Proven Guilty

by Jim Butcher

Chapter 39~40

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The Scarecrow let out an ear-splitting trilling chirp, like a summer locust on steroids, and it bounded to one side in an effort to keep the mounded ice of the fountain between us. I'd already seen how fast a fetch could move, and didn't bother with a snap shot. Instead, I let it distance itself from Molly and Charity, until it reached cover behind the fountain's ice and stopped moving.

  Then I blew two-thirds of that dome away in a single blast of light, thunder, and fire.

  The golden Summer flame hammered straight through the ice and into the Scarecrow. The old fetch was taken off guard, and the lance of fire incinerated what would have been a hip and thigh on a human being. It bellowed a metallic roar of pain and anger, bounced off one of the white marble statues of the three sisters, and was forced to seize hold of one of the statues' ankles to keep from bouncing over the edge of the parapet.

  But the Scarecrow wasn't the only faerie who cried out. Without warning, a hurricane of sound slammed into me, painfully intense. Once more Arctis Tor shuddered, the black ice trembling and heaving while deep, almost subsonic groans echoed through the fortress. The other fetches' screams arose from below, a frenzied chorus of berserk rage.

  The heaving ground and the sonic sledgehammer tossed me into a bank of ice-sculpted rose vines with thorns three times as long as their flowers. The ice was not brittle, and it didn't break as my weight hit it. I felt a sharp pain from my ankle, a thorn stabbing underneath the hem of my duster, but the spell-worked coat protected me from further harm. I was on my feet again in a second, readying another blast.

  But in that second, the Scarecrow had reversed its course with eerie agility. It headed for Charity and Molly, running on all three of its limbs like a wounded spider, awkward but still swift. This time I couldn't afford to take my time about lining up the shot. I flicked a lash of fire between the Scarecrow and the Carpenter women, but it sidestepped and I only burned a few loose-end tendrils from its vine-body. The Scarecrow hurtled toward Molly. Charity lay perfectly still beside her, sprawled on the black ice.

  But only until the Scarecrow came within reach of her sword. Then Charity rolled and popped up into a low, slashing lunge. Her sword seared its way through the Scarecrow's undamaged leg, slicing it off at an angle that began at midthigh and finished just above the knee. It frantically rolled again, struggling to get out of sword range. Charity pressed ruthlessly, too close to the damned fetch to let me blast it again. The Scarecrow hopped and skittered on its remaining limbs, heading for the edge of the parapet.

  "Charity!" I shouted. "Down!"

  Michael's wife dropped out of my line of fire in an instant.

  The fetch shimmered, body contorting weirdly, and leapt. On the way, it changed. Membranous wings unfurled from its body and beat powerfully down, and within a heartbeat the rest of the fetch's body had conformed to the shape of one of the monstrous, hang-glider-sized bats I'd seen in Faerie once before. It hurtled away, wings thrashing to gain altitude, and the faerie moon shone down in lunatic glee.

  I had a perfect shot.

  Once more, I called upon the fire of Summer I'd taken in. I could feel its intensity beginning to ebb, but if the fetch managed to slip away I might never have such an opportunity again. Besides. That creature had tormented my friend's wife and daughter, nearly murdered them right in front of my eyes, and now it was going to answer for it.

  So I unleashed the fire again, this time so brilliant that it lit dark mountainsides five or ten miles away, so hot that the blowing snow hissed into instant steam in the wake of the flame. When it struck the fetch, it detonated into a blinding conflagration, an explosion that roared so loudly that it shattered every icy replica of a rose vine upon the parapet.

  What tumbled burning from the faerie skies toward the merciless mountains below could not have been identified as anything in particular. It trailed sparks, soot, and ash, and when it slammed into a granite cliff side, it hit with such force that an icy rockslide was jarred loose from the mountain's slope, burying the fetch under incalculable tons of stone.

  I shook my staff at the rockslide in a primal gesture of triumph and shouted, "Who's next!?!"

  The courtyard below become completely silent for a second, and then I could see fetches, too dark to make out clearly, darting away from the base of the spire, retreating from the fight.

  "Harry!" Charity said, her voice strained.

