The Unkindest Tide

by Seanan McGuire

  “From the Court in the Mists, standing in lieu of Her Majesty, Queen Arden Windermere, Prince Nolan Windermere and Her Majesty’s seneschal, Cassandra Brown.”

  Nolan and Cassandra walked decorously down the gangplank. Nolan was still in his rumpled turn-of-the-century finery, but Cassandra had exchanged her jeans and sweatshirt for a dress of blue linen a few shades lighter than the lamplit sky above us. She walked three steps behind Nolan, as was technically appropriate for a changeling in service to a pureblood court, her head bowed and her hands folded in front of her. My breath caught in my throat. I’ve known Cassandra since she was born, and while there’s a fourteen-year chunk missing in the middle, courtesy of my time in the pond, I’d never truly seen her in the context of Faerie before.

  She was glorious. She was where she’d always been intended to be. Only our prior ruler’s prejudices against changelings had kept Cassandra from this side of her heritage for so long, and I was suddenly, fiercely grateful to see her this way.

  “From the Ryan clan among the Selkies, Gillian Marks.”

  There she was, my baby girl, alone and anxious at the top of the gangplank, hugging her arms around herself and looking around like she wanted nothing more than to leap into the waiting sea and swim away as fast as she could. She didn’t have anyone to lean on, and so when she took her first step down, her foot shot out from under her and she went sprawling, landing hard on her behind.

  “Gillian!” I was halfway up the gangplank before I realized I was going to move. I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop until I was beside her, dropping to my knees on the wood, offering my arm so she could pull herself to her feet.

  She glared at me and slapped my arm away. “I’m not a part of your fiefdom, remember?” she snapped, and there was a depth of hurt in her voice that wounded me as surely as any arrow. She pushed herself to her feet, wobbling as she turned and stomped down the gangplank, her anger somehow lending her the stability she needed to remain upright. I stayed where I was, baffled and aching from the urge to run after her.

  What had just happened? Maybe more importantly, how could I fix it?

  The people who’d gathered to watch us arrive whispered behind their hands, enthralled by the drama we were enacting for their amusement. I stood, bracing myself as carefully as I could, intending to stalk back to where Tybalt and Quentin were waiting for me.

  Naturally, I immediately fell on my ass. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.

  I heal at a rate that’s frankly offensive to anyone who believes actions should have consequences, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain. The impact of my behind on the wood was hard enough to send a shock along my spine, and I sat there for a moment, blinking in shock and surprise. Unfortunately for me, I was still sitting there when Rodrick decided he couldn’t keep the rest of his passengers waiting any longer.

  “From the Kingdom in the Mists, apprentice Poppy,” he announced, and Poppy launched herself into the air, stained glass wings beating harder than any pixie’s would have needed to, fighting to keep her increased weight aloft. It had taken her a while to learn how to fly again after giving up her pixiehood for Simon Torquill’s sake. Still, she made a striking sight as she cut through the air toward the dock, a moving painting in all the colors of the living autumn.

  Some of the people surrounding us gasped. A few clapped hands over their mouths, staring . . . and then a man who could have been her brother, only rendered in shades of red and pink instead of orange, pushed his way through the crowd, pulling Poppy into a fierce embrace even as they both burst into tears.

  “What the . . . ?”

  “When you want to keep something secret, you send it out to sea,” said a familiar voice. I tilted my head back. The Luidaeg stood over me, offering her hand. “There are a lot of secrets buried far from familiar shores.”

  “You said the Aes Sidhe died out,” I said, letting her pull me to my feet. Her skin was cooler than normal, like she’d risen from the depths and hadn’t had enough time to return to room temperature. “You can’t lie.”

  “I can’t, and they did,” she said. “A few scattered survivors does not a people make. It’s just a funeral in slow-motion.” She turned and looked over her shoulder at Rodrick, lifting one eyebrow. “Well? This is where you’re supposed to introduce me.”

  “I . . . I sail at the pleasure of Captain Pete, and that means I truthfully name all who enter these waters, as pleasure can easily become pain,” he said. “Annie. We’ve met before. I know you. Why would you write such a thing on my passenger manifest? Are you trying to get me in trouble?”

