One Salt Sea

by Seanan McGuire

  Pureblood honor sometimes works for us as much as it works against us—rarely, but rarely is better than never. The delay in hostilities would give the local fiefdoms time to send their children and fosters to safety before things got violent. Oberon’s Law allows adults to kill one another on the field of war, but there’s nothing that justifies killing a child.

  I looked back to the Queen. “I’m going to need the authority to question your Court, Highness.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Are you questioning me again?”

  “No, I’m asking to question the people under you. No matter how stainless your honor is, the people who work for you may be less admirable.”

  The Queen hesitated before nodding, once. “Provided you ask no more than is necessary, you may speak to them, starting at dusk.”

  “Dusk tomorrow? But that’s hours from—”

  “I told you not to question me, Daye.” There was a dangerous edge to her voice. “My people need time to calm themselves and send notice that war is coming—and it is coming, unless you’ve somehow gained the power to perform miracles on demand. I’ll let you play your little detective game, but mark me: this will be settled on the battlefield.” She looked around our group. “How far Faerie has fallen that you, all of you, would stand here while this mongrel bitch challenged my authority. I rejoice that Oberon isn’t here to see this.”

  “My grandfather would approve of Countess Daye’s actions,” said Luna softly.

  The Queen stopped. None of us are quite used to thinking of Luna as the daughter of two Firstborn—and more, as someone who knew Oberon personally, as a loving grandparent, in the days before his disappearance. That gives her a certain scary credibility.

  “Be that as it may,” said the Queen, finally, “he’s not here, and war stands before us.”

  “That’s nice,” I said flatly. “Dusk?”

  “Dusk.”

  “May we be excused?” No one else asked before fleeing, but in this case, civility seemed like the better part of valor.

  “Go.” The Queen pointed to the door.

  I didn’t want to say anything that might set her off again, so I simply bowed before taking Connor’s hand and starting for the exit. Sylvester and Luna followed. They weren’t letting me turn my back on the Queen of the Mists alone, and I found that reassuring.

  We had just passed through the curtain dividing the ballroom from the entrance hall when April appeared. “The guards of this establishment are exceedingly jumpy,” she said, scowling. “I got a crossbow bolt through my chest.”

  April is only material when she wants to be. I still grimaced. “Glad you’re okay,” I said. “Did you find anything?”

  “Nothing of interest. People fleeing. Poorly trained guards unable to believe an attack would occur within a royal knowe, thus proving that they possess an insufficient grasp of historical fact. Several pages copulating in the kitchen. I believe they were upset when I appeared next to them.”

  “There was no sign of our attacker?”

  “None. I apologize.”

  “It’s okay. You did your best.” I looked to Sylvester. “Sylvester—”

  “I know. Do you really think you can find the boys?”

  Probably not. But a girl’s got to try. “I hope so. If I can’t . . . will we really go to war?”

  “You’ve never seen a war, have you?” Luna glanced at her husband. “I always forget how young she is.”

  I’m more than fifty years old. By human standards, I’m middle aged. By fae standards, I’m little more than a highly precocious child. “I haven’t had the privilege.”

  “It’s not a privilege,” said Sylvester. His voice was soft. “It’s the worst thing in our world. Consider yourself fortunate that it’s been so long since the War of Silences. I fought there. Part of my heart has never left that battlefield.”

  “Oh, oak and ash,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  The Kingdom of Silences meets the Kingdom of the Mists within a mile of where the state of Oregon meets the state of California. The War of Silences was fought there, shortly after King Gilad died. The Tylwyth Teg who used to rule in Silences didn’t like the proclamations our new Queen was making, and when diplomacy failed, they decided to overthrow her. What they didn’t count on was the Mists having an army of its own.

  The war lasted six days.

  Hundreds died on both sides: when Faerie goes to war, the night-haunts eat very, very well. When the dust cleared, the ruling family of Silences was broken, their heirs scattered and their army banished by the man who took the throne—a man who, coincidentally, used to be a Baron in the Court of the Mists. We’ve had good relations with the Kingdom of Silences ever since.

