The Winter Long

“It can’t have been Blind Michael,” said Quentin. “He doesn’t fit the ‘living’ part of the description.”


“Well, I don’t think Acacia would have arranged to have her own daughter and grandchild kidnapped and imprisoned,” I said. “She was too happy to see Luna again when we broke Michael’s Ride.”

Mags was staring at us, open-mouthed. I shot her a curious look. She recovered her composure enough to say, “I just—you people talk of the First as if they were commonplace, as if we should all be seeing them on a regular basis and having them over for tea. It’s so strange. Even in my youth, the First were rare creatures, better left to someone else’s story than drawn into your own.”

“Mom’s Firstborn,” I said, with a shrug. “It makes me harder to impress.” Now that Mags had pointed it out, the strangeness of the situation was visible to me, too. There was a time when meeting any of the Firstborn would have been a terrifying notion. Now it was basically Tuesday.

“Your mother,” said Tybalt thoughtfully.

“Yeah?” I frowned at him. “What about her?”

“She knows the Luidaeg, obviously, in the same way Acacia does; they are all of them sisters. She knows Simon. She must have, to have married him.”

My eyes narrowed. “I don’t like where this is going.”

“I did not expect you to. That doesn’t mean you can refuse to come along for the journey.” Tybalt shook his head, expression turning grim. “She knows everyone we know to have been bound, and she has never kept any counsel save her own.”

“I’ll be the first to admit that I have issues with my mother, but she’s still my mother, and you may want to back off on the whole ‘your mother may have ruined your life’ song that you’re starting to sing,” I said, a dangerous note in my tone. “I don’t like it, it doesn’t suit you, and you’re beginning to piss me off.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t need to hear it,” said Tybalt flatly. “Amandine is as strong a candidate to have spun this geas as any other. We cannot rule her out just because you do not want her to have done it, my little fish. If the world were that kind a place, it would be so different as to have never made us.”

“Fine. Fine. I can deal with this in one phone call.” I’d been looking for an excuse to pick up the phone anyway, although I couldn’t bring myself to say that part out loud. I dug my phone out of my pocket and began pressing the keys in a spiral, moving outward from the center. When I reached the end, I spiraled back in, and chanted, “One’s for sorrow, two’s for joy, three’s a girl, four’s a boy.” The smell of copper and freshly cut grass rose in the air around me.

“What’s she doing?” asked Mags, sounding concerned.

“Calling the Luidaeg,” said Quentin. I saw him shrug out of the corner of my eye. “Toby usually does that when she wants to ask questions that could get her dismembered. You get used to it. I’m surprised she hasn’t done it already, since worrying about the Luidaeg is part of why we’re here.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to get used to it,” said Mags.

I rolled my eyes as I raised the phone to my ear. There was no ringing: instead, there was the distant sound of waves, beating themselves endlessly against some unseen rocky shore. That was normal. The Luidaeg’s phone isn’t connected to any official “service,” either mundane or fae, and it reacts differently every time I call it. I think the creepiest thing it could do at this point is actually behave like a normal phone.

There was a click. The sound of waves stopped, replaced by empty air. That, at least, was unusual. I frowned. Normally the Luidaeg answered her phone by yelling at me. “Luidaeg?” I said.