by Jim Butcher
“Donald Morgan,” the Merlin said, “have you anything to say in your defense?”
That part was sort of unusual. The accused were very rarely given much of a chance to say anything.
It clouded issues so.
“I do not contest the charges,” Morgan said firmly through his black hood. “I, and I alone, am responsible for LaFortier’s death.”
The Merlin looked like he’d just found out that someone had cooked up his own puppy in the sausage at breakfast that morning. He nodded once. “If there is no other evidence, then the Senior Council will now pass—”
I stood up.
The Merlin broke off and blinked at me. The room fell into a dead silence, except for the scratch of Peabody’s pen. He paused to turn to a new page and pulled a second inkwell out of his pocket, placing it on the writing desk.
Anastasia stared at me with her lips pressed together, her eyes questioning. What the hell was I doing?
I winked at her, then walked out into the center of the stage and turned to face the Senior Council.
“Warden Dresden,” Ebenezar said, “have you some new evidence to present for the Senior Council’s consideration?”
“I do,” I said.
“Point of order,” Ancient Mai injected smoothly. “Warden Dresden was not present at the murder or when the accused escaped custody. He can offer no direct testimony as to the truth or falsehood of those events.”
“Another point of order,” Listens-to-Wind said. “Warden Dresden earns a living as a private investigator, and his propensity for ferreting out the truth in difficult circumstances is well established.”
Mai looked daggers at Injun Joe.
“Warden Dresden,” the Merlin said heavily. “Your history of conflict with Warden Morgan acting in his role as a Warden of the White Council is well-known. You should be advised that any damning testimony you give will be leavened with the knowledge of your history of extreme, sometimes violent animosity.”
The Merlin wasn’t the Merlin for nothing. He had instincts enough to sense that maybe the game wasn’t over yet, after all, and he knew how to play to the crowd. He wasn’t warning me, so much as making sure that the wizards present knew how much I didn’t like Morgan, so that my support would be that much more convincing.
“I understand,” I said.
The Merlin nodded. “Proceed.”
I beamed at him. “I feel just like Hercule Poirot,” I said, in my reasonably functional Latin. “Let me enjoy this for a second.” I took a deep breath and exhaled in satisfaction.
The Merlin had masterful self-control. His expression never changed—but his left eye twitched in a nervous tic. Score one for the cartoon coyote.
“I first became suspicious that Morgan was being framed . . . well, basically when I heard the ridiculous charge against him,” I said. “I don’t know if you know this man, but I do. He’s hounded me for most of my life. If he’d been accused of lopping off the heads of baby bunny rabbits because someone accused them of being warlocks, I could buy that. But this man could no more betray the White Council than he could flap his arms and fly.
“Working from that point, I hypothesized that another person within the Council had killed LaFortier and set Morgan up to take the blame. So I began an independent investigation.” I gave the Senior Council and the watching crowd of wizards the rundown of the past few days, leaving out the overly sensitive and unimportant bits. “My investigation culminated in the theory that the guilty individual was not only trying to fix the blame upon Morgan, but planting the seeds of a renewed outbreak of hostilities with the vampire White Court, by implicating them in the death.
“In an effort to manipulate this person into betraying himself,” I continued, “I let it be known that a conspirator had come forward to confess their part in the scheme, and would address members of the White Council at a certain place and time in Chicago. Working on the theory that the true killer was a member of the Council—indeed, someone here at headquarters in Edinburgh—I hypothesized that he would have little choice but to come to Chicago through the Way from Edinburgh, and I had the exit of that Way placed under surveillance.” I held up the manila envelope. “These are the photographs taken at the scene, of everyone who came through the Way during the next several hours.”
I opened the envelope and began passing the Senior Council the photos. They took them, looking at each in turn. Ebenezar calmly confirmed that the images of the Wardens exiting the Way together with himself, Mai, and Listens-to-Wind were accurate.
