Page 50 of The Unkindest Tide

The other armed guard seemed to shake off his disorientation—or maybe he was just too angry to notice how dizzy he was. He bellowed and charged at me, trident lowered, like he thought he might have better luck skewering me than his partner had.

He never reached me. The Cephali dropped from the ceiling, landing on his head and wrapping her tentacles around his face, cutting off all air supply. He grunted angrily and clawed at her, only for her to wrap two more tentacles around his wrists. His struggles slowed and finally stopped, and he fell, not visibly bleeding, next to the first guard.

All this had taken less than a minute. Maybe that was why the guard with the map hadn’t moved. He turned slowly, eyes gone wide and face gone pale, and I realized how young he looked. He didn’t even look as old as the still-invisible Quentin . . . and he didn’t have a weapon.

“Hi,” I said. “We’re from the other team. I have a proposal for you.”

He swallowed hard. “I will not swear fealty to a woman I’ve just met,” he said. His voice shook. I realized he thought I was Merrow, and that, as a Merrow, I was allowed to kill him if I wanted to, thanks to his own liege’s declaration of war.

“Not what I’m looking for, so don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to make my voice as soothing as I could. “My squire—who’s still invisible, and could be behind you right now, so don’t even think about running—my squire is pretty good with knots. You give me the map, not because we need it, but because I don’t want you to have it anymore. He ties you up and shoves you into a storeroom. When someone finds you, you get to tell them you fought just as hard as your friends here.” I prodded one of the fallen guards with my toe. It would have been nice if the Luidaeg’s spell had left me with my shoes.

“I refuse to sit by while my comrades in arms are killed,” he said stiffly, and closed his eyes. “Do me this mercy, and kill me quickly, so I may be ready for the night-haunts to arrive.”

I glanced at the place where I assumed Quentin was standing, wishing that he were visible, so I could see him roll his eyes. Then I looked back to the guard. “We’re not killing anyone. We’re here for Peter Lorden. Once we have him, we’ll leave, and you can tell whatever story makes you happy. Be the hero who fought off twenty invisible attackers, or just say you kicked your friends’ asses. I don’t care. Give me the map, let us tie you up, and this ends.”

He opened his eyes, looking uncertainly from me to the Cephali still sitting serenely on the other guard’s face, and back again. Then he held out the map.

“Good choice,” I said, and grabbed him.

It only took us a few minutes to get all three of the guards securely bound and chucked into the nearest small storage room, which was mostly filled with dried beans and packages of instant ramen. Quentin appeared in a wafting cloud of my magic as the last of the don’t-look-here gave way. He picked up one of the ramen packages, wrinkling his nose.

“Really?” he asked. “There’s so much salt in these things.”

“I bet when you live at the bottom of a literal ocean, you don’t care as much,” I said, taking the ramen away from him and tossing it at one of the unconscious guards before closing the door. “We should have a while before the next patrol comes looking for this one. Let’s move before we have to do this whole routine over again.”

“How are you not dead?” demanded the Cephali, finally breaking her silence. “I saw them stab you. You’re covered in blood.”

“That’s pretty normal for her,” said Quentin. “Her fiancé is going to be pissed.”

“Not if it all washes off in the water,” I said. “There’s no need to tell Tybalt I got impaled.”

“Again,” said Quentin.

“Again,” I agreed.

The Cephali’s eyes widened. “No wonder the Duchess Lorden chose you as allies,” she said. “Not even she would want to face you in open waters.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” I said, and started walking.

Quentin paused long enough to pick up one of the discard tridents before he followed me.

The palace was designed in a series of gentle, organic spirals, which made sense, since it had apparently been grown from a seed coral, not built like the knowes I was used to back on land. I still got the feeling of patient presence from it that I got from the more familiar knowes; it was alive, if not exactly in the way quick-moving, hot-blooded creatures understood living.

If I’d thought it spoke the same language as the land knowes, I would have tried to plead with it for Peter’s life. It’s a weird trick, but one that’s served me well in the past. Instead, I put a hand on Quentin’s shoulder, saying, “Don’t let me walk into any walls,” and closed my eyes.

Blood magic can take many forms, and most of those are shared between the Daoine Sidhe and the Dóchas Sidhe. The Dóchas Sidhe just got them in a stronger form, because our blood magic isn’t diluted with flowers. I opened my mouth as I walked, tasting and testing the air, trying to focus on the unique blend of Daoine Sidhe and Merrow that the Lorden boys represented. As far as I’m aware, that’s a blending that has never happened before, in all of Faerie, and may never happen again, given how reclusive the Merrow tend to be.

I breathed in and tasted the steel and heather traceries of Quentin’s heritage, which made so much more sense to me now that I knew his mother had been born a changeling and given up her human heritage in order to marry her true love. Steel had never seemed like a logical element of a pureblood’s magic, but we carry our parents in our veins—sometimes even the pieces they, themselves, have chosen to give away. I tasted the Merrow guards behind us, and the Cephali, a delicate blend of sweet seagrass and something tart and salty that I automatically identified as plankton and filed away for future reference. My internal catalog of magical signatures defies proper description, and is filled with things I’ve never actually experienced.

I breathed in again, letting Quentin guide me down the hall . . . and there, under the heavier, more present scents, I found a thin thread of Merrow mixed with Daoine Sidhe. It tasted like stonecrop blossoms and young kelp, and I could almost follow those traces back to Patrick and Dianda, and farther, all along their family lines. I’d never gone looking for someone by dowsing through their parents before, and the possibilities were both endless and intoxicating. I shook myself loose, opening my eyes, and pointed down the hall.

“This way,” I said.

Together, we hurried toward our destination, and I didn’t say anything about the fact that, for me to pick up the scent that strongly, Peter must have been bleeding at some point. I just walked as fast as I could and hoped that I wasn’t already too late.

TWELVE

THE HALL CURVED and the smell of Peter’s magic grew stronger, until I could pick it up without even really trying. Then it began growing fainter again. I paused.