Dead Beat df-7

by Jim Butcher

I stared at her for a full ten seconds before I said, in a very quiet voice, "I've got a fallen angel tripping all over herself to give me more power. Queen Mab has asked me to take the mantle of Winter Knight twice now. I've read Kemmler's book. I know how the Darkhallow works. And I know how to turn necromancy against the Black Court."

  Mavra's filmed eyes flashed with anger.

  I continued to speak quietly, never raising my voice. "So once again, let me be perfectly clear. If anything happens to Murphy and I even think you had a hand in it, fuck right and wrong. If you touch her, I'm declaring war on you. Personally. I'm picking up every weapon I can get. And I'm using them to kill you. Horribly."

  There was utter silence for a moment.

  "Do you understand me?" I whispered.

  She nodded.

  "Say it," I snarled, and my voice came out so harsh and cold that Mavra twitched and took half a step back from me.

  "I understand," she rasped.

  "Get out of my town," I told her.

  And Mavra retreated into the shadows.

  I stood there over my grave for a minute more, just feeling the pain of my battered body, and bitterly considering the inevitability of death. After a moment I felt another presence near me. I looked up and found the dream image of my father regarding my tombstone speculatively.

  " 'He died doing the right thing,' " my father read.

  "Maybe I can change it to, 'he died alone,'" I said back.

  My father smiled a little. "Thinking about the death curse, eh?"

  "Yeah. 'Die alone.'" I stared down at my open grave. "Maybe it means I'll never be with anybody. Have love. A wife. Children. No one who is really close. Really there."

  "Maybe," my father said. "What do you think?"

  "I think that's what he wanted to do to me. I think I'm so tired that I'm hallucinating. And that I hurt. And that I want someone to be holding my hand when it's my time. I don't want to do it alone."

  "Harry," my dad said, and his voice was very gentle, "can I tell you something?"

  "Sure."

  He walked around the grave and put his hand on my shoulder. "Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone." His fingers squeezed me tight. "But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side."

  I frowned and looked up at my father's image, searching his eyes. "Really?"

  He smiled and drew his finger in an X on his chest. "Cross my heart."

  I looked away from him. "I did things. I made a deal I shouldn't have made. I crossed a line."

  "I know," he said. "It only means what you decide it means."

  I looked up at him. "What?"

  "Harry, life isn't simple. There is such a thing as black and white. Right and wrong. But when you're in the thick of things, sometimes it's hard for us to tell. You didn't do what you did for your own benefit. You did it so that you could protect others. That doesn't make it right-but it doesn't make you a monster, either. You still have free will. You still get to choose what you will do and what you will be and what you will become." He clapped my shoulder and turned to walk away. "As long as you believe you are responsible for your choices, you still are. You've got a good heart, son. Listen to it."

  He vanished into the night, and somewhere in the city, bells started tolling midnight.

  I stared at my waiting grave, and I suddenly realized that death was really not my biggest worry.

  He died doing the right thing.

  God, I hope so.

  Thomas was waiting back at my apartment when I returned, and Mouse came loping in not long after. Murphy's bike had failed him completely, and by the time he'd reached the college campus, the fur had flown and the whole show was over. I crashed hard, and slept for more than a day. When I woke up, I found that my injuries had all been dressed again, and that an IV was hanging beside my bed. Butters showed up every day to check on me, and he had me on antibiotics and had imposed a ferociously healthy diet on me that Thomas made me stick to. I grumbled a lot, and slept a lot, and after several days was feeling almost human again.

  Murphy showed up to chew me out for the wreck she found where her house used to be. We'd left the place sort of trashed. But when she saw me in bed, covered in bandages, she stopped in her tracks.

  "What happened?" she asked.

  "Oh. Things," I said. "Chicago was interesting for a couple of days there." I peered at her. She had a cast on her left arm, as if for a broken wrist, and I thought I saw the edge of a bruise on her neck. "Hey," I said. "What happened?"

  Her cheeks turned pink. "Oh. Things. Hawaii was interesting for a couple of days there."

  "I'll trade you my story for yours," I said.

  She got pinker. "Um. I'll… have to think about it."

  Then we both looked at each other and laughed, and we left it at that.

  Chicago reacted to the events of that Halloween predictably. It was all attributed to the worst storm in fifty years, rioting, a minor earth tremor, a large load of bread produced by a local bakery that had been contaminated with ergot, and similar Halloween-fueled hysteria. In the blackout, some reprehensible types had vandalized the museum and relocated Sue's skeleton to a local campus as some kind of bizarre practical joke. There had been dozens of break-ins, robberies, murders, and other crimes during the blackout, but any other reports and wild stories were automatically put down to hysteria and/or ergot poisoning. Life went on.

  Captain Luccio survived her injuries, but not without serious long-term damage that would take a lot of rehabilitation. Between that and the uncertainty of what would happen in her shiny new body, she had been relieved of command as the captain of the Wardens until such time as her health and state of mind were judged to be sound and reliable.

  Morgan took her place.

  He came to visit me at my place, maybe two weeks later, and gave me the news.

  "Dresden," he said. "I was against inducting you in the first place. But Captain Luccio had the right to ignore my recommendation. She made you a Warden and she made you a regional commander, and there's nothing I can do about that." He took a deep breath. "But I don't like you. I think you are dangerous."

  His mouth twisted. "But I am no longer convinced you do these things out of malice. I think you lack discipline and judgment. You have repeatedly demonstrated your willingness to put yourself in harm's way to protect others. As much as it galls me to admit it, I don't think you have any evil intentions. I think your questionable actions are the result of arrogance and poor judgment. In the end, it matters little why you do it. But I cannot in good conscience condemn you for it without giving you some sort of chance to prove me wrong."

