by Jim Butcher
The front door of the building was open, and smoke was billowing from it, hazing out everything more than thirty or forty feet away. Two teams of firefighters with hoses had already deployed up to the door and were flooding the place with water, evidently preparing to work their way inside. I didn’t feel like getting hosed down or set on fire, so I skirted the front door, circling the building. There was an emergency exit on the side of the building, and a secondary entrance in the rear where deliveries came in.
The earth abruptly became liquid under my feet and forced me to slow my pace or pitch forward into it. The svartalves manipulated earth the way mortals do plastic, only with magic, obviously, and I dropped my veil at once, lifting my hands. “Whoa, whoa, it’s me! Harry Dresden!”
A svartalf’s head came up out of the ground without any kind of accompanying illusion, enormous dark eyes blinking twice and staring at me. “Ah,” the svartalf said, rising higher out of the ground, and I recognized the voice. It was Etri’s sister, Evanna, his second-in-command. Her hair was pale and so silken-fine that it hung rather lankly around her head. More of her rose out of the ground, clothed in a simple shift the same color as her hair. “Wizard, I was told to watch for you. I need you to come with me.”
“My daughter,” I said. “I have to get to her.”
“Precisely,” Evanna said, her voice crisp. She held out her hand to me.
I gritted my teeth and said, “We’re going to earthwalk?”
“If you please,” she said.
“I hate this,” I said. “No offense.” Then I took a deep breath and took her hand.
I can earthwalk. Technically. I mean, if I really, really, really wanted to, I could do it. Wizards can pull off almost anything other supernatural beings can do, if we want to work at it.
But why would I want to?
Evanna’s hand pulled me down and I sank into the ground as if it had suddenly become thick Jell-O. Dirt-flavored Jell-O. We began moving, and the ground passed through us in the most unsettling way imaginable. I could feel the earth grinding at every inch of my skin, as if I was thrashing my way through fine sand, and my clothes didn’t do a thing to stop the sensation. Worse, it gritted away at my eyelashes, forcing me to blink and hold my hand up over my eyes—which also did no good whatsoever.
Worst was the phantom sensation of earth in my mouth and my nose and tickling at my throat. Technically, I think she was using magic to slide our molecules around and through those of the ground around us. Practically, I was enjoying the experience of a slow and torturous sandblasting, including getting punched in the taste buds with overwhelming mineral sensations.
Seriously. It’s revolting.
We emerged from the earth into one of the residential corridors below the main building, which was presumably burning merrily somewhere above us. You couldn’t have guessed it. There was no smoke in the air, no sound of any fire, no leak of water from above.
I fought against the urge to spit as Evanna let go of my hand—and looked up at my grimace with amusement. “Mortals find it unpleasant, I know. Do you need a cup of water?”
I lifted an eyebrow and looked down at her. Way, way, down. Evanna is six inches shorter than Karrin, though the two of them shared something in the way of the same solid, muscular frame. “Are you patronizing me?”
“Wizard. Would I do such a thing?” She started walking and I set out behind her.
“I’m not familiar with this level,” I said.
“We’re a level below our guest apartments and staff homes. These are the family quarters,” Evanna replied. “Etri, myself, our mates and children, a few cousins from time to time,” she said. Her feet made no sound on the stone floor.
“Uh. Shouldn’t everyone be leaving? You know, the fire and all?”
Evanna cocked her head to look back and up at me. “We took precautions.”
“Precautions?”
“With guests like yourself, it seemed wise,” she said. Her delivery was stone-faced, completely dry. “We had heard rumors of other buildings burning down. The upper levels have been isolated from the quarters below. If the administrative offices burn to a pile of ash, it will not touch these levels.”
I let out a breath in a sharp exhale, a sound of relief.
She inclined her head to me. “Your daughter is safe. We assume.”
“What do you mean, you assume?” I asked.
“Once the fire began, security forces attempted to enter your quarters,” she said. “The Guardian would not permit us to remove her.”
I suddenly felt a little sick. “Mouse. You guys didn’t …”
Evanna stared hard at me for a moment. Then her expression softened very slightly. “No, of course not. The character of the Temple Guardians is well-known. We would never desire to harm such a being unless at great need. And we do not harm children. That is why I was sent to watch for you.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Wait. You’re saying that you couldn’t go get her.”
Evanna shrugged a slender shoulder. “The Guardian seemed very determined.”
I walked a few steps, thinking. She was right about Mouse. He was a good dog. Or maybe even a Good dog. But he had an unerring ability to determine when someone or something was hostile. He’d die before he let any harm come to Maggie.
Which meant that if Mouse was defending her from the svartalves …
I had to consider that they might be up to something he considered to be no good. They were a very insular people, and they weren’t human. They might not necessarily think or feel about things the way I would expect them to. I’d lived among them for a time now, and while I was comfortable interacting with them, I wasn’t fool enough to think that I knew them.
Evanna stared at up my face as I thought, and I suddenly realized that she was reading my expression. Her own face went completely blank, completely empty of any emotion, as she regarded me.
“What’s going on here?” I asked her carefully.
“You tell me,” she said.