“Other than this group,” I said, “I believe it is highly unlikely that anyone from Edinburgh should have randomly arrived at the Way in Chicago. Given that the group was indeed assaulted by creatures with the support of a wizard of Council-level skill at that meeting, I believe it is reasonable to state that the killer took the bait.” I turned, drawing out the last photo with a dramatic flourish worthy of Poirot, and held it up so that the crowd could see it while I said, “So why don’t you tell us what you were doing in the Chicago area last night . . . Wizard Peabody?”
If I’d had a keyboard player lurking nearby for a soap-opera organ sting, it would have been perfect.
Everyone on the Senior Council except Ebenezar and, for some reason, the Gatekeeper, turned to stare slack-jawed at Peabody.
The Senior Council’s secretary sat perfectly still beneath his little lap desk. Then he said, “I take it that you have proof more convincing than a simple visual image? Such things are easily manufactured.”
“In fact,” I said, “I do. I had a witness who was close enough to smell you.”
On cue, Mouse stood up and turned toward Peabody.
His low growl filled the room like a big, gentle drumroll.
“That’s all you have?” Peabody asked. “A photo? And a dog?”
Mai looked as if someone had hit her between the eyes with a sledgehammer. “That,” she said, in a breathless tone, “is a Foo dog.” She stared at me. “Where did you get such a thing? And why were you allowed to keep it?”
“He sort of picked me,” I said.
The Merlin’s eyes had brightened. “Mai. The beast’s identification is reliable?”
She stared at me in obvious confusion. “Entirely. There are several other wizards present who could testify to the fact.”
“Yes,” rumbled a stocky, bald man with an Asian cast to his features.
“It’s true,” said a middle-aged woman, with skin several tones darker than my own, maybe from India or Pakistan.
“Interesting,” the Merlin said, turning toward Peabody. There was something almost sharklike about his sudden focus.
“Working on the evidence Dresden found,” Ebenezar said, “Warden Ramirez and I searched Peabody’s chambers thoroughly not twenty minutes ago. A test of the inks he used to attain the signatures of the Senior Council for various authorizations revealed the presence of a number of chemical and alchemical substances that are known to have been used to assist psychic manipulation of their subjects. It is my belief that Peabody has been drugging the ink for the purpose of attempting greater mental influence over the decisions of members of the Senior Council, and that it is entirely possible that he has compromised the free will of younger members of the Council outright.”
Listens-to-Wind’s mouth opened in sudden surprise and understanding. He looked down at his ink-stained fingertips, and then up at Peabody.
Peabody may not have seen the man turn into a grizzly, but he was bright enough to know that Injun Joe was getting set to adjust another relative ass-to-ears ratio. The little secretary took one look around the room, and then at my dog. The expression went out of his face.
“The end,” he said, calmly and clearly, “is nigh.”
And then he flung his spare pot of ink onto the floor, shattering the glass.
Mouse let out a whuffing bark of warning, and knocked Molly backward off of the bench as a dark cloud rose up away from the smashed bottle, swelling with supernatur
al speed, tendrils reaching out in all directions. One of them caught a Warden who had leapt forward, toward Peabody.
It encircled his chest and then closed. Everything the slender thread of mist touched turned instantly to a fine black ash, slicing through him as efficiently as an electric knife through deli meat. The two pieces of the former Warden fell to the floor with wet, heavy thumps.
I’d seen almost exactly the same thing happen once before, years ago.
“Get back!” I screamed. “It’s mordite!”
Then the lights went out, and the room exploded into screams and chaos.
Chapter Forty-eight
The truly scary part wasn’t that I was standing five feet away from a cloud of weapons-grade deathstone that would rip the very life force out of everything it touched. It wasn’t that I had confronted someone who was probably a member of the Black Council, probably as deadly in a tussle as their members always seemed to be, and who was certainly fighting with his back to the wall and nothing to lose. It wasn’t even the fact that the lights had all gone out, and that a battle to the death was about to ensue.
