delight. Yes, Sir Daye, once. Long ago. It was a short trip, taken in company of my nursemaid, Marianne. I travel in my sister’s name, but I am, I admit, hopeful that perhaps someone there might remember her, and be able to tell me where she’s gone. We would welcome her home, if she were willing to return. If nothing else, I would like to find her, and see for myself that she’s all right.”

  “And as Arden’s seneschal, I’m here to make sure he doesn’t get kidnapped by pirates or something,” said Cassandra. “It’s sort of like going on vacation, except for the part where it’s not going to be restful and we’re all going to die.�
�

  “Cheerful,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I learned from the best.”

  A car door slammed in the distance. I turned to see Gillian walking toward us, towing a small suitcase in her wake. She was alone. Danny must have stayed with the cab, and I was grateful for that; I didn’t want to explain, again, what was going on, and we’d come too far to turn back now.

  She stopped a few feet away, eyes going terribly wide at the sight of Poppy, with her gauzy, undisguised wings, and Nolan, with his sharply pointed ears and inhumanly handsome features. “I thought we were supposed to use illusions when we were out in public,” she said, voice wavering. She raised a hand to indicate her own seemingly human face. “Did I do this wrong?”

  “There’s an illusion on this whole pier right now, courtesy of the Duchy of Ships,” said the Luidaeg. “It was necessary.”

  Gillian frowned. “Why?”

  “Because our ride is almost here,” said the Luidaeg.

  As if on cue, the fog in front of the pier parted and a ship sailed majestically toward us. It was an old-fashioned thing, like it had been stolen from the set of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, with tall sails and a stylized mermaid on the prow. Only she wasn’t quite a mermaid: her body ended not in the long, scaled sweep of a fish’s tail, but in a tangled knot of tentacles, each one carved into an elegant spiral and colored the same coral red as her hair. There was an air of antiquity to the vessel, accentuated by the barnacles on its sides and the tattered edges of its sails.

  The flag flying above the crow’s nest was unfamiliar to me, showing three black feathers above a background of blue, each tipped in palest gray. The Luidaeg looked at it and smiled before turning to the rest of us.

  “I want to make this perfectly, exquisitely clear, and I want to do so right now, while there’s still time for you to go home and forget you were ever here,” she said. “October is necessary for this to work. Gillian is bound to attend this Convocation. The rest of you are convenient at best and inconsequential at worst, and if you offend or bother me in any way between here and the Duchy, if you try my patience while we’re in open waters, I’ll throw you over the side without thinking twice.”

  Dean paled. Quentin patted his arm, clearly trying to be soothing.

  He was just as clearly failing. Quentin didn’t think of the Luidaeg as a threat, but Dean had grown up in the Undersea, and he understood how dangerous she could be.

  “That’s a ship,” said Gillian.

  “Sure is!” chirped Marcia.

  “It’s . . . it’s huge, and no one’s coming over here to take pictures or point at it,” said Gillian.

  “Nope,” agreed Marcia. “They can’t see it. Or if they can see it, they know it’s not here for them, and they don’t want to mess with anybody powerful enough to summon an Undersea vessel to a mortal pier.” She moved closer to Gillian, patting the other woman on the arm. They looked like they were roughly the same age. When had my daughter become a woman? When had the world changed?

  Oblivious to my staring, Marcia continued, “I’m Marcia. You must be Gillian. You have your mother’s chin. Anyway, I’m Dean Lorden’s seneschal, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have. You’ll probably come up with a million, and I think I’m the least intimidating person here.”

  “The man who picked me up was seven feet tall and gray like a boulder,” confessed Gillian.

  “That would be Danny McReady,” said Marcia. “He’s a friend of your mother’s. He’s a Bridge Troll, and a very nice guy. Did he give you his business card? It can be really useful to have someone you can—”

  “Please stop calling her that,” interrupted Gillian.

  Marcia stopped, blinking wide, confused eyes at her. “Calling who what?”

  “Calling October my mother,” said Gillian. “She is, I know, but . . . it’s complicated.”

  Marcia looked from Gillian to me and back again before she said, “Got it. Anyway. He’s a friend of October’s. Good number to have.” She turned away, shoulders stiff, and moved to retrieve the suitcase she’d abandoned next to Dean, fussily checking the latches.

  Gillian grimaced. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

  The Luidaeg clapped her on the shoulder with one hand, snapping the fingers of the other. Gillian’s human disguise dissolved in a whiff of fennel, the underlying seawater drowned out by the proximity to the ocean.