  I hadn't realized it when Charity had gotten her head down, but she'd dropped into a baseball player's slide. Thanks to all the fire I'd been pitching around, the black ice had become slick with a thin layer of melt-water, and her momentum was carrying her with slow, dreamy smoothness toward the parapet's edge.

  I turned to run toward her, and then used an ounce of brainpower to deduce that I'd only be duplicating the behavior that got Charity into the mess to begin with. Instead I dropped to all fours, crawling forward with my staff extended. Her ankles were over the edge by the time I got close enough to reach her. She was able to get her fingers around the end of the wizard's staff, and I locked onto the other end, halting her slide. I then began to move backward, very slowly, very carefully. The black ice of the parapet hardened once more in a moment, as though it had never thawed, and I pulled Charity carefully away from an involuntary education in skydiving.

  Once she was clear, we both turned to look at Molly. The girl lay quietly, still breathing. I rolled onto my back until I could get my breath again. Charity rose and went to her daughter. I didn't follow her. It wasn't the kind of moment she'd appreciate me sharing.

  I watched, and kept an eye out for trouble. Charity knelt down beside the young woman and gathered her into her arms as she might have a smaller child. Charity held Molly against herself and rocked gently, her lips murmuring steadily as she did so. For a moment, I thought that the terror and trauma had driven Molly too far away to return. But then she shuddered, blinked her eyes open, and began to weep quietly, leaning against her mother.

  I heard a groan behind me, and spun up into a crouch, blasting rod ready again.

  The sculpture of the crucified man groaned again. Though he was still crucified and horribly rotted, my fire spells, as augmented by Lily's extraordinary power, had melted the bonds around his left wrist, and now his left arm flopped bonelessly in the steady, howling wind. I had never seen human flesh so badly mangled. His fingers, wrists, and forearms had long since succumbed to frostbite, the blood gone poisonous as it flowed through them, causing the flesh to swell grotesquely. Despite that, I could see that the skin of his entire arm was covered in layers of scars. Burn scars. Knife scars. Scars from flesh torn by blunt force and left to heal incorrectly.

  I've taken a few hits myself. But that poor bastard's arm had suffered more than my whole body.

  Almost against my will, I walked over to the tree. The man's hair hung like Spanish moss over his bowed face, some of it light brown, some of it dark grey, some of it gone brittle and white. I reached out and brushed the hair back from the man's face, lifting his head toward me a little. His beard was as long and disgusting as his hair. His face had been ravaged somehow, and I got the unsettling impression that his expressions had so contorted and stretched his face that they had inflicted their own kind of damage, though there were no scars as on his arm. His eyes were open, but completely white and unseeing.

  I recognized him. "Lloyd Slate," I murmured. "The Winter Knight. "

  The last time I'd seen Slate had been after the battle on the hill of the Stone Table, a place that served as the OK Corral for the Faerie Courts when they decided to engage in diplomacy by means of murdering anyone on the other team. Slate had been a first-rank menace to society. A drug addict, a rapist, a man with no compunctions about indulging himself at the expense of others. By the end of the battle he had killed a young woman who might have become a friend.

  He stirred and let out a small whimper. "Who is there?"

/>   "Dresden," I replied.

  Slate's mouth dropped open, and a maniacal little giggle bubbled under his reply. "You're here. Thank God, you're here. I've been here so long. " He tilted his head to one side, exposing his carotid artery. "Free me. Do it, quickly. "

  "Free you?" I asked.

  "From this," Slate sobbed, voice breaking. "From this nightmare. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Thank God, Dresden, kill me. "

  The seedier neighborhoods of my soul would have been happy to oblige him. But some dark, hard part of me wanted to see what else I could think of to make him suffer more. I just stared at him for a while, considering options. After perhaps ten minutes, he dropped unconscious again.

