Skin Game

by Jim Butcher

  Ascher looked skeptical. Binder looked pensive. Karrin finished her inspection of the next Uzi and picked up another one.

  “Ash-my-girl,” Binder said, and jerked his head toward the other end of the factory floor.

  She nodded, and the two of them moved off, walking close and speaking quietly.

  Karrin watched them go, and then asked me, “What do you think they’re talking about?”

  “Same as us,” I said. “Wondering when someone’s going to pull the rug out from underneath them, and how they’re going to get out of it in one piece.”

  “Or maybe thinking about doing a little pulling themselves,” she said.

  “Or maybe that,” I said. “But . . . they won’t do it until after they’ve got their packs loaded with jewels.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Binder,” I said. “He’s a mercenary, plain and simple.”

  “Unless that’s what he wants us to think,” Karrin said.

  “Unless that,” I said. I exhaled slowly. “This whole thing,” I said, “is going to come down to guessing who isn’t what they look like.”

  “Who is?” Karrin asked, her hands moving surely over the weapon. “Ever.”

  “Point,” I said. “But it’s going to be about guessing motivations. Whoever’s done a better job of figuring out what the other wants wins.”

  Her mouth quivered at the corners. “Then we might be in trouble. Because your motivations have . . . never exactly been mysterious, Harry.”

  “Not to you,” I said. “To someone like Nicodemus, I must seem like an utter lunatic.”

  Karrin let out a short laugh. “You know what? I think you’re probably right.” She manually cycled the action of the Uzi, caught the round as it was ejected, then put the weapon down and nodded. “That’s it. Forty of them.”

  I grunted. “Didn’t some biblical guy have forty soldiers to take on an army or something?”

  “Gideon. He had three hundred.”

  “I thought that was the Spartans.”

  “It was also the Spartans,” Karrin said. “Except that they had about four thousand other Greeks there with them in addition to their three hundred.”

  “Three hundred makes a better movie. Who had forty guys, then?”

  “You’re thinking of how many days and nights it rained on Noah’s ark.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I was sure somebody had forty guys.”

  “Ali Baba?”

  “He didn’t have forty guys,” I said. “He ripped off forty guys.”

  “Maybe you’re remembering cartoons again,” Karrin said.

  “Probably,” I said. I stared down at the guns. “Forty of those demon suit guys. With Uzis.”

  She grimaced. “Yeah. Gonna take me maybe three hours just to load all the clips.”

  “What kind of target is tough enough that it needs forty demon soldiers with submachine guns to assault?”

  Karrin shook her head. “Military installation?”

  I grunted.

  “You don’t plan for this many guns if you don’t intend to use them,” Karrin said. “If it comes down to Binder’s goons shooting people . . .”

  “We sure as hell don’t stand around and watch it happen,” I assured her.

  She nodded. “Good.” She twisted her mouth in distaste. “Won’t that upset Mab, if you bail out?”

  “Her Royal FreezePop-iness can get upset—but if she claims to be surprised, I’ll laugh in her face.”

  “But it could mean she kills you,” she said quietly.

  “Could mean she tries,” I said, aiming for cocky and confident.

  Karrin looked away, the motion a little too sharp. She didn’t go so far as to need to blink tears from her eyes or anything, but for a moment she looked about ten years older. She nodded. It looked like she wanted to say something.

  “Karrin?” I asked.

  She shook her head once and said, “I’ve got to get these clips loaded.”

  “Want help?”

  “Sure.”

  We set to the task of loading a hundred and twenty thirty-two-round magazines with 9mm rounds. Thirty eight hundred bullets or so. Even with speed-loading tools, it took a while, and we worked in companionable silence, broken occasionally by the passing guard or an increasingly gentle, intermittent series of whumping sounds that came from the far end of the factory floor—Ascher, presumably, practicing her breaching spell.

  Just as we were finishing up, bootsteps came from the opposite direction and I looked up to see Nicodemus marching toward us, a pair of his squires tromping along behind him. Deirdre walked beside him, in her human form, her expression unfriendly and otherwise unreadable.

  “Weapons ready?” he asked Karrin, without stopping.

  “All set.”

  “Excellent. Conference table, please.”

  “Why?” I asked. My left hand hadn’t been good for much beyond holding the magazine as I loaded rounds, and the fingertips of my right hand felt raw.

  Nicodemus went on by and glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes lingering on my splint. “Grey is back. It’s time to talk about our target.”

  Twenty-two

  We gathered at the conference table again, and Anna Valmont slid into the seat beside me.

  “Hey,” I said. “How goes the grease job?”

  She eyed me and smiled faintly. “I am, in this crew, what is known as a grease man. A grease man is the person who can get you into someplace you otherwise couldn’t get into by yourself.” Her voice turned wry. “A grease job is something else.”

  “Right,” I said, narrowing my eyes, nodding. “Got it. So how goes the man greasing?”

  Valmont let out a shallow chuckle. “Got to admit, I wouldn’t mind being the first to take on one of those Fernucci monsters and win.”

  “Can you?”

  She nodded slowly. “I think it’s possible.”

  Grey sauntered in, looking exactly as he had that morning, and sat down at the table.