  From Morgan, this was the equivalent of Emperor Constantine converting to Christianity. He was almost admitting that he had been wrong. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a penny, and dropped it to the floor.

  "What was that for?" he asked.

  "I'm just making sure gravity is still online," I said.

  He frowned at me, then shrugged and said, "I don't trust you. I'm not committing any Wardens to your command, and, truth be told, we don't have them to spare in any case. But you may be required to participate in missions from time to time, and I will expect you to work with the other regional commander in America. He operates out of Los Angeles. He specifically requested the assignment, and given his role in recent events, he could hardly be gainsaid."

  "Ramirez," I guessed.

  Morgan nodded. Then he reached into his coat and produced an envelope. He handed it to me.

  "What's this?" I asked.

  "Your first paycheck," Morgan said, and he didn't look happy to be saying it. "Monthly."

  I opened the envelope and blinked. It wasn't a fortune, but it sure as hell would be a nice little addition to my earnings in the investigation business. "I never thought I would hear myself say this," I said as he started to leave, "but thank you, M
organ."

  His face twisted up into something bitter, and he managed to spit out the words: "You're welcome." I think he fled before he started to puke.

  Several weeks later Butters showed up at my door with a big box wrapped in Christmas paper. I let him in, and he carried it to the living room and presented me with it. "Go ahead. Open it."

  I did. Inside the box was a guitar case, and inside that an old wooden guitar. "Uh," I said. "What's this for?"

  "Therapy," Butters said. He'd been having me practice squeezing a squishy ball with my left hand, and, just as he'd predicted, I had slowly gained a little more control of it. "You're going to learn to play."

  "Uh, my hand doesn't work that well," I said.

  "Not yet," Butters replied. "But we'll start slow like everything else, and you can work up to it. Just do the lessons. Look, there's a book in the bottom of the case."

  I opened the case and found a book entitled Guitar for Total Idiots, while Butters went on about tendons and metacarpal something-or-other and flexibility. I opened the book, but night had fallen and the fire was too low to let me read it. I absently waved a hand at the candles on the table beside the couch and muttered, "Flickum bicus." They puffed to light with a little whoosh of magic.

  I stopped and blinked-first at the candles and then at my burned hand.

  "What?" Butters asked.

  "Nothing," I said, and opened the book to look over it. "You know, Butters, for a mortician you're a pretty good healer."

  "You think so?"

  I glanced at the warm, steady flame of the candles and smiled. "Yeah."

  Author's Note

  When I was seven years old, I got a bad case of strep throat, and was out of school for a whole week. During that time, my sisters bought me my first fantasy and sci-fi novels: the boxed set of Lord of the Rings and the boxed set of the Han Solo adventure novels by Brian Daley. I devoured them all during that week.

  From that point on, I was pretty much doomed to join SF amp;F fandom. From there, it was only one more step to decide I wanted to be a writer of my favorite fiction material, and here we are.

  I blame my sisters.

  My first love as a fan is swords-and-horses fantasy. After Tolkien I went after C. S. Lewis. After Lewis, it was Lloyd Alexander. After them came Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Robert Howard, John Norman, Pol Anderson, David Eddings, Weis and Hickman, Terry Brooks, Elizabeth Moon, Glen Cook, and before I knew it I was a dual citizen of the United States and Lankhmar, Narnia, Gor, Cimmeria, Krynn, Amber- you get the picture.

  When I set out to become a writer, I spent years writing swords-and-horses fantasy novels-and seemed to have little innate talent for it. But I worked at my writing, branching out into other areas as experiments, including SF, mystery, and contemporary fantasy. That's how the Dresden Files initially came about-as a happy accident while trying to accomplish something else. Sort of like penicillin.

  But I never forgot my first love, and to my immense delight and excitement, one day I got a call from my agent and found out that I was going to get to share my newest swords-and-horses fantasy novel with other fans.

  The Codex Alera is a fantasy series set within the savage world of Carna, where spirits of the elements, known as furies, lurk in every facet of life, and where many intelligent races vie for security and survival. The realm of Alera is the monolithic civilization of humanity, and their unique ability to harness and command the furies is all that enables their survival in the face of the enormous, sometimes hostile elemental powers of Carna, and against savage creatures who would lay Alera in waste and ruin.

  Yet even a realm as powerful as Alera is not immune to destruction from within, and the death of the heir-apparent to the Crown has triggered a frenzy of ambitious political maneuvering and infighting amongst the High Lords, those who wield the most powerful furies known to man. Plots are afoot, traitors and spies abound, and a civil war seems inevitable- all while the enemies of the realm watch, ready to strike at the first sign of weakness.

  Tavi is a young man living on the frontier of Aleran civilization- because let's face it. swords-and-horses fantasies start there. Born a freak, unable to utilize any powers of furycrafting whatsoever, Tavi has grown up relying upon his own wits, speed, and courage to survive. When an ambitious plot to discredit the Crown lays Tavi's home, the Calderon Valley, naked and defenseless before a horde of the barbarian Marat, the boy and his family find themselves directly in harm's way.

  There are no titanic High Lords to protect them, no Legions, no Knights with their mighty furies to take the field. Tavi and the free frontiersmen of the Calderon Valley must find some way to uncover the plot and to defend their homes against a merciless horde of Marat and their beasts.

  It is a desparate hour where the fate of all Alera hangs in the balance, where a handful of ordinary steadholders must find the courage and strength to defy and overwhelming foe, and where the courage and intelligence of one young man will save the Realm-or destroy it.

  Thank you, readers and fellow fans, for all of your support and kindess. I hope that you enjoy reading the first book of the Codex Alera, Furies of Calderon, as much as I enjoyed creating it for you.

  Jim

  Furies of Calderon will be available in paperback in July 2005 from Ace Books.

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