Peace Talks

by Jim Butcher

  He held up his right hand. Evanna lifted her left, rested her hand against his for a moment, and said, “My lord brother.”

  “Sister,” Etri replied. He looked at me. “What did you learn?”

  “He seems ignorant of events,” she said.

  Etri actually scowled for a second. Then he said, “You are sure?”

  “As sure as I may be,” Evanna said.

  “I am ignorant,” I said. “For crying out loud, do you think I’d try to kill you, or help kill you while my own daughter was right here in your stronghold?”

  Etri looked at me and made a growling sound. Then a svartalf called out in their native tongue, and Etri looked over his shoulder toward the command center. “I must go. Sister, please excuse me.” He turned to walk away and said, over his shoulder, “Transparency is our policy with allies. Show him.”

  “Show me what?” I asked.

  “This way,” Evanna said, and walked deeper into the war room, to the last section—a series of cubes about five feet square, made of thick, heavy bars of some kind of dark metal I couldn’t identify, walled off behind a couple of layers of similar bars—a detention area.

  We had to pass through a couple of gates to get inside, and they locked behind us with heavy, very final-sounding thumps of metal on metal. Only one of the cells within was occupied, and it was surrounded by a number of very alert-looking, very heavily equipped svartalves, each carrying some kind of organic-looking, swirly implement made of something like silver and wearing body armor.

  “The assassin,” Evanna said without emotion. “A creature well-known to be your frequent ally.”

  My heart suddenly fell out of my chest.

  The shirtless man curled on the floor of the cage had been beaten savagely. He was shuddering with pain, and maybe shock. There was hardly an inch of skin showing that wasn’t covered in bruises and cuts and drying blood. One of his feet had been … I don’t know what. It looked as if he’d gotten it caught in some kind of industrial machine. It was twisted at an impossible angle and seemed to be given shape only by the shoe containing it.

  I recognized the shoe.

  I’d seen it on the beach that morning.

  The assassin lifted his head toward us. He was missing teeth from a mouth caked with blood. His face was grotesquely swollen, one eye completely shut.

  It was my brother.

  It was Thomas.

  8

  My brother stared back at me. His face twitched in the beginning of a sad, helpless little smile, but the gesture made him wince in pain even as he formed it. His head sank down again and he lay shuddering, too weak to look up.

  I stood there staring in shock for a really long, silent moment. I could feel the pressure of Evanna’s attention on me.

  “I know he visited here sometimes,” I said. My brother lived his life terrified that he was slowly killing Justine, feeding on her life force. So he would find other willing partners, sometimes. Which was, in his situation, maybe the most moral thing he could have done.

  When you’re an incubus, life is weird like that.

  “He visited me, specifically,” Evanna said, “as well as some of the other women of the Court, from time to time. My people have always been enamored of beauty, above all.” She took a step closer to the cage and said, to Thomas, “And this wondrous creature did not make love so much as he made art. Blindingly beautiful, passionate art.” Her voice turned harder. “Blinding, indeed. Such a waste.”

  I looked down, closed my eyes, and pictured the cells, then the war room, then the swiftest un-burnt route out of the svartalf embassy. I tried to add in everything I knew about where the security forces were, because depending on the answer to my next question, I might be about to take them all on.

  That’s the thing about living behind all that security: If it can keep threats out, it can just as easily keep you in.

  “What will happen to him?” I asked.

  “Justice,” Evanna replied, