Page 29 of The Unkindest Tide

They missed her. They’d been missing her for centuries; they might miss her forever, depending on how things went with the resurrection of the Roane. My heart went out to them, and to her. Why does Faerie have to make everything so hard?

We had entered a small market area, packed with stalls selling fruit, vegetables, bread, and less edible goods, when Tybalt stepped out of the narrow space between a spice vendor and a slightly more permanent-looking tailor’s shop. He was carrying my leather jacket over one arm, and had an expression on his face that couldn’t seem to decide between amusement and irritation.

“Imagine my surprise when I emerged from unpacking to find Marcia saying you’d gone on without me.” He fell into step beside us, offering the Luidaeg a nod. “Lady Sea Witch.”

“Sir Cat,” she replied, without breaking stride. “Don’t be too annoyed at October. I told her she didn’t have time to go get you. I also told Marcia to tell you not to follow us.”

“She did,” he said, offering me my jacket. “I elected to ignore her, as is my right as both a cat and a king.”

“How did the Cait Sidhe survive past infancy?” asked the Luidaeg.

Tybalt raised an eyebrow. “If any of us would know the answer to that, milady, I would expect it to be you. You were, after all, there when it happened.”

The Luidaeg laughed and kept walking.

I shrugged my leather jacket on, taking a moment to fuss with the ribbons that served as my sleeves, trying in vain to make them lie flat, or at least not get all twisted and tangled around my elbows. Tybalt watched this with some amusement, waiting until I was done before he reached over and took my hand.

“You look quite elegant, if a bit anachronistic,” he said. “The Luidaeg’s work, I assume?”

“I can dress myself.”

“Yes, but you generally choose not to unless under serious duress, and I have never once seen you voluntarily trend toward corsetry.” Tybalt shook his head. “I fear I’ll need to take all responsibility for your wedding gown, lest you show up in one of those abominable knee-length creations.”

“They’re called skater dresses, and they’re very comfortable,” I protested.

The Luidaeg looked over her shoulder at us. “Now is when you want to do your wedding planning? Now? Do you have no sense of timing, or are you just oblivious?”

“We are surrounded by water on all sides,” said Tybalt. “Forgive me if I wish to take my betrothed’s mind off the situation.”

I flashed him a smile and kept walking. The Luidaeg rolled her eyes and did the same.

The shopping district—if it could really be called a district, under the circumstances—gave way to another residential neighborhood, this one consisting entirely of tiny shacks. It was shabbier here. The air smelled more strongly of saltwater and decaying wood, and the walkways were slipperier, damp with condensation and streaks of drying seaweed. I cast the Luidaeg a curious look, allowing my question to go unasked.

She answered it anyway. “The Duchy of Ships is home to a great many Selkies and their families, but that doesn’t make them wealthy, or even particularly well-regarded,” she said. “Their inability to breathe water means they can never fully belong to the Undersea. Still, they work as couriers and messengers, and they hold on.”

“Can Roane breathe water?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

“Yes and no,” said the Luidaeg. “They don’t have gills, but their control over the currents is such that they can call air bubbles to themselves, and keep breathing without coming to the surface. It’s a relatively common trick in the Undersea. There are several descendant races who are technically air-breathers, but manage to do it subtly enough that they never get called on it. An open secret, if you will. Now can you stop asking me questions about my kids? You know I have to answer, and you know that makes me uncomfortable.”

“Sorry.”

She shook her head. “It’s not your fault. It’s just that these are things that should be common knowledge—the Roane should never have been lost—and now I have to explain them like they’re trivia. Like they’re trivial. I hate everything about this. I even hate doing this to the Selkies, although that’s not going to stop me. Faerie needs the Roane.”

“Why?” asked Tybalt. The Luidaeg whipped around to stare at him, and he put his hands up. “Peace, lady, please. I only ask because . . . because this doesn’t return your children to you. This doesn’t put their hands in yours, or their eyes upon your face. Why do this, when the ones who broke faith with you are so long gone?”

“I made a promise, and thanks to my stepmother, I can’t break them,” she said. “I could try. Some people might even argue that I have tried, with as long as I’ve put off calling in this debt that is due. I could have grabbed October here when she was a child, raised her as my own, raised her to think doing this was the most important thing in the world.” She glanced at me before resuming her forward progress. “And don’t think I didn’t consider it. Amy had no right to do what she did to you. No right. But I wasn’t ready to be a mother again, and Sylvester was glad to step in when I told him he was needed, and I gave the Selkies another fifty years. I’ve put this off as long as I can. Anything more would be cruel.”

“Ah,” said Tybalt, with what sounded like genuine sorrow. “My apologies for your unfair predicament.”

The Luidaeg sighed and kept walking.

The shacks grew denser around us, until there was no space between them. Sand began appearing on the deck, adding a level of grit and grip to the waterlogged wood. And then, without warning, the lane opened up, becoming a wide, artificial cove, like something out of a Coney Island fever dream.

We were still in the Duchy of Ships: that much was clear from the way everything continued to shift and creak around us, ancient wood settling deeper and deeper into its questionable moorings. But the decks and walkways were gone, obscured by a layer of fine white sand that would have looked exactly like an ordinary beach, if not for the five-foot drop between it and the waterline. The shacks were replaced by tidy little houses built in an almost Cape Cod style and painted in ice cream pastels, their windows thrown wide and their shutters painted in contrasting colors.

There were children everywhere. Small children, two and three years old, rolling in the sand and building complicated castles that collapsed at the slightest touch. Awkward prepubescent children goading each other into diving off the beach’s edge, pulling themselves back up to the sand by way of rope ladders, or scaling the pylons that held the whole construct in place. Teenagers, who looked at us, took note of our clothing, and looked away, although I couldn’t say whether it was out of dislike of strangers or judgment of our fashion choices.

There were adults as well, moving more sedately, and every other one I saw had a seal’s pelt tied around their waist or shoulders. They were the ones who went pale at the sight of us—or, in some cases, froze in place, seemingly unable to even breathe.