  The Luidaeg lowered her eyes to the deck, holding that position for several long seconds. When she glanced up again, looking at him through sooty lashes, her irises and sclera had blended into a single fathomless darkness, not black, not exactly, but layer upon layer of translucence leading to the same inevitable conclusion. I like to think of myself as relatively fearless where the Luidaeg is concerned. I couldn’t look at those eyes for more than a second before I turned away, searching for something—anything—less terrifying.

  There was a clatter of hooves as Rodrick stumbled back, away from the Luidaeg, away from her graveyard gaze.

  “Does anyone ever really know anyone else, or do we act like cartographers, drawing maps of unfamiliar shores, pretending it teaches us their secrets? You’ve met me, Mate Rodrick of the Duchy of Ships, master of the Jackdaw, wind-chaser and wave-chaser and son of the sea. You’ve seen my shores from a distance, through a fog. But to claim to know me? That’s the purview of greater hearts than yours, and it’s not a burden you’ve ever been called upon to bear. Now announce me, so we can end this little passion play and move on to the business at hand. The fog is clearing. My capital city can finally be named.”

  Rodrick cleared his throat, still staring at her with a mixture of fascination and horror, like a hiker seeing their first venomous snake. “Y-yes, my lady,” he said. His voice was a shipwrecked whisper, the ghost of his former sonorous tones. He cleared his throat a second time, and in that same hollow voice, announced, “From the Kingdom of Albany, in the High Demesne of Albion, most recently in the Mists, Firstborn to Maeve by Oberon, the fair and hallowed lady known as the Luidaeg, called sea witch by all who would avoid her wrath.”

  Somehow, despite its broken hollowness, his voice carried, silencing the crowds around us. I glanced to the Luidaeg. Her eyes were green again, and she inclined her chin ever so slightly, confirming that the spell which carried Rodrick’s voice throughout the Duchy had been hers. I knew, in that moment, that it had penetrated even the smallest and most private of rooms, reaching the ears of every citizen and every visitor. She was coming before them in her truest guise, and that was a sacred, terrifying thing. They deserved to be warned.

  Some of the people on the docks began weeping. Others put their hands over their mouths or turned their eyes away, unable or unwilling to look at her, to face the judgment they had to be certain was upon them. The Luidaeg offered Rodrick a smile. He trembled and bowed.

  He didn’t know her well enough to see the softness in her expression, but I did. She was being gentle. It didn’t look like it—it looked like some dire portent suddenly suspended over an entire people, like the sword of Damocles, only waiting for the final thread to break—and yet I knew she didn’t need any of this pomp or circumstance. She could have risen out of the sea like the avenging hand of Oberon himself. She could have swept this entire Duchy away, leaving only wreckage and legends behind. She was, in her terrifying way, trying to be kind.

  She didn’t let go of my hand as she turned and descended the gangplank. The crowds pulled back as we passed, too frightened to stay close, too aware of what offending the sea witch could cost them to flee. When we reached the bottom, Quentin rolled his eyes at us.

  “Are all Firstborn overly dramatic, or is that a special gift you have?”

  De
an looked horrified. The Luidaeg laughed. I eyed Quentin.

  “You won’t call Arden by her name, because her title is more important, but you’ll back-talk the Luidaeg? I just want to be clear on where your sense of self-preservation fails you.”

  He shrugged. “The Luidaeg isn’t a reigning monarch. She won’t get mad at me for being disrespectful. Not in that way, at least. She might get mad at me for being disrespectful in other ways, but I’m pretty good about knowing where my boundaries are.”

  Dean’s horror deepened, until he looked like he might be sick over the idea of what the Luidaeg was going to do to his boyfriend. I offered him a sympathetic smile.

  “You get used to it, honest,” I said.

  A murmur ran through the crowd, sounding relieved and worried at the same time. They began to pull away, and this time, they didn’t let fear of offending the Luidaeg stop them. In a matter of moments, they had opened a clear path along the dock, leading deeper into the ramshackle conglomeration of ships and shanties and more permanent structures.

