“Sir October Christine Daye, Knight of Lost Words, daughter of Amandine the Liar, sworn in service to Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, hero of the realm in the Mists, there are debts between us,” she said, and her voice was cold and hollow, and filled with ancient echoes. “Do you deny this?”
“I don’t,” I said.
Tybalt said nothing.
“I would have them settled,” she said. “I would see you free of me.”
“For five minutes, tops,” muttered Quentin.
The Luidaeg shot him a look that was somewhere between amused and annoyed before she focused on me again. “Do you accept my right to demand repayment of your debts?”
“I do,” I said.
“Then in two months’ time, when Moving Day arrives, you will come with me to the Duchy of Ships, and we will finally put paid to the debts that lie between us. By the tide and the tempest, it is said; by the water and the wave, it shall be done.”
A pulse seemed to flow through the room, striking us all, making the hair on my arms stand on end. Then it was gone, taking the chill and the electric charge in the air with it. I shivered, allowing myself to lean against Tybalt, keeping my eyes on the Luidaeg.
“That sounded fancy, but what did it mean?” I asked.
The Luidaeg looked suddenly weary. “It means on May first, you and I and whoever your Queen Windermere decides ought to be present will get on a boat and sail to the Duchy of Ships, where all the Selkies in the world will be gathering to have their skins permanently bound to their bodies. We’re bringing back the Roane, Toby. After all this time and all these deaths, we’re bringing back the Roane.”
“Right,” I said slowly. “That.”
“You knew this was coming,” said the Luidaeg. “You were there when I told Liz the bill was coming due.”
“Yes, but . . . I sort of forgot a little?” I ran a hand through my hair. “It was always something that was going to happen, something in the future. Not something happening now.”
“It’s still something happening in the future. It’s just that the future has a date on it.” The Luidaeg turned to Dean. “Tell your mother the sea witch is calling in the Selkies’ debt. She may or may not know what that means, but she’ll want to be there, since it’s going to be happening in her waters.”
“I’ve never even heard of the Duchy of Ships,” protested Dean, awe apparently forgotten in the face of his confusion. That, or my general air of disrespect was rubbing off on him. Sweet Titania, I hoped not. “How can it be in my mother’s waters if I’ve never heard of it?”
“Ask your mother,” said the Luidaeg, not unkindly. “I’ll send word to the Queen in the Mists. It’s an old protocol, but I suppose this as good a time to observe it as ever.”
“Which protocol?” I asked.
Surprisingly, it was Tybalt who answered. “When one of the Firstborn performs a major working within a royal protectorate, it is considered only polite that they should warn the local regents, to prevent accidental interference in their business. It was most commonly used when Rides were to be declared.”
The Luidaeg nodded. “And this is a sort of Ride, if you cock your head and squint. So I’ll handle telling your queen, and spare you trying to explain it to her without spilling secrets that aren’t yours to tell. The origin of the Selkies has always been kept quiet, for their sake as much as for my own. My sister doesn’t get the satisfaction of knowing that people feel sorry for me because of what happened to my kids.” She glanced back to me. “You’re taking this better than I expected. I’m proud of you.”
I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Slowly, the Luidaeg blinked. Then, in a careful tone, she asked, “You haven’t put together what this means yet, have you?”
“Apparently not,” I said. “Why would I—”
And I stopped.
Gillian—my daughter, my baby girl, born one-quarter Dóchas Sidhe, turned human by my own hand, turned Selkie to save her life—was wearing one of the stolen skins of the Luidaeg’s children, and she couldn’t take it off for a hundred years, or she would die. The Luidaeg was preparing to use me to offer a choice to all the other Selkies: they could be permanently bound to their skins, making them Roane, fae forever, and shutting their mortal families on the other side of an impassable chasm, or they could pass those skins on and die human, letting their children secure an eternity in the sea.
Gillian wasn’t going to have that choice. Time after time, Gillian’s choices had been taken away from her, and while I’d never done it to her on purpose, I had always, over and over again, been the architect of her loss. If she wanted to live, she would have to change one more time, from Selkie to Roane . . . and this time, there’d be no going back.
The Luidaeg nodded gravely. “There,” she said, and there was no satisfaction in her tone. “You finally get it. I’m going to let you decide what you want to tell her, and—Toby? This may not mean much yet, but I’m genuinely sorry we didn’t take care of this sooner, so you wouldn’t have to tell her at all.”
Part of me wanted to say not to be silly; if we’d taken care of this sooner, before the false Queen of the Mists had stabbed Gillian with elf-shot and left us with no choice but to turn her fae to save her life, there wouldn’t have been a Selkie skin to tie around my daughter’s shoulders. She would have died, and something inside of me would have broken beyond repair.
The rest of me wanted to scream and keep screaming, possibly forever.
The Luidaeg offered me a small, sad smile as she picked up her plate of nachos. “And with that, I think it’s time for me to go,” she said. “Nice seeing you all; I’m sure I’ll see many of you on May first. Quentin, visit me more, or you’re going to find something unpleasant in your bed one morning.”
“Okay, Luidaeg,” he said.
She walked out of the dining room. A moment later, I heard the front door open and close. I leaned against Tybalt, closing my eyes.
“Well, damn,” I said, and that seemed to summarize the situation perfectly, because no one said anything else. We just stood there, a small, silent cluster, and waited for the world to start making sense again.
We were going to be waiting for a while.
THREE
THIS IS THE TROUBLE with time. No matter how much you think you have, it always passes faster than you expect. The Luidaeg had come to me at the beginning of March to tell me I had a job to do on Moving Day. We had all looked at the calendar, me included; had looked at the almost two months between the ask and the action, and thought we’d have plenty of time to deal with things.