  From somewhere to my right, a delicious voice, at once rough and silky, purred, "You do not understand his true torment. "

  I turned to face the frozen fountain. Well. The remains of it, anyway. Maybe a third of the ice mound remained, but it had partially uncovered the statue within-no statue at all, but a member of the Sidhe, a tall, inhumanly lovely woman, her appearance one of nigh perfection. Or it would have been so in other circumstances. Now, partially free from the encasing ice, her scarlet hair clung lumpily to her skull. Her eyes were deeply sunken and burned too bright, as though she had a fever. She stood calmly, one leg, her head, one shoulder, and one arm now emerging from the ice, which was otherwise her only garment. There was an eerie serenity to her, as though she felt no discomfort, physical or otherwise, at her imprisonment. She seemed to regard the entire matter with amused tolerance, as though such trivial conditions were hardly worthy of her attention. She was one of the oldest and most powerful Sidhe in the Winter Court- the Leanansidhe.

  And she was also my godmother.

  "Lea," I breathed quietly. "Hell's bells. What happened to you?"

  "Mab," she said.

  "Last Halloween," I murmured. "She said that you had been imprisoned. She's kept you here? In that?"

  "Obviously. " Something extremely unsettling glittered in her eyes. "You do not understand his true torment. "

  I glanced from her to the Winter Knight. "Uh. What?"

  "Slate," she purred, and flicked her eyes in his direction. She was unable to move her head for the ice about it. "There is pain, of course. But anyone can inflict pain. Accidents inflict pain. Pain is the natural order of the universe, and so it is hardly a tool mete for the Queen of Air and Darkness. She tortures him with kindness. "

  I frowned at Slate for a moment, and then grimaced, imagining it. "She leaves him hung up like that. And then she comes and saves him from it. "

  My godmother smiled, a purring sound accompanying the expression. "She heals his wounds and takes his pain. She restores his sight, and the first thing his eyes see is the face of she who delivers him from agony. She cares for him with her own hands, warms him, feeds him, cleans away the filth. And then she takes him to her bower. Poor man. He knows that when he wakes, he will hang blind upon the tree again-and can do naught else but long for her return. "

  I shook my head. "You think he's going to fall for that?" I said. "Fall in love with her?"

  Lea smiled. "Love," she murmured. "Perhaps, and perhaps not. But need. Oh, yes. You underestimate the simple things, my godchild. " Her eyes glittered. "Being given food and warmth. Being touched. Being cleaned and cared for-and desired. Over and over, spinning him through agony and ecstasy. The mortal mind breaks down. Not all at once. But slowly. The way water will wear down stone. " Her madly glittering eyes focused on me, and her tone took on a note of warning. "It is a slow seduction. A conversion by the smallest steps. "

  The skin on my left palm itched intensely for a moment, in the living skin of the Lasciel sigil.

  "Yes," Lea hissed. "Mab, you see, is patient. She has time. And when the last walls of his mind have fallen, and he looks forward with joy to his return to the tree, she will have destroyed him. And he will be discarded. He only lives so long as he resists. " She closed her eyes for a moment and said, "This is wisdom you should retain, my child. "

  "Lea," I said. "What has happened to you? How long have you been a Sidhe-sicle?"

  Some of the strength seemed to ebb from her, and she suddenly seemed exhausted. "I grew too arrogant with the power I held. I thought I could overcome what stalks us all. Foolish. Milady Queen Mab taught me the error of my ways. "

  "She's had you locked up in your own private iceberg for more than a year?" I shook my head. "Godmother, you look like you fell out of a crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down. "

  Her eyes opened again, glittering and unsettling as hell. And she laughed. It was a quiet, low sound-and it sounded nothing like the laugh of the deadly Sidhe sorceress I'd known since before I could drive.

  "Crazy tree," she murmured, and her eyes closed again. "Yes. "

  I heard heavy, thumping steps on the staircase, and Thomas came sprinting onto the parapet, fae-bloodied sword still in hand. "Harry!"

  "Here," I said, and waved an arm at him. He glanced at Charity and Molly, and hurried over to me.

  A little lump of fear knotted itself in my guts. "Where's Murphy?"

  "Relax," he said. "She's downstairs guarding the door. Is the girl all right?"

  I pitched my voice low. "She's breathing, but I'm more worried about damage to her mind. She's crying at least. That's actually a good sign. What's up?"

  "We need to go," Thomas said. "Now. "

  "Why?"

  "Something's coming. "

  "Something usually is," I said. "What do you mean?"

