A Killing Frost

by Seanan McGuire

  “Well, then she’s living up to her origins. She’s asleep, and Simon was there when we arrived. I know neither Luna nor Ceres would have voluntarily opened him a Rose Road, so he must still have some of Luna’s blood to work with. He had a bow and arrow and elf-shot he’d brewed himself from the herbs and simples growing near the bier. He said it was powerful stuff. Walther’s confirmed it. May was already injured, and I didn’t want Quentin getting hurt, so we tried to talk to him like rational people.”

  “That’s where you made your biggest mistake,” said the Luidaeg. “Simon’s way home has always been an external one. He’s a kind man, and he can be a good man when the situation allows for it, but he’s never been a generous man. His essential selfishness shines through unless he cares. Without knowing who you are to him, he won’t care about you.”

  “Luidaeg, he didn’t even remember being married to Mom,” I said. “Everyone says they were together for literally centuries. How could one spell make him forget that much of his life?”

  “Not forget,” said the Luidaeg. “Revise. It remade his memory to give him the life he would have had if he’d never found his way home in the first place. He’d always been at risk of losing it. His relationship with his brother was never as strong as it was with his sister; Sylvester cared more, in those days, about being seen as a pureblood scion on a noble line, and claimed Glynis Torquill as his mother, forcing Simon to do the same. Simon never fully forgave him.”

  I frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because Celaeno Torquill was the woman who carried the boys beneath her heart for nine long months, and it was her body that bore them, and her hands that held them to her breast. Sylvester couldn’t forgive her for the crime of being mortal, and Simon couldn’t forgive his brother for the sin of refusing to be known as changeling-born.”

  “I . . . wait.” I knew surnames had come from the human world, not out of Faerie; even this many centuries removed from our King and Queens, there hadn’t been so many of us that we needed to track our family lineages that carefully. Quentin was a Sollys because his mother had been born a changeling. I had just assumed the Torquills had a mortal ancestor further back along their family tree, someone long forgotten, their mortality purged by a hope chest in the days when such things were more common, and less likely to be dismissed as little more than legend.

  The Luidaeg nodded. “The Torquill brothers were born as changeling as you were. Their parents took the mortality out of them while they were too young to remember, and Amy’s first great act of blood magic was noticing its absence while they all played in the garden, and no one who was there could ever say whether she’d understood what she was asking, or what she might be capable of doing. That was when we realized she would have to be hidden. If Faerie knew a living hope chest walked among us . . .”

  Sometimes it was hard to learn new things about my mother. They always left me wishing she’d been a better person, because she’d been through so much when she was younger that made me wish I could go to her now, and hold her, and tell her she had value beyond what she could do for other people. Unfortunately, the damage ran too deep, and there were no reassurances I could offer that she’d be able to hear.

  I stood and stared at the Luidaeg in silent shock as she continued, “Your mother’s love was never good for him, but it was the best thing he’d ever found for himself, and he anchored himself by it for so long that as long as he remembered her, he could never be entirely lost. Almost, yes, but not all the way. So the spell took that from him, and with it, took August, and anything else he might hold onto.”

  “Your magic can be cruel, Luidaeg,” I said, not quite admonishing, not quite forgiving. “He wasn’t attacking us, and I thought maybe if I could convince him he was doing this for Patrick—he still remembered Patrick—he’d be able to come back here with me, and give me permission to get married, and then go back to waiting for his patroness to wake up until the heavens fell down.”

  “An exciting plan,” said the Luidaeg. “How were you planning to convince him?”

  “He thought Patrick was dead.” I still wasn’t sure he’d known Patrick wasn’t before the Luidaeg cast her spell. It was precisely the kind of casual cruelty both Evening and the false queen thrived on. “I promised him that Patrick wasn’t, and thought that might be enough. It wasn’t. He wrapped me in rose briars and stole a taste of my blood to convince himself that I was telling the truth. But he saw himself stabbing your sister with the elf-shot arrow, and decided we’d been able to manipulate my blood memories somehow.”

