by Jim Butcher
I closed my eyes and pictured the city at Millennium Park. There was a lot of flat, open space, good for an old-school battlefield. There weren’t a lot of places where you could have troops with rifles dig in, especially not in the vision-killing haze of dust and smoke. But Columbus Drive was a sunken road that divided Millennium Park from Daley Park, a natural obstacle that any troops coming in from the lake would have to overcome. Enough guns there would pile bodies in windrows.
I looked back at the men and women following me. If I put them there, they’d inflict the most damage on the enemy—for a while, anyway. Then they’d probably be overrun and slaughtered.
The question was whether or not that was still the right thing to do. The people marching behind me weren’t children. They knew death was in the air. And if the enemy overcame us, the city was doomed. All of it.
But, hell, I wasn’t even sure the people who were following me were actually doing it entirely of their own free will. The power of the Winter mantle and Mab’s preparations could well be influencing their emotions to the degree that it wouldn’t exactly be fair to call their willingness to fight a choice.
I knew how Mab would have called it. She had a battle to win.
Whereas I had people to protect.
“Sanya,” I said.
“Da?”
“When we get to the park, I want you to take charge of these folks. The enemy will be coming in from the east and northeast. I want you to find a position where you can . . . What’s the word where you get to shoot at them just fine, and they can’t shoot back at you too good?”
The Russian smiled thinly. “I think you are trying to say ‘defilade.’”
“Yeah. That. Defilade the crap out of them.”
“No. We want to be in defilade. What you want to happen to them is to put them in enfilade.”
“Whatever, you know what I’m after. Put them where they can do the most damage and take the least in reply.”
“Visibility this low, might not be possible.”
“Then guess,” I said, exasperated. “I’m kind of counting on the Big Guy making things work out so that you’re in the right place at the right time. Figure if I put these people with you, they’ll be there, too.” I looked back at the bleak, frightened, determined faces following me. “If God is going to be on anyone’s side today, I want Him to be on theirs.”
Sanya lifted both his eyebrows. “Faith? From you? Bozhe moi.”
“Less faith. More observation of operational patterns,” I countered.
Sanya abruptly grinned and said, “Da, all right. Maybe the horse will sing.”
“What?”
He waved a hand. “It is Russian thing.”
“No, it isn’t, Chekhov,” Butters said, in the kind of pedantic tone of protest you only get from a confident nerd. “What about me, Harry?”
“Same deal,” I said. “Only I want to be the one who’s with you at the right place at the right time. Stick close to me.”
The little Knight nodded. “Got it.”
“And me?” Murphy asked.
“Keep driving,” I said. “I need to stay mobile, and the park is open ground. The bike should be able to move around pretty quick.” I bumped my elbow on a black composite-material box that had been strapped to the back of the Harley. There was a printed label on it that read, CAMPING SUPPLIES.
“What’s in here?” I asked her.
“My dancing shoes.”
“Right.” I looked over at Will, who was watching me with serious wolf eyes. “And I need you guys to run interference for me. When the enemy figures out what I’m doing, I’ll”—I swallowed—“be target number one.”
The wolf stared steadily at me for a moment and then nodded once, sharply. Will knew exactly what I was asking them to do: take bullets for me, of one kind or another.
“Bob,” I said, “if anything useful comes over the airwaves, I want to know about it.”
“Got it, boss,” Bob said. “Um. But right now, there’s a repeating message from the castle’s command post, for any surviving forces to meet at Wrigley.” He was quiet for a second and then said, “I don’t think there’s anybody left over there.”
Somewhere in the distant haze ahead of us, a Jotun’s horn blared out, a long and mournful wail, a sound that somehow encapsulated bleakness and rage, despair, the end of all things.
And, somewhere in the distance behind us, another horn answered.
I could feel uneasiness ripple through my friends, and through the crowd behind me. Not even the monsters of Winter could hear those horns without feeling a sense of slow, inevitable dread.
I didn’t feel it, of course. I was a mighty wizard of the White Council, monarch of mental mastery, pharaoh of fickle fear.
I didn’t pucker up at all.
So. The enemy was playing head games, too.
“Bozhe moi,” Sanya murmured. “Are there enough of us?”
“Enough to do our country loss,” I said. “Steady.”
And we kept moving forward as the city once more turned the color of blood beneath the glare of the Eye.
Chapter
Eighteen
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Bean. Probably you have, on a TV show or in a movie. It’s this big silvery sculpture that’s supposed to look like—I don’t know—an air bubble underwater or something. It has an arch in the middle that you can pass under, and it was originally named the Cloud Gate, because from far overhead you can look down and see it reflecting the sky and the clouds.
But if you don’t have that very privileged viewpoint, if you look at it from the perspective of everyday people, it looks like a big old bean lying on its side. So Chicagoans called it the Bean, much to the artist’s apparent disgust. It casts a distorted reflection of the city skyline on one side, and of the concrete and trees of the park on the other.
Tonight, on one side of the Bean was a hazy reflection of a city on fire.
And the other side showed the backs of maybe a couple of hundred of Mab’s soldiers, who were facing east, toward the lake, standing in their armored ranks, and waiting.