  He gritted his teeth and shook his head. "Since last year. . . since the Erlking. . . I've had. . . intuitions, maybe? Maybe just instincts. I can feel things in the air better now than before. I think the Wild Hunt is coming toward us. I think a lot of things are coming toward us. "

  No sooner had he said it than I heard, blended with the distant cry of the wind, a long, mournful, somehow hungry horn call.

  I stepped up onto the edge of the fountain and peered out into the moonlit night. I couldn't make out anything very clearly, but for an instant, far in the distance, I saw the gleam of moonlight on one of the odd metals that faeries used to make their weapons and armor.

  Another horn rang out, this one more a droning, enormous basso- only the second horn came from the opposite side from the first. Over the next few seconds, more horns joined in, and drums, and then a rising tide of monstrous shrieks and bellows, all around us now. In the mountains east of Arctis Tor, one of the snowcapped peaks was abruptly devoured by a rising black cloud that hid everything beneath it. A quick check around showed me several other peaks being blanketed in shadow. Horn calls and cries grew louder and continuously more numerous.

  "Stars and stones," I breathed. I shot a glance at my godmother and said, "The power I used here. That is what caused this, isn't it?"

  "Of course," Lea said.

  "Holy crap!" Thomas blurted, jumping like a startled cat when what he must have thought was another statue moved and spoke.

  "Thomas, this is my godmother, Lea," I said. "Lea, Th-"

  "I know who he is," my godmother murmured. "I know what he is. I know whose he is. " Her eyes moved back to me. "You summoned forth the power of Summer here in Arctis Tor, in the heart of all Winter. When you did so, those of Winter felt the agony of it. And now they come to slay you or drive you forth. "

  I swallowed. "Uh. How many of them?"

  The mad gleam returned to her eyes. "Why, all of Winter, child. All of us. "

  Crap.

  "Charity!" I called. "We're leaving!"

  Charity nodded and rose, supporting Molly, though the girl was at least mobile. If she'd remained unaware and walled away from the world, it would have been a real pain to get her all the way back down the tower. Molly and her mom hit the stairs.

  "Thomas," I said. "See if you can chop off some of this ice without hurting her. "

  Thomas licked his lips. "Is that a good idea? Isn't
this the one who tried to turn you into a dog?"

  "A hound," Lea murmured, glittering eyes flicking back and forth at random. "Quite different. "

  "She was a friend of Mom's," I told Thomas quietly.

  "So was my Dad," Thomas said. "And look how that turned out. "

  "Then give me the sword and I'll do it myself. I'm not leaving her. "

  Lea made a sudden choking sound.

  I frowned at her. Her eyes bugged out and her face contorted with apparent pain. Her mouth moved, lush lips writhing, twisting. A bestial grunt jerked out of her throat every second or two. The fingers of her freed hand arched into a claw. Then she suddenly sagged, and when she turned her eyes back to me, they were my godmother's again; one part lust, one part cool, feline indifference, one part merciless predator.

  "Child," she said. Her voice was weak. "You must not free me. "

  I stared at her, feeling confused. "Why?"

  She gritted her teeth and said, "I cannot yet be trusted. It is not time. I would not be able to fulfill my promise to your mother, should you free me now. You must leave. "

  "Trusted?" I asked.

  "No time," she said, voice strained again. "I cannot long keep it from taking hold of. . . " She shuddered and lowered her head. She lifted her face to me a few seconds later, and the madness had returned to her eyes. "Wait," she rasped. "I have reconsidered. Free me. "

  I traded a look with Thomas, and we both took a cautious step backward.

  Lea's face twisted up with rage and she let out a howl that shook icicles from their positions. "Release me!"

  "What the hell is going on here?" Thomas asked me.

  "Uh," I told him. "I'll get back to you after we get out of Dodge. "

  Thomas nodded and we both hurried toward the stairs. I glanced back over my shoulder, once. The fountain was already building itself up again, freezing water to ice. A thin sheet of it already covered my godmother. I shuddered and looked away, directly at the delirious Lloyd Slate. My footsteps quickened even more.

  And then, just as I was leaving, only for an instant, I thought I saw one more thing. The triangle of statues of Sidhe noblewomen caught a stray beam of moonlight, while thin clouds made it jump and shift. In that uncertain light, I saw one of the statues move. It turned its head toward me as I left, and the white marble of its eyes was suddenly suffused with emerald green the same color as Mab's eyes.

