The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,11
was proud when my voice didn’t shake.
The Luidaeg waved a hand, like she was brushing away a scrap of cobweb. “We have to deal with the Selkies. Almost three years ago, I told Elizabeth Ryan she had a year to notify the clans, and after that, their bill would come due. I didn’t specify a date. I could have, I suppose, but if I had, I would have needed to stick to it or pay the price, and honestly, I didn’t feel like taking that sort of risk.”
“What bill?” asked Quentin. He glanced at me, confusion and curiosity in his face. “I wasn’t there when you went to see the Selkies, remember? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My stomach sank even lower. “Luidaeg . . .”
“No. They need to know, because everyone in this room is going to be touched by this, whether or not they’re directly involved.” She sat up and opened her eyes, rising from her seat so she could turn and address all of us at the same time.
Her eyes had shifted colors while they were closed, going from deep blue to pure black, a darkness that filled them completely from side to side. She had no pupils, no irises, no sclera. Just drowning darkness, as deep and pitiless as the sea itself.
“I am Antigone of Albany, known as the Luidaeg, the sea witch, and by other names, as they’ve suited those who would speak of me,” she said. “I am the daughter of Maeve and the mother of the Roane, who kept the storms, who saw the future in the tangled tides. They were beautiful, my children, and they were innocent of the great, slow, terrible war fought between my siblings and I, for we had sworn, all of us, to keep it between ourselves. We hated, how we hated, but even in our hatred, we knew this was not their fight.”
She paused, tilting her face toward the ceiling as she took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, if no less formal.
“People wonder sometimes why my father, who was never fond of dictating our lives and ways, set down the Law. He thought, you see, even until the day he left us, that we’d eventually find our way to peace without intervention, as he’d done before us. He was an . . . idealistic man, my father, and I hope he still is, because that’s a rare gift. Even rare gifts can cause pain, when improperly used. Some of my brothers and sisters had children with teeth and claws, who were equipped to defend themselves. Others had children who could melt into the water or fade into the sky. And I had the Roane, and they were sweet, and kind, and even seeing the future couldn’t convince them to be anything else. My father made the Law to protect the Roane and others like them from the cruel hands of Titania’s brood, who would have slain all the children of Maeve purely to make their mother smile.”
Another pause. She kept staring at the ceiling. A single tear escaped her eye, running down her cheek. It left a shimmering trail behind it, gleaming like mother-of-pearl. “One of my sisters hated me for reasons that had nothing to do with my children, and she hated my children because they saw the future and refused to share it with her. So one night, she put knives in the hands of people who saw Faerie as a land to plunder, and she told those people that if they slaughtered the Roane, they would find the secrets of immortality in the flensed skins of my sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, all the way down to the babes in their cradles. My sister looked at my descendants and saw them as sacrifices. And then she saw them sacrificed. Not all, but enough. Enough to take a thriving race to near extinction in a single night. Enough to break my heart forever.”
Dean was the first of the boys to realize what the slaughter of the Roane actually meant. He swayed in the doorway, horror and sudden nausea written in the lines of his face. Good. The others would get there, and they were good boys; they had a strong sense of right and wrong. I had faith that their reactions would mirror his.
“The children of the killers woke up the next morning—they woke up, when my children were never going to wake up again,