The scary part was that I was standing in a relatively small, enclosed space with nearly six hundred wizards of the White Council, men and women with the primordial powers of the universe at their beck and call—and that for the most part, only the Wardens among them had much experience in controlling violent magic in combat conditions. It was like standing in an industrial propane plant with five hundred chain-smoking pyromaniacs double-jonesing for a hit: it would only take one dummy to kill us all, and we had four hundred and ninety-nine to spare.
“No lights!” I screamed, backing up from where I’d last seen the cloud. “No lights!”
But my voice was only one amongst hundreds, and dozens of wizards reacted in the way I—and Peabody—had known they would. They’d immediately called light.
It made them instant, easy targets.
Cloudy tendrils of concentrated death whipped out to strike at the source of any light, spearing directly through anyone who got in the way. I saw one elderly woman lose an arm at the elbow as the mordite-laden cloud sent a spear of darkness flying at a wizard seated two rows behind her. A dark-skinned man with gold dangling from each ear roughly pushed a younger woman who had called light to a crystal in her hand. The tendril missed the woman but struck him squarely, instantly dissolving a hole in his chest a foot across, and all but cut his corpse in half as it fell to the floor.
Screams rose, sounds of genuine pain and terror—sounds the human body and mind are designed to recognize and to which they have no choice but to react. It hit me as hard as the first time I’d ever heard it happen—the desire to be away from whatever was causing such fear, combined with the simultaneous engagement of adrenaline, the need to act, to help.
Calmly, said a voice from right beside my right ear—except that it couldn’t have been there because bandages covered that side of my head completely, and it was physically impossible for a voice to come through that clearly.
Which meant that the voice was an illusion. It was in my head. Furthermore, I recognized the voice—it was Langtry’s, the Merlin’s.
Council members, get on the ground immediately, said the Merlin’s calm, unshakable voice. Assist anyone who is bleeding and do not attempt to use lights until the mistfiend is contained. Senior Council, I have already engaged the mistfiend and am preventing it from moving any farther away. Rashid, prevent it from moving forward and disintegrating me, if you please. Mai and Martha Liberty, take its right flank, McCoy and Listens-to-Wind its left. It’s rather strong-willed, so let’s not dawdle, and remember that we must also prevent it from moving upward.
The entire length of that dialogue, though I could have sworn it was physically audible, was delivered in less than half a second—speech at the speed of thought. It came accompanied with a simplified image of the Speaking Room, as if it had been drawn on a mental chalkboard. I could clearly see the swirling outline of the mistfiend surrounded by short blocks, with each block labeled with the names of the Senior Council and drawn to represent a section of three-dimensional dome that would hem the cloudy terror in.
Hell’s bells. The Merlin had, in the literal length of a second and a half, turned pure confusion into an ordered battle. I guess maybe you don’t get to be the Merlin of the White Council by saving up frequent-flier miles. I’d just never seen him in motion before.
Warden Dresden, the Merlin said. Or thought. Or projected. If you would be so good as to prevent Peabody from escaping. Warden Thorsen and his cadre are on the way to support you, but we need someone to hound Peabody and prevent him from further mischief. We do not yet know the extent of his psychic manipulations, so trust none of the younger Wardens.
I love being a wizard. Every day is like Disneyland.
I ripped off my ridiculous stole, robe, and cloak as I turned toward the doorway. The frantic motions of panic made the two or three light sources that had not been instantly snuffed into independent stroboscopes. Running toward the room’s exit was a surreal experience, but I was certain that Peabody had planned his steps before he’d begun to move, and he’d had plenty of time to sprint across the room in the darkness and leave the auditorium.
I tried to think like a wizard who had just been outed as Black Council and marked for capture, interrogation, and probable death. Given that I had been fairly sure it was going to happen to me over the past few days, I’d already given consideration to how to get out of Council HQ, and I figured Peabody had taken more time to plan than I had.
