The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,29

say that she’s been practicing her dream-walking just like you told her to, and you should be nice to me because I’m her favorite sister.”

The Luidaeg actually looked amused at that. “Did she, now? Well, I guess I have to listen. It wouldn’t do to piss off the only oneiromancer we have on hand.” She turned to Nolan. “You, on the other hand, were distinctly not invited to this party. What are you doing here, Prince Windermere? Don’t you know what happens to nobles who sail too far from familiar shores?”

“I stand as diplomatic emissary for my sister, Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, long may she rule in peace and in plenty,” said Nolan stiffly. I couldn’t blame him for that. He wasn’t accustomed to being interrogated by the literal sea witch.

He was a striking man, despite his somewhat old-fashioned clothing and his plummy, outdated accent. He looked and sounded like something from an Underhill production of The Great Gatsby, and while I wasn’t sure having him along with us was necessarily a good idea, it was nice to see him outside the knowe. He’d spent the better part of the twentieth century in an elf-shot coma, and he was still adjusting to the way the world had changed while he was asleep. This was, so far as I was aware, the first time Arden had allowed him out of her sight for longer than a quick trip to the store. Which meant . . .

“Nolan, have you been to the Duchy of Ships before?”

He turned to me, eyebrows lifted. Then he relaxed, and smiled his prince’s smile, and said, “The informality of this era is a delight. Yes, Sir Daye, once. Long ago. It was a short trip, taken in company of my nursemaid, Marianne. I travel in my sister’s name, but I am, I admit, hopeful that perhaps someone there might remember her, and be able to tell me where she’s gone. We would welcome her home, if she were willing to return. If nothing else, I would like to find her, and see for myself that she’s all right.”

“And as Arden’s seneschal, I’m here to make sure he doesn’t get kidnapped by pirates or something,” said Cassandra. “It’s sort of like going on vacation, except for the part where it’s not going to be restful and we’re all going to die.”

“Cheerful,” I said.

She shrugged. “I learned from the best.”

A car door slammed in the distance. I turned to see Gillian walking toward us, towing a small suitcase in her wake. She was alone. Danny must have stayed with the cab, and I was grateful for that; I didn’t want to explain, again, what was going on, and we’d come too far to turn back now.

She stopped a few feet away, eyes going terribly wide at the sight of Poppy, with her gauzy, undisguised wings, and Nolan, with his sharply pointed ears and inhumanly handsome features. “I thought we were supposed to use illusions when we were out in public,” she said, voice wavering. She raised a hand to indicate her own seemingly human face. “Did I do this wrong?”

“There’s an illusion on this whole pier right now, courtesy of the Duchy of Ships,” said the Luidaeg. “It was necessary.”

Gillian frowned. “Why?”

“Because our ride is almost here,” said the Luidaeg.

As if on cue, the fog in front of the pier parted and a ship sailed majestically toward us. It was an old-fashioned thing, like it had been stolen from the set of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, with tall sails and a stylized mermaid on the prow. Only she wasn’t quite a mermaid: her body ended not in the long, scaled sweep of a fish’s tail, but in a tangled knot of tentacles, each one carved into an elegant spiral and colored the same coral red as her hair. There was an air of antiquity to the vessel, accentuated by the barnacles on its sides and the tattered edges of its sails.

The flag flying above the crow’s nest was unfamiliar to me, showing three black feathers above a background of blue, each tipped in palest gray. The Luidaeg looked at it and smiled before turning to the rest of us.

“I want to make this perfectly, exquisitely clear, and I want to do so right now, while there’s still time for you to go home and forget you were ever here,” she said. “October is necessary for this to work. Gillian is bound to attend this