I made an exasperated sound. “Hell’s bells, Evanna, how should I know? I’ve been at my girlfriend’s all evening. I just got here.”
She turned abruptly, in front of me, confronting me exactly as if I wasn’t two feet taller and two hundred pounds heavier than her. “Stop,” she said firmly.
I did.
She narrowed her eyes and said, “Say that again.”
“Why is everyone so shocked that I have a girlfriend?” I asked.
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if silently counting to three, and opened them again. “Not that part. Your explanation of events.”
“Oh,” I said. I began to speak but stopped myself at the last second and took a moment to think. I’d only met Evanna in passing, but she was looking remarkably intense by svartalf standards—which is to say, she was working as hard as she could to give away nothing by her expression or body language. I had to wonder what else she was concealing.
I looked around us. Then I focused and used my wizard senses, looking deeper. I could feel the energy moving around us, feel the disturbances in the stone beneath my feet, in several discrete locations.
Evanna wasn’t alone. There were half a dozen of the embassy’s security personnel shadowing us, earthwalking through the safety of the stone.
The svartalves were being polite about it and had sent a pretty and charming captor to round me up—but subtle or not, I suddenly realized that I was a prisoner being escorted. And that my next words were going to count for more than most.
In moments like this, I generally try to tell the truth, because I don’t have the intellectual horsepower to keep track of very many lies. They add up.
“I’ve been at my girlfriend’s all evening,” I said. “I just got here. I don’t know what’s going on.”
As I spoke, her eyes closed. She opened them again slowly after I finished speaking and said quietly, “You speak the truth.”
“No kidding!” I blurted. “Evanna, I know that I’
m a guest, but you are officially starting to freak me out. I want to see my daughter, please.”
“You are under guest-right,” she said quietly. Then she nodded once and said, “This way.”
We went up the stairs, down a hall, and through a set of doors and were suddenly in territory I recognized—the hall outside of the apartment. There were a number of svartalf security staff gathered outside the door, and they were talking among themselves as Evanna and I approached.
“… doesn’t make any sense,” one of them said. “The lock is disengaged. It should open.”
“It must be a spell holding the lock closed,” said another.
The first twisted the doorknob by way of demonstration. It turned freely the way unlocked doorknobs do. “Behold.”
“A ram, then,” said the second.
“You’d ruin the wood,” I told them as we approached. “And you still wouldn’t be able to get past.”
The second svartalf rounded on me with a scowl. “You installed additional security precautions without notifying security?”
“Clearly.”
“That is explicitly against our corporate policy!”
“Oh, get over it, Gedwig,” I said. “For a guy who puts magical land mines all over his lawn, you’re being awfully sensitive.”
“You could have threatened the safety of everyone here.”
I shook my head. “It’s a completely passive plane of force. Extends across the walls on either side, too. Won’t hurt anyone, and you’d need a tank to break it down.” And it had cost me a very long weekend of work installing it.
Gedwig scowled. “This display of your distrust could be considered an insult to svartalf hospitality.”
“My distrust!?” I blurted. “Are you freaking kidding m—” I cocked an eyebrow, turned to Evanna, and asked, “By any chance, does your people’s tongue not have a word for irony?”
“Peace, Gedwig,” Evanna said. “Mister Dresden, can you open the door?”
“It’s easy if you have the key,” I said. I produced the metal door key from my pocket and flipped it around so that she could see the pentacle inscribed on its base. “I think it would be best if I went in alone to talk to Mouse. All right?”
Evanna nodded once. “So be it.”
“But, my lady,” Gedwig began.
She flicked a hand up, palm toward him, and the guard shut his mouth instantly.
I nodded and touched the key to the doorknob. The energy bound in the key was conducted through the metal into the plane of force beyond it, disrupting its flow and shorting out its field. “Be right back,” I said, and opened the door while watching the two security guys. Gedwig looked like he wanted to push in past me, but he held his position behind Evanna as I entered and shut the door behind me.
“Dad!” Maggie said. “You’re home! What’s happening?”
My daughter was sitting on the dinner table, as close to the middle of it as she could get, and her babysitter, Hope Carpenter, sat next to her with an arm protectively around her shoulders. Mouse was pacing steadily around the table, his head down, nose whuffling. He glanced up at me once and shook his ears a little by way of greeting before returning to his rounds.
“Harry,” Hope said. She was a very serious young woman to whom adolescence had been uncommonly generous. Having become an expert father and all, over the past three or four months, I had new insights into how worried Michael would be about how his lovely dark blond daughter might be treated, especially given that …
Stars and stones, Maggie wasn’t all that much younger than Hope, really. In a few more years, would I be the one writhing with protective paternal concern? I would. And that thought was fairly terrifying. Or maybe humiliating. Or both.
Augh. You already have trouble enough on your plate without borrowing more, Dresden.
“Heya, Hobbit,” I told her, and gave them my most reassuring smile. “Uh. How come you guys are up on the table?”
“Because they keep trying to come through the floor and get us!” Maggie said, her voice wavery with fright.