  “Is that all?”

  “He also saw Quentin’s true identity, which is why he seized him. He said he was going to use Quentin as a bargaining chip to get access to the elf-shot cure.” My phone, tucked in the pocket of my jacket and with my battery recharged, remained stubbornly silent. Arden would have called me if Simon had reappeared with my squire in tow . . . wouldn’t she have?

  I was starting to second-guess absolutely everything I thought I knew. This night had been dizzying and convoluted, and it wasn’t over yet. “He’ll also have seen you helping to wake Dianda at the conclave,” said the Luidaeg. “He knows Patrick is alive, and that the Undersea has access to the cure.”

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “Meaning he’ll have gone for both his goals at the same time. He was always a man who valued efficiency. Poppy!” She cupped her hands around her mouth as she shouted, amplifying the sound. Even that couldn’t account for how loud she suddenly was. She didn’t have the physical stature to yell that loudly.

  There was a distant clatter, too deep into the apartment to make sense with the apparent floor plan, and then a much more ordinary voice yelled back, “Doing the things as you told me wanted to be doing, aren’t I? Should I be all for giving up now?”

  “I have her sifting lentils out of fireplace ashes, for practice,” confessed the Luidaeg, before she yelled, “Stop for the moment, and come out here. I need to talk to you.”

  I somehow managed to resist the urge to put my hand over my face. “Luidaeg, we don’t have time for this,” I said. “You already made me explain everything, and that wasn’t fast. We need to be getting to Goldengreen before Simon shows up there and does something to Dean.”

  “Oh, Simon’s already there,” she said, waving my concerns away.

  “What?” Attempting to throttle the sea witch wouldn’t end well for me. In that moment, I was still deeply tempted. I stared at her instead, opening and closing my mouth without another sound.

  “Stop making that face, you look like a koi,” she said. “Patrick’s son holds Goldengreen, which used to belong to my sister, may she never tread those halls again. Simon’s going to see that as an affront to his lady’s honor and a way to get to his lost friend, all at the same time. Simon’s at Goldengreen. And since he was there when most of the wards were set, he’s inside by now. Haring off half-cocked isn’t going to make it easier for us to win this. It’s just going to make things worse. Like you did when you decided to go looking for the failure on your own.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Your Fetch, who only has your memories up to the point of her creation, when, might I note, you weren’t a hero yet, and didn’t know your ass from an answer, and your half-trained squire, don’t count. They’re friends and companions. They’re not backup, and if your kitty-cat wasn’t so worried about you calling off the engagement if he so much as sneezes, there’s no way he would have agreed to you walking away with just the pair of them for protection. It doesn’t work. So we do things my way.”

  I glared at her and was still glaring as Poppy came bounding down the hallway, ash on her hands and smudged on her cheeks. She looked like an orange-haired Daoine Sidhe, apart from her wings, which were long and thin and patterned in a dozen shades of sunrise orange, like the world’s biggest and most ridiculous piece of wearable stained glass. She was wearing jeans
and a loose tunic that had clearly seen better days, and she beamed at the sight of me.

  “October!” she exclaimed. “I knew we had company, and suspected as it might be you, what with the good officer stirring in his sleep—he likes you better than he likes much of anyone else, because when you come to see us, he almost wakes up, and he doesn’t do that when you’re gone. But I had ashes to tend.”

  “How’s it coming?” asked the Luidaeg.

  Poppy held out her hands, opening them to show sooty palms full of lentils. The Luidaeg nodded.

  “Good,” she said. “You can get back to work. October and I are going to Goldengreen.”

  “Am I for coming?”

  “No,” said the Luidaeg. “I want you to stay here. If anyone tries to get in before I come back, seal the door. No matter who they are. No one in and no one out, do you understand?”

  Poppy hesitated, worrying the corner of her mouth between her teeth before nodding solemnly.

  “Good,” said the Luidaeg. She gestured for me to follow as she turned to walk away from her apprentice. “You, come on. We’re taking a shortcut.”

