by Jim Butcher
“Oh, it’s straight-eye,” I noted. I nodded to Evanna, deeply enough to make it a small bow. Her expression became more neutral and she returned my nod precisely. But her eyes didn’t change, even when she directed them elsewhere. “Maybe we should be covering the old folks, kids.”
“Yeah,” Ramirez said in his take-charge voice. “Yoshimo, stay with Senior Councilman Cristos. Bill, you’ve got McCoy’s back. Chandler and I’ll take Liberty and Listens-to-Wind.”
Ah.
“Where do you want me?”
“Liaise,” Ramirez said. “Head off trouble before it starts. And get me a scout of the room. You’ve met some of these people before.”
I pursed my lips for a second and then said, “Who are you protecting here, Carlos?”
He clapped a hand lightly against my arm. “Hopefully everyone. Eyes open. Let’s go, people.”
The young Wardens moved out purposefully. I grimaced, snagged a champagne flute off a passing server’s tray, and touched the rim of the glass to my lips for politeness’s sake before continuing my slow perusal of the room.
Opposite the svartalves’ colors was a streaming silken banner of pure white, intricately embroidered with sinuous shapes in silver thread, cascading down to a number of similarly upholstered sofas, where Lara Raith and her entourage had set up shop. Lara wore a simple white sheath dress cut to show a considerable length of leg and had her blue-black hair pinned up in elegant curls. Scarlet gems at her ears and wrist flickered with bloody red fire in the faerie lights. She sat in the center of one of the sofas as if it were a throne.
Freydis, dressed in a formfitting white bodysuit and a man’s suit jacket, sat on the floor at Lara’s feet like some kind of exotic pet, her green eyes bright in contrast to her close-cropped red hair. The Valkyrie looked distracted and sleepy and wasn’t either one of those things. Behind Lara stood Riley and four of Lara’s bodyguards, all of them looking lean and mean in matching buzz cuts and suits that didn’t show the weapons they were undoubtedly carrying.
Lara looked up, met my eyes for a second, and gave me a serious nod. She moved her right hand in a tiny gesture, palm up, hand tilted toward the sofa beside her. I nodded and made my way over to her.
“Harry,” she said, her tone light and delighted. “What a pleasure to see you. Won’t you sit for a moment?”
“Very kind,” I said, and settled next to her on the edge of the couch, where I could get up again quickly. I didn’t touch her. “So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?”
Lara threw back her head and laughed girlishly. It was patently false and impossible not to find appealing. “You’re so funny. You’re always so funny, Harry.”
I blinked. Lara wasn’t exactly a ditzy party girl, but she was doing a damned good impression.
She recognized when I got that something was up. Her eyes tracked over to one side and followed Ramirez as he limped slowly along behind Listens-to-Wind and Martha Liberty, leaning on his cane. Their color shifted from medium grey to a more sparkling color with flecks of metallic silver. “Oh, that poor boy. So pretty and wounded and so many hang-ups. Are you quite sure he isn’t meant as a present?”
I heard a faint, sharp cracking sound, as if someone had snapped a couple of toothpicks. There was a whisper of power released into the air that I could barely detect, and a second later Freydis tucked a small, broken wooden plaque into her suit coat’s pocket and said, firmly, “Clear.”
Lara’s giggling ceased and her smile vanished. “We’ve got about a minute before the happytalk illusion fades. What have you got?”
I pushed out my senses enough to feel the neat little combination privacy spell and external illusion now veiling us. “Little. I put a man I trust on Justine.”
“My people are there.”
“Can’t be too safe,” I said.
Lara grimaced. “Cristos is over there assuring Etri that the White Council will fully support him in this matter. Probably offering to dig my brother’s grave for him.”
“Etri isn’t the sort to subcontract his work,” I said. “And he’s furious.”
Lara narrowed her eyes at the svartalf king across the large room. “There must be a way he can be reasoned with.”
“As a rule, yes,” I said. “But he’s got good reason to be angry right now.”
“He’s got my brother,” Lara snarled.
