by Jim Butcher
So I backed off, the trees groaning threateningly as they retreated.
“Trade time, seidrmadr,” Freydis called to me. “Yours for mine.”
“Why should I?” I called back.
Freydis tightened her hand, and I saw Murphy tense up with pain.
“This is not the fight that is destined to be her last,” the Valkyrie called. “Unless you make me kill her.”
Murphy simply lifted her arms. There were a couple of clinking sounds, and a pair of metal bits flew up from her hands and arched out to either side of the Water Beetle, landing in the water with little splashes.
They were little metal handles. Soldiers called them spoons.
Murphy was holding a live grenade to either side of their heads.
Freydis’s eyes went very wide.
“Frags,” Murphy said calmly. “Your move, bitch.”
There was an instant of frozen silence.
“Gods, that’s hot,” Freydis said, and blurred as she dove over the railing, hitting the water like a thrown spear.
Murphy turned and pitched the grenades over the far side of the Water Beetle. She had to lob one of them underhand, with her wounded arm. They hit the drink maybe seven or eight yards out, and a couple of seconds later they went off with a roar of displaced liquid that sent a geyser of water twenty feet in the air.
I ignored that. The frags were no danger to anything when they were surrounded by that much water, and instead I tracked the evasive Valkyrie, until I found her.
I raised my voice and called out to where Freydis had tried to swim silently back to shore in the shadows and shelter of some huge old shaggy willows. She came out of the water and picked up a rock and was about to start through the trees and rocks on a least-time course for the back of my skull.
“Hey, Red!” I called. “Your client is fine, there’s no reason to fight me, and if you make me spend what’s left of my money on weregild for your boss, I’m going to be really annoyed.”
Freydis paused in the darkness in confusion. I didn’t blame her. There was no way I could have seen her from where I was standing, no way I could have heard her stealthy movements. But while I stood on Demonreach, I was as aware of the island as of my own body. I could have chucked a rock, bounced it off a couple of trees, and landed it right on the Valkyrie’s head.
Sometimes actions speak louder than words. I lifted a hand and willed the earth of the island to cooperate. Freydis found herself sunk to her waist in the ground in the space of a heartbeat. I heard her let out a short choked sound.
“See?” I called to her. “This is … just a terrible idea. Just awful. For you, I mean. Maybe we can talk instead.”
Freydis’s voice came out a little breathless. “Lara?”
I looked at Lara and made an impatient gesture with one hand. “Come on.”
“I’m alive,” Lara called back to her. Then she looked at me and said evenly. “You traitor.”
“Hey,” I said, lifting an annoyed finger. “I’m not the one who came running at you with a knife.”
“What did you do to him?” Lara asked, her voice cold and measured.
I’d heard the tone before. Back when I’d had to put the fear of, well, me, into a vampire named Bianca. We’d sort of been amicable opponents up until that point. Things changed when I’d made her feel helpless. Things had gotten a little complicated.
And I’d just repeated history.
Only Lara was smarter and stronger and a great deal more dangerous than Bianca had ever thought about being.
This was one of those situations where it would maybe be wise to use my words.
I walked over to Lara and settled down on my haunches next to her. “I did exactly what I said I would do,” I said. “He’s safe. Locator spells won’t be able to lock onto him here. His demon can’t hurt him. The svartalves can’t get to him. We did it.”
“I want to see him,” Lara hissed. “I want to talk to him.”
I rubbed at my eyes. “You can’t,” I said. I frowned and reached for my intellectus of the island.
I felt what my brother felt. Which was not much. There was distant pain, but mostly he had simply sunk into an exhausted stupor. His mind had been overwhelmed by physical stimuli. Now he sought blessed shelter in oblivion. “He’s … unconscious.”
She stared at the middle distance, refusing to look up at me. “Unconscious?”
“He’s locked in one of the cells,” I said. “He’s safe. But he’s stuck, too. And right now he’s exhausted. Resting.”
“You never said anything about locking him in a cell.”
“I said he’d have to stay here.”
Lara let out a small bitter laugh. “You did. And you kept your word. To think I believed you’d come into Mab’s service as a result of misfortune rather than aptitude.”
I winced at that one.
Ow.
“You’ve made your point, I believe, Dresden,” Lara said somewhat stiffly. “The current balance of power does not favor me. Is it really necessary to keep me in this … position?”
“Are you done with the knife play?” I asked.
“I am ready to negotiate rationally,” she said.
I gave her a professionally suspicious look.
Her poker face was much better than mine.
“Fine,” I said. I stepped back and gestured.
The ground just sort of slid away from her, bringing her back to her feet without any effort needed on her part. As her right hand came free, she lifted a small practical knife that she’d been hiding … somewhere. She put it back into the sheath she held in the other hand and then tossed the knife down onto the ground between us.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I’d appreciate it if we could deal frankly with one another at this point.”
“Sure,” I said.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“For what?”
“Don’t be coy, Dresden,” Lara said. “You hold my brother’s life in your hand now. What is your price?”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Wait—you think that … Wow.”
She tilted her head.
