The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,32

gone to find a seat atop some nearby barrels. I looked back to the gangplank. Gillian was now safely on the ship, and two more sailors—a Merrow and a Candela—had appeared to get us ready to cast off. Everyone looked perfectly content with the situation, and with their role in the journey ahead.

Tybalt touched my elbow. “What is it?” he asked.

“That’s the problem. I don’t know,” I replied. “But something’s wrong.”

He nodded and stepped closer as we pushed away from the pier—still visible through a wavering, crystalline curtain, like it was on the other side of a heat haze rising from a highway in the summer sun. As soon as we were no longer in contact with it, it winked out, and we were sailing on an endless, wine-dark sea, bound for an unknown destination, and everything was water all around us, and there was no turning back.

FIVE

IT TURNS OUT SAILING is intensely dull when you’re just riding the boat, not actually doing anything to drive it. There were cabins belowdecks, but as we were supposed to arrive at the Duchy of Ships before sunrise, they hadn’t been prepared for our use, and the crew didn’t like us hanging out down there. Worse, there were no beds—not even cots. The rocking that suffused the whole ship was worse on the deck, and there was nowhere else to be. I heal quickly enough for injuries that would be game over for most people to be only minor inconveniences for me. Somehow seasickness, like migraines from excessive magic use, didn’t care. Once my stomach went into rebellion, that was all she wrote.

I hoped the barnacles lining the ship’s hull and sides didn’t mind being vomited on, because it was happening. It was happening a lot. I gripped the rail, trying to keep my eyes closed so the roiling water below wouldn’t set me off again. Footsteps warned me of someone’s approach. I wondered, half-eagerly, whether this was a surprise assassination attempt. Drowning couldn’t have been worse than the nausea.

Actually, I had drowned before, at least once, and it hadn’t been worse than the nausea. I hate puking. Almost as much as I hate being shot, stabbed, covered in my own blood, and everything else that happens to me on a horrifyingly regular basis.

“Did you not bring any Dramamine?” Marcia sounded concerned, but not like she was about to lose everything she’d ever eaten over the side of the ship.

I decided to hate her a little. “Didn’t think of it,” I wheezed, allowing my head to loll forward, so if I did vomit again—I couldn’t possibly vomit again, there was nothing left inside me—it would follow the path of the existing mess. “Never been seasick before.”

“Have you ever gone sailing before?”

I shook my head. The motion was enough to set my temples throbbing and make my stomach do another slow tuck and roll. I groaned.

“Poor Toby.” Marcia put her hand against my back, rubbing in small, concentric circles. It helped. Not enough to make me feel like I could let go of the rail, but it helped. “We’ll be there soon. Miss the Luidaeg says the Duchy of Ships doesn’t sway nearly this much. It’s too big for that. Well, except when there’s a major storm, but the Merrow have agreed to sing the storms away for as long as this meeting is going on. Which could be days. I hope you remembered to clean your fridge before we left.”

“May and Jazz are home, and the wards are keyed to Raj,” I said. “Food doesn’t have time to spoil in my house.”

“Oh, that’s good,” said Marcia cheerfully, still rubbing my back. “Tybalt is having a serious conversation with one of the ship’s cats, or at least that’s what it looks like. I don’t know whether the cat is Cait Sidhe or not. I guess it doesn’t matter much. And the prince is up in the rigging. He climbs really well, for a prince. If I were a prince, I think I’d spend all my time sitting around waiting for people to bring me things. Bonbons and stuff like that.”

I finally took my eyes off the water, peering at her through the disheveled curtain of my hair. “Are you just babbling at me until I start feeling better?”

“Yup!” Marcia beamed. “Is it working?”

My stomach was no longer roiling. I didn’t trust myself to stand up on my own, but I also didn’t feel like I was about to introduce the barnacles to my breakfast.