One Salt Sea

“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.”

“Right.” I unbuckled my knife belt. Peeling off my jeans took a bit more effort. “So the wards are keyed to Selkie skins, not individual Selkies?”

“Yes, Your Excellency!” said Helmi, sounding surprised and delighted by this strange display of logic from one of the land fae. “The skins pass hands with such frequency, it seemed best to allow their bearers to come and go easily. No one would want to present the Selkies an unfair barrier, given their limitations—and besides, they’re needed all along the coast. It would be quite a bundle to ask them to carry, if they needed a token for each of the knowes.”

“Uh-huh.” Selkie skins “pass hands” every few decades at the most—Connor is older than I am. That must make them almost as transitory as humans to a true immortal. “How many Selkies pass through in a given week?”

“Five, eight, maybe, if there’s news to be passed along.”

“And how many of them do the guards stop for questioning?” The green dress was made of a soft, cottony material. I shrugged it on, pushing my salt-matted hair back with the headband, and belted my knife around the outside of my hips. It might spoil the line of my borrowed attire, but at least I wasn’t hiding the fact that I was armed.

“None. Why would they? The Selkies travel on legitimate business. Or do you not have messengers where you dwell?”

I stepped out from behind the screen. Helmi’s expression was one of honest curiosity, like this was exactly the sort of barbarism she expected from land-dwellers.

“We do, but they’re not quite as . . . standardized.” I smoothed my skirt with the heels of my hands. It was definitely a step up from my usual Old Navy couture. And I just had to go to the bottom of the sea to get it. “I think I’m ready to go back.”

“Surely.” Helmi rotated her entire body, tentacles slapping the floor as she turned, and then made her way back to the door we’d entered through. She knocked three times before opening it, revealing a room that was absolutely not the one we’d been in before. For one thing, this one had walls—wooden ones, no less, making them seem strange and exotic after all the coral.

Dianda and Patrick were standing near one wall, arguing quietly with Connor. All three looked up when Helmi and I approached. My bare feet were silent against the floor. Her tentacles weren’t. Connor’s eyes lit up when he saw me, and he took a half-step forward before he remembered that he was in the presence of his liege and stopped, standing at sudden attention.

“You clean up well,” said Dianda, giving me a once-over.

“Helmi was a great help.” Another careful two-step in the dance of avoided thanks, complete. “Your Graces, Connor, I wanted to verify something Helmi told me. Is that possible?”

Dianda nodded. “Certainly. What did you want to know?”

“Is it true that the wards on this place are set to admit Selkies with no verification of identity or allegiance?”

“Yes.” Dianda frowned quizzically. “All the Undersea Duchies set their wards this way. Selkies act as messengers, and messengers are honor-bound to do no mischief in fiefdoms other than their own. Even in times of