by Jim Butcher
“Ungh,” River Shoulders grunted in the affirmative. He gestured down at the tuxedo awkwardly. “Had to put on this monkey suit. Didn’t mean it to be a disguise.”
Strength of a River in His Shoulders was a shaman of the Forest People who had apparently been living right under everyone’s nose for hundreds of years. He’d hired me for some jobs in the past, and he was a decent guy. He also happened to be very large and very scary.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
He shrugged. His shoulders were a good five and a half feet across, so it was a fairly impressive motion. “After that mess in Oklahoma, I thought a lot about what you had to say, about my child. And you were right.” He pursed his lips briefly. “Out of line, arrogant, but right.”
I felt myself flash him a grin. “Seems about correct for a wizard.”
“Eh, for a human,” he agreed. “Called a council of my people. Told them to leave my son alone or I’d start breaking skulls. And then we decided to join the Accords.”
I tilted my head. “After lying low for so long?” I asked. “Why?”
River Shoulders glanced around the room, maybe a little nervously. “So I could get the chance to pay you back. What you did for me, for my family, was more than just work for hire. You cared. You chanced making me mad to show me I was being foolish when no one else would. Even when I got mad. Pretty good friend stuff, there. And you gave me my son.”
I cleared my throat and looked away. “Yeah, well. Okay.”
“I heard you went up against one of the Forest People and beat him.”
“Killed him,” I said.
River Shoulders eyed me and repeated, “Beat him.”
A little cold feeling went through me. “What?”
He nodded. “Big part of why I’m here. Wanted to warn you.”
“How?” I demanded. “There was nothing left but ketchup.”
River Shoulders shrugged again. “I don’t know how. But I saw him not a moon ago. Blood on His Soul won’t forget. Keep your eyes open, huh?” Once again, his eyes tracked nervously around the room. “Hey, does it feel hot in here to you?”
And suddenly I remembered Listens-to-Wind’s cryptic words. River Shoulders wasn’t a coward or anything, but it had to be tough to shift from a long lifetime of avoiding notice to showing up at a gathering of the most dangerous supernatural beings on the planet. “Oh, right,” I said. I turned to one of the staff behind the buffet and said, “Is there somewhere a little quieter we can go?”
The staffer was mostly staring up at River Shoulders, but he said, “Uh. Yeah. Sure.” He started to turn away.
River Shoulders put out a hand, rested fingertips lightly on the man’s shoulders, and said, “Hey, Einherjar.”
The man froze and turned to stare at River Shoulders, and then his hand, with hard eyes.
River nodded and withdrew his hand carefully. “Listen up. Grendel was a bad egg. Spawned mostly bad eggs. Most of my people thought he was a lunatic. So right now, the only quarrel you and me got is what you’re bringing with you.”
The man peered at River Shoulders and then at his tuxedo and spectacles. He gave a slow nod and said, “Yeah. Sir. Come up to the gym.”
I took a look around the room and noted how many red jackets were casually blending in among the crowd. Yeah. Marcone had plenty of people here.
We followed the Einherjar back through a set of doors to a short hall, up a flight of stairs, and into the gym I’d visited before, in spirit. It wasn’t big, but it had everything you needed, including a small boxing ring. There were a couple of lights on, but otherwise the place was dark and quiet. Our guide gave River Shoulders another thoughtful look and departed in silence.
River Shoulders let out a sigh and sank down to the stone floor, resting his back against a wall. He took the spectacles off and tucked them into a pocket.
“Why the glasses?” I asked.
“Make me look less threatening. Like that gorilla in the video game.” I arched an eyebrow. “You play video games?”
“I study human cultures,” River Shoulders said. “How you guys think about us, and creatures you think are like us. Video-game gorilla thought of better than King Kong, you know?” He shook his head. “Humans are scared of just about everything. Problem is, their first reaction to being scared—”
“Is to kill it,” I said, nodding. I considered my super-nice suit and decided that I didn’t much like suits anyway. I sat down on the ground next to River. “I’m familiar with the problem.”
“Hah,” the big guy said. He shook his head. “Thank you, getting me out of there.” He grimaced. “There’s just too much tension there. Too much hatred. Lust. Greed. Fear.”
I looked up at River for a moment and realized that he’d been frightened to be there. Exposed, in the midst of more noise and movement than he could adapt to readily. I knew River could wield Power in his own way, and if the poor guy was an empath, too, that room must have been torture. “Yeah, these parties are a hoot,” I said.
He grunted, took a deep breath, and exhaled. He sounded like a racehorse. “Einherjaren here, too. That’s always trouble.”
“How come?” I asked.
He scrunched up his nose, enormous brows beetling. “My people follow three paths,” he said. He gestured at himself. “Sky path, like me. We learn. We remember. Watch the stars. Read. Talk to you people, mostly on the rez. Think about things.” He sighed. “There’s not too many of us.”
I frowned and said, “You’re like wizards are to humans.”
He shrugged. “Not entirely the wrong way to see it. Why you and me get on pretty good, probably.”
“I’ll buy that. Okay.”
“Second path is the forest path. That’s most of us, maybe nine in ten. Forest path thinks that humans are good example of what not to do. That we should stay close to nature. Avoid contact. Fire. Tools. All that. Stay quiet and unseen mostly and live in harmony with the natural world.”
“And humans see them once in a while,” I said.
River nodded. “Though me and the guys on the rez watch those shows about you looking for them. Pretty darned funny. Little bit sad.”
I tilted my head and made a guess. “The Genoskwa. He’s on the third path.”
“War path,” River agreed. “He thinks our people are the first people. Thinks we should kill most of you. Make the rest into cattle and slaves.” He mused for a moment. “They’re assholes,” he said frankly. “Kind of stupid. But there’s not too many of them, either, so they can’t get what they want. Settle for hanging around national parks, making people disappear once in a while, when the sky path don’t stop them.”
“And the first Grendel was on the war path?”
River nodded. “Taught his tribe. They had numbers enough to make a go of it, back then. The other paths left them to their madness, walked over the ice, joined our people here. Grendel’s people drove the humans from some places. Humans were tied to their lands, their crops. Not much they could do about it.”
“What happened?”
“They picked a fight with the wrong humans,” River Shoulders said. “Vikings. Vikings had a champion. A teacher.”
“Beowulf?” I asked.
“Beowulf. Vadderung. He got a lot of names and faces.” River Shoulders nodded. “Lived and fought like a mortal. Showed them how to have courage. Helped build a warrior culture. Fight the giants. Some of his people even came across the sea, found us, and didn’t waste any time on talk. But there were too many of us here, and they left.”
“So what was with confronting that guy before he brought us up here?”
River Shoulders shook his head. “Lot of the Einherjaren got to Valhalla fighting my people on the war path. They remember.”
“So, the Genoskwa …”
“Our word for the war path,” River Shoulders said. “Blood on His Soul is more arrogant than most. More dangerous, too. Thinks he is the ultimate genoskwa. A paragon.” He pursed his lips and
mused. “Maybe he is.”
“He’s a lot bigger than you,” I noted.
“Yeah,” River said amiably. He yawned. It was innocent and terrifying. A volleyball could fit in his mouth with room to spare. “I’m kind of a pip-squeak.”
“Well, I know that was my first thought when I first saw you.”
He grinned. That also was terrifying. But I was starting to get accustomed to it. “You not real used to talking to people taller than you, are you?”
“Probably some truth to that,” I said. “How you feeling?”
“Better,” he said. “Listens-to-Wind is a good kid, was helping shield me from all that”—he lifted a hand and flicked it around the side of his head, as if having difficulty putting a concept into words —“noise. But he’s got duties of his own tonight.”
A good kid?
“How old are you, exactly?” I asked.
River Shoulders put on a serious expression, exaggerated his northern, Native American accent, and said, “Many moons.” He shrugged, returning to his usual tone. “Tough to keep track sometimes. Was born on the walk across the ice. Not much food at first. Probably why I grew up puny. Figure I’m about middle age.”
Which, presumably, made him approximately the same age as the tale of Beowulf. That made him better than a thousand years old. Minimum.
No wonder he could do things with magic I’d never seen before.
“You know what, Hoss Dresden?”
“What?”
“You always treated me pretty good. Even when you were scared. Takes courage to do that to someone so different from you.”
“Not so hard to be polite to someone who can punch me to the moon.”
“Your personal history says otherwise,” River Shoulders said, his tone gently teasing. “You pretty good about defying folk who need defying. And you’re getting better about figuring out who those folk are. Listens-to-Wind says you had a tough childhood.”
“Lot of people do,” I said. “I was lucky to get a good teacher. Don’t know about how much courage I have.”
“Seem to have a bit,” he replied. “Now, courage ain’t everything. But you build everything else on it.” He eyed me, and his features were both troubled and resolved, the expression of someone who had made a hard decision. “Sometime, you want to learn more, come find me.”
“Should I blast calls and pound my staff on trees?” I asked lightly.
His eyes sparkled far back under his brows. “Maybe give my woman a call,” he said. “Be quicker. And a little less silly-looking.”
I frowned and said, “You’re serious.”
“Listens-to-Wind says you’re a good investment. Just got some rough edges and need to learn more. Especially with that thing Mab hung on your shoulders.”
I frowned. “Listens-to-Wind made an offer like that, too.”
“Sure,” River said. “But I taught him. And he’s just about gotten to the end of his path.” He looked uncomfortable. “Lot of the wizards who matter are near the end. Hanging on hard.”
I tilted my head at him. “Why?”
“Not the right person, time, or place to tell you, starborn.”
I pursed my lips. “Six hundred and sixty-six years,” I said experimentally.
River’s craggy brows rose, itself a feat of superhuman strength. “Huh,” he said. “You learned some things.”
“I learned that,” I said.
“We pretty close to that time,” he said. “Kinda promised not to tell you anything. Sucks. Necessary. But if I was you, I’d think hard about taking my offer.” River’s eyes flickered toward the door, and he started putting his spectacles carefully back on. “Someone coming.”
It was a good ten seconds before I heard the whisper of light steps on stone, and then Molly swept into the room. The Winter Lady wore an opalescent formfitting gown that very heavily emphasized that she was my best friend’s daughter and that I ought not to notice that about her, dammit.
“Harry,” she said, and then paused, eyeing River Shoulders. “Uh, that is, Harry Dresden.”
River Shoulders went from sitting down to standing in a light, liquid motion. “You want to insult me, you going to have to try something worse than calling me hairy, Miss Lady Winter,” he said politely, and bowed a little at the waist. “If you will excuse me. Miss. Hoss.”
“Good talk,” I said. “Next time, a fire and steaks.”
River Shoulders nodded and moved out of the room in long, silent, relaxed strides that carried him at about the same pace as me when I went jogging.
Molly waited until he had left and said, “What the hell, Harry? What are you doing up here?”
“Liaising,” I said. “Listens-to-Wind asked me to keep an eye out for him.”
“Well, I need you to do it some more,” she said. “The fiddler decided he liked the look of Warden Yoshimo and tried to lay a whammy on her.”
I stood up. “Hell’s bells. Did it work?”
“Not for long. But it should be dealt with openly, in front of everyone, by you.”
Right. As Mab’s nominal enforcer, I was the guy she would send to, well, enforce the Accords, unless the infraction had been committed by someone out of my league.
“Okay,” I said. “Show me.”
She looked pointedly at my arm. I offered it to her, and we started back down to the main hall. “Molls, I talked to your dad today.”
“Oh?” she asked, her tone utterly neutral.
“He says you haven’t been home to visit in a while.”
She glanced surreptitiously at me. “I’ve been busy. There’s been no time.”
I stopped and perforce she stopped with me. I frowned at her and said, “Kid. Make time.”
Her voice turned sharper. “You aren’t my father, Harry. You aren’t my mentor anymore, either.”
“No,” I said agreeably. “But I am your friend.”
“We can talk about this later,” she said, tugging my arm.
I didn’t budge. “Now seems to be a good time. Your family misses you. And you owe them better than this, Molls.”
“ Harry …”
“Just tell me you’ll visit. The word of the Winter Lady is good.”
“Harry, I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
She fretted her lower lip. “It’s complicated.”
“Going to Sunday dinner isn’t complicated.” I turned to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got something precious. You’ve got a family. And they love you. And you’re probably going to live for a very long time without them. It’s idiotic to miss the chance to be with them while you can.”
She looked away from me, and tears made her eyes glisten.
“Come on,” I said, gently. “Don’t get all famous and forget the people you started with, faerie princess. They’ve got to be proud to have a celebrity in the family.”
Molly closed her eyes entirely as the tears fell.
Then she said, in a tiny voice, “They don’t know.”
I blinked exaggeratedly. “What?”
“I … I haven’t told them. About being the Winter Lady.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I know. Stars and stones, Molls, what were you thinking?”
She shook her head. “It’s … They’re going to see it as a bargain made with dark powers. If they found out …”
“Not if,” I said. “When. You can’t keep things like this hidden forever.” She shook her head wordlessly.
“It needs to be done,” I said. “You owe them the truth, at least.”
“I can’t,” she hissed. She opened her eyes and met mine. “It’s Papa. I’ve wanted to tell him, so many times. But he wouldn’t understand. I just … just imagine the look on his face when he knows … and it hurts, Harry.” She closed her eyes and shook her head again. “I can’t face that. I can’t.”
She broke off, and her tears fell in silence.
It hurt to see her suffering.
So I gave her a hug.
“This is hurting you. And it’s hurting them, too, even if they don’t know it yet.”
“I know,” she said.
I said gently, firmly, “It has to be done.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” I said. “I’ll be there with you.”
She shuddered and clung to me. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t.”
The shudders eased after a few moments. “You will?”
“What are friends for?”
Her weight leaned harder against me for a moment, in gratitude. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
We went back down to the main hall, where I immediately walked across the room to the musicians’ alcove, reached up, and ripped down the swath of cloth covering it with an enormous rasp of tearing silk.
The music stopped instantly, and the entire gathering paused to stare at me with lifted eyebrows. I noted that Yoshimo, surrounded by her fellow Wardens and the Senior Council members, looked up with pained, furious eyes.
Behind the curtain, half a dozen Sidhe sat with musical instruments now silent in their hands and stared at me with their large jewel-like eyes. The ruling class of Faerie, the Sidhe were slim, beautiful, ancient, and deadly. The tallest among them was a male prettier than nine out of ten women on magazine covers, and he had silver-white hair and amber eyes. He carried a violin in one hand.
Without a word, I called upon Winter for strength and kicked him in the chest before he could rise fully to his feet.
The Sidhe crashed backward through the rest of the chamber orchestra, knocking over chairs and smashing instruments, and hit the stone wall with a crunch of broken bones. He staggered off the wall and fell to the ground, trying to scream in pain and unable to find enough breath to get it done.
I turned to Molly, hooked a thumb over my shoulder, and said, “That guy? He seemed the most douche-like.”
Molly blinked once and nodded.
I nodded back and turned toward the fallen Sidhe. “These people are guests, under guest-right,” I said in a voice meant to carry through the room.