“Lara, look,” I said. “I’m slowly growing more aware of things, but … you’re giving me too much of what you probably think is credit. I don’t play the game like that.”
“A cursory review of your defeated foes begs to differ, wizard.”
“I’ll play hardball,” I acknowledged. “But I play it clean. Or at least, I don’t sell my own damned brother up the river for gain.”
“You’re not that much of an idealist, Dresden,” Lara said with a faint hard smile on her mouth. “At the end of the day, you’ll commit genocide if you think it’s the proper thing to do.”
“You’re goddamned right I will,” I said, because the empirical evidence was pretty tough to dispute. “But if I was as hard-core as you think I am, you wouldn’t be walking off this island with your own mind. And maybe not at all.”
Lara narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean by that?”
I threw up my hands. “Hell’s bells, Lara. Look, if I wanted to do something bad to you, I could right now. You’re standing in the wrong place, I have the advantage, and if I wanted to wreak some manner of skullduggery upon you, you aren’t in a position to stop me from doing it.”
Words could not be more rigid than the ones she spoke. “I am aware.”
“No!” I said. “That’s not … Augh! Look, I’m not saying that because I’m trying to leverage you. I’m pointing out that I can do it, but I’m not going to because it’s just … dickish. And I try to avoid acting like that whenever I can.”
Lara frowned. “What?”
“Look, I know you play the game real hard,” I said. “That’s in your nature. But you also understand family.”
She tilted her head, frowning. “What do you mean by that?”
“That Thomas is my family, too,” I said. “I won’t do anything to knowingly harm him. Um, again. And if he needs m
e, I’ll be there for him.”
“And,” Lara murmured thoughtfully, “I suppose if anything happens to you, terrible things happen to my brother.”
“Not terrible,” I said. “ Just … nothing.” Unless the next Warden decided to free him. I hadn’t yet finished reviewing the inmates of the island. The filing system of the island, such as it was, was a psychic one. Reviewing the inmates meant reviewing the inmates. The first half dozen or so had left me with nightmares for a couple of weeks, and there’s only so much masochism I can keep all to myself.
“He’s trapped there forever,” Lara said.
“No. He’s safe there until we can find a way to cure him,” I said.
She regarded me with flat eyes. “And as a happy side effect, if I wish to protect his life, now I must invest resources in protecting yours.”
That hadn’t been what I’d been planning at all.
And yet … by Lara’s standards, that’s exactly what I’d done.
There is plenty of daylight between intentions and results. Intentions are fine things, but they don’t stanch bleeding or remove scars.
Or heal broken brothers.
Man. I hadn’t planned it like that.
Had I?
Maybe I’d been hanging around Mab too much.
“Lara,” I said tiredly, “I’ll grant you, yes, that’s how things stand. We can talk all night about how they got there. But I swear to you, I didn’t do it to try to get a handle on you. Of every person you have had to deal with, which of them has tried harder to avoid even touching your … handles?”
She stared at me with that unreadable expression for a good minute. Then she said, “Empty Night, wizard. Either you’re sincere, in which case”—she shook her head, baffled—“I feel I do not understand you very well at all. Or you’re a person capable of using even your brother’s misfortune and possible death to secure gain for yourself while simultaneously cladding your actions in such moral armor as to make them practically unassailable. In which case, I suppose … I admire your skill in arranging matters.”
“I figure you can look at this two ways,” I said.
She arched an eyebrow.
“You can write this down in your little black book and remember it,” I said, “because I took a cheap shot at you when you needed help, when you earned it, and when you came to ask for it, you deserved getting it. And instead, I leveraged you.”
“That is one way to look at it,” Lara concurred.
“Or,” I said, “you can take it as a bit of circumstance that happened because circumstances are bugnuts, absolutely insane, and you and I do not have reasonable jobs for sane and rational people. Both of us are making it up as we go along, as best we know how. Both of us look for the knives coming at our backs, and both of us take action to prevent them. That includes being suspicious-minded enough to take out a little insurance even when you aren’t consciously thinking about doing so.”
Something like grudging understanding tinged her gaze for a second. She let out a soft snort through her nose.
“So,” she said. “You agree with the old man. And decided to be a very clever frog with this scorpion.”
“I respect what you can do, Lara,” I said quietly. “You’re one of my favorite frenemies. But if we both want to survive, a certain amount of moving past these rough spots is going to be necessary.”
She let out a hard little laugh. “I suppose, then, I shall expect a similar amount of tolerance from you when, one day, I have the upper hand.”
I winced at her tone. It was hard, unforgiving.
I’m pretty sure I could have thought of a number of terrible things I could do to Lara Raith that wouldn’t have made her blink. But making her feel helpless was not on that list.
I definitely did not want to think about Lara gaining the upper hand between us. I didn’t want to think about that for more than a couple of reasons.
“Yeah, that’s fair,” I breathed. “When it’s my turn, I’ll have to take it with grace. But look: You got what you wanted. Our brother is safe. He’s hidden from any tracking spells and he’ll at least not be in any worse shape while he’s a guest here. Yes, you’re going to have to watch my back until we can get him out of there, but since Mab’s got me covering yours anyway, that shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for you—and we’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. Let’s survive the night, and we’ll sort out Thomas tomorrow. Agreed?”