“Etri and his people look like a batch of little geeks,” I said. “You of all people shouldn’t make the mistake of falling for appearances. If they were weak, someone would have offed them by now.”
Lara clenched her jaw. “If I don’t create some options, I’m going to have to leave Thomas to rot.” She inhaled. “Or change my posture.”
Which was a polite way to say Start Killing People.
I regarded Lara obliquely for a moment. Maybe she wasn’t running on the kind of cold political calculation she’d led me to believe she had embraced. Maybe things weren’t quite as clear where her baby brother was concerned as she had led me to believe.
I was pretty sure I hadn’t been doing the peace process any favors lately, so I pondered as hard as I could. “When you have a problem, you have a problem,” I said thoughtfully. I nodded at Cristos. “When you have two problems, sometimes one of them is a solution in disguise.”
Lara eyed me and narrowed her eyes.
“Cristos thinks he’s a statesman, brokering peace and justice, that kind of thing,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Ask him for his help.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Makes him look good if he can get both parties to concede something,” I said. “He’s out to gain face and reputation. Etri wants justice and he’s upset enough not to be thinking clearly. If you can’t negotiate something out of that, you aren’t the person I think you are.”
Lara gave me a direct, intense, silent look for a long moment. I could feel the soulgaze forming and averted my eyes before things got any more intimate.
“I want you to introduce me,” she said.
“I’m happy to advise you,” I said. “I’m not sure that it would be helpful to you for me t—”
Her voice hardened. “I am owed favors. You are obliged to repay them.”
And, deep down inside of me, something twisted with acute discomfort, as if Lara’s words had just reached into my guts and started kicking them, then waterboarded my conscience for good measure. Welling up from the Winter mantle was the sure and certain knowledge that Lara was owed, and that it was an injustice too deep to tolerate that she should not be repaid. No matter how inconvenient or personally humiliating it might be.
Wow.
So that’s what it felt like from the faerie side of things.
No wonder so many of them didn’t like me much.
“Fine,” I growled. My voice came out tense, under pressure. I rose and offered her my arm, invisibly shattering the little illusion spell around us. “Come on.”
“Everyone else stay here,” Lara said firmly. She held up a finger to forestall both Freydis’s and Riley’s sudden words of protest. “No. I’m going alone.” She rose and laid her hand lightly on my forearm and nodded to me. I started leading her across the room.
“I regret doing that to you,” she said quietly after a few steps. “He’s family.”
“I didn’t much like it, either,” I said. I still felt faintly queasy, though the discomfort had rapidly begun fading the moment I’d acquiesced. “I get it. Don’t make a habit of it.”
She gave my arm a gentle squeeze of her fingers through the spidersilk suit and glanced up at me with a rather sad smile that showed no regret whatsoever. Her pale grey eyes were resolved. “Only if I must.”
We went across the room to Etri’s seating area, and I walked directly up to the svartalf king.
Cristos, who had been in the middle of saying something very sincerely, looked up at me and frowned. “Warden Dresden.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, even more since
rely, “but I saw an opportunity for us to help out our neighbors.”
Cristos arched an eyebrow and began to speak, but Etri held up a hand and the man fell silent. Yoshimo, standing six feet back and to one side of Cristos, gave me an inquiring glance.
“Etri,” I said. “Please allow me to introduce Lara Raith, daughter of Lord Raith and his chancellor in the White Court.”
“I know who she is,” Etri said, his gaze level and not quite hostile. He nodded to Lara, who returned the gesture precisely. “I fear we have little to say to one another, Lady Lara.”
“That depends on what is said, sir,” Lara replied. “And when two potential foes meet, the presence of a trusted mutual ally can do much to allay suspicion and fear.” She turned to bow her head to Cristos. “Sir, your reputation for skill in such matters is well-known. I am certain you are aware of the tensions between our realms at this delicate time. Perhaps the wider reconciliation we are all hoping for can begin here, between King Etri’s people and my father’s Court.”
“Ridiculous,” Evanna said, her voice brittle.