  There, at the exact center of the newly-opened path, was a woman. She was about the same height as the Luidaeg, and like the Luidaeg, she looked innocent and ancient at the same time, like a girl barely out of her teens who had nonetheless somehow seen more than any single person should have to see. She was dressed like a pirate from a summer blockbuster, down to the ludicrously large white feather in her battered hat and the cutlass belted at her nipped-in hourglass of a waist. Her shoulders were narrow and her hips were wide and she walked toward us like the rolling ocean, like she had nothing to worry about in the world, like the sea witch came to visit every day.

  She was a stunning beauty, in every sense of the word “stunning”: she was gorgeous and terrifying at the same time, with skin the color of a shark’s belly, streaked here and there with lines of tiny scales that glittered with mother-of-pearl rainbows, shimmering and strange. Her hair was long and black and filled with oil-slick echoes, almost matching her scales. It covered her ears and the lines of her neck, making it impossible for me to tell whether she had gills. I couldn’t name her type of fae on sight, and with so many other fae still clustered around us, I couldn’t try to breathe in her heritage; I would have knocked myself on my ass again if I’d even considered it.

  She smirked as she drew closer, like she knew what I’d been considering. Then she focused on the Luidaeg. “Gentle winds and kind tides to all who come to my realm with peaceful hearts and honest hands.”

  The Luidaeg raised an eyebrow, looking briefly amused. “We’re doing this the formal way, are we?”

  The nameless woman looked placidly back at her.

  The Luidaeg snorted. “All right, Petey. Clear skies and trackless shores to all who keep their signal fires burning, guiding home sailors from the sea.”

  The woman—Captain Pete, I presumed—suddenly grinned and, to my utter shock, swept the Luidaeg into an embrace. Even more shockingly, the Luidaeg returned it.

  “It’s been too long,” said Pete.

  “I’ve had my reasons,” said the Luidaeg, and pulled back, shooting a smile at the rest of us. I braced myself. She never smiled like that unless she was about to say something upsetting.

  “Pete, this is my retinue for the duration of our stay, along with a few assorted nobles and hangers-on. Retinue and otherwise, this is Captain Pete, keeper of the Duchy of Ships, protector of these waters, and my sister. Count Lorden, you may know her better by her given name: Amphitrite, Firstborn daughter of Titania and Oberon, Mother of the Merrow.”

  I stared, open-mouthed. Quentin did the same. Tybalt kept his composure better than either of us, offering the Luidaeg’s newly-revealed sister a deep, formal bow.

  Marcia squeaked in dismay. I turned to see that Dean had hit the dock in a dead faint.

  “Okay,” I said. “Business as usual, then. Good to know.”

  SIX

  PETE DIDN’T SHARE THE Luidaeg’s feelings about interior decorating, thank Oberon. I wasn’t up for sitting in waist-deep garbage, pretending not to see the roaches. Her quarters were spacious, airy, and meticulously decorated in a mixture of “pirate queen” and “fae noble” that May would probably have admired and taken notes on, before running the hell away, because my Fetch has more sense than to sit down with an unfamiliar Firstborn for tea and cookies.

  The Duchy of Ships wasn’t designed to provide its citizens with huge homes, and Pete seemed content to live by the rules she set for everyone else, leaving her with one room that was large enough to serve as social area, kitchen, and bedroom, all at the same time. A decadently soft-looking bed was centered on one wall, and Dean was sprawled in the middle of it, still dead to the world. Somewhat worryingly so, given that he hadn’t woken up when Tybalt and Quentin had picked him up from the dock, or during the walk back to Pete’s quarters. Marcia and Poppy were off to find the canteen and get him some restorative soup. Also, I privately thought, to reduce the number of bodies in the room.

  Gillian was gone as well, swept away by the rapidly-growing Selkie contingent, who had surrounded her while I’d still been trying to get Quentin to calm down about his unconscious boyfriend. When I’d looked up, she’d been walking away, and she hadn’t looked back.

  Still, Pete was a decent hostess, and she hadn’t shown any signs of transforming us into anything unpleasant, which was about all I asked for in one of the Firstborn. My standards may be low, but hey. They’ve earned it.