  “Order, please,” Nicodemus said, as Grey sat down next to Deirdre. “We’ll make this quick and then break for a meal, if that’s all right with everyone.”

  “All right with me,” Ascher drawled. She looked sweatier and more smudged than she had a few hours before, but her expression was unmistakably smug. “I’m ravenous.”

  “I know just what you mean,” Nicodemus said. “Deirdre?”

  Once more, Deirdre circled the table with folders that were labeled simply GOAL.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said. “Does this master plan of yours come with health coverage?”

  “Dresden,” Nicodemus said.

  “Because that kind of thing is getting to be more and more important. I mean, I know the government probably means well and all, but those people, honestly.”

  Nicodemus eyed me.

  “Life insurance seems like something that would be worthwhile, too.” I looked up at Ascher and winked. “Maybe we should strike until we get a whole-life policy.”

  Ascher flashed me a quick grin and said, “I’ve always thought that insurance was more or less betting against myself.”

  “Nah,” Binder said. “In my experience, you’re just playing the odds.”

  “Children,” Nicodemus said with a sigh, “shall we focus on the matter at hand?”

  “But I haven’t even had the chance to dip Deirdre’s pigtails in my inkwell,” I said.

  Deirdre glowered at me, her eyes glinting.

  “Fine,” I said, and subsided.

  “Each of you,” Nicodemus said, “brings something to the table that we need in order to reach our final destination. The manor of the Lord of the Underworld, Vault Seven.”

  “You mean Ha—”

  “Shall we not speak his name for the n
ext twenty-four hours or so, please, Mr. Dresden?” Nicodemus said in a pained tone. “Unless you prefer him to be ready and waiting for all of us, including yourself? Granted, the likelihood of him taking notice of any one of us, in particular, is vanishing small, but it seems prudent to take a few simple steps.”

  “Whatever,” I said. I thought he was being pretty fussy. What with books and movies using him as a character, and mythology courses being taught all over the world, I figured Hades got to hear his name spoken in one form or another tens if not hundreds of thousands of times every day.

  Each utterance of a powerful supernatural being’s name is . . . kind of like sending him a page, a ping for his attention. If I could have a phone that survived longer than an hour, and it tried to get my attention ten thousand times a day, I’d throw the damned thing into a hole. The big supernatural beings, especially the very humanlike Greek gods, probably reacted in much the same way. Odds were good that I could sit chatting for an hour or two and mention his name several times, yet he wouldn’t even notice my relative handful of pings among all the others. It took a deliberate and rhythmic repetition, usually at least three times, to really get a signal through the noise.

  But on the other hand . . . there was always the chance that Hades just might feel my utterance of his name and randomly decide to take a moment to pay attention. That probably wouldn’t be good. So despite giving Nicodemus lip, I shut up.

  “Once we gain entry to the Underworld vault . . . ,” Nicodemus began.

  I held up my hand and said, “Question?”

  Nicodemus’s left eye began to twitch.

  I didn’t wait for him to respond. “You’re planning on just jumping straight to the vault? Hell, not even Hercules could do that. It was kind of a journey to get in. There was a bit with a dog and everything. Do you really think we’re going to just hop right past all of the defenses around the realm of the king of the Underworld?”

  That got everyone’s attention, even Grey’s. They all looked at Nicodemus, interested in the answer.

  “Yes,” Nicodemus said in a flat tone.

  “Oh,” I said. “Just like that, eh?”

  “Once we’re inside the vault,” Nicodemus said, as if my question was not interesting enough to waste more time on, “there will be three gates between us and our goal. The Gate of Fire, the Gate of Ice, and the Gate of Blood.”

  “Fun,” I said.

  “Obviously,” Nicodemus said, “Ascher was chosen for her capability with fire. As the Winter Knight, you, Dresden, will obviously handle the Gate of Ice.”

  “Right,” I said. “Obviously. What about the Gate of Blood?”

  Nicodemus smiled pleasantly.

  Of course. Old Nick had probably spilled more blood than the rest of us in the room together, if you didn’t count Deirdre. “Exactly what does each of these gates entail?”

  “If I knew that,” Nicodemus said, “I’d not have bothered recruiting experts. Each of us will take point on our specific gate, with the rest of the team backing whatever play they decide is important. Once we’re through, we’ll be in the vault. It’s quite large. You’ll have a few minutes to gather whatever it is you feel you need to take with you. After that time, I’m leaving. Anyone who lags behind is on his or her own.”

  I held up my hand again, and didn’t bother waiting for a response. “What are you after?”

  “Excuse me?” Nicodemus asked.

  “You,” I said. “Vault Seven is awfully specific. And you don’t care much about money. So I have to wonder what’s in there that you are so interested in.”

  “That’s hardly your concern,” Nicodemus said.

  I snorted. “The hell it isn’t. We’re all sticking our necks out—and if things don’t go well, we might have an angry god on our tails. I want to know what’s worth that, other than the twenty million. After all, a lot of things could go wrong. Maybe you wind up dead, purely by someone else’s hand on the way in—maybe I want to grab that whatsit for myself.”