Before we rode into the hazy park, we heard a couple of sharp, high-pitched, twittering whistles. The Sidhe could communicate like that if they wished, in whistles and birdsong. They had a complex musical language, too, and for some reason the Winter Sidhe absolutely loved human music. No idea why, but it was a genuine thing with them. I’d rarely seen a gathering of Winter that didn’t include mortal music, and mortal musicians where possible, though I had come away with the impression that one really, really didn’t want to be chosen to perform for the Sidhe. Bad things tended to happen.
You know all those brilliant musicians who wound up dead way sooner than they should have? Call it maybe a fifty-fifty chance that the Sidhe were involved along the line. It was part of how my godmother had made her bones with Mab.
Mab stood behind them, in her battle mail, her pale hair glowing with starlight, mounted upon a freaking unicorn.
Don’t get the wrong idea. The unicorns who serve Winter aren’t like the ones you’ve maybe seen in books or movies or cartoons. These things aren’t silver and white and pretty. They look like a unicorn as designed by H. R. Giger. They have exoskeletons in creepy variants of black that sort of nodded at other colors in the shining highlights. And they have no eyes. I’d seen exactly one of them, once before, and even that one had been only a glamour around a different creature.
This thing . . .
Power radiated from it. It was the size of a Budweiser horse, plus an extra few hundred pounds of armored chitin that looked black but shone deep purple wherever light reflected from it. Its smooth head and the blank spots where eye sockets should have been were eerie, and when it champed its jaws, it showed hard, serrated ridges of bone in a jaw that could open wider than it ought. Its ears sw
iveled about alertly, moving too smoothly, like exceedingly precise automation, and a flicker of insight made me realize why the Winter Sidhe respected their unicorns: They had no eyes to be deceived by glamour or beauty. It didn’t have a horn. It had horns. Curling ram’s horns as big across as a stop sign armored to either side of its skull, and the horn that arched from its forehead was more a spiked saber than a spiraling lance.
Mab’s steed pounded a foot down against the concrete impatiently, and the energy that rippled out from that impact lifted a visible, expanding ring of dust from the ground and stirred the haze in the air. Mab laid a hand upon its neck, a soothing motion, and the unicorn stilled—but it didn’t take a wizard to detect the rage and hatred seething off of the creature.
It wanted to fight. It wanted to kill.
I knew how it felt.
Ah, that was it, then. The horn. What had that Tim Curry character called it, an antenna pointing to heaven? Maybe he’d been half-right. After I focused my attention on the power surrounding the creature, I could feel Mab’s subtle influence, the spirit of Winter in the air, pouring off the unicorn’s horn, the energy buzzing like high-tension lines carrying current. The being was serving as a living focus for Mab’s power, the way I’d use a staff or blasting rod—or the knife at my hip, the one I had carefully not touched, barely even with my thoughts, since coming ashore.
That artifact, taken from Hades’ vault, continued to vibrate with a power all its own that remained unabated and uninfluenced by the terrible forces in the air around the city.
I kept on not touching it—and, after a moment of mental effort, not even thinking about it.
I touched a hand to Murphy’s shoulder, and she brought the bike rumbling to a halt. I swung off and crossed fifty or sixty feet of concrete. A block of the Sidhe, each warrior armored in that faemetal they preferred to steel, shining in variegated shades of glacial green, winter blue, and deep, dark purples, whirled to face me as a single being, their boots stomping hard on the concrete as shields were raised and weapons came up.
I didn’t so much as break stride. Lions do not lower their heads for jackals. Even jackals know they can kill what fears them.
The Winter Sidhe respected those who understood the law of the jungle, and I had demonstrated to them from the first that I wasn’t putting up with any of their crap. They would test me—predators always test potential prey for weakness—but as long as I made them think it would be more trouble than amusement to push me, they would press no further.
The warrior Sidhe, male and female alike, each deadly skilled and experienced in the art and practice of war, yielded before me, melting as smoothly from my path as if they had never been there.
For today.
They would look for weakness again tomorrow. Assuming any of us survived to see it.
As I approached, I saw Mab staring hard at me, and then past me, at the uncertain form of the people who had followed my banner. Her eyes narrowed and then bored into mine, even as I walked the last few yards to her. For some reason, I felt . . . utterly naked, as if my clothing had vanished and a cold chill had swirled into damned uncomfortable places.
Then her expression changed. For a flickering portion of an instant, I thought I saw . . . something, in her eyes, some vague shadow of pain. Of . . . sympathy?
Then Mab was Mab again.
“My Knight,” she murmured. “Half a dozen cohorts have come to your banner.”
Eleven hundred and eighty-seven, I thought. I blinked. Because that’s how many people had chosen to follow me. I didn’t know how I knew that. It just . . . flew into my head. This had to be another instance of intellectus, a form of intelligence that bypassed standard human processes of rationality, just as I experienced on the island.
But this was different.
It was people.
Mab tilted her head to one side. “You did not embrace the cold.”
“No,” I said. My voice felt rough.
