The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,75

me, and took a breath.

Water filled my mouth and lungs. I felt like I was choking, the familiar instincts of my body warring with the reality of what I was feeling: water flowing into the places where air had always been before, sustaining and preserving me. I took another breath. The panic began to recede. I opened my eyes, and the water was clear around me, as transparent as the world above. Fae have excellent night vision, and for the Undersea races, that extends to the ability to see a much greater distance underwater. Which makes sense, really. They need to be able to navigate in their watery home.

Something was thrashing six or so feet below, spinning in the water like it couldn’t tell up from down. I shifted the angle of my torso, trying to remember the swimming lessons I’d received from Dianda the last time I’d done this. My body knew what to do, courtesy of the Luidaeg’s enchantment. All I needed to do was get out of its way.

My flukes beat against the current, driving me downward as I kicked. I pressed my arms against my sides to cut down on the drag, noticing as I did that my clothes had changed along with the rest of me: my rag-cut dress was gone, replaced by a much simpler short-sleeved shirt, tied at the waist with a woven rope belt that also served as a scabbard for my knife. The Luidaeg really did think of everything, when the world gave her the time to think. Too bad it didn’t do that more often.

As I grew closer to the thrashing in the water, my suspicions were confirmed: it was Quentin, transformed and panicking, twisting himself into a knot as his body told him he was drowning and he tried to claw his way back to the surface that refused to be in any single, predictable direction. As a Daoine Sidhe, he’d had the same basic density as a human; if he stopped swimming, he would float upward, aided by the air in his lungs. As a Merrow, or a magically-made bootleg of a Merrow, he didn’t have that same buoyancy. If anything, he was designed to sink, to drop lower when he was in the kind of danger that left him unable to swim.

Real Merrow glow faintly when submerged, their scales generating a soft, luminous light. My scales didn’t glow. That was fine. I already knew what they looked like. Quentin’s didn’t either . . . mostly. There were specks of gold buried in the midnight blue of his tail and streaking his flukes and the fins at his sides, like he’d been briefly dipped in molten metal. Those were glowing, more brightly than a real Merrow’s would have, intermittently lighting up in dazzling streaks.

It was a pretty effect. I had no idea what it meant. I just knew I needed him to stop panicking. I swam closer, reaching out and grabbing his hands by the wrists. He stopped thrashing almost instantly, staring at me with wide, terrified eyes. There were streaks of gold in his normally blue irises. It was striking and strange. I smiled encouragingly, and he managed to summon a wavering smile of his own, although his eyes were still too wide. I guess “knowing I’m giving the sea witch consent to transform me” and actually experiencing it are very different things.

But then, I already knew that from experience.

I hooked a thumb upward, indicating the surface. We couldn’t talk while submerged. Real Merrow have a separate language designed for use beneath the waves. It sounds like whale song, like a heartbreaking melody from another world. It’s beautiful and elegant and complex and it spreads along the currents like ink through paper, and I had no idea how to even start. English doesn’t have the right shape for use underwater.

To my surprise, Quentin shook his head and pointed outward instead, away from the dark shadows of the Duchy’s support pillars, toward the gates that would take us out to sea, toward Saltmist. He wanted to get this over with.

So did I. I nodded my understanding, let go of his hands, and began swimming away, trying to let my body do what it already knew how to do. Quentin followed, surprisingly clumsy in his new shape. I rolled onto my back and half sat up in the water, watching him. He seemed to have the basics of kicking and fluke placement down, but the rest—where to put his