One Salt Sea
Page 47

Dianda followed my gaze and said mildly, “That’s Anceline, one of our herders.”
“What is she?” I asked, before realizing how rude the question really was. I blanched. “I mean—”
“I asked the same thing when I first came here,” said Patrick. “She’s a Cetace. They rarely come to the surface. They prefer to stay deep, where there’s less chance they’ll encounter human whaling ships.”
That led to horrifying mental images I didn’t want to explore further. I nodded. “I understand. She’s beautiful.”
“I’m sure she’d be pleased to hear you say so,” said Dianda.
I was trying to figure out whether she was serious or not when one of the coral-rimmed doors opened and one of the octopus-people slipped through. This one’s lower body was the shocking red of a maraschino cherry, and her upper body was pure Irish, with pale, freckled skin, and corkscrew curls the color of her octopus half. She moved with remarkable efficiency, her tentacles seeming to find and discard purchase independently. She stopped and bowed when she was roughly six feet away. That was also a fascinating process, since it involved twining her tentacles into an elaborate knot while she bent forward.
“Your Graces,” she said. The curtain of her hair almost concealed the bundle of fabric she was clutching against her chest.
“Cephali,” murmured Patrick. I flashed him a relieved smile.
“Rise, Helmi,” said Dianda. “Helmi, this is Countess October Daye, our guest from the land. She’s here to help us find Dean and Peter.”
Helmi’s eyes widened, and she stared at me as she straightened. “Truly?”
“Truly,” said Patrick. “Can you take her to change, and then bring her to us?”
“Yes, Your Grace. Absolutely.” One of Helmi’s tentacles whipped out and wrapped itself around my wrist. I barely managed to keep from yanking away. She didn’t hold tightly; it was more like the tugging of a toddler. “Come with me, Your Excellency?”
It took me a moment to remember that “Your Excellency” meant me. “Sure. And you can call me Toby.”
“As you wish, Your Excellency.” Helmi began moving back the way she’d come, pulling me along in her wake.
“We’ll see you shortly,” called Dianda.
“Right!” I answered. Then Helmi opened the door and pulled me into a small, cluttered room that looked reassuringly familiar, despite the pink coral walls. I guess a changing room is a changing room, no matter where you go.
Helmi’s bearing changed dramatically in the absence of her lieges. She released my wrist and straightened, tapping her tentacles against the floor as she studied me. “It will do,” she said finally, and extended her bundle in my direction. “If they’d given me the name of your fiefdom, I might have found you visitor’s motley in the appropriate colors, but it will do.”
“Honestly, right now, anything will do, as long as it’s dry,” I said. I hung my leather jacket on what I presumed was a drying rack before taking the bundle of fabric and rolling it out atop a nearby chest. The outer two layers were towels. Inside was a short green dress that looked suitable for spending a day at the beach, dry underclothes, and a matching green headband for my hair. No shoes. I suppose shoes never became a high priority in the Undersea, since half the population didn’t need them.
“Is it suitable, Your—Toby?”
“It’s perfect.” I peeled off a towel and began vigorously rubbing my hair. “Just give me a minute to dry off before I go changing. Do you need to be somewhere?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Good. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
Helmi’s tentacles beat a complex pattern against the floor before she asked, “Is this in service of returning the young masters to us?”
“Yeah. It is.”
“Then you may ask me to cut the very limbs from my body, and I will do it. Only promise me it serves toward their return, and it is yours.”
That was . . . dramatic. I stopped rubbing and blinked at her. Judging by her expression, she was serious. “Okay.” I resumed drying my hair. “What do you know about the wards here? How are they configured?”
“They’re mastered and maintained by the Asrai. Clever things, the wards are.”
In my experience, “clever” is never a good thing where wards are concerned. Clear, concise instructions are the key to not waking up with something nasty under your bed. “Clever how, exactly?”
“Well, Your—Toby, I don’t know how it is on land, but in the sea, most of us are migratory. The Cetacea follow the herds, and the Sirens follow their kraken. The Asrai don’t move much, but then, they wouldn’t, would they?” She rattled off the names of unfamiliar fae races with easy familiarity; to her, they were as normal as Cait Sidhe and the Tuatha de Dannan were to me.
I, on the other hand, was starting to feel like I needed some sort of field guide. “So you move around a lot. Have these, uh, Asrai come up with a way to shortcut adding people to the permanent wards?” Casual wards like the ones on my apartment are constructed and taken down daily. They’re generally not set when either May or I are home, since we don’t see the point in wasting the magic. Places like Shadowed Hills tend to have more permanent wards, at least on certain areas, ones set to allow people who have permission to pass, and stop the people who don’t. Modifying them is a long, laborious process, which is why I don’t bother trying to construct that kind of protection.
“Oh, yes. The wards are set to allow those of us who live here to come and go as we please, and to admit anyone who carries an appropriate token.”
“Okay. So could someone have stolen one of these tokens?”
“Oh, no. They’re enchanted to break at once if taken from their rightful owners.”
There went one theory. I put down my towel. “And everyone migratory has one of these tokens?”
“All but the messengers.”
I picked up the green dress, stepping behind a screen of what looked like woven kelp. “Messengers?”
“The seal-kin.”
“Do you mean the Selkies?” I pulled my shirt off over my head, a slow certainty blossoming in my chest.
“Aye,” she confirmed. “They’re easier and more difficult at the same time, because they’re skins, not souls.”