One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

The question seemed to stop him cold. His ears trembled, giving more away than his face did; his expression was more quizzical than anything else, a man trying to find the answer to a question he didn’t fully understand. “I don’t know what you mean.”


“How much did Rayseline pay you for your help? Hell, how did she even find you?” I turned to face him, meeting his eyes with my own. “Don’t fuck around with me. I’m not in the mood to waste time kicking your ass tonight.”

“I really don’t know what you mean, October,” he said, and took a step toward me, holding his hands out in supplication. “Ain’t nobody paid me nothing since you paid me for that information on the kidnappings. I’m packing to get out of town, like I told you I was going to—like you would be, if you had any sense. It’s not too late, you know. You can ditch the preschool, blow this pretzel stand with me. We can set up business in some new city, someplace that doesn’t have the baggage this one does. You and me, just like old times . . .”

The smell of damp linen and pine gathered around him as he spoke, the tangled edges of his magic trying to slink past my defenses. Glastig are masters of persuasion. If Bucer had been a pureblood, I might have had reason to worry. As it was, I glanced to my companions, trying to measure how they were holding up in front of Bucer’s barrage of magically persuasive chatter. Quentin looked dubious; Raj looked disgusted. Only Connor looked like he was coming around to Bucer’s line of crap. That was fine. Training him wasn’t my problem.

I turned back to Bucer, took three long steps forward, and grabbed the edge of one sensitive ear before he had a chance to react. He yelped. I twisted. He yelped louder, the smell of linen and pine dissipating. “I was trying to do this the nice way, Bucer, but oh, no, we can’t have nice things, can we? You just had to go and try enchanting me. Now we can’t play nicely anymore. That was a mistake, don’t you agree?”

“You’re hurting me!” he wailed.

“No, I’m showing you that I can hurt you.” I let go. He staggered back a step, eyes wide and wounded. “Someone told Raysel where to find my daughter, Bucer. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t Connor, because he didn’t know. Not even the Queen knew where she was. It was a secret, and someone told.”

Bucer licked his lips, looking cornered. That wasn’t much of a surprise. He was cornered. “Somebody had to know where she was. Maybe that liege of yours—”

“Sylvester would never have told anyone where to find Gillian. Not even his own daughter knew where to find mine. But Devin knew, didn’t he? Devin knew what she looked like, because he sent a Doppelganger that looked just like her to my door. And if Devin knew, someone had to find out for him. You’ve always been good at finding things out, haven’t you, Bucer?” I took a step forward, closing the distance between us again. “How did she find you? How much did she pay you?”

He looked into my eyes. Whatever it was he saw there, he didn’t seem to like it very much. “I don’t know how she found me,” he whispered. “People like her, they always find people like us when they need to, you know? Someone told her who I was. That we used to work together, that I’d . . . I’d . . .”

“That you’d know where to find my little girl.”

Bucer took a slow breath before he said, “Yeah. That’s what she wanted. One of the things, anyhow. Maeve’s ass, Toby, you left the kid. She was going to get hurt sooner or later. You had to know that. I was doing you a favor.”

My hands itched to lock around his throat. I fought the urge back, taking a calming breath. “And you don’t know who sent her?”

“No.” His ears drooped. “I just wish whoever it was had sent her to somebody else. This ain’t worth it.”

“No. It’s not. What did she pay you?”

Bucer’s expression turned shifty again. “Money. Lots of it. And she said she’d make sure I had time to get out of the Kingdom before they found the bodies of the little boys. She said I could come back when the fighting was over, and they’d make me a Baron.”