  “I am the last person who should lecture you about family, except for maybe my sister, may piranhas strip the flesh from her poisonously pretty bones,” she said. Her teeth seemed sharper than they’d been a few seconds ago: she looked like she could chew through diamond. “But technically, you’re part of my family as long as you wear that skin, and once you can’t take it off anymore, you’re going to be part of my family forever, so I’m going to give you this advice for free: hate your mother as much as you want to. Loathe her. Raise up armies to destroy her and everything she cares about. But for the love of my father, don’t go saying it. She’s a fucking hero of the realm, and you’re a brand new Selkie who most of these people will be looking at as a possible tool to use against her. The more dissent they see, the more they’re going to aim their designs on you. Be dull. Be unwanted. Be the daughter who broke the chain of Amandine’s line, and make yourself seem as placid and pointless as possible. Do you understand me?”

  Gillian glared at her, jaw set in a stubborn line. Finally, sullenly, she said, “Yes.”

  “Good. Because your first test is almost here.”

  The great ship had sailed closer as we talked among ourselves; now it was almost to the pier. It shouldn’t have been able to fit there. It should have run up against hidden obstacles, ancient, rotting support beams and fresh-poured concrete pylons. It did no such thing. It sailed, straight and true, until it pulled up along the pier and a voice called from above, “’Ware below!”

  “That means step back,” said the Luidaeg.

  We stepped back, watching as a gangplank dropped from the side of the ship and landed, neat as anything, against the pier. It was perfectly dry, with ropes along the sides to keep passengers from falling off the ship and into the water as they boarded.

  A Satyr appeared at the top of the gangplank, dressed in a long black coat that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a pirate ship, with a tricornered hat perched jauntily on his head. His hooves seemed to have been treated with something that helped them grip the deck, because his steps were steady and sure, even as he bowed deeply to the lot of us.

  “All who come in peace are welcome aboard,” he called, as he straightened. “How many are you?”

  “Ten,” called the Luidaeg. “Do you know where we’re going?”

  “I was dispatched to take a gathering to the Duchy of Ships,” the Satyr replied, seemingly unoffended by her question. “If I’m not your ship, I’m not your ship, but I’ll not be taking passengers anywhere else.”

  “We’re going to the same place,” said the Luidaeg. “Poppy?”

  “Here, here,” said Poppy, hurrying to stand beside her.

  The two of them walked up the gangplank. At the top, the Luidaeg offered the Satyr a shallow nod, which he returned. Poppy bounced onto her toes, then hugged him, leaving him looking nonplussed as she followed the Luidaeg onto the ship.

  I exchanged a glance with Tybalt, shrugged, and started up the gangplank myself. He hurried to match his steps to mine, and Quentin followed behind us. Dean and Marcia seemed to take that as their cue; they joined us on the gangplank, with Nolan and Cassandra behind them, and Gillian bringing up the rear.

  At the top, the Satyr offered me a thin-lipped smile. “Whom do I have the honor of meeting?” he asked.

  “Sir October Daye of Shadowed Hills, Knight of Lost Words, hero of the realm,” I said, as blandly as I could manage. “I’m accompanied by Tybalt, King of Dreaming Ca
ts, and my squire, Quentin.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” said Tybalt, with a thin-lipped smile of his own.

  Quentin waved.

  The Satyr blinked—once—and looked me up and down. “You’re Sir Daye?” he asked.

  “Last time I checked,” I said. “Why?”

  “No offense, I beg, but I thought you’d be . . . well, taller. And larger. And terrifying. I expected substantially more in the way of teeth.”

  “Sorry. No extra teeth here.” I shrugged. “Do we need to pay you or anything?”

  “No!” Now he looked horrified. “My name’s Rodrick; I sail at the pleasure of Captain Pete; your fare has already been paid by the Duchy of Ships. It would be rude, if not immoral, for us to take anything more from you. We’d be naught but common pirates if we did that.”

  “Got it. Come on, Quentin. Mind your step. The deck might be slippery.” I stepped off the gangplank, onto the ship proper, and barely managed to catch myself on Tybalt’s arm before I toppled over in disorientation and shock.

  The world spun around me, a sudden carousel of light, color, and sickeningly irregular motion. Then it passed, and I was standing on the deck of the ship—but the sky above us was shot through with veins of glittering purple and spectacularly bright gold, and I could count at least eight moons without really trying. We were in the Summerlands. I looked frantically around, settling my gaze on the Luidaeg, who shrugged almost sympathetically.

  “The Duchy of Ships is a unique case,” she said. “The ships that go back and forth between the coastal kingdoms and the ducal waters are functionally floating knowes. You crossed over when you willingly stepped onboard.”

  “You could have warned me,” I snapped.

  She smirked. “Where would have been the fun in that?”

  “Right.” I forced myself to loosen my grasp on Tybalt’s arm, shooting him a wan smile to balance the alarm in his expression. “I’m fine. You know transitions can be hard on me.”

  “I haven’t seen one hit you that hard in a very long time,” he said solemnly.