by Jim Butcher
It lasted for long moments, then the Merlin prompted, quietly, “Gatekeeper. What say you?”
I leaned forward in my chair, my mouth dry. If he voted against me, I was betting a Warden would zap me unconscious before the sound of his voice died away.
After several of my frantic heartbeats, the Gatekeeper spoke in a resonant, gentle voice. “It rained toads this morning.”
A baffled silence followed. It became, a moment later, a baffled mutter.
“Gatekeeper,” the Merlin said, his voice more urgent, “how do you vote?”
“With deliberation,” the Gatekeeper said. “It rained toads this morning. That bears consideration. And for that, I must hear what word returns with the messenger.”
LaFortier eyed the Gatekeeper and said impatiently, “What messenger? What are you talking about?”
The back doors of the theater burst open, hard, and a pair of grey-cloaked Wardens entered the theater. They each had a shoulder under one of the arms of a brown-robed young man. His face was puffy and swollen, and his hands looked like rotten sausages about to burst. Frost clung to his hair in a thick coating, and his robe looked like it had been dipped in water and then dragged behind a sled team from Anchorage to Nome. His lips were blue, and his eyes fluttered and rolled semicoherently. The Wardens dragged him to the foot of the stage, and the Senior Council gathered at its edge, looking down.
“This is my courier to the Winter Queen,” Ancient Mai stated.
“He insisted,” one of the Wardens said. “We tried to take him for treatment, but he got so worked up about it I was afraid he would hurt himself, so we brought him to you, Ancient.”
“Where did you find him?” the Merlin asked.
“Outside. Someone drove up in a car and pushed him out of it. We didn’t see who it was.”
“You get the license number?” I asked. Both Wardens turned to eye me. Then they both turned back to the Merlin. Neither of them had gotten it. Maybe license plates were too new a concept. They weren’t yet a whole century old, after all. “Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “I would have gotten it.”
Ancient Mai carefully descended from the stage and moved to the young man. She touched his forehead and spoke to him gently in what I presumed to be Chinese. The boy opened his eyes and babbled something broken and halting back at her.
Ancient Mai frowned. She asked something else, which the boy struggled to answer, but it was apparently too much for him. He sagged, his eyes rolling back, and went completely limp.
The Ancient touched his hair and said in Latin, “Take him. Care for him.”
The Wardens laid the boy on a cloak, and then four of them carried him out, moving quickly.
“What did he say?” Ebenezar asked. He beat me to it.
“He said that Queen Mab bade him tell the Council she will permit them travel through her realm, provided one request is fulfilled.”
The Merlin arched a brow, fingers touching his beard thoughtfully. “What does she request?”
Ancient Mai murmured, “She did not tell him. She said only that she had already made her desires known to one of the Council.” The Senior Council withdrew together to one side, speaking in low voices.
I didn’t pay them any mind. The Ancient’s translation of the messenger’s words shocked me enough to keep me from so much as breathing, much less speaking. When I could move, I turned back to my table, leaned forward, and banged my head gently on the wooden surface. Several times.
“Dammit,” I muttered, in time with the thumps. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”
A hand touched my shoulder, and I looked up to see the shadowed cowl of the Gatekeeper, standing apart from the rest of the Senior Council. His hand was covered by a black leather glove. I couldn’t see any skin showing on him, anywhere.
“You know what the rain of toads means,” he said, his voice very quiet. His English had a gentle accent, something part British and part something else. Indian? Middle Eastern?
I nodded. “Trouble.”
“Trouble.” Though I could not see his face, I suspected a very slight smile had colored the word. The cowl turned toward the other Senior Council members, and he whispered, “There isn’t much time. Will you answer me one question honestly, Dresden?”
I checked Bluebeard to see if he was listening in. He had leaned way over toward a round-faced grandma-looking wizardess at another table and appeared to be listening intently to her. I nodded to the Gatekeeper.
