The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,147
like she was suffocating. Then she coughed, rubbing her throat with one hand, and looked at me with wide, wondering eyes.
“We have another Firstborn,” she rasped. “Pete.”
“Pete,” I agreed. “If she’s willing to help you . . .”
“It won’t work.” Her face fell. “I swore to destroy the Selkies, and that’s what I have to do.”
“But did you swear to destroy the Selkies, or to bring back the Roane?” I asked. “Because maybe those don’t have to be the same thing.”
For a long, seemingly endless moment, the Luidaeg was silent. I held my breath, counting the seconds. If I hit twenty, I thought it might be a good idea to run. The sea witch might extend me more patience than she did most, but it wasn’t limitless, and when it evaporated, I was going to be left high and dry and stranded on the cliffs of her regard.
Finally, in a low voice, she asked, “What would you have me do?”
And I told her.
TWENTY-THREE
WE BEGAN WITH ISLA’S skin. She’d died without formally passing it along: currently, technically, it had no owner, not even René, who hadn’t been allowed to take it. Marcia carried it into Pete’s receiving room, which seemed larger and eerier without its gathered crowds. Every sound we made echoed up into the rafters, bouncing back and forth between walls and windows until it became the insensate roaring of the sea, stripped of meaning and nuance.
Pete was there when the rest of us arrived, standing behind a vast round table that looked like it might have started life as a tall ship’s lookout, only to be pulled down from the mast and pressed into a different sort of service. She was back in her pirate’s attire, hat perched on her head, weight resting on her fingertips as she leaned against the table’s surface. She looked at us gravely, studying each of us in turn, before she settled on the Luidaeg, back in white samite, her hair a tempest of black curls that sometimes seemed to flash silver, like they mirrored the ceaseless swirl of an angry sea.
“Annie,” Pete said, voice barely louder than a sigh. “What stars do you steer by?”
The Luidaeg somehow mustered a smile. “They haven’t bound me or tricked me or anything of the sort, I swear. They just convinced me to try another way.”
“Another way.” Pete gave the rest of us a dubious look. “Centuries I spent asking you to find a way to talk yourself out of doing this, and these people, these little, temporary people,” her eyes flicked over me and Marcia on the word “temporary,” like it was the kindest way she could find to remind the Luidaeg that we were mortal, “managed to do it in less than a week’s time? I’m dubious. You’ll forgive me for that.”
“I’ve forgiven you for worse,” said the Luidaeg. “Please, Amphitrite. Because you’re my sister, and my friend, and because I didn’t argue when I let you exile me, help me now. Help me find out whether this is the way forward, or only another anchor to weigh me down.”
“You know what it’ll cost if you fail.”
The Luidaeg nodded. “I do. I don’t know why, Dad help me, but I’ve decided it might be worth it. To know. To know whether I’m about to make myself into the monster they’ve all wanted me to become.”
Pete nodded, expression grave. Marcia stepped forward, putting the willow basket on the table. Its contents sloshed faintly, and my stomach lurched. This was a dead creature’s hide, a skin passed who knew how many times over, and there was no blood left in it. This kind of death existed away from and outside of my sphere as one of the Dóchas Sidhe—but it was also exactly the sort of thing Faerie had made my mother—and by extension, me—to do. It was a spell, tangled and ancient and intricate as anything. Age couldn’t change its essential nature.
Marcia started to step back. The Luidaeg’s hand lashed out, quick as a striking snake, and latched around Marcia’s wrist. Marcia squeaked, and froze.
“Weren’t you tempted?” asked the Luidaeg. “A Selkie’s skin, no witnesses, and all the sea standing ready to welcome you home. I’ve seen the way you stand in the shallows, looking toward the deeps. Weren’t you tempted?”
“No,” said Marcia. She met the Luidaeg’s eyes and didn’t flinch. “I have other paths to walk, and other roads to run. I can’t do them wrapped in a sealskin that isn’t mine. I’m sorry. I’m