Sea Lord (19 page)

beach.

Not a tourist, she realized now, sickly.

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A selkie.

And her brother knew.

“Dylan and I never even spoke before Caleb’s wedding,” she said.

Griff nodded. “Caleb, he’s the one. He and Margred bound the killer.”

“Caleb?” Dismay was turning her into a parrot.

“Aye. It was well done, too, for all your brother’s human and Margred’s lost her pelt.”

Her mind struggled to come to grips with the fact that this summer, while she was writing lesson plans and

waiting tables and working in her garden, her family had apparently been acting out episodes from
Buffy
.

She wanted to go home. She wondered now if the home she missed, the family she thought she knew,

even existed outside her imagination. “What do you mean, lost?”

Griff shrugged. “Gone. Destroyed. The demon that killed Gwyneth burned Margred’s sealskin.”

Lucy tried to reconcile his words with the fur at the foot of the bed, with her memories of her

sister-in-law. She summoned an image of Maggie, bloodied and dazed on the night Caleb brought her

home. But overlying that was the picture of Maggie smiling up at Caleb on their wedding day. What was

real? Which was true?

“And what happens . . .” Her throat closed. Conn’s harsh face haunted her. His fierce accusation echoed

in her memory. “
I am more your prisoner than you are mine.
” She wet her lips. “What does it mean?

When a selkie loses its sealskin?”

“They cannot Change,” Iestyn said promptly.

Lucy blinked. “That’s it?”

“That’s frigging everything.” From Roth.

“Ask my lord what it means,” Griff said. “And stay away from the hall.”

Before she could frame another question, he had turned away through another arch to another courtyard

where the grass gave way to cobblestones. For a large man, he moved very lightly. Even on the stones,

he barely made a sound. Beyond him, Lucy glimpsed more tall, curved stone walls and a big door bound

in iron, standing open. The hall?

She looked at the two boys. “What now?”

They exchanged glances. “You do not know?”

She felt like a student teacher on her first day of school. Not a good feeling. “Well, he’s going to join

Conn and the other wardens, right? To meet this . . . demon person.”

Iestyn nodded. “Gau.”

“Do you know why they are meeting?” Roth asked.

She didn’t have a clue. She shook her head.

He scowled. “We thought you would.”

Iestyn uncurled from the grass.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?” Lucy asked.

“To get a look at them.”

She was not their teacher. She had no authority over them at all. But she didn’t need authority to know

this was a Bad Idea, like being trapped in a house with a serial killer and going alone to investigate a

noise in the basement.

“Griff told you to stay away from the hall.”

“He said he didn’t want to see us,” Roth said.

“And he won’t. We can get a good view from the barbican,” Iestyn added.

They turned on her with identical smiles of pleased challenge. “
They are older than they look,
” Conn

had said. They were selkie. Maybe they knew what they were doing.

But they looked like a couple of ten-year-olds on World’s End planning to dive off the rocks into the

quarry pool.

She watched them climb the broken, narrow stairway to the battlements. They were only halfway up the

wall when the castle shuddered like a horse tormented by flies. Lucy’s heart lurched. The vibration rose

through the stones under her feet and shivered in her bones. Madadh pressed against her leg, shoulders

bristling.

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She patted the hound with a shaking hand, taking comfort from his warm, wiry bulk. “What was that?”

Iestyn turned, his face pale and his eyes brilliant with excitement. “The demons are here. In the caves

under the castle.”

Roth called down. “Hurry, or we’ll miss them.”

From his seat on the dais, Conn watched as the delegation from Hell drifted across the great hall,

escorted by a rigid Morgan and the northern wardens. The finfolk shimmered in silver and black. The

children of fire shifted like pillars of smoke, transparent and opaque by turn, their number and their

countenances constantly changing. In the shadows of the hall, their eyes glittered like sparks.

The demon lord Gau was the solid center of this entourage. Lacking matter of his own, he adopted

illusions to suit the mood of the moment, bending light and imbuing particles of earth, water, and air to

sustain the form and function of a diplomat. Today, indulging a sense of humor or perhaps merely a flair

for the dramatic, he had assumed the aquiline visage, flowing robe, and laurel crown of an ancient

Roman.
Virgil
, Conn thought. Dante’s guide through the
Inferno
. The wise elder statesman, the

virtuous pagan.

Gau was fond of misrepresentations. Even his name meant “lie.”

Gau stopped in front of the dais, the focus of all eyes. “Lord Conn.”

Conn inclined his head a bare fraction. He did not stand. “Lord Gau. You have come far from Hell to

trouble our company.”

The demon smiled, his teeth only slightly pointed. “All places are Hell, my lord. It is only a matter of

perception.”

Conn raised his eyebrows. “You are here to debate philosophy.”

“I come to offer my respects,” Gau said, “and in acknowledgment of the long history between us.”

“I see no respect in your recent violence against our people,” Conn said coldly.