  Not just the same color.

  Mab's eyes.

  The statue winked at me.

  The sounds of the approaching fae grew even louder, reminding me that I had no time to investigate. So I shivered and hurried down the stairs beside Thomas, leaving the parapet and its prisoners and-perhaps-its mistress behind me. I had to focus on getting us back to Lily's rift in one piece, so I forced all such questions from my mind for the time being.

  The four of us were slogging through snow up to my knees a few moments later, while I spent the last reserves of power I'd taken from Lily's butterfly to keep us from going into hypothermia.

  I took the lead and ran for the rift as a nightmarish symphony of wails and horns and howls closed in all around us.

  Chapter Forty

  Shielded by the good graces of Summer, we fled Arctis Tor. The winds outside howled louder, kicking up increasingly intense clouds of mist, snow, and ice. Beyond the wind, still vague but growing slowly more clear and immediate, I could hear the cries of things that thrived in the dark and the cold. I heard drums and horns, wild and savage and inspiring the kind of terror that has nothing to do with thought, and everything to do with instinct.

  I heard the cry of the Erlking's personal horn, unmistakable for any other such instrument.

  I traded a quick glance with Thomas, who grimaced at me. "Keep moving!" he called.

  "Duh," I grunted.

  Immediately behind me, Murphy panted, "What was that about?"

  "Erlking," I told her. "Big-time bad guy. Wants to eat me. "

  "Why?" she asked.

  "Well. I met him," I said.

  "Ag," Murph said. Even with her labored breathing, the nonword managed to be dry. "Last October?"

  "Yeah. He thinks I insulted him. "

  "You're never mouthy, Harry. Must have been someone who looks like you. " She grimaced and clutched at her belt, her balance wavering. There was a long, open slice in the tough leather, where a claw or blade had nearly struck home. The belt gave way, and the oversized mail she wore flopped down, binding her legs, almost tripping her. "Dammit. "

  "Hold up," I called before Murphy could fall down, and we all staggered to a halt. Molly all but dropped into the snow.

  "We can't stand around like this!" Thomas called.

  "Charity, Murph, we've got to travel as light as we can. Ditch the armor. " I ripped off my duster and wriggled like an eel to get out of my own mail. Then I tossed it at Thomas.

  "Hey!" he said, and scowled.

  "Don't leave it on the ground," I said. "Thomas, carry it. "

  "What?" he demanded. "Why?"

  "You're strong enough that it won't slow you down," I said, and got my coat back on. "And we don't dare leave this much iron lying on the ground here. "

  "Why not?"

  I saw Murphy get out of her gear, and turn to support Molly so Charity could, too. "Would you want visitors leaving radioactive waste around behind them when they left your place?"

  "Oh," he said. "Good point. Because we wouldn't want to get them mad at us. " He started rolling the mail into a bundle, which he tied into a rough lump with a belt, and slung it over his shoulder.

  Howls and wails and horn cries grew louder, though now all to our flanks and the rear. Somehow, in the gale of snow and wind, we had slipped out of the noose the encircling forces had formed around us. If we kept moving, we stood a real chance of getting away clean.

  "This entire field trip isn't what we were meant to think it was," I told him. "We've been used. "

  "What? How?"

  "Later. Now carry the damn armor, and don't leave anything lying behind. Move. " The little flutter of Summer fire left in me began to waver, and for a second the wind gained frozen teeth sharp enough to sink all the way into my vitals. "Move!"

  I started slogging through the snow again, doing my best to break a path for those coming behind me. Time went by. Wind howled. The snow slashed at my face, and the Summer fire sank to low embers that would not last much longer. They fluttered and faded at almost the precise moment I sensed a rippling of magical energy nearby, and got a whiff of stale popcorn.

  The rift shone in the air thirty yards up the slope.

  Things, big shaggy things with white fur and long claws, emerged from the snows behind us, running as lightly over the snow and ice as if it had been a concrete sidewalk.

  "Thomas!" I pointed at the oncoming threat. "Murph, Charity! You get the girl out of here. Move!"