  Of course, it’s not that hard to have good relations with a puppet government. It’s also easy to let your army fall into disrepair when your nearest neighbors would never dream of raising a hand against you. Silences might get the last laugh after all.

  “That fight ended long ago,” said Sylvester. “Now it falls to us to keep the next war from beginning.”

  I reached across our small circle to take his hand. “It won’t,” I said. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  SEVEN

  STARLIGHT FROSTED THE BEACH in gilded silver as we stepped from the shelter of the cave and waded through the water to the beach, all of us emerging perfectly dry, courtesy of Connor. Sylvester gave me a fierce hug and turned to walk, hand-in-hand with Luna, toward the parking lot.

  April watched them go before turning back to me. “Is there anything else I can do?”

  “Just get home safely, and tell your people to stay out of danger.” I allowed myself a brief smile. “I don’t have time to save their butts right now.”

  “Acknowledged,” she said, and vanished in a haze of static, presumably returning to her escort.

  Connor cast a quick don’t-look-here over the both of us, the briny smell of his magic blending into the smell of the waves. He took my free hand once the spell was complete, his eyes going to the water. “Toby . . .”

  “I know.” I followed the direction of his gaze. “If it comes to that, I won’t blame you.”

  “That’ll make one of us.”

  “Connor . . .” The Luidaeg’s shell was getting steadily colder, reaching the point where “freeze” becomes “burn.” I shivered. “I shouldn’t have let April leave without asking if she had a phone. Do you have a phone?”

  Connor blinked, apparently thrown. “Uh . . . no? I spend half my time underwater. They make diving watches, but they don’t make diving cell phones yet.”

  “Oh, root and branch.” May’s been trying to get me to start carrying a cell phone for ages now. I hate it when she’s right. “Do you mind taking a detour? I think the Luidaeg’s trying to get hold of me.” I didn’t want to pull the shell out while I was standing on a public beach, don’t-look-here or not. It might do anything, from transmitting her voice to exploding, and I didn’t want to deal.

  “I . . . guess not.” Connor looked uneasy. I couldn’t exactly blame him for that. If the Luidaeg is a legendary monster to most of Faerie, she’s a well-known, and very real, danger in the Undersea. “If she wants you.”

  “Good. Come on.”

  The parking lot was empty by the time we reached my car. I passed Connor the arrow, still wrapped in Patrick’s vest, and unlocked the doors. He offered the arrow back once we were in the car. I shook my head.

  “Keep it while I drive. Try not to stab yourself.”

  Connor snorted. “There’s a real vote of confidence.”

  “Stick around. Maybe you’ll get another one.”

  He smiled a bit at that, setting the arrow across his knees with the pointy end toward the door. If anything got stabbed, it would be my poor car, which was better than the alternatives.

  Jokes aside, the enormity of what was ahead of us was staggering. For Connor, this was a choice between loyalties. For me, it was just too damn much to think about. My mind
kept skipping tracks, too overloaded to settle on which was more important—the Lorden children or the threat of war.

  From the look on Connor’s face, his thoughts were equally grim. I cleared my throat. “Are you sure you’re okay with coming along on this?”

  “I have to be.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’d rather deal with the Luidaeg than risk winding up on different sides of the battlefield.”

  I grimaced. “We’re not going to war. I just need to find the kids, and this all goes away.”

  “That’s assuming your Queen didn’t kidnap them herself.”

  I didn’t miss his choice of pronouns. The Undersea is technically part of the system of Courts and Kingdoms established by Oberon, but “technically” is a big word. There’s a King somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. If Saltmist wanted to claim to belong to his Kingdom instead of to the Mists, nobody could really stop them. “I don’t think she did, and anyway, it’s not a good thing to say,” I said carefully. “She was ready to banish me for suggesting it.”

  “Yeah, well, the Queen’s not here now, and I don’t trust her.”

