Eight #3
The Undersea … “Luna threatened the Lordens before she took off with her kid,” I said.
“And if we can’t get Raysel back, that’s going to mean she intentionally prevented Dianda from getting satisfaction for her offense.
How quickly do you think that’s going to impact the Roane?
If Saltmist feels compelled to go to war with the Mists for the sake of their reputation?
Lots of Roane living on our coastlines these days.
Elizabeth, Diva, Gillian … they’d all be in the line of fire. ”
Slowly, the Luidaeg turned to give me a hard, unhappy look. “So you’re learning,” she said finally. “What do you want from me? Let’s start there.”
“Luna’s Blodynbryd. She has access to the Rose Roads back to Blind Michael’s lands,” I said.
“And you think that’s where she took the kid?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Raysel vanished from a sitting room at the royal knowe, and she didn’t use the door.
There’s no magical signature there that would indicate one of the Tuatha grabbing her, and that leaves her mom using a Road no one else has access to.
Blind Michael’s lands are the most logical place for her to try hiding her daughter. ”
“I would argue about that, if I could,” said the Luidaeg.
“Sadly, I really can’t. They’re distant, hard to reach, shrouded in bad press from the years my brother spent being an asshole, and Luna still has a key to the back door.
It’s where I’d take my kid if I were in her position. Cacie will let them in.”
“Cacie?” asked Tybalt, somewhat blankly.
“Acacia,” said the Luidaeg. “For all my little sister’s many faults, she’s always been there for her children when they needed her.
Sometimes that means letting them leave and not asking where they’re going, so your husband can’t force the information out of you; sometimes it means giving them a place to hide when they’ve just abducted their own kids.
I’m guessing you’re about to ask me to send you after them? ”
“Please,” I said.
“You’ll have to pay.”
“How long do we keep shifting the balance of obligation back and forth between us before we can admit that we’re just trying to help each other?” I asked. “How long do we have to keep the books?”
“Until Titania lets me go,” she said. “So forever, if she has anything to say about it. I can’t send you via the Rose Road, unless you specifically ask me to pry the doors open and damage the foundations; that will cost you a lot more.
I could make you a Babylon candle and send you via the Children’s Road—it’s a lot laxer about letting adults in since my brother died and stopped enforcing his ideas about the age restrictions on the place.
You didn’t like the Blood Road the last time I helped you use it, and you have a baby at home who probably wants you to come home alive—or would, if she were old enough to understand what ‘alive’ means, or even who you are… ”
I managed, barely, not to wince. “Low blow, Luidaeg.”
“Low but honest,” she said, meeting my eyes. “I can’t lie.”
I sighed. “Fair enough, still mean. So the Blood Road’s out. Do we have an option you’re leading up to and trying to make more attractive by being sneaky about it?”
“The Thorn Road,” she said.
I blinked. “I thought that was only for children of Maeve.”
“It was intended for children of Maeve, but anyone can access it if they have the key,” said the Luidaeg.
“It doesn’t like being used by other fae.
You’ve used it before. You know how to stay on the path, and at this point, the environment isn’t going to be actively hostile to you unless you do something. ”
“Why is this better than the Children’s Road?” I asked.
“Because the Children’s Road was never meant to be used by adults.
The Thorn Road, though … Mom knew Pete. And Pete wasn’t entirely unique.
She’s just the only child of Titania that I raised with my own hands.
Mom knew her descendants were more capable of compassion than her sister could ever have dreamt, and while she was careful to make sure the bolt-hole she’d opened for us wouldn’t be taken over if we shared it with our half-siblings, she also knew we might need to help others get away someday, and so she left her road—left our road—accessible when the right protocols are followed.
Opening the way with the Summer Roads Key is one of those protocols.
Open the door properly and politely, get where you’re going, and get Acacia to give you a door out of the skerry when you’re finished.
The Thorn Road is your safest option. Every time someone walks the Children’s Road in an adult body, it destabilizes the foundations just a little more.
The road needs time to heal, unless you want it to collapse, and I don’t want to turn you into a kid while you’re lactating.
It would stop immediately, and that might screw with Miranda’s meal schedule.