He waved his hand. No words, no pause to prepare, nothing. He waved his hand, and the sounds of the room suddenly seemed to blur together, robbed of any coherence at all. “I understand you know how to Listen, too. I would rather no one else heard us.” The sound of his voice came to me warped, parts pitched high and others low, oddly reverberating.
I gave him a wary nod. “What is the question?”
He reached up to his cowl, black leather against twilight purple, and drew back the hood a little, enough that I could see the gleam of one dark eye and a rough, thin grey beard against bronzed skin. I couldn’t see his other eye. His face seemed to ripple and contort in the shadows, and I had an idea that he was disfigured, maybe burned. In the socket of the missing eye, I saw something silver and reflective.
He leaned down closer and whispered near my ear, “Has Mab chosen an Emissary?”
I struggled not to let the surprise show in my face, but I’m not always good at hiding my feelings. I saw comprehension flicker in the Gatekeeper’s shadowed eye.
Dammit. Now I understood why Mab had been so confident. She’d known all along that she had set me up for a deal I couldn’t refuse. She’d done it without breaking our bargain, either. Mab wanted me to take up her case, and she seemed perfectly happy to meddle in a supernatural war to get what she wanted.
She’d just been toying with me in my office, and I’d fallen for it. I wanted to kick myself. Somewhere out there was a village I’d deprived of its idiot.
In any case, there was no sense lying to the guy whose vote would decide my fate. I nodded to him. “Yes.”
He shook his head. “Precarious balance. The Council can afford neither to keep you nor to cast you out.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.” He drew the cowl back down and murmured, “I cannot prevent your fate, wizard. I can only give you a chance to avoid it on your own.”
“What do you mean?”
“Cannot you see what is happening?”
I frowned at him. “A dangerous imbalance of forces. The White Council in town. Mab meddling in our affairs.”
“Or perhaps we are meddling in hers. Why has she appointed a mortal Emissary, young wizard?”
“Because someone up there takes a malevolent amusement in my suffering?”
“Balance,” the Gatekeeper corrected me. “It is all about balance. Redress the imbalance, young wizard. Resolve the situation. Prove your worth beyond doubt.”
“Are you telling me I should work for Mab?” My voice sounded hollow, tinny, as though it was trapped in a coffee can.
“What is the date?” the Gatekeeper asked.
“June eighteenth,” I said.
“Ah. Of course.” The Gatekeeper turned away, and sounds returned to normal. The Gatekeeper joined the rest of the Senior Council, and they trooped back up to their podiums. Podii. Podia. Whatever. Goddamned correspondence course.
“Order,” called the Merlin again, and the room grew quiet after a reluctant moment.
“Gatekeeper,” the Merlin said, “what is your vote?”
The silent figure of the Gatekeeper silently lifted one hand. “We have set our feet upon a darkling path,” he murmured. “A road that will only grow more dangerous. Our first steps are critical. We must make them with caution.”
The cowl turned toward Ebenezar, and the Gatekeeper said, “You love the boy, Wizard McCoy. You would fight to defend him. Your own dedication to our cause is not inconsiderable. I respect your choice.”
He turned
toward LaFortier. “You question Dresden’s loyalty and his ability. You imply that only a bad seed can grow from bad soil. Your concerns are understandable—and if correct, then Dresden poses a major threat to the Council.”
He turned to Ancient Mai and inclined the cowl forward a few degrees. The Ancient responded with a slight bow of her own. “Ancient Mai,” the Gatekeeper said. “You question his ability to use his power wisely. To judge between right and wrong. You fear that DuMorne’s teaching may have twisted him in ways even he cannot yet see. Your fears, too, are justified.”
He turned to the Merlin. “Honored Merlin. You know that Dresden has drawn death and danger down upon the Council. You believe that if he is removed, so will be that danger. Your fears are understandable, but not reasonable. Regardless of what happens to Dresden, the Red Court has struck a blow against the Council too deep to be ignored. A cessation of current hostilities would only be the calm before the storm.”
“Enough, man,” Ebenezar demanded. “Vote, for or against.”