  Murphy looked back and her eyes widened. She immediately ducked under Molly's other arm and began to help Charity. Charity staggered for a step, then drew the sword from her belt and thrust it into the snow at my feet, before redoubling her efforts to get Molly over those last few yards.

  I transferred my staff to my left hand and took the deadly iron in my right. The last bit of the power Lily loaned me played out, and I didn't have enough magic left in me to light a candle, much less throw around fire or even use my shield. This was going to be about steel and speed and skill, now, purely physical. Which meant that I probably would have gotten myself quickly killed if Charity hadn't thought fast and armed me with iron.

  As things stood, my brother and I only needed to hold the oncoming yeti-looking things off until the ladies escaped. We didn't have to actually beat them.

  "What are those things?" Thomas asked me.

  "Some kind of ogre," I told him. "Hit them hard and fast. Scare them with iron as much as we can, as fast as we can. If we can get them to come at us cau
tiously, we might be able to pull off a fighting retreat back up the slope. "

  "Got it," Thomas said. And then, when the first of the snow ogres was maybe thirty feet away, my brother took two steps and bounded into the air. The top of his jump was about ten feet off the snow, and when he came down he held the saber in both hands. The iron weapon sliced cleanly through the ogre's breastbone and filleted the monster, splitting him open like a steaming baked potato. Its faerie blood took flame, purple and deep blue, and gouted in a blaze of streaming energy.

  But Thomas wasn't done there. The next ogre threw a rock the size of a volleyball at him. Thomas whirled, dodged it, faked to one side, and then cut across the second ogre's thighs, sending it howling to the ground.

  The third ogre hit him with a small tree trunk, baseball style, and turned my brother into a line drive that missed slamming into me by six inches. The ogres howled in fresh aggression and charged.

  I'm not a terribly skilled swordsman. I mean, sure, more so than ninety-nine percent of the people on the planet, but among those who know anything about it, I don't rate well. To make matters worse, my experience was largely in fencing-fighting with a style that uses long, thin blades; a lot of thrusting, a lot of lunging. Charity's sword would have been at home on the set of Conan the Barbarian, and I had only a basic under-standing of using the heavier slashing weapon. I have two advantages as fencer. First, I'm quick, especially for a guy my size. As long as something isn't superhumanly fast, I don't get massively outclassed. Second, I have really long arms and legs, and my lunge could hit a target from a county away.

  So I played to my strengths. I let out a howl of my own to match the ogres', and when the one with the club drew near and swept it up over his head in a windup, I lunged, low and quick, and drove about a foot of cold steel into its danglies. I twisted the blade and rolled out to one side as I withdrew it. The club came down on the snow where I'd been. Fire fountained from the ogre's pelvic region. The ogre screamed and ran around in a panicked agony, and the ogres coming behind it slowed their steps, their charge faltering, until the ogre keened and fell over into the snow, the fire of cold iron consuming it. They stared at their fallen comrade.

  Hey. I don't care what kind of faerie or mortal or hideous creature you are. If you've got danglies and can lose them, that's the kind of sight that makes you reconsider the possible genitalia-related ramifications of your actions real damned quick.

  I bared my teeth at them, and ogre blood sizzled on the steel of my borrowed sword. Never turning from them, I started walking back step by slow, cautious step, tight agony in a fiery band around my ribs reminding me of my injuries. I reached Thomas a second later, and he was just then sitting up. He'd crashed into a boulder, and there was a knot already forming just above one eye. He was still too disoriented to stand.

  "Dammit, Thomas," I growled. My left hand wasn't strong enough to grab onto him and haul him up the hill. If I used my right, the sword would be in my weak hand, and I wouldn't be able to defend either one of us. "Get up. "

  The ogres began gathering momentum, coming for us again.

  "Thomas!" I shouted, lifting my sword, staring at the ogres as my shadow abruptly flickered out over the ground between us.

  Wait. My shadow did what?

  I had part of a second to realize that a new source of light had cast the flickering shadows, and then a bead of intense fire, maybe the size of a Peanut M amp;M, flashed over my shoulder and splashed over the chest of the nearest ogre. Summer fire slammed the ogre to the ground before it could so much as scream, and began to rip its flesh from its bones.

