The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,92

can control the weather, the season, even the overall feeling of their demesne. A forest that seems creepy and unwelcoming in the hands of one noble may be airy and open in the hands of another; a place where it never stops snowing may blossom into eternal summer when the head that wears the crown is changed. How extreme the effect is depends on how tightly the landholder is tied to the land. It would take time for Saltmist to adapt completely to being held by Dianda’s brother.

But it was already underway. It felt like the water was getting colder, like it was rejecting our presence. The fields still grew green, but there were strands of what looked like an underwater species of briar growing around their edges, reaching upward with thorny, gravity-defying tendrils to catch and claim anything that came too close. We swam by one of the thicker brambles and I saw fish trapped inside, impaled and motionless, their bloodless bodies left by circumstance to rot.

Peter shivered, swimming faster, until he was pacing me through the water. I expected him to pull ahead, but he didn’t. Instead, he matched the motion of his tail to mine, pacing me, so I’d be able to protect him if something attacked us. I blinked, surprised, and barely resisted the urge to glance back and see how his Cephali guard had taken this change. There wasn’t time. Anything that could slow us down was something to be avoided.

Then the gate was there, appearing out of the gloom like the welcome anchor that it was. I grabbed Peter’s hand, ignoring his startled look, and swam even faster, pulling him with me into the glimmering disk.

The world dipped, whirled, and spun, remaking itself as something new. Nausea threatened to overwhelm me. Before it could, the water warmed around us, suddenly pierced with brighter shafts of shimmering sunlight that couldn’t possibly have been visible this deep, not according to the rules of the mortal world. Faerie works differently, thank Oberon.

I let go of Peter, who looked frantically around before kicking as hard as he could, arrowing toward the surface like a shot. I took off after him, unwilling to lose sight of him when we were this close to our goal. “I had your son, but I don’t know where he went” wasn’t the sort of thing that was going to play very well with the Lordens. I didn’t know what Patrick’s breaking point actually was. This wasn’t how I wanted to find out.

Peter swam, and I followed, and Quentin followed me, and the Cephali followed him, until together we sketched an arrow across the slope of the sea, six people fleeing from an uncertain future, heading for the questionable safety of a duchy that could still decide that Torin had been in the right to do what he’d done. A duchy filled with anxious Selkies and inscrutable Firstborn and seriously, there are days when I feel like I need a vacation from my life. Is it too much to ask for things to stop being hard for just a few hours? Please?

The shadow of the Duchy of Ships cut through the water, seeming to loom out of nothingness with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible. Then the long chains of the anchors and the thick sweeps of the pylons were all around us, turning the formerly open waters into an obstacle course. There were no guards. Pete apparently trusted her people to take care of themselves, and didn’t see any point to holding off an invasion that was never going to happen. I couldn’t decide whether that was arrogance or confidence. For the Firstborn, I guess the difference doesn’t matter as much as it does for the rest of us.

Peter broke the surface first, propelled by his own anxieties. I was close behind. I took a gulping, almost involuntary breath when I broke back into the air. Quentin did the same. The Cephali were more decorous, rising silently, their tentacles curling around them. Then we were looking up at the smooth wooden side of the Duchy, and Poppy was looking back at us, one orange-skinned arm raised in a vigorous, amiable wave.

“There you are!” she chirped. “I was getting worried you wouldn’t come back before everything ran out and you drowned yourselves dead, bones at the bottom of the sea and everything!”

Peter looked nonplussed. I nudged him with my shoulder.

“That’s Poppy. She works for the Luidaeg, and she’s as close as you can