Just then, Mouse whirled his entire body around, his grey mane flying. Maybe three feet to one side of the table, the stone floor suddenly rippled and a svartalf began earthwalking up out of the ground.
Mouse rushed over to the intruder, rose on his hind legs at the last second, and then plunged down onto his front paws, directly onto the inbound svartalf, letting out a dishes-rattling sound that could only technically have been described as a bark. It was more of an explosive roar, and flickering blue sparks leapt from his mane as he struck, even as a wave of supernatural energy washed through the room like a burst of spectral lightning. There was just enough time to see the svartalf flinch, and then suddenly the floor was the floor again, and Mouse had resumed his protective pacing around the table.
“Like that,” Maggie said. “We didn’t even break any rules at all. Get ’em, Mouse!”
“How long has this been going on?” I asked.
Hope shook her head and said, “T-twenty minutes? Half an hour? One minute we were on the couch and then there were these things trying to grab us. If it hadn’t been for Mouse, they would have.”
I felt my jaw clench so hard that my teeth squeaked in protest. Then I turned, picked up my staff, and said, “Stay right there. Good job, boy, keep it up. I’m going to try to sort this out.”
Mouse whuffed an acknowledgment without ceasing his patrol around the girls.
I turned around and went back out to the hall. I might have looked a little angry, because Gedwig and his companion took one look at me, drew their weapons—a pistol in one hand and a slender wavy-bladed dagger in the other—and backed away from each other so that they were flanking me. They didn’t point the guns directly at me or lunge at me with their knives, but everything about their body language suggested to me that they would shoot without hesitation if they had to.
Evanna stood her ground, her expression blandly neutral, and looked up at me expectantly.
I didn’t raise my voice—but I didn’t try to hide the anger in it, either. “Why are your people terrifying two children? What have they done to offend you?”
“Nothing,” Evanna said. “We only sought to put them in protective custody and escort them out of the building through the escape tunnel.”
“I thought you said there was no danger of fire.”
“I did,” Evanna said.
“I just saw one of your people try to grab them,” I said. “Tell them to knock it off. Right now.”
Evanna blinked at me once, then turned and snarled something to Gedwig. He clenched his jaw but nodded, holstered his weapon, and sank into the floor.
“Your anger is misplaced, wizard,” Evanna said, her words clipped. “You are not the one who has been wronged. Blood has been spilled, and those responsible will be made to repay the debt.”
“What the hell does that have to do with me?” I demanded.
Evanna stared at me with her huge dark eyes and said, “I will show you, if you wish.”
“I wish,” I said.
She gestured for the other security guard to lower his weapon, then turned and started walking. She moved quickly for such a bitty thing, and I hurried to keep pace with her.
“An assassin entered the stronghold this evening,” she said.
“What?” I asked. “How did that happen? Your security measures are insane.”
“The way such things generally happen,” she said. “Through treachery. The assassin reached my brother’s business chambers. There were explosions, which started the fire. Several guards were wounded. One threw himself between Etri and harm and paid with his life for his loyalty.”
I leaned my head back and felt the anger evaporating, rapidly transmuting to pure anxiety. Someone had tried to knock off what amounted to a head of state and had gotten close. Etri was no insignificant figure in the supernatural world—he was the heaviest hitter I knew of among his people, and they in turn were the most skilled an
d serious smiths and crafters and designers on the planet. Hell, I’d bought materials I had needed for magical components from them myself, on a regular basis. They were expensive and worth every penny, even back when I hadn’t had an athletic sock filled with diamonds tucked under my mattress for a rainy day.
“I didn’t know,” I said in a much quieter voice. “Who did you lose?”
“Austri,” Evanna said, “who has served our family faithfully for seven hundred years.”
That hit me like a punch in the gut. Austri had been weird, but he’d been a decent guy, and a man who loved his children very much.
“Hell’s bells,” I said. “I … I’m sorry for your loss.”
Evanna nodded at me once.
She led me down a hall I’d never been down, and into what could only have been a war room.
It was a huge chamber with twenty-foot ceilings broken into specific organized areas. In one corner was an armory that bristled with weapons—not only modern ones, not only archaic ones, but weapons that I could not so much as identify. Across from it was a medical triage, biologically isolated behind transparent plastic curtains. Svartalves in very normal-looking medical scrubs were moving about busily on the other side.
One gurney sat silently, ignored. There was a small figure on it, completely covered with a bloodstained sheet. Austri.
I turned my eyes past that to a small vehicle park, containing a number of cars, what looked like a chariot, a Viking longboat that appeared to be made out of some kind of glimmering silver, and a number of objects that, again, defied definition. At the far end of the room was what must have been a command-and-control area, with a number of tables in circled ranks around a central work area, glowing with the light of dozens of sheets of thin crystal that the svartalves were using like monitor screens.
While I was goggling, Etri approached, wearing the usual outfit for a male svartalf who wasn’t pretending to be human—a brief loincloth. He looked awful. There was a swelling bruise on one of his cheekbones and what had to have been an incredibly painful burn on one bare shoulder. His huge dark eyes were not calm. There was an anger in them so deep that I could all but feel the earth trembling beneath his feet.