The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,104
. . .” She stopped and swallowed. “When they seem like they might become a threat to Faerie, we have ways of stopping their tongues. We don’t like to do it. It’s small and petty and cruel and unfair, but it’s sometimes necessary.”
“Magically, you mean,” I said.
Liz glowered. “Yes, magically. What do you take us for? The fact that our place in Faerie has to be earned doesn’t make us less a part of it than you. If anything, it makes us more a part of it. We chose.”
So had every changeling, ever, but somehow that never seemed to get us a better place at the table. I looked at her expression and decided it might be better not to point that out. “So is it ever, under any circumstances, acceptable to kill one of your human kinfolk? Just so I know we’re on the same page here.”
“No,” she said, utterly affronted. “A Selkie without a skin is still a Selkie where it counts. We respect the Law among our own kind, even if no one else will.”
“Wait,” blurted Quentin. We turned to look at him. His cheeks flared red, but he pressed on, saying, “I thought if a prospective Selkie refused to accept the skin, you, um, drowned them. So they couldn’t go back to the others and tell them the truth about where you all come from.”
I didn’t remember the Luidaeg telling him that part, but that didn’t mean anything: I wasn’t always there, and the two of them had a relationship that existed outside of their mutual relationship with me. I turned back to Liz, waiting for her response.
“We drown our children, yes,” she said. “It kills me that we do, but it’s the agreement we made with the sea witch when she put the enchanted sealskins into our hands, and we keep our word. If you’re asking whether I’ve ever drowned a child, the answer is no. I had to have an heir when I became head of my clan, but I sought out a Roane man, and I lay with him to get my Diva. She’ll never need a sealskin to reach the sea, and so there was never any need to offer her the betrayer’s bargain. And before you say it, yes, I know I cheated, and yes, I know the sea witch would be within her rights to strike me down for going against the spirit of her deal with us, and no, I don’t care. I was never going to sacrifice a child to the water.”
“Okay, that’s . . . really awful, but given what the Divided Courts do to changelings who choose their human parents, I don’t think I get to judge you,” I said.
“Nor does the Court of Cats,” said Tybalt. “It’s rare for our children to choose anything aside from Faerie, and those who are born in feline skins never need to make the choice at all, but when it happens that a human-born child selects the mortal world as their home, their blood is on our hands. You shall find no censure here.”
Liz looked briefly startled. “Well, good,” she said, voice gruff with unshed tears. “Why are you asking me this?”
“I have one last question, and then I can explain,” I said. “What would happen if someone killed one of the skinless Selkies? Not Diva—I’m not sure she’s technically a Selkie at all, if she doesn’t need a sealskin to be part of Faerie—but one of your mortal kin.”
“If the killer was of Faerie but not of the clans, we would approach the local regent,” she said. “In Roan Rathad, that would mean approaching Baron Aberforth and hoping he was in the mood to listen to our petition. Not because that person would have done anything wrong in the eyes of the Law, but because sometimes, we can convince those in charge that our human relations are our property, and at least get the perpetrators fined for their crimes. It’s not enough—it’s barely this side of wergild—but it means they don’t do it casually.”
“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