  “Sorry about that,” said Pete, waving her mug of ale toward the unconscious Dean. At least it wasn’t rum. That would have been too on the nose, and it was way too soon for us to start seriously drinking. She pursed her lips in a small frown. “I sort of overload my descendants until they get used to me. The Merrow are usually so busy running things under the waves that they never come up to visit the Duchy, and so I don’t have to remember to hide from them.”

  “Is that why you go by ‘Pete’?” I asked.

  “That, and ‘Amphitrite’ isn’t exactly what I’d call a modern name,” she said. “It doesn’t roll trippingly off the tongue the way it did five thousand years ago. I like to move with the times. Keeps me from seeming like a stagnant old fuddy-duddy who needs to be undermined and overthrown.”

  “Is there anyone around here who could undermine and overthrow you?” asked Quentin.

  She fixed him with an amused stare. He met it, looking genuinely curious. To my surprise, she was the first to look away, swinging her attention to the Luidaeg as she asked, “How much time have you spent desensitizing this kid to the idea that gods walk among us?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Luidaeg. “A lot. He follows Toby around, and she’s not great for nurturing a sense of self-preservation.”

  “Ah, yes. The famous October.” Pete turned to me, and for the first time, I felt the full weight of her regard. Her eyes were startlingly like the Luidaeg’s, deep and drowning and comprised of what felt like countless layers of clear water combining into darkness. “Amandine’s youngest. Is Amy the only sibling we have standing who’s still having kids?”

  “She hasn’t had one since October, but so far as I know, yes,” said the Luidaeg.

  “We’re all supposed to be gone now, you see, lies and legends and bones at the bottom of the sea,” said Pete, still looking at me. “We agreed, when our parents disappeared. We’re too big. We’re like hurricanes surrounded in skin, storms that walk the world and do more damage than we intend to. Our wars shook Faerie when Dad and the Moms were here to rein us in, and without them, we could have ruined everything. So we withdrew. We stopped telling people who we were. We’re oddities and demons now, sea witches and dark lords of the fen, but we’re not Firstborn. The word carries too much weight. And that means we couldn’t exactly go around having kids, since they’d give the game away.”

  “Our sister had one, shortly after Amy had August,” said the Luidaeg.
>
  “Wait, what?” I asked.

  “Dawn,” said the Luidaeg shortly, her attention still mostly on Pete. “I think she wanted to prove she was still stronger than the baby of the family.”

  “Eira.” Pete’s lip curled in disgust. “If there’s one thing I truly regret, it’s that I share a mother with her, and not with you. Not that I don’t love my mother, may she remain missing until the stars fall from the sky, but who wants to sit at the family table and admit they’re the full sibling of the biggest bitch to ever walk the world?”

  “About that,” I said. The Luidaeg turned to look at me. Having the full attention of two Firstborn was a bit much, even for me, but I refused to back down. “I thought, well. I thought Titania’s children and Maeve’s children didn’t, you know. Get along.”

  “We don’t, usually,” said Pete. “Mom encouraged her kids to be conquerors and kings. She wanted us to carve out empires in her name, and if we could do our carving through the bodies of our half-siblings, all the better, because it meant there’d be less competition. She wasn’t exactly what I’d call ‘nurturing.’ More ‘bloody-minded and dedicated to the idea that one day she’d be seen as the one true Queen of Faerie.’”

  “She sounds like a nice lady,” I said, as carefully as I could.

  The Luidaeg snorted. “She sounds like nothing of the sort.”

  “Anyway, the ocean is mostly Maeve’s domain, what with her being the source of water magic and all, and I was Titania’s first child who actually took to the depths. Like a fish, some might say.” Pete took another sip of ale. “Mom saw me as a chance to start undermining Maeve’s interests, and hey, it might have worked, if not for the part where my full siblings treated me like some sort of unwanted spindrift washed up on their shores. I was wet, which meant I was less than they were, so they felt free to act like it. Whereas Maeve’s children . . .” She faltered, looking to the Luidaeg.