The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,44

on all sides, but I had people I loved and trusted with me; I would do my job, go home, and everything would be fine.

Really.

SEVEN

ALL THE MEMBERS of our party—save Gillian, who was still off with the Selkies—had been assigned quarters carved from the belly of the same cargo ship, with individual apartments made from sections of hull. They radiated out from the tiny courtyard that had once been the ship’s upper deck, making it impossible for any of us to sneak away without the others knowing. I found that oddly comforting. This was a big, unfamiliar place, and while I was statistically the most likely to wind up covered in blood, I liked to have a sense of where they were.

Tybalt and I had taken the apartment closest to the gate on the left-hand side of the entrance, with the Luidaeg taking the apartment on the right-hand side. Quentin was next to me and Tybalt; Dean and Marcia were next to the Luidaeg; Poppy and Cassandra were on the other side of them, and Nolan had an apartment entirely to himself. Small tables made from a ship too damaged to be repurposed as housing dotted the courtyard, accompanied by mismatched chairs and lovingly crafted planters. Each played host to an assortment of plants, ranging from kitchen herbs to lush tomatoes to patches of strawberries the color of candied violets that glowed with their own strange inner light.

The Luidaeg saw me eyeing the strawberries and said, “Those found their roots first in Emain Ablach, which was my sister’s country before our father decided we had to be exiled to the Summerlands. They’re not like goblin fruit. They won’t hurt you. But they do make excellent jam. Breakfast here is going to be a treat.”

“See, you say ‘my sister,’ and I can’t help thinking of Evening,” I said.

The Luidaeg shook her head. “Here, I’ll mostly be referring to Amphitrite. You can trust her, for the most part.”

“For the most part?”

“There’s no one in this world you can trust all the time. Not even the people you love, not even the people who love you.” The Luidaeg looked briefly, terribly tired. This had to be so hard on her. She had moved among the Selkies for centuries, pretending to be their loving, uncomplicated Cousin Annie, a woman whose ancestry contained some life-extending fae heritage but whose shoulders would never be draped in a Selkie’s skin. They had loved her and pitied her and let her into their homes, and now she was betraying them. She had never been the woman they believed her to be.

What we were going to do would bring the Roane back to Faerie’s oceans, and it was difficult not to see that as a good thing. Evening had wanted them destroyed, and Evening played a long, brutal game. Maybe she’d been trying to hurt her sister; maybe she’d been doing something more complicated. The Roane could see the future, after all. By arranging their destruction, she had closed the eyes of prophecy, and those eyes had been open for a reason.

I don’t like prophecy. I don’t like anything that smacks too much of destiny, of needing to follow someone else’s template for what’s to come. But it turns out I like Evening even less.

And despite all that . . . bringing back the Roane wasn’t going to bring back the Luidaeg’s children. These new Roane would still be the people they had been when Faerie was something they could set aside and walk away from. They would have their own families and their own histories, and they wouldn’t be hers, not really. Maybe in a generation or two, she could have a relationship with them. But it wasn’t going to happen right away, and it wasn’t going to happen on this floating duchy.

Her elbow caught me in the ribs, knocking me out of my woolgathering. I turned to blink at her. She looked impassively back. Her eyes were green again, the color of sunlight in the shallows.

“You were getting ready to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I could see it. Don’t. I made this bed for myself, a long damn time ago. If there’s anyone you should feel sorry for, it’s the second sons and the dutiful daughters who always thought their day would come, and are about to find out they’ll never have the waters after all. They’re who I’m worried about.”

“Worried how?” I asked carefully.

“I bet we find some bodies floating under the dock before