The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,120
too tired for that.
We walked through the Duchy of Ships in a ragged line, fixed on our destination, trying to ignore the way people pointed and whispered behind their hands. Whatever temporary “ignore them, they’re strangers” field we’d started with, we’d lost it somewhere between rescuing the son of an imprisoned Merrow Duchess and pulling a drowned woman from the sea.
Tybalt glanced my way, annoyance melting into a far more welcome wry amusement. “I see your reputation is spreading. You have fans again.”
“I never asked for fans,” I said, walking faster, as if that would be enough to shift me out from under the weight of all those staring eyes.
“Yet you charm everyone you meet in the same unfaltering manner,” he said. “It seems difficult to believe that it is entirely accidental.”
I hit him in the arm. He laughed, and things were, if not okay again, at least a little better.
The door to our courtyard appeared ahead of us like a beacon, offering the promise of safe harbor. We kept going until we could smell the fresh green scents of our private garden, and hear the sound of voices. Patrick, and Peter, both talking loudly enough that I could tell them apart even before we were close enough for me to pick out words.
“—not the land, Father! You can’t keep thinking of it like it is!”
“We don’t have an army right now, Peter. You have to slow down.”
“Mother has been imprisoned!”
“Does it help at all if I say the sea witch is working on it, and is just as annoyed as the rest of us?” I stepped around the edge of the courtyard.
Patrick and Peter, who had both frozen in place at the sound of my voice, turned to look at me. They were virtually nose-to-nose, Patrick towering almost a foot over his son, yet still seeming somehow evenly matched. Dean and Marcia were off to one side. Neither of them made any effort to hide their relief at my appearance. Cassandra and Nolan were on the other side, looking utterly, profoundly confused. I guess suddenly being dropped into Undersea politics without a primer would do that.
“And where’s Poppy?” I asked.
“She’s in her apartment with the—with the thing you found,” said Dean, haltingly.
“The body,” I said. “You mean she’s with the body.”
He nodded, looking like he was about to be sick. Getting that boy out of the Undersea was the best thing I ever did. He was a good Count, thoughtful and patient and fair. Staying in Saltmist would have eaten him alive.
I turned to René. “We can take you to your sister momentarily,” I said. “Will your traditions allow you to leave the skin with her body until this is resolved? Even if the night-haunts come for her, they won’t touch the skin.” If they’d been able to find sustenance in Selkie skins, all chance of the resurrection of the Roane would have been eliminated ages ago.
Looking sick, René shook his head. “The skin can’t be given to the dead,” he said. “The magic won’t allow it. Some of the first Selkies tried to have their skins buried with them, thinking that was a way to break the bargain, and their children and siblings found those skins draped over chairs at the kitchen table the next day.”
“Delightful.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “René, may I introduce you to Duke Patrick Lorden of Saltmist, his son, Peter Lorden, Count Dean Lorden of Goldengreen, his Seneschal, Marcia, and Crown Prince in the Mists Nolan Windermere, and his ‘please don’t cause a diplomatic incident because you don’t understand what’s happening’ Cassandra Brown.”
“I feel I may have just been insulted,” said Nolan, sounding puzzled.
“Aren’t you supposed to introduce princes and the like first?” asked Marcia.
“Not when we’re in an Undersea fiefdom, surrounded by ocean on all sides,” I said. “There’s etiquette and then there’s common sense, and they don’t always agree. Everyone, this is René. He’s married to the head of the Beacon’s Home Selkies, and Isla was his sister.”
“I am terribly sorry for your loss,” said Nolan. He managed to make the proclamation sound like it actually meant something, and wasn’t just the sort of thing people said when they didn’t know what else to do.
“If we can’t leave the skin with the body, what are we supposed to do with it?” asked Quentin. “Can you stick a Selkie skin in a closet?”
“The Luidaeg does, but I don’t know how you keep them there,” I said.