The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,38

I just want to be clear on where your sense of self-preservation fails you.”

He shrugged. “The Luidaeg isn’t a reigning monarch. She won’t get mad at me for being disrespectful. Not in that way, at least. She might get mad at me for being disrespectful in other ways, but I’m pretty good about knowing where my boundaries are.”

Dean’s horror deepened, until he looked like he might be sick over the idea of what the Luidaeg was going to do to his boyfriend. I offered him a sympathetic smile.

“You get used to it, honest,” I said.

A murmur ran through the crowd, sounding relieved and worried at the same time. They began to pull away, and this time, they didn’t let fear of offending the Luidaeg stop them. In a matter of moments, they had opened a clear path along the dock, leading deeper into the ramshackle conglomeration of ships and shanties and more permanent structures.

There, at the exact center of the newly-opened path, was a woman. She was about the same height as the Luidaeg, and like the Luidaeg, she looked innocent and ancient at the same time, like a girl barely out of her teens who had nonetheless somehow seen more than any single person should have to see. She was dressed like a pirate from a summer blockbuster, down to the ludicrously large white feather in her battered hat and the cutlass belted at her nipped-in hourglass of a waist. Her shoulders were narrow and her hips were wide and she walked toward us like the rolling ocean, like she had nothing to worry about in the world, like the sea witch came to visit every day.

She was a stunning beauty, in every sense of the word “stunning”: she was gorgeous and terrifying at the same time, with skin the color of a shark’s belly, streaked here and there with lines of tiny scales that glittered with mother-of-pearl rainbows, shimmering and strange. Her hair was long and black and filled with oil-slick echoes, almost matching her scales. It covered her ears and the lines of her neck, making it impossible for me to tell whether she had gills. I couldn’t name her type of fae on sight, and with so many other fae still clustered around us, I couldn’t try to breathe in her heritage; I would have knocked myself on my ass again if I’d even considered it.

She smirked as she drew closer, like she knew what I’d been considering. Then she focused on the Luidaeg. “Gentle winds and kind tides to all who come to my realm with peaceful hearts and honest hands.”

The Luidaeg raised an eyebrow, looking briefly amused. “We’re doing this the formal way, are we?”

The nameless woman looked placidly back at her.

The Luidaeg snorted. “All right, Petey. Clear skies and trackless shores to all who keep their signal fires burning, guiding home sailors from the sea.”

The woman—Captain Pete, I presumed—suddenly grinned and, to my utter shock, swept the Luidaeg into an embrace. Even more shockingly, the Luidaeg returned it.

“It’s been too long,” said Pete.

“I’ve had my reasons,” said the Luidaeg, and pulled back, shooting a smile at the rest of us. I braced myself. She never smiled like that unless she was about to say something upsetting.

“Pete, this is my retinue for the duration of our stay, along with a few assorted nobles and hangers-on. Retinue and otherwise, this is Captain Pete, keeper of the Duchy of Ships, protector of these waters, and my sister. Count Lorden, you may know her better by her given name: Amphitrite, Firstborn daughter of Titania and Oberon, Mother of the Merrow.”

I stared, open-mouthed. Quentin did the same. Tybalt kept his composure better than either of us, offering the Luidaeg’s newly-revealed sister a deep, formal bow.

Marcia squeaked in dismay. I turned to see that Dean had hit the dock in a dead faint.

“Okay,” I said. “Business as usual, then. Good to know.”

SIX

PETE DIDN’T SHARE THE Luidaeg’s feelings about interior decorating, thank Oberon. I wasn’t up for sitting in waist-deep garbage, pretending not to see the roaches. Her quarters were spacious, airy, and meticulously decorated in a mixture of “pirate queen” and “fae noble” that May would probably have admired and taken notes on, before running the hell away, because my Fetch has more sense than to sit down with an unfamiliar Firstborn for tea and cookies.

The Duchy of Ships wasn’t designed to provide its citizens with huge homes, and Pete seemed content to live by the rules she set