Speaking of which, have you called your Fetch yet? ”
“No,” I admitted uncomfortably. “I was hoping we’d be back before she could get worried, and Quentin’s going to go make sure she knows what’s up.”
“And you trust him to go home, not follow you and show up here in twenty minutes, offering his soul if I’ll just set him on the same path?”
He did that once, a long time ago. I still only hesitated for a moment before I said, “I do. He said he’d go home, and I believe him.”
The Luidaeg shot me an amused look. “Ah. Character growth. Come with me.”
She walked down the hallway, and Tybalt and I followed, unsure what else we could do under the circumstances. The eerie cleanliness of the apartment continued around us as we walked, as seemingly real as the old illusion of decay. I preferred this, but I still wasn’t sure how real it was.
We passed the living room, where the television was on but no one was present, and stepped into the kitchen, a Formica-and-tile dream of the seventies, complete with slate-blue appliances.
The single window looked out on a stormy seaside coast that didn’t look like it was anywhere near San Francisco.
The Luidaeg waved for us to sit, then began bustling around the kitchen, collecting jars and bottles of strange liquids from the refrigerator and various cupboards.
This, at least, was as familiar as it was unsettling. I cleared my throat. “We didn’t discuss the actual price,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I have all the blood I need from you,” she said, mildly. “It’s useful stuff to have on hand, but let me tell you, trading in body parts was never my childhood aspiration. I have promises and paths aplenty. The one thing I don’t have right now is your restraint.”
“My restraint?” I asked.
“I can get you there and back by the light of a candle, so I’ll only ask once, but for the both of you: for each of you, one time, I will be able to tell you not to do something, and you’ll obey me, no matter how dear the danger might be.
If I say no, you will stop. Even if your daughter is in danger, you will refrain from taking action.
Do you understand what I’m asking of you? ”
“I do,” I said. “But I do not like it.”
“I didn’t expect that you would.”
“Wait,” said Tybalt. “You would bargain for the right to risk our child? To stay our hands when the need is greatest?”
“What else do you have left to give me?” The Luidaeg shrugged. “You know I set my prices as low as I reasonably can where your wife, the walking natural disaster, is concerned. This is the price my magic is telling me suits the request. Take it or leave it.”
“Can you promise me the danger won’t be deadly if Miranda is involved?” I asked.
Tybalt shot me a horrified look. The Luidaeg nodded.
“I can promise you that much,” she said. “I’ll allow risks, but I won’t force you to stop yourself when it means my godchild could be damaged beyond recovery. You have my word.”
That would have to be enough. “We’ll take the deal,” I said.
“I thought you would,” she said, and pulled a large bowl out of the nearest cupboard, beginning to pour her various bottles and flasks into it.
She didn’t measure anything, just dumped what she had and kept on going.
Most of the liquids glowed. Some of them fizzed.
Some of them fizzed and glowed, which was impressive to look at, and a little disturbing when they mixed.
Despite their various clashing colors, the resulting mix never got muddy, never turned dull or brown.
Each new color caused the whole mixture to change, strobing gold to blue to green to red, until it finally settled on a spectacularly luminescent white, like the hide of a storybook unicorn.
The Luidaeg lifted the bowl and carried it over to her sink, where she added a shot of water straight from the faucet.
Past experience told me her pipes weren’t connected to anything as ordinary as the municipal water system: what came out when she turned on the taps was pure seawater, salty and unfiltered.
This accomplished, she put the bowl down on the counter and held out her hand imperiously. “Knife,” she said.
“Which one?”
“The one I gave you, and stop screwing around pretending you didn’t already know that.”
Right. I stood, drawing the curved shell knife she had given me right before Miranda’s birth from its place at my hip.
I hadn’t sharpened it since she gave it to me, but it still looked sharp enough to cut the foam off of a wave.
Carefully, I held it out to her, and she snatched it out of my hand, somehow managing not to carve my palm open in the process.
Instead, she slashed the blade down along her own palm, splitting the skin and sending a gout of brackish-looking blood pouring into the gleaming contents of the bowl, where it vanished without making any perceptible change.
“Hand,” she said, in the same imperious tone.
I’d been expecting that, sadly. I held my hand out to her, looking away as she brought the blade to bear.