Page 18 of The Unkindest Tide

“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 Convocation. The rest of you are convenient at best and inconsequential at worst, and if you offend or bother me in any way between here and the Duchy, if you try my patience while we’re in open waters, I’ll throw you over the side without thinking twice.”

Dean paled. Quentin patted his arm, clearly trying to be soothing.

He was just as clearly failing. Quentin didn’t think of the Luidaeg as a threat, but Dean had grown up in the Undersea, and he understood how dangerous she could be.

“That’s a ship,” said Gillian.

“Sure is!” chirped Marcia.

“It’s . . . it’s huge, and no one’s coming over here to take pictures or point at it,” said Gillian.

“Nope,” agreed Marcia. “They can’t see it. Or if they can see it, they know it’s not here for them, and they don’t want to mess with anybody powerful enough to summon an Undersea vessel to a mortal pier.” She moved closer to Gillian, patting the other woman on the arm. They looked like they were roughly the same age. When had my daughter become a woman? When had the world changed?

Oblivious to my staring, Marcia continued, “I’m Marcia. You must be Gillian. You have your mother’s chin. Anyway, I’m Dean Lorden’s seneschal, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have. You’ll probably come up with a million, and I think I’m the least intimidating person here.”

“The man who picked me up was seven feet tall and gray like a boulder,” confessed Gillian.

“That would be Danny McReady,” said Marcia. “He’s a friend of your mother’s. He’s a Bridge Troll, and a very nice guy. Did he give you his business card? It can be really useful to have someone you can—”

“Please stop calling her that,” interrupted Gillian.

Marcia stopped, blinking wide, confused eyes at her. “Calling who what?”

“Calling October my mother,” said Gillian. “She is, I know, but . . . it’s complicated.”

Marcia looked from Gillian to me and back again before she said, “Got it. Anyway. He’s a friend of October’s. Good number to have.” She turned away, shoulders stiff, and moved to retrieve the suitcase she’d abandoned next to Dean, fussily checking the latches.

Gillian grimaced. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

The Luidaeg clapped her on the shoulder with one hand, snapping the fingers of the other. Gillian’s human disguise dissolved in a whiff of fennel, the underlying seawater drowned out by the proximity to the ocean.

“I am the last person who should lecture you about family, except for maybe my sister, may piranhas strip the flesh from her poisonously pretty bones,” she said. Her teeth seemed sharper than they’d been a few seconds ago: she looked like she could chew through diamond. “But technically, you’re part of my family as long as you wear that skin, and once you can’t take it off anymore, you’re going to be part of my family forever, so I’m going to give you this advice for free: hate your mother as much as you want to. Loathe her. Raise up armies to destroy her and everything she cares about. But for the love of my father, don’t go saying it. She’s a fucking hero of the realm, and you’re a brand new Selkie who most of these people will be looking at as a possible tool to use against her. The more dissent they see, the more they’re going to aim their designs on you. Be dull. Be unwanted. Be the daughter who broke the chain of Amandine’s line, and make yourself seem as placid and pointless as possible. Do you understand me?”

Gillian glared at her, jaw set in a stubborn line. Finally, sullenly, she said, “Yes.”