“I choose to base my vote upon a Trial. A test that will lay to rest the fears of one side of the issue, or prove falsely placed the faith of the other.”
“What Trial?” the Merlin asked.
“Mab,” the Gatekeeper said. “Let Dresden address Queen Mab’s request. Let him secure the assistance of Winter. If he does, that should lay to rest your concerns regarding his ability, LaFortier.”
LaFortier frowned, but then nodded at the Gatekeeper.
He turned next to Ancient Mai. “Should he accomplish this, it should show that he is willing to accept responsibility for his mistake and to work against his own best interests for the greater good of the Council. It should satisfy your concerns as to his judgement—to make the mistakes of youth is no crime, but not to learn from them is. Agreed?”
Ancient Mai narrowed her rheumy eyes, but gave the Gatekeeper a precise nod.
“And you, honored Merlin. Such a success may do much to alleviate the pressure of the coming war. If securing routes through the Nevernever places the Red Court at a severe enough disadvantage, it may even enable us to avoid it entirely. Surely it would prove Dresden’s dedication to the Council beyond a doubt.”
“That’s all well and good,” Ebenezar said. “But what happens if he fails?”
The Gatekeeper shrugged. “Then perhaps their fears are more justified than your affection, Wizard McCoy. We may indeed conclude that his appointment to full Wizard Initiate may have been premature.”
“All or nothing?” Ebenezar demanded. “Is that it? You expect the youngest wizard in the Council to get the best of Queen Mab somehow? Mab? That’s not a Trial. It’s a goddamned execution. How is he even supposed to know what her request was to begin with?”
I stood up, my legs shaking a little. “Ebenezar,” I said.
“How the hell is the boy supposed to know what she wants?”
“Ebenezar—”
“I’m not going to stand by while you—” He abruptly blinked and looked at me. So did everyone else.
“I know what Mab wants,” I said. “She approached me earlier today, sir. She asked me to investigate something for her. I turned her down.”
“Hell’s bells,” Ebenezar breathed. He took the blue bandanna from his pocket and mopped at his gleaming forehead. “Hoss, this is out of your depth.”
“Looks like it’s sink or swim, then,” I said.
The Gatekeeper murmured to me in English, “Will you accept this, Wizard Dresden?”
I nodded my head. My throat had gone dry. I swallowed and tried to remind myself that there wasn’t much choice. If I didn’t play with the faeries and come out on top, the Council would serve me up to the vampires on a silver platter. The former might get me really, really killed. The latter would certainly kill me as well—and probably more than that.
As deals went, it blew. But some little part of me that hadn’t let me forget all the destruction, maybe even the deaths I’d caused last year, danced gleefully at my apparent comeuppance. Besides, it was the only game in town. I tightened my grip on my staff and spoke as clearly as I could manage.
“Yeah. I accept.”
Chapter Seven
The rest of the Council meeting was somewhat anticlimactic—for me, anyway.
The Merlin ordered the wizards to disperse immediately after the meeting via preplanned, secure routes. He also distributed a list to everyone, noting the Wardens near them to call upon if help was needed, and told them to check in with the Wardens every few days, as a safety precaution.
Next, a grizzled old dame Warden went over the theories to a couple of newly developed wards meant to work especially well against vampires. Representatives of the White Council’s allies—secret occult brotherhoods, mostly—each gave a brief speech, declaring his or her group’s support of the Council in the war.
Toward the end of the meeting, Wardens showed up in force to escort wizards to the beginnings of their routes home. The Senior Council, I presumed, would loiter around for a few days in order to see if I got killed trying to prove that I was one of the good guys. Sometimes I feel like no one appreciates me.
I stood up about three seconds before the Merlin said, “Meeting adjourned,” and headed for the door. Ebenezar tried to catch my eye, but I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I slammed the doors open a little harder than I needed to, stalked out to the Blue Beetle, and drove away with all the raging power the ancient four-cylinder engine could muster. Behold the angry wizard puttputt-putting away.