“My prince, we are not your enemies. For centuries, the children of fire have watched in sympathy as

your numbers, powers, and territories decline, as the humans despoil your oceans and abuse your

patience. The demon Tan sought merely to bring your attention to an existing problem.”

“Through murder.” Conn kept his voice level and his hands still on the arms of his chair.
Never admit

emotion. Never reveal weakness.

“Tan’s methods were perhaps extreme,” Gau admitted. “But his intentions were good.”

Enya leaned forward, displaying her bosom and her teeth. “We all know where the road of good

intentions leads.”

Gau’s smile was sharper and more predatory than hers. “Through personal experience, I am sure. How

many years did you sacrifice the sea’s embrace for the tepid lovemaking of your prince? With the best of

intentions, of course.”

“Careful, demon,” Conn warned softly. “I will not tolerate attacks on my own. Any attacks.”

The demon stared back at him, his eyes black, blank and shiny as dead beetles in his borrowed face.

“But you do it all the time,” he protested. “You watch as humans overrun the earth, pollute the water,

violate the very air, and you do nothing. What does it take to exhaust your patience?”

“You are very close to finding out.”

“Am I? Am I really? And what of your people’s patience? What of the finfolk? Your father wasted

centuries in dreams and denial. Do you expect them to follow you while you do the same?”

What
of
the finfolk? Morgan had escorted the demons from the caves and through the castle’s outer

defenses. Had Gau used the opportunity to undermine the finfolk lord’s loyalty? Or did the demon seek

to sow trouble now by stirring up Conn’s own doubts?

Conn looked at Morgan. The warden of the northern seas returned his stare with expressionless golden

eyes.

Doubt slid under Conn’s calm surface, quick and stealthy as a shark, a cold shadow on his soul. “The

children of the sea are neutral in your war on Heaven and humankind,” he said evenly. “We will not side

against the Creator.”

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Gau watched him with cold calculation. “Even though we are here to offer ourselves—again—as allies in

protecting all of creation?”

Anger constricted Conn’s lungs. He forced himself to breathe. “Was it an alliance you offered Gwyneth?”

Gau’s eyes flickered. He waved a hand. “One selkie. One, among—how many is it now, prince? At least

she wasn’t clubbed by humans, her sealskin stripped from her living body. She has a chance to be born

again on the foam. Her pelt was returned to the sea.”

“Not by you,” Griff growled.

“Not by me personally,” Gau admitted. “But nonetheless, returned. Let’s not be shortsighted.”

“I see you clearly,” Conn said. “Liar. Torturer. Murderer.”

Beside Gau, Morgan stirred. “Killing one of us does not inspire trust.”

Gau spread his hands, stretching his mouth in a parody of astonished innocence. “Did I say I had killed

her?”

“Your master, then,” Ronat said impatiently.

“My master is also displeased by this unfortunate development. Was not the victim also one of us? A

fellow elemental. Tan acted completely without Hell’s knowledge and approval. No, I am here . . .”

Gau’s black gaze traversed the circle of wardens and lit again on Conn. “To offer Hell’s regrets.”

Conn drew another careful breath. He did not believe a word of the demon’s protestations. “You go to

great effort to make an apology,” he said dryly.

Gau showed his teeth in another smile that skittered around the chamber like dead leaves in an alley.

Enya looked away. “Is not your goodwill worth my poor effort?” His voice was dangerously close to

sincerity. “We do not want a conflict, my lord. You cannot afford a conflict.”

His face was a mask. His voice was a lie. But what he said, Conn realized bleakly, was true.

Conn did not have the numbers or the power or the support to force a quarrel with Hell. He could not

fight and win. He could not surrender and survive. All he could do was cling to his duty like a barnacle to

the rocks and pray that Lucy turned the tide before they all dried up and died.

If she had his children . . .

He pictured her lean, quiet face, her eyes like the sea in the wake of a storm. But it was not that.

Not only that.

Gau was waiting for his response.

“In the interest of peace, we accept Hell’s apology,” he said formally.

Gau bowed with only a trace of mockery. “We are grateful for your wisdom, sea lord. My master would

be disturbed if anything interfered with the present delicate balance of power.”

Despite Gau’s distinguished mask, despite his diplomatic phrasing, Conn knew very well he was not

being thanked.

He was being warned.

Lucy sat with her hands in her lap, listening to the gentle sound of the water, feeling the sun on her face,

trying hard not to think of anything at all.

“
You belong here,
” Conn had said to her last night. “
In time you will come to accept that.
”

Was he right?

She wondered how Dylan had adapted, coming here for the first time when he was thirteen, leaving

behind his family and friends, the only life, the only world he’d ever known. But Dylan was selkie, and

he’d had their mother with him.

She wondered how Griff’s wife, Emma, had adjusted, the only human, the only mortal on Sanctuary.

Conn said she had been happy here. Fulfilled. But Emma’s husband had been devoted to her until the

day she died.

Lucy pleated the red wool in her lap and wondered how it would feel to be loved. How she would feel if

Conn loved her.

She remembered the look on his face as he gazed out to sea, his body carved out of moonlight and