One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

“And she’s siding with the land?” Was that hope I heard in her voice? Hope, or something like it. I almost hated to dash it against the cold rocks of reality.

“She’s not siding with anyone. She can’t. But she can ask me to do it.” I glanced toward Etienne, offering what I hoped was a reassuring nod. The poor guy didn’t spend enough time around me to be used to this sort of thing. “She wants this resolved as much as the rest of us do.”

“So she sent you to the seas.” The Queen’s moon-mad eyes narrowed. “What did you learn?”

“That you weren’t responsible for what happened to the Lordens, but someone from the land was.” I took a breath, and launched into my explanation once again. I was starting to feel like I needed flash cards, just to make things go faster. The Queen listened without interruption, her face giving away nothing of what she was feeling.

I told her almost everything. Almost, because I wasn’t willing to tell her my daughter was among the missing. It wasn’t because I was afraid she’d take me off the case—that sort of thing only happens in the mortal world; in Faerie, danger to family is supposed to make you better at your job, not worse—but because if she waved Gillian off as an acceptable loss, I’d have to kill her.

Finally, I finished, and fell into an uneasy silence, waiting for her to respond. After a long pause, she said, “I see. You come here only to add worse news to what I already have. Your courtesy grows with every passing day.”

“I’m here to ask you, to beg you, to please call off this pointless war. At least one person has already died.” I offered my hands, palms up, in a beseeching gesture. “The Lordens know you don’t have their children. Help me find them. Give me the resources I need. Apologies and restitutions can be made, and we can end this.”

Her frown was almost puzzled this time. “Call it off? But you said it yourself. People have died. There’s no calling it off once blood is shed.”

“But—”

“Oberon’s Law is very clear. You, more than anyone, should know that. Only in a time of war is killing justified, and I’d not make criminals of my subjects. The war goes forward. There will be a reckoning.”

“For what? The damages done? Won’t that just do more damage?”

“Then we’ll have a reckoning for that, until the better side stands triumphant, and the last reckoning pays for all.” She looked serious, like what she was saying made perfect sense. Her knife had vanished in the frills of her skirt, leaving her the very image of the innocent, slightly puzzled Queen of Faerie—Titania in disarray. I only had to see her eyes to know that I couldn’t change her mind. As long as there was an excuse to fight, they’d fight. I had to take their excuses away, and that meant proving this war had been provoked.

“What if the Undersea forgives it?” I asked, desperately.

Her innocence cracked, revealing the anger in her eyes. “Would you have me forgive their insult?”

“If they can forgive a death, yeah, I sort of would. It seems like the reasonable thing to do, you know?” Etienne shot me an alarmed look. I did my best to ignore it. Maybe baiting the Queen isn’t smart, but neither is going to war to prove that you can.

The Queen took a sharp breath. Then—so marginally I almost missed it—she nodded. “If the Undersea will absolve us of all complicity in this matter, and if no subject of this Kingdom dies . . . perhaps I can see fit to standing down the troops.”

It wasn’t enough. It was going to have to do. “Who told you I’d gone into the water?” I asked, trusting my abrupt change of subject to get me an answer.

“A messenger,” she said, eyes narrowing.

“Who spoke to the messenger?”

“Dugan.”

“In that case, we’d like to speak to Dugan, if you don’t mind.”