Etri gave his sister a weary look and held up his hand again. “Lady Lara, I see little hope for resolution of any kind in this matter but what is prescribed in the Accords.”
Cristos’s eyebrows beetled, and he folded his hands thoughtfully. “And yet, if you see little hope, then a little must be there. Perhaps a little hope is a good place to begin. Surely, Etri, there is no harm in speaking while we are all under the protection of guest-right.”
The svartalf rubbed a few fingers wearily at his forehead, clearly irritated, and glanced up at me. “Harry Dresden,” he said. “You have been a guest and friend to my people. You were friends with Austri. Can this person be trusted?”
I eyed Lara and then turned back to Etri. “If she gives you her word, she’ll keep it.”
Which … wasn’t exactly a lie. Lara was good to her word. So was Mab. So was Etri. And I didn’t particularly trust any of them, beyond that.
But then, when you get right down to it, what else is there? And what more can you really ask for?
Etri studied me for a moment and then nodded, and I got the impression that he had intuited my exact meaning. His mouth set in a line that said he clearly didn’t enjoy the prospect, but that he was also clearly resolved to treating his peers with courtesy. “Very well. Lady Lara, if you would please join us. May I send for a drink?”
Lara smiled warmly at me and settled down in a chair one of Etri’s people carried over for her, to leave her, Etri, and Cristos seated at the points of a triangle. “Thank you, Warden Dresden, for the introduction.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Please,” Cristos said, his voice mellow, his gaze annoyed, “do not let us keep you from your duties any longer, Warden.”
“Yep,” I said to Cristos, in a voice that was louder and more nasal than it had to be. “Okay. Bye-bye.”
I shot Yoshimo with my forefinger and strode away. There was a buffet over in one corner of the hall. My nose caught a whiff of something delicious and reported to my stomach, which instantly started growling. I realized I had been too distracted to have a meal today, which really seemed like something I should grow out of at some point.
Well. There was no sense in going hungry if I didn’t have to, and I suspected that the more time I spent with my mouth full of food, the less time I would have to screw up at this stupid party. I went for the food.
The room was getting even fuller. Under a sickly green banner of cloth sat the LaChaise clan’s representatives, centered on a ruddy-faced, burly man with big old muttonchops who looked like he enjoyed a lot of meat and potatoes. Carter LaChaise, leader of a large family of ghouls who ran a lot of supernatural business in Cajun country. They’d been seated at a table and were dining ravenously on steak tartare, I hoped, and looked weirdly like the painting of the Last Supper.
I considered setting them all on fire for a while, until I started getting looks from the table. It was only then that I noticed how widely I was smiling and moved along.
A black banner with black gemstones draped down into a semi-alcove shape, surrounding a single enormous chair in shadow. A very tall, very large man, apparently in his fifties, sat lazily in the chair, silently regarding the gathering. He held a pipe negligently in one hand, apparently unlit, but smoke trailed sinuously down from his nostrils with each breath, and his eyes reflected the light of the room like a cat’s. Ferrovax, the dragon, disguised in human form. The last time we’d met had been at an event like this, and he’d tossed me around like a chew toy. I avoided his eyes, and his lips curled into a smirk as he tracked me going by. Some of my antics a few months back had disturbed some of his treasures, held in Marcone’s vault. I had a feeling he was the type to take that personally.
I shivered at that. There was plenty of fallout from that job that was still due to come raining down, I was pretty sure.
There was a dizzying array of other delegations. The Summer Court of the Fae held the far corners of the room, in the complementary cardinal direction from the svartalves and the White Court, opposite the Winter Court on the other side. Both were centered around a single thronelike chair, but no principals were seated yet—only five of the Sidhe, in armor respective of their queens’ colors, deep blues and greens and purples for winter, with more springlike greens and golds for summer.
Other beings were all over the place. I recognized a naga from a mess I’d gotten into on a rough weekend a few years back, at the moment disguised as a woman with smoky skin in a lovely white evening gown, chatting with Ivy the Archive, who was startlingly older than the last time I’d seen her, and dressed to match in a black evening gown without jewelry or other accoutrements.