  “There’s something we have in common; neither do I. I get a little wary when people try to kill me.”

  “And I get a little pissed when people try to kill either one of us.” He sighed. “Toby, you know what’s going to happen if things get bad. I—”

  “Do you really want to talk about that right now?”

  “No.”

  “Did you kidnap the Lorden kids?”

  “What? No!”

  “Then calm down until we get to the Luidaeg’s. We’re going to stop all this from happening, and then it won’t matter.” I flashed him a smile. “That’s the beauty of the future. We get to change it. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Connor put his hand on my knee. I put my own hand over it, squeezing gently before returning my focus to staying on the road. It was only eight-thirty—were we really only at the Queen’s Court for an hour? It’s amazing how quickly things can fall apart—and there was too much traffic for me to safely get distracted.

  The streets cleared once we moved into the less-reputable stretch of the waterfront, and the smell of the docks slipped in through the vents, filling the car with a familiar mix of fish and sweet decay. Weird as it seems, I found myself relaxing. The Luidaeg was one of Faerie’s monsters, but she was also a friend, and I trusted her.

  The Luidaeg’s neighborhood looks like it might topple into the ocean at any moment. The people who live there tend to be the poorest of the poor, the ones who don’t have any other choice. And it’s probably one of the safest places in the city. I looked it up in the police department records once, after using a quick don’t-look-here to keep the police from realizing I wasn’t supposed to be there. Sure, you’ll find drug dealers in the shadows and hookers on the street corners, but no one ever seems to actually get hurt. All the crimes are victimless ones, and even the poorest children don’t go to bed hungry. There’s something to be said for living in the haunt of a fabulous monster.

  I parked a block away from her apartment, taking the arrow from Connor before I got out of the car. He scanned the deserted street as he stood. “Um, Toby? Are we in the right place?”

  “Not what you expected?”

  “From the sea witch? Not really.” Connor shook his head. “I don’t know what I expected. But it wasn’t this.”

  Oberon preserve me from purebloods and their expectations. “Just follow my lead, and try not to touch anything.”

  I led him down the alley to the Luidaeg’s door, a flat rectangle of rotting wood set in a crumbling frame. The door swung open before I could knock, revealing the Luidaeg herself. Connor froze. That’s a natural response when confronted by the sea witch.

  Good thing all my natural responses were burned out years ago. “Hey,” I said.

  “What in my mother’s name took you so long?” she snarled, stepping out of the way as she gestured me briskly inside. “I expected you twenty minutes ago.”

  “Traffic,” I said. The shell stopped radiating cold as soon as I was over her threshold. I rubbed my thigh through the fabric of my dress, wincing a little. I’d be lucky if I didn’t have frostbite.

  As if she could read my mind—there was a terrifying thought—the Luidaeg said, “Be grateful. It could have been a lot worse.”

  “I am,” I said. I meant it, too. The Luidaeg could probably have blown my brains out with the thing, if she’d wanted to.

  She swung her attention to Connor. “Selkie,” she half-said, half-spat.

  He swallowed, hard. “Ma’am.”

  “Oh, for Mom’s sake.” The Luidaeg rolled her eyes. “I don’t have time for this. Get in here.” He stepped inside, and she slammed the door behind him, casting the hall into darkness. “Now come on.” She turned and strode down the hall. Not being entirely stupid, I followed. Connor followed me.

  The carpet crackled underfoot, bits of debris catching on my heels. I don’t know what color the carpet was when the Luidaeg moved in, and she keeps the lights low enough that even the improvements to my vision won’t let me see what color it is now. There are some small mercies in this world. The crackling was accompanied by the sound of insects scuttling for cover. The cockroaches clever and quick enough to survive in the Luidaeg’s presence breed prodigiously; she crushes or eats the dumb ones. If an insect uprising ever displaces the mammals as the titular head of the food chain, I expect it to start at her place.