  “If you have all these shortcuts, why did you need to send Arden to pick me up?” I asked, following her across the living room.

  “I wanted to. Sometimes she needs to remember who she belongs to, and this seemed like a good way for both of us to get what we want.” She stopped at the only door on this side of the room, yanking it open to reveal a closet cluttered with cleaning supplies and stained towels. She scowled. “Wrong door.” She slammed it and pulled it open again, this time revealing a stretch of beach beneath a Summerlands sky. The stars were so close and clear that it felt like I could reach up and touch them.

  “Out we go,” she said, planting a hand in the small of my back and shoving me through. The world spun uncomfortably, but I didn’t lose my balance or what little remained of my lunch. Whether this was a door she used with reasonable frequency or I was just that much more fae, I couldn’t tell. Either way, the sand was soft beneath my feet, and I stumbled before getting my balance back and turning to glare at her.

  “Not cool,” I said.

  “Sort of cool,” she replied, and stepped out the door after me. Her clothing changed as she crossed over, going from overalls to a long blue gown that appeared to have been sliced out of the night sky itself, even down to the little flecks of silver glistening on the skirt and bodice. She pulled the door closed behind herself.

  It was set into a crumbling stone wall that looked like something out of a Scottish castle. I had never seen it before, and I like to think I know most of the landmarks in and around the fae side of San Francisco. I lifted an eyebrow. She glanced over her shoulder at the wall, then waved her hand. The door disappeared. She looked back at me.

  “Better?”

  “Not really.” I waved a hand vaguely at the wall, which hadn’t disappeared. “I’ve never seen that before, and I thought I knew all the local Summerlands beaches.”

  “Ah. This one’s isn’t local. This one’s mine.”

  California doesn’t allow private ownership of actual beaches. The Summerlands overlay California, but they’re not subject to mortal laws. The Luidaeg began walking, her dress frothing around her ankles like kicked-up water. It was a beautiful effect and would have been lovelier if it hadn’t been so unsettling. It was getting harder to ignore how much it looked like she’d stolen a strip out of the sky.

  Fae, especially the more powerful purebloods, love forcing random pieces of nature to behave like couture. Gowns made of living butterflies, or feathers, or strips torn out of the wind, aren’t uncommon. But convincing the sky to stay that dark and wrap itself around her so tightly, without turning clear or wisping away, was a display of casual power more blatant than she normally bothered with. She was the Luidaeg, the sea witch, immortal and unstoppable.

  And if she was showing off, even to this degree, she was afraid. I didn’t like that. Anything that worries the Luidaeg is something lesser fae should stay far, far away from. I hurried to pace her. The ocean beside us was perfectly calm, a flat sheet of black glass stretching all the way to the unseen line of the horizon. The conflicting light from the half-dozen moons overhead glittered and danced across its surface, painting it with rainbows, beautiful and cold.

  “Do you think he’s going to wake her up?” I asked.

  She glanced at me, and her eyes were glass-green, devoid of the darkness that sometimes lingered there. “I think he’s going to get a nasty surprise if he does, since he’s the reason she’s asleep, and she has no prohibitions against killing her mother’s descendants. Or my mother’s descendants. She can murder with impunity because who’s left to stop her? Only me, and I’m bound too tightly to raise a hand in anyone’s defense.”

  Something we’d learned all too well when Evening had literally killed her, leaving her body discarded on the floor of her apartment. I had arrived before the night-haunts, and it says something about my life that my first response had been to bring her back from the dead. It says something else about my life that it hadn’t been the first time I’d done something like that—although it had been the first, and so far only, time with one of the Firstborn, and it had exhausted me in ways I hadn’t had the words for. One of the first things she’d said upon waking up was that she hadn’t been dead for long enough: her geas still bound her. Meaning if Simon did wake Evening, the Luidaeg wouldn’t be able to fight her.