  "I've got him!" Fix called, and I saw him in my peripheral vision, sword in hand. He got a shoulder under Thomas's arm and lifted him with more strength than I would have credited the little guy with. The ogres' charge came to a complete halt. I shoved my staff through the belt tying up the bundle of mail Thomas had been carrying, lifted it awkwardly to my shoulder, and we fell back toward the rift, never turning our backs on the ogres. They hovered at the edge of visibility in the gusting snow, but did not menace us again.

  "Watch your step," Fix warned me.

  Then I felt a rippling sensation around me, and then I stepped into an equatorial sauna.

  I found myself on the thin stretch of stage before the screen in Pell's dingy old theater. I stepped to one side, just as Fix came through with Thomas.

  Lily stood on the floor, facing the rift. She looked weary and strained. As soon as Fix came through, she waved a hand as if batting aside an annoying fly. There was a rushing sound, and then the rift folded in on itself and vanished.

  Silence fell on the dimly lit theater. Lily melted down onto her knees, one hand holding her up, white hair fallen around her head as she shivered, breathing hard. The ice and frozen snow that had been coating me, gathering in my hair and in the creases of my clothing, vanished, replaced by the usual residual ectoplasm.

  "Mmmm," Thomas observed in a slightly slurred voice. "Slime. "

  Fix lowered him to the ground and went to Lily.

  "Fix," I said. "Did you hear what was happening out there?"

  "Kicked a beehive, it sounded like. " He knelt beside Lily, providing her his support. "The castle's garrison came out to meet you?"

  "No," I said. "That was every other Winterfae on the map, apparently. "

  "What?" he demanded.

  "I, uh, kind of threw a bunch of Summer fire around Mab's playhouse, and blew up most of this frozen fountain thing. "

  Fix's mouth dropped open. "You what?"

  "The Scarecrow was hiding behind the thing and so. . . " I put Charity's sword down and waved a hand. "Kablooey. "

  Fix stared at me as if I'd gone insane. "You poured Summer fire into Winter's wellspring?"

  "I can't sleep well any night I haven't inflicted a little property damage," I said gravely. "Anyway, I did that, and all hell broke loose. My god-mother told me that anybody who was anybody in Winter had gotten their vengeance on and was coming to kill me. "

  "My God," Fix breathed. "That would do it all right. Where did you get Summer fire to. . . " His voice trailed off and he stared at Lily.

  The Summer Lady looked up, her weary smile gorgeous. "I only provided a minor comfort and guide in order to repay my debt to the lady Charity," she murmured, a small smile on her lips. "I had no way to know that the wizard would steal that power for his own use. " She drew in a deep breath and said, "Help me up. We must go. "

  Fix did so. "Go where?"

  I said, "All of those Winter forces are now at the heart of their own realm. Which means that they aren't on the borders of Summer waiting to attack. Which means that Summer has forces that can be spared to assist the Council," I said quietly.

  "But it only took them a few minutes to show up," Murphy pointed out. "Couldn't they just run back and be there a few minutes from now?"

  "No, Murph," I said. "They planned for that. This whole raid was a setup from the get go. " I jerked my head at Lily. "Wasn't it. "

  "That is one way to describe it," Lily said quietly. "I would not, myself, interpret it that way. I had no part in bringing the fetches here-but their presence and their capture of Lady Charity's daughter presented us with an opportunity to temporarily neutralize the presence of Mab's forces upon our borders. "

  "We," I murmured. "Maeve is working with you. That was why she showed up at McAnally's so quickly. "

  "Even so," Lily said, bowing her head at me in a nod of what looked like respect.

  Fix blinked at Lily. "You're working with Maeve?"

  "She couldn't have altered the flow of time at the heart of Winter," I said quietly. "Only one of the Winter Queens could do that. "

  Fix blinked at Lily as if I hadn't spoken. "Maeve's working with you?"

  Lily nodded. "Like us, she fears Mab's recent madness. " She turned back to me. "I provided you with power enough to threaten the wellspring, in the hope that you would draw some
portion of Winter back into its own demesnes. Once that was done, Maeve altered the passage of time relative to the mortal realms. "

  I arched an eyebrow. "How long have we been gone?"