  There was a mutter of agreement from Binder, and nods from Karrin and Valmont. Even Ascher looked curious. Grey pursed his lips thoughtfully.

  “Should I fall, the rest of you will already be dead,” Nicodemus said calmly.

  “Indulge me,” I said. “This deal is already starting to stink. A reasonable person might walk based purely on what happened today.”

  That brought a low round of mutters, and Valmont asked, “What happened today?”

  I told her about Tessa and her ghouls and Deirdre and Harvey. That made Valmont’s lips compress into a line. She knew better than most what was left when a Denarian tore into a mortal, and two out of three possible suspects were Knights of the Coin.

  “That has no bearing on our mission,” Nicodemus said.

  “The hell it doesn’t,” I said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but the last thing we need is his crazy ex jumping into things on some kind of vengeance kick.”

  “It’s not about that,” Nicodemus said.

  “Then what is it about?” I asked. “I dealt with the White Council my whole life, so I’m used to being treated like a mushroom—”

  “Eh?” Ascher asked.

  “Kept in the dark and fed bullshit,” Binder reported calmly.

  “Ah.”

  “—but this is going beyond the pale, even for me. You ask us to trust you about the plan to get into what should be an impenetrable vault. You ask us to trust you that our share will be waiting next to whatever it is you want. You ask us to trust you and believe that Tessa isn’t on some kind of jihad that will get us all killed, but won’t tell us what it is about.” I looked around the table at my criminal confederates. “Trust is kind of a two-way street, Nicodemus. It’s time to give something.”

  “Or you’ll do what, precisely?”

  “Or maybe we’ll all walk away from a bunch of empty promises without a sliver of proof to back them up,” I said.

  Nicodemus narrowed his eyes. “Dresden and his woman are obviously in accord,” he said.

  Karrin scowled.

  Nicodemus ignored her. “What about the rest of you?”

  “What he said,” Valmont said quietly.

  Ascher folded her arms, frowning.

  Binder sighed. “Twenty. Million. Quid. Think, girl.”

  “We can’t spend it if we’re dead from sticking our heads into a hole and getting them whacked off,” Ascher said firmly.

  Nicodemus nodded. “Grey?”

  Grey tented his fingertips in front of his lips for a moment and then said, “The personal aspect of this interference troubles me. A job of this sort requires pure professionalism. Detachment.”

  Binder made a nonverbal sound of agreement with Grey’s statements.

  “I will not walk away from a job once I’ve agreed to it—you know how I operate, Nicodemus,” Grey continued. “But I would sympathize if another professional of less ability and less rigid standards did so.”

  Nicodemus regarded Grey thoughtfully for a moment. “Your professional recommendation?”

  “The wizard has a point,” Grey said. “He is an annoying, headstrong ass, but he isn’t stupid. It would not be foolish for you to invest some measure of trust to balance what you ask for.”

  Nicodemus mused over that for a moment and then nodded his head. “One ought not hire an expert and then ignore his opinion,” he said. Then he turned to the rest of us. “Vault Seven contains, in addition to a standard division of gold and jewels, a number of Western religious icons. It is my intention to retrieve a cup from the vault.”

  “A wha’?” Binder asked.

  “A cup,” Nicodemus replied.

  “All this,” Binder said, “for a cup.”

  Nicodemus nodded. “A simple ceramic cup, something like a teacup, but lacking any handle. Quite old.”

  My
mouth fell open and I made a choking sound at approximately the same time.

  Grey pursed his lips and let out a slow whistle.

  “Wait,” Ascher said. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Karrin said quietly.

  Nicodemus made a face in her direction. “Miss Murphy, please.”

  She gave Nicodemus a small, unpleasant smile.

  Binder clued in a second later. “The bloody Holy Grail? Is he bloody kidding?”

  Valmont turned to me, frowning. “That’s real?”

  “It’s real,” I said. “But it was lost more than a thousand years ago.”

  “Not lost,” Nicodemus corrected me calmly. “It was collected.”

  “The cup that caught the blood of Christ,” Grey mused. He eyed Nicodemus. “Now, what possible use could you have for that old thing?”

  “Sentimental value,” Nicodemus said with a guileless smile, and straightened the skinny strands of his grey tie. “I’m something of a collector of such artifacts myself.”

  The tie wasn’t a tie, unless you meant it in a very literal sense. It was a length of simple old rope, tied into the Noose—the one that Judas used to hang himself after betraying Christ, if I understood it correctly. It made Nicodemus all but unkillable. I didn’t know if anyone else in the world knew what I knew: that the Noose didn’t protect him from itself. I’d nearly strangled him with it the last time we’d crossed trails—hence his roughened voice.

  Grey didn’t look like he believed Nicodemus’s answer, but that hadn’t stopped him from being satisfied with it. He looked around the room and said, “There. You know more than you did. Is it enough?”

  “Tessa,” I said. “What’s her beef with you going after the Grail?”

  “She wants it for herself, of course,” Nicodemus said. “I’ll deal with Tessa before we launch. It won’t become an issue for the job. You have my personal guarantee.”

  Grey spread his hands. “There,” he said. “That’s good enough for me. Binder?”