The Winter Long

“Why did we fall?” There was no life in my voice; it was a dead thing that fell between us like an accusation. That seemed somehow exactly correct.

“Because the wards of Goldengreen have closed,” Dianda said. She rose, scales falling away, and moved to stand beside me, putting her hand on my shoulder. I didn’t shrug it off. It would have been too much work. “Dean and most of his court are still inside, but all the doors are shut, and all the entrances are locked.”

“How do you know?”

“Mary. She started screaming, and said that if we wanted to save Dean, we needed to get to Goldengreen before the doors froze shut.” Grief rolled across Dianda’s face like a wave, there and gone in moments. “We weren’t fast enough. That’s good for you, though, since I wouldn’t have found you if we hadn’t been beating at the underwater doors.”

Mary was a Roane woman attached to Dianda’s court. She had the gift of prophecy, even if she didn’t always make sense—like most soothsayers, she spoke in riddles and metaphors more often than she did in simple, declarative sentences. The last time our paths had crossed, she’d foretold Connor’s death. My eyes stung with salt that had nothing to do with the sea. I blinked the tears away, grasping instead for the burning ember of rage that was starting to burn in my chest.

“Who locked the doors?” I asked.

“Not Dean,” said Dianda. “No matter who he swears his loyalties to these days, he would never, never seal the wards against his mother.”

Her logic made sense. Dean had always been a dutiful son, and even if he kicked absolutely everyone else out of his knowe, he would have left a door open for Dianda. The rage was growing brighter in my chest, becoming a fire that warmed me even as it left ashes in its wake. “We came here because someone gave me a warning about danger at Goldengreen. I guess we needed to be faster, too.”

“You think so?” Dianda’s voice was frozen. I glanced at her. She glared at me. “You knew my son was in danger, and you didn’t come sooner?”

“I didn’t know anything, Dianda. We left the minute we figured out what the warning meant, and while we stand down here arguing about it, no one’s getting in there to find out what’s going on.” I turned to face the cliff that stood between us and the mortal museum that housed the entrance to the knowe, so very high above us. “Do you have anyone who can get me up that cliff?”

“We’re the Undersea. We don’t fly.”

“Right. Make yourself useful, then, and get back in the water. Find my boys.” Anger has always made my illusions come easier. I grabbed a handful of fog out of the air and twisted it into a human disguise, draping it over myself as I said, “I’m going to go find out what the hell is going on in Goldengreen.”

“October, if they’ve been in the water this whole time, they’re not—”

“Find them.”

The Undersea prizes strength above all else. Dianda had been fighting to hold her Duchy since the day she received it. She looked at me and didn’t argue. “All right,” she said. “But what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to remind the knowe that I had a valid claim to it once, and I didn’t abuse it,” I said. “And then I’m going to go inside. Whether the knowe likes it or not.”

“Take me with you.”