The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,132

. are you saying you’re a soothsayer?”

“Yes.” She nodded firmly. “I am. Not the best, but I am. That’s why I knew I had to convince the Queen to send me on this trip, with or without Nolan. Bringing back the Roane changes things. It makes the future easier to see, but it also makes it more malleable. There are people who don’t want that to happen.”

“What about you?”

A glass bottle smashed against the dock; Patrick cheered. Cassandra grimaced. “I don’t think it’s mine to decide, and this has been coming for a long, long time. This is supposed to happen. Things have been broken for hundreds of years, Auntie Birdie, and the air moves too fast for me to see how the fixing ends, but I know we’re supposed to be fixing things. Nothing can be broken forever and stay stable. We have to move through this. But you, you have to stop them before they go too far.”

“Who is ‘them,’ honey?”

A rousing cheer rose from Torin’s guards. A chill swept over me, even before I heard the small, familiar voice whimpering under the shouts and jeers of the attackers.

“Sir Daye, it seems I have something that belongs to you.”

Torin’s voice was hectoring, smug. As far as he was concerned, he’d already won. The second he’d acquired the target of his little plan, he’d won.

I turned.

Torin was none the worse for wear from his encounter with Tybalt. There were a few scratches on his cheek, but he stood as tall and proud as ever, giving no sign that his injuries were slowing him down. The light from the hanging lamps around the courtyard’s walls glittered off the glass beads stitched to the breast of his doublet, a mocking mimicry of the way the light had glittered off Quentin’s scales when we’d been in the water.

One of the strands of beads had snapped down the middle. I looked at the broken, glittering line, and I finally understood. I understood everything.

He hadn’t returned alone. A hulking Cephali stood beside him, skin flashing warning bands of blue and orange. The Cephali was holding Gillian’s arms behind her back with two of his tentacles, twining them around her arms so there was no chance for her to break away. Not that she wasn’t trying. My girl was thrashing as hard as she could, a snarl on her face that I recognized all too well from my own mirror. She had never looked so much like my daughter.

She saw me and shouted, “Toby! Get these fuckers off me!”

The sound of her voice, of my name, was enough to break the paralysis that had settled over me. I strode toward the gate, aware that I was a blood-drenched nightmare of a woman and fully prepared to use it to my own advantage. I didn’t bother stopping outside of spearing range. Anyone who stuck one of their little toys into me was going to live to regret it.

“It’s obvious you have her because you think you can use her,” I snarled, eyes on Torin. “You’re wrong. Let her go.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It seems to me that she’s been plenty useful already. You’re not fighting off my people anymore, when they were only here to collect what was mine by right. What will you give me for the girl, Sir Daye? Your own hand? Your own head? Or maybe the proof of my sister’s degeneracy? Give me the boys, and I’ll return your Selkie brat.”

“My sons are not for sale,” spat Patrick. He had a glass bulb in each hand, and looked ready to start throwing again.

I had no idea what was actually in those breakable projectiles, but given that half of Torin’s people were on their hands and knees, vomiting, I was fairly sure it wasn’t anything I wanted getting spilled on Gillian.

“Sale implies I believe you deserve some compensation,” Torin countered sharply. “You have no rights in the Undersea, lander. You’re a pet. A filthy, foul pet who dallied with my sister and needs to be put down for your transgressions. The children aren’t yours to claim. They’ll learn manners when they come to serve me.” He didn’t sound angry. If anything, he sounded . . . eager, like he was excited to get started.

The thought sent shivers along my spine, and not only because he had Gillian. At least she seemed to be unharmed, if furious. That was good. As long as he wasn’t hurting her, I wouldn’t have to take him