  "It is nearly sunrise of the day after you departed," she replied. "Though the passage of time was only altered in the last few moments of your escape. Maeve will not be able to hold it for long, but it will give us time enough to act. "

  "What if I hadn't realized it in time?" I asked her. "What if I hadn't used your fire?"

  She smiled at me, a little sad. "You would be dead, I suppose. "

  I glared at her. "And my friends with me. "

  "Even so," she said. "Please understand. The compulsion my Queen has laid upon me permitted me few options. I could not make explanation of what I had in mind. Nor could I simply stand by and do nothing while the Council was in such desperate need. "

  "But now you can tell me all about it?"

  "Now we are discussing history," she said. She inclined her head to me. Then to Charity. "I am glad, Lady, to see your daughter returned to you. "

  Charity looked up at her long enough to give her a swift smile and a nod of thanks. Then she went back to holding her daughter.

  "Lily," I said.

  She arched a brow, waiting.

  She'd manipulated me, turned me into a weapon to use against Mab. She hadn't exactly lied to me, but she had taken an awful gamble with my life. Worse, she'd done it with the lives of four of my friends. She had good intentions all the way down the line, I suppose. And she had faced limitations that my instincts told me I still did not fully appreciate or understand. But she hadn't dealt with me head-on, open and honest.

  But then, she was a Faerie Queen in her own right. What in the world had ever given me the impression that she would play her cards faceup?

  I sighed. "Thank you for your help," I said finally.

  She smiled, though the sadness was still in it. "I have not been as much a friend to you and yours as you have been to me and mine, wizard. I am glad that I was able to lend you some help. " She bowed to me, from the waist this time. "And now I must take my leave and set things in motion to help your people. "

  I returned the bow. "Thank you. "

  She bowed again to the company, and Fix echoed her. Then they walked swiftly from the theater.

  I dropped onto my ass at the edge of the stage, my feet waving.

  Murphy joined me. After a moment, she said, "What now?"

  I rubbed at my eyes. "Holy ground, I think. I don't think we're going to have any immediate fallout from this, but there's no sense in taking chances now. We'll get back to Forthill, make sure everyone is all right. Food. Sleep. "

  Murphy let out a groan that was almost lustful. "I like this plan. I'm starving. "

  I sat there watching Molly and Charity, and felt a twinge of nerves inside me. I'd been sent to find black magic. Molly was it. She'd used her power to renovate someone's brain, and as benign as her intentions might have been, I knew that it hadn't left her unstained. I knew better than anybody how much danger Molly was still in. How dangerous she might now be.

  I'd saved her from the bad faeries, sure, but now she faced another, infinitely more dangerous threat.

  The White Council. The Wardens. The sword.

  It was only a matter of time before someone else managed to trace the black magic back to its source. If I didn't bring her before the Council, someone else would, sooner or later. Even worse, if the mind-controlling magic she'd already used had begun to turn upon her, to warp her as well, she might be a genuine danger to herself and others. She could wind up as dangerous and crazy as the kid whose execution had served as a prelude to the past few days.

  If I took her to the Council, I would probably be responsible for her death.

  If I didn't, I'd be responsible for those she might harm.

  I wished I wasn't so damned tired. I might have been able to come up with some options. I settled for banishing thoughts of tomorrow for the time being. I was whole, and alive, and sane, and so were the people who had stood beside me. We'd gotten the girl out in one piece. Her mom was holding her so ferociously that I wondered if I might not have been the catalyst for a reconciliation between the pair of them.

  I might have healed the wounds of their family. And that was a damned fine thing to have done. I felt a genuine warmth and pride from it. I'd helped to bring mother and daughter back together. For tonight, that was enough.

  Thomas sat down on my other side, wincing as he touched the lump on his head. "Harry," Thomas said. "Remind me why we keep hurling ourselves into this kind of insanity. "

  I traded a smile with Murphy and said nothing. We all three of us watched as Charity, on the floor in front of the first row of seats, clutched her daughter hard against her.

  Molly leaned against her with a child's gratefulness, need, and love. She spoke very quietly, never opening her eyes. "Mama. "

  Charity said nothing, but she hugged her daughter even more tightly. "Oh," Thomas said. "Right. "

  "Exactly," I said. "Right. "