My brain felt like something made out of stale cereal, coffee grounds, and cold pizza. Thoughts trudged around in aimless depression, mostly about how I was going to get myself killed playing private eye for Mab. If things got really bad, I might even drag down a few innocent bystanders with me.
I growled at myself. “Stop whining, Harry,” I said in a firm, loud voice. “So what if you’re tired? So what if you’re hurt? So what if you smell like you’re already dead? You’re a wizard. You’ve got a job to do. This war is mostly your own fault, and if you don’t stay on the ball, more people are going to get hurt. So stiff upper lip, chin up, whatever. Get your ass in gear.”
I nodded at that advice, and glanced aside, to the envelope Mab had given me, which lay on the passenger seat. I had a name, an address, a crime. I needed to get on the trail of the killer. That meant I would need information—and the people who would have the most information, a couple of days after the fact, would be the Chicago PD.
I drove to Murphy’s place.
Lieutenant Karrin Murphy was the head of Chicago PD’s Special Investigations team. SI was the city’s answer to weirdness in general. They got all of the unusual crimes, the ones that didn’t fall neatly into the department’s other categories. SI has handled everything from sightings of sewer alligators to grave robbing in one of the city’s many cemeteries. What fun. They also got to take care of the genuine supernatural stuff, the things that no one talks about in official reports but that manage to happen anyway. Trolls, vampires, demon-summoning sorcerers—you name it. The city had appointed SI to make sure the paperwork stayed nice and neat, with no mention of preposterous fantasies that could not possibly exist. It was a thankless job, and the directors of SI typically blew it after about a month by refusing to believe that they were dealing with genuine weirdness. Then they got shuffled out of Chicago PD.
Murphy hadn’t. She’d lasted. She’d taken things seriously and employed the services of Chicago’s only professional wizard (guess who) as a consultant on the tougher jobs. Murphy and I have seen some very upsetting things together. We’re friends. She would help.
Murphy lives in a house in Bucktown, near a lot of other cops. It’s a tiny place, but she owns it. Grandma Murphy left it to her. The house is surrounded by a neat little lawn.
I pulled up in the Beetle sometime well after summertime dark but before midnight. I knew she’d be home, though I wasn’t certain she’d be awake. I made sure that I didn’t sound lik
e I was trying to sneak up anywhere. I shut the door of the Beetle hard and walked with firm footsteps to her door, then knocked lightly.
A moment later the curtains on the barred windows beside the door twitched and then fell back into place. A lock disengaged, then another, then a door chain. I noted, as I waited, that Murphy had a steel-reinforced door just like I did. Though I doubted she’d had as many demons or assassins showing up at it.
Murphy opened the door partway and peered out at me. The woman didn’t look like the chief of Chicago PD’s monster hunters. Her bright blue eyes were heavy, weary, and underscored with dark bags. She stood five feet nothing in her bare feet. Her golden hair was longer on top than in back, with bangs hanging down to her eyes. She wore a pale peach terry-cloth bathrobe that fell most of the way to her feet.
In her right hand she held her automatic, and a small crucifix dangled on a chain wrapped around her wrist. She looked at me.
“Heya, Murph,” I said. I looked at the gun and the holy symbol and kept my voice calm. “Sorry to drop in on you this late. I need your help.”
Murphy regarded me in silence for more than a minute. Then she said, “Wait here.” She shut the door, returned a minute later, and opened it again, all the way. Then, gun still in hand, she stepped back from the doorway and faced me.
“Uh,” I said, “Murph, are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “Can I come in?”
“We’ll know in a minute,” Murphy said.
I got it then. Murphy wasn’t going to ask me in. There are plenty of monsters running around in the dark that can’t violate the threshold of a home if they aren’t invited in. One of them had caught up to Murphy last year, nearly killing her, and it had been wearing my face when it did it. No wonder she didn’t look exactly overjoyed to see me.
“Murph,” I said, “relax. It’s me. Hell’s bells, there isn’t anything that I can think of that would mimic me looking like this. Even demonic fiends from the nether regions of hell have some taste.”