  Meaning also that she couldn’t help me against Simon himself. The only way she could hurt a child of Titania was if they knowingly and willingly entered into a bargain with her. Once that was done, the rules changed, at least for the duration of their exchange. So while removing Simon’s way home had absolutely hurt him—and was still hurting him according to any reasonable means of measure—it hadn’t violated her geas.

  My mother is a nightmare and my sister isn’t much better, but whenever I have to think too hard about the family politics among the Luidaeg and her siblings, I’m very, very glad my family is the way it is. Sure, it would be better to have a mother who didn’t lie to me and kidnap my fiancé when she wanted things, and a sister who didn’t think I was vermin for being part-human, but given the choice between them and Evening, I’m happy to stick with what I have.

  The beach continued in a straight line for what seemed like forever, silvery sand glistening in the moonlight. Ahead of us, I saw what looked like a palace made of delicately interwoven seashells rising out of the surf and towering over the cliff that provided it with partial support. The shape of it wasn’t familiar from this angle, but its planes and faces gleamed with pearlescent light, pale pink and impossibly iridescent. I had never seen it before. I knew it all the same.

  “Goldengreen?” I asked, glancing to the Luidaeg for confirmation.

  She nodded. “My sister wanted her privacy, so she drove its foundations deep into a place I had already gone to great lengths to hide. From everyone but her, of course, since there’s no true privacy between sisters.” The loathing in her voice was palpable. “Technically, Goldengreen is built on my own claimed, unceded land.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “It never came up.”

  Her simple dismissal stung. I’d been the custodian of Goldengreen for long enough that I should have known if I was risking offending the Luidaeg by performing my duties. “Is there any way to move it, now that it doesn’t belong to her anymore?”

  “Not without destroying and rebuilding the knowe, and I never got the impression you wanted to do that.” We were getting closer, the walls of Goldengreen rising above our heads. As was often the case in the Summerlands, the distance we were walking and the distance we’d actually traveled didn’t quite add up. No one really knows how big the Summerlands are, but while locations on that side of reality will roughly correspond with locations in the human world, they’re not quite built on th
e same scale.

  “No,” I said quietly. “No, I don’t want to do that. I wouldn’t want to do that, even if Goldengreen still belonged to me. It’s not the knowe’s fault that it was built by a bad person.” None of us can be blamed for who our parents were. And if the knowe was truly as alive as I had always believed them to be, Evening was its mother. Talk about fruit of the poisoned tree.

  Instead of heading for the cliff or a previously unknown exterior staircase, as I had expected, the Luidaeg led me around the wall of the knowe, to the place where the cliff wall extended out over the water and formed a gentle slope. “This is the part you’re not going to like,” she said.

  “As opposed to all these other parts that I’ve absolutely adored?”

  “If we don’t want to climb half a mile of cliff face—and we don’t, these walls weren’t designed to provide easy handholds, and falling is just going to slow us down even more—then we need to go in through the cove.”

  Her meaning hit me like a hammer. I took an involuntary step backward, eyes going wide. “What? No! There has to be another way in!”

  “Not one that will get us there with any speed, and I thought you wanted to save the kid.” She raised one hand, studying her fingernails. “You planning to tell me I’m wrong?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Who the fuck told you Faerie was fair? You should deck them the first time you have the opportunity because they didn’t do you any favors with that one.” She lowered her hand. “That mean you’re good to go for a little swim with me?”

  I hate water. I’ve managed to get past most of my issues—I let people in now, I try not to charge into danger without consideration for the people around me who care and would be hurt if I went and got myself killed—but I still hate water. Even the thought of submerging myself can bring back full-body flashbacks to the moment when my gills opened and my lungs stopped working and the land rejected me for what felt like it was going to be the rest of my life. I don’t remember much of the fourteen years I spent swimming in the Japanese Tea Gardens. Fish don’t have the best sense of time. I remember enough to know that there’s a reason I wake up sometimes in a cold sweat, with a heart that’s beating too fast to let me go back to sleep, and why I can’t take baths anymore. The water is death.