If I was him, I’d rip open a Way into the Nevernever and close it behind me. I’d find a good spot to get out, and then I’d make sure it was prepared to be as lethally hostile to pursuers as I could make it. The centuries upon centuries of wards placed upon the Edinburgh tunnels by generations of wizards, though, prevented any opening to the Nevernever from inside the security checkpoints, so Peabody would have to get through at least one Warden-manned security gate before he enacted his plan.
I had to stop him before he got that far.
I plunged through the doorway and noted that both Wardens on guard outside were of the younger generation who had risen to the ranks since the disastrous battle with the Red Court in Sicily. Both young men were standing blankly at attention, showing no reaction whatsoever to the furor in the Speaking Room.
A corner of a black formal robe snapped as its wearer rounded a corner in the hallway to my right, and I was off and running. I felt like hell, but for a refreshing change of pace, I had an advantage over an older, more experienced wizard—I was younger and in better shape.
Wizards might stay alive and vigorous for centuries, but their bodies still tend to lose physical ability if they do not take great pains to stay in training. Even then, they still don’t have the raw capabilities of a young person—and running at a dead sprint is as raw as physical activity gets.
I rounded the corner and caught a glimpse of Peabody, running up ahead of me. He turned another corner, and by the time I rounded that one, I had gained several steps on him. We blew through Administration and passed the Warden barracks, where three Wardens who were still freaking teenagers, the dangerous babies we’d hurried through military training for the war, emerged from the doors twenty feet ahead of Peabody.
“The end is nigh!” he snarled.
All three of them froze in their tracks, their expressions going blank, and Peabody went through the group, puffing, and knocked one of them down. I pushed harder, and he started glancing over his shoulder, his eyes wide.
He ducked around the next corner, and my instincts twigged to what he was about to try. I came around the corner and flung myself into a diving roll, and a spray of conjured liquid hissed as it went by overhead. It smacked against the wall behind me with a frantic chewing noise, like a thousand bottles of carbonated soda all shaken and simultaneously opened.
I hadn’t had time to recharge my energy rings, and they were still on my dresser
back home, but I didn’t want Peabody to get comfortable taking shots at me over his shoulder. I lifted my right hand, snarled, “Fuego!” and sent a basketball-sized comet of fire flying down the hallway at him.
He spat out a few words and made a one-handed defensive gesture that reminded me of Doctor Strange, and my attacking spell splashed against something invisible a good three feet short of him. Even so, some of it wound up setting the hem of his formal robes on fire, and he frantically shucked out of it as he continued to flee.
I made up even more distance on him, and as he turned into one of the broad main hallways of the complex, I wasn’t twenty feet away, and the first security checkpoint was right in front of us. Four Wardens, all of them young, manned the gate—which was to say that, since all the grown-ups, grandpas, and fussbudgets who might object were at the trial, they were sitting on the floor playing cards.
“Stop that man!” I shouted.
Peabody shrieked, obviously terrified, “Dresden’s gone warlock! He’s trying to kill me!”
The young Wardens bounced to their feet with the reaction speed of youth. One of them reached for his staff, and another drew his gun. A third turned and made sure the gate was locked—and the fourth acted on pure instinct, whipping her hand around her head in a tight circle and making a throwing gesture as she shouted.
I brought up my shield in time to intercept an invisible bowling ball, but the impact hit the shield with enough force to stop me cold. My legs weren’t ready for that, and I staggered, bouncing a shoulder off of one wall.
Peabody’s eyes gleamed with triumph as I fell, and he snapped, “The end is nigh!” freezing the young Wardens in place, as he’d done before. He ripped the key on its leather thong from around the neck of one of the Wardens, opened the gate, then turned with a dagger in his hand and sliced it along the thigh of the young woman who had clobbered me. She cried out and her leg began spurting blood in rhythm with her heart, a telltale sign of a severed artery.