She kept at it with those flat eyes for another minute before she shook her head and pushed her dark hair back out of her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “Yes, all right. Your reasoning is sound. We have larger issues to face. They must take priority. I accept your terms. You have my word.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Lara recovered her knife and turned away from me. “And after that,” she said, starting back for the boat, “my first prerogative shall be balancing any scales between us that seem less than level. Beginning with my bodyguard. You will release her, please.”
I gestured, muttered to the island, and felt Freydis’s tension ease as she escaped the sinkhole I’d put her in. The redheaded Valkyrie melted out of the shadows. She paced over to Lara’s side, checking her client for injury, before giving me the kind of steady, cautious look people normally reserve for dangerous animals.
“Shall we return to the city, then?” Lara asked. Her voice was its normal velvet loveliness again, but I could feel the sharp edges underneath.
Fabulous. This was just what I needed. To provide people like Lara with motivation.
“Go ahead and board,” I said. “I need to grab a couple things. We’ll leave in five minutes.”
Lara nodded stiffly and turned to walk back to the ship. She was limping slightly and had been thoroughly muddied. I watched her go.
“SHALL I PREPARE ANOTHER CELL FOR THAT ONE?”
I turned to find the island’s spirit looming over my shoulder—and I hadn’t sensed Alfred’s approach.
Which … bothered me. I mean, my intellectus of the island was essentially without limit. With a minor effort of concentration, I could have known how many ants were on the island, how many birds, how many fish in the waters off its shores. But I couldn’t find out more about the inhabitants of the cells without dragging my brain through their psychic rap sheets, experiencing to some degree everything they were and had done. And I couldn’t sense Alfred or his movements. I mean, the spirit had come every time I’d called.
And I’d been assuming this whole time that it had to.
But Alfred was apparently able to hide things from me. The spirit could hide its presence from my intellectus of the island, for example. And it could hide the innate terror of the island’s inmates, preventing it from taking a toll on my psyche.
So I kind of had to wonder—what else could Demonreach be hiding from me?
“That won’t be necessary,” I muttered back to the spirit. “Alfred, how big a being can the cells contain?”
“PHYSICAL SIZE IS NOT A FACTOR,” the spirit replied. “METAPHYSICAL MASS IS A DIFFERENT CONSIDERATION.” The creature’s green eyes suddenly flashed fiercely. “THE LAST TITAN IS ON THE MOVE.”
“Yes,” I said simply. “Can you hold her?”
“IF YOU CAN PERFORM THE BINDING, I CAN HOLD HER,” Alfred said.
“From how far out?” I asked.
“I AM A JAILER, NOT A BOUNTY HUNTER,” Alfred replied. “PERHAPS TO THE SHORES OF THE LAKE—IF YOU USED THE ATHAME FROM THE ARMORY.”
An athame is a magical tool—think magic wand, but in the form of a knife. They’re powerful tools for ritual magic.
I had one locked up in the island’s armory. I’d stolen it from the God of the Underworld, from the same shelf as the Shroud and the Crown of Thorns. If it truly was what I was pretty sure it was, then using it was going to put me in a long-term pickle.
But if the storm coming for Chicago was as bad as I thought it was going to be, not using it would be unthinkable.
“To the sho
re, eh?” I said. “All right. Get me the knife. And a binding crystal. And the placard.”
“YOU WISH TWO OF THE WEAPONS?”
Alfred sounded … slightly intimidated.
That’s the kind of power level we were talking about.
“Sure,” I said in the most cavalier fashion I could. “After all, that’s only half the arsenal. And as soon as I leave, I want the full defensive measures of the island activated. Nothing gets in or out. Understood?”
“UNDERSTOOD, WARDEN,” the entity said with a bow.
“Great,” I sighed. “Now, run and get me my toys, Alfred. I’ve got a long night coming up.”
36
When I got back to the boat, Karrin was up on top of the boathouse, seated on the stool there. Her P90, a personal defense weapon that was the bastard child of an assault rifle and a box of Belgian chocolates, was resting on the safety railing, its barrel aimed in the same general direction as where I had been standing and negotiating moments before.
I checked. She had a good line of sight to where I’d been standing with Lara, as well as to where Freydis had come out of the water.
“Had them both lined up, huh?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I know who my friends are.”
“But you didn’t shoot.”
She folded her arms as if cold. “I know who my enemies are, too.” She glanced down, toward where Lara and Freydis were belowdecks, washing off mud and changing into some spare clothing. Some of it was Thomas’s and would sort of fit. “Lara’s tired and scared and running on instinct,” Karrin continued. “She’d have never come at you the way she did, here, otherwise.”
I regarded Karrin for a second. Then I said, surprised, “You like her.”
“I find her terrifying,” she replied calmly. “But I will acknowledge a certain amount of respect. When we worked together in the BFS, she always held up her end and always kept her word. That’s not nothing.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. I opened up the boat so that the roar of the engine would prevent Lara from overhearing our conversation. Vampires and their hearing. “So, I made an enemy of her.”