Her chin lifted, and her hard, cold eyes flickered in naked, unconcealed pride. “Never once in your life, my Knight, have you taken the easy road. I chose well.”
“They’re lightly armed. They need heavier weapons.”
Mab’s tone gained an icy edge. “They are not following my banner, O Knight.”
I lowered my voice to a bare growl. “Then I’ll send them home,” I said. “If you want me to fight for you, quit making it more difficult to fight for you. You and Marcone have been thick as thieves lately. I know you both. There are more weapons around here somewhere. I need them.”
Slowly, slowly . . . the unicorn noticed me. Its head swiveled as smoothly as a gun turret, bringing that horn to point at me, and the power in the air around me made me feel like my hair should have been standing straight up. There were bits of bone still stuck in its serrated blade. Its breath smelled like rotten meat.
My scrotum attempted to travel back in time.
Mab suddenly threw back her head and let out a . . . sound. Imagine a witch’s cackle, rolling up from her belly. Now imagine that at almost the exact instant said witch began it, she snapped a moldy scarf tight around her own throat. Then imagine the choked exhalation of what air remained above the point of strangulation.
Whatever the hell that sound was, it was not a laugh.
And it made the damned unicorn take a nervous sidestep.
“Yes,” Mab said, a wild fey light around her eyes, her head swaying as her mount shifted its weight nervously. “Oh yes. You’ll do, child. Tell me, who takes out contracts in terms of a thousand years, these days?”
“Oh God,” I said. I stared at her. Then at the Bean. “You’re kidding.”
Because that was the contract the artist of the Bean had with the city of Chicago. That the thing would stand for one thousand years. And when it had been finished, it had been encased in polished steel and enclosed, more or less permanently.
It was for all practical purposes a time capsule, out in plain sight, in front of God and everybody.
I stalked over to the Cloud Gate. I poked at polished panels of steel with my staff until one of them rang a little hollower than the others. I gave that one a series of solid thumps, and it popped off and clattered to the concrete. The red glare of the night was too dim to show me anything until I drew out my mother’s pentacle amulet, sent a whisper of will into it, and set it aglow with azure wizard light.
The inside of the Bean isn’t made of metal. It’s all a wooden framework and looks more like the hold of an old pirate ship. The interior of the Bean was piled high with mil-spec weapons cases and boxes and boxes of ammunition, secure on a sturdy internal framework. Just right in the middle of Millennium Park.
“You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve, Mab,” I murmured.
And her voice whispered in my ear, as if she’d been standing flush against me, “Thank you, my Knight. It is a fine compliment.”
I jumped and hit my head on the low opening and backed up enough to glower at her.
Mab turned her eyes away from me and said, “Do battle as you will, my Knight. Take command of your mortals and what few servants of Winter were near enough to join us.” Her gaze returned to the northeast, where the red pulse of the Eye flashed again. “Make the Fomor bleed. You will know the time to come to me.”
It was a clear dismissal, and Mab’s tone made it obvious that she was done with my shenanigans.
But I’m not so much the kind who gets easily dismissed.
Not even by the Queen of Air and Darkness.
I went to her side, where I noticed that even the unicorn’s hooves were set up like cruel, spiked maces, and said, “This . . . banner.”
“Few Knights have had the strength to manifest it.”
“You never spoke to me about it.”
“Would you have listened?”
Well. Touché, I guess.
&nb
sp; “I can feel them,” I said. “The people following me.”
Mab closed her eyes for a moment. Then she said, “Yes. Such is the rule of Winter.”
“And when they die. I’ll feel that, too.”
“Obviously,” Mab said, in a near whisper. “For all power there is a price.”
I shuddered. My soul had already taken a beating in the past few days. I don’t know that I needed to add on the psychic experience of living through hundreds of deaths to my list of mental scars.
I gritted my teeth. I could take a little more if I had to. And I had to. A lot more people were going to die if we didn’t stop the enemy here.
I glanced aside at Mab and frowned.
Did she feel it, too? Her command of her subjects? Of . . . me?
Did she feel it when they died? Did she carry their pain, their rage, their terror, upon the back of her own soul, or whatever it was that passed for one now? Did she even have a soul anymore?
I was mortal once. . . .
I’d been waiting for Mab to lay into me with the magically enhanced temptation, the usual trappings and blandishments of corruption. I’d been expecting her, every time we met, to start putting me through Sith boot camp. The Kurgan’s Guide to Conflict Resolution. Evil 101.
The whole time, I’d been wondering, What happens when she does?
The far more terrifying question had never once occurred to me: What happens when she doesn’t?
Maybe the process of becoming something horrible wasn’t about temptation to sin, forbidden delights, and bad impulse control.
Maybe it was about choosing to throw your soul into a meat grinder, over and over again. Until what remained couldn’t even be seen as a soul any longer. Maybe the real monsters, the big bad monsters, aren’t created.
They’re forged. Hammered. One blow at a time.
I was mortal once. . . .
Mab opened her eyes again at last. The look she gave me was, for a second, very human: one weary, determined soldier staring at another. I had, in her eyes, passed some kind of test, some rite, that had changed my status.