Should Ivy even have hips yet? I did some math, making an effort not to count on my fingers, and realized that, yes, it really had been that long since I’d seen her. Now she looked like a girl going to prom, only way more self-assured—and she was evidently there alone, absent the bodyguard I’d come to associate with her as surely as I did coffee with doughnuts. Where was Kincaid? I tried to make eye contact with Ivy as I went by, but either she was too involved in the conversation to notice or she ignored me.
I felt awkward. I was never much good at parties.
I went by a sky blue banner swirling with cloudy whites and flashing lines of gold, opposite Ferrovax’s cozy alcove, and exchanged a nod with Vadderung, CEO of Monoc Securities, seated in a comfortable stuffed chair that looked like it would be good for reading. Vadderung looked like a tall, muscular man in his early sixties who could probably bench-press a motorcycle. He wore a charcoal suit, his long wolf-grey hair and trimmed beard made rakish by a black eye patch on a leather thong. Like Ferrovax, he sat alone, without guards, with a rather large glass of wine in one hand and a smoldering pipe in the other.
I traded a nod with him as I passed, and he mouthed the word “Later” at me as I did.
I made it to the buffet without causing any major diplomatic incidents, which for me is remarkable. I picked up a plate and started with the platter of tiny tenderloin steaks. I mean, sure, they were meant to be little nothings, appetizers, but if you stacked a dozen of them together you had something that resembled a real steak.
I was moving on to look for something delicious to go with them when a hairy hand the size of a cafeteria tray, lumpy with scars and muscle, clamped down on my right shoulder.
I nearly flew out of my shoes as panic flashed through me, and my brain took me back to a few months before, when the owner of a hand like that had been stalking me through the burning ruins of one of the weapons vaults kept by the King of the Underworld, Hades himself. The Genoskwa had occupied more than the usual space in my nightmares since, and the sudden surge of adrenaline caused the Winter mantle to go berserk, readying my body for combat in an instant.
Only it was already too late. The fingers, thick as summer sausages, had already tightened down. It had me.
“Dresden,�
� growled an enormous, rumbling voice. “Good. Finally, I can pay you back properly.”
21
When someone has ahold of you, there’s a basic rule of thumb to follow, which Murphy had taught me a while back. I called it the Rule of Thumb. The idea is to twist whatever part they’ve got hold of toward their thumb in a circling motion. The basic principle is that it’s easier to overcome the power of one thumb than it is four fingers supported by the thumb. The Genoskwa’s grip was incredibly strong—but the Winter mantle gave me enough physical capability, at moments like this, that I wasn’t exactly a ninety-pound weakling, either.
His right hand was on my right shoulder. So I dipped suddenly, spinning clockwise and pulling sharply back and down, pitting the weight and power of my entire body against the monster’s single thumb.
I did it just right—and even so, only barely managed to break the grip and pull away. I also managed to jostle the buffet table, setting the serving trays to clanking, and nearly knocked the thing over with my ass as I crouched, dropping my plate to lift my arms in what would probably be a useless gesture of self-defense.
Only it wasn’t the Genoskwa.
Standing in front of me was a goddamned Sasquatch, a hairy humanoid figure a solid nine feet and change in height, layered with dark brown hair and muscle. He was wearing—I’m not even kidding —what looked like a Victorian-era tuxedo, tailored to his enormous size. He had spectacles across his broad, flat nose, their lenses the size of tea saucers, and they still looked a little small on him. His hair, all of it that was visible, had been shampooed and conditioned, and for a second I thought I was looking at a Wookie.
“Hah,” rumbled the Sasquatch. His face spread into an uneasy smile that showed me broad teeth that looked like they could crunch through a fence post like it was a stalk of celery. “I heard you met my cousin.”
I blinked several times and then realized that everyone in the room nearby was staring at us. I’d dropped both my staff and my snack plate, and the servers behind the buffet table looked like they wanted to quietly vanish. I huffed out a breath, pushed away the Winter mantle’s scream to engage in bloody combat, and said, “Wow. River Shoulders? Is that you?”