  The Luidaeg’s living room is usually slightly better than the hall, in that the layers of junk covering the floor are shallower, and there are windows, which keeps the mold from getting more than a light foothold on the walls and furniture. The Luidaeg was standing at the center of the room, arms crossed, waiting. “Well?” she demanded. “What happened?”

  “How do you know something happened?”

  “You’re here, which means the shell reacted. That means something happened. What was it?”

  I took a breath. “Somebody decided to take a shot at Patrick Lorden.”

  “Oh, rot and wreck.” The Luidaeg took a step back, sitting heavily on the couch. Her eyes were wide. That was the scariest thing I’d seen all evening. “Is he dead?”

  “No—I managed to knock him out of the way before the shot was fired.” I held up the arrow. “I dug this out of the floor.”

  “Give it to me.” It wasn’t a request. I stepped forward, dropping the arrow into her outstretched hand. She peeled away Patrick’s vest, first sniffing the wood, then licking the feathers fletching the end. Making a sour face, she offered it back. “It’s just elf-shot. It’s safe to touch, as long as you don’t do anything stupid, like cutting yourself.”

  Assurances aside, I still used Patrick’s vest to keep myself from touching the wood as I took it from her hands. She snorted, looking almost amused.

  “I’ll ask Walther to take a look. Maybe he can figure out which recipe was used,” I said. Walther Davies is Tylwyth Teg, and possibly the only alchemist in Faerie who holds a PhD in chemistry. He cured my iron poisoning after I was rescued from the Queen’s dungeon, and was largely responsible for saving Luna’s life when Oleander poisoned her. If anyone could identify the specific spell used to craft the elf-shot, it would be him.

  “Good. Now, while I was waiting for you, I got a visit from one of the Queen’s messengers.” She started peeling the electrical tape off her left pigtail, expression pensive. “Saltmist has declared war. You have to find those boys, Toby. You don’t understand just how screwed you are if you don’t.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean? We’re going to war if I don’t find them. Isn’t that screwed enough?”

  “He knows.” She jabbed a finger toward Connor. He looked away. She glared. “Oh, he knows. The Undersea is marshaling their forces, isn’t it, Selkie? It’s going to be a massacre, because while the land’s been getting soft, the sea’s stayed hard. The sea can’t afford to be soft, can it, Selkie?”

&nb
sp; “No,” mumbled Connor.

  “No,” repeated the Luidaeg. “Do you get that, Toby? The sea has more fighters than the land. They’re better trained, they’re better disciplined, and they’re not as politically divided. They’re going to slaughter you.”

  “Us,” I said. The Luidaeg was silent. “Luidaeg? You mean they’re going to slaughter us.”

  “No.” She looked at me gravely. “I mean they’re going to slaughter you.”

  “Luidaeg—”

  “The Undersea knows my limits.” She dropped her pigtail, standing. “There’s no one there that’s willing to come here and take me on, but they know I won’t take the fight to them. I can’t attack the children of Titania. I won’t attack the children of Maeve. This one’s up to your Queen’s army, and guess what, October? Your Queen’s army ain’t up to the task.”

  Connor wasn’t saying anything. That just made the Luidaeg’s tone—a mixture of anger, fear, and resignation—all the more terrifying. I squared my shoulders, trying to ignore the fact that I was standing in the apartment of the sea witch, wearing a fairy-tale prom gown, waiting for the attack of the mermaids.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Find the boys. I assume the Queen tasked you with the same thing?”

  I snorted. “More like I bullied her into allowing it, but yes.”

  “Good. Now listen to me: if you find them, you must not take them to her. Bring them to me, or find a way to get them to their parents, but don’t let her near them. I don’t trust her to remember that the land can’t win this war if she thinks she has the upper hand.”

  “All right.” I shifted the arrow to my other hand. “Anything else?”

  “One more thing—I’ve been scrying for the boys, and I can’t find them. That’s not a good sign. You don’t have much time.”

  “I figured that out on my own.”

  She pointed to the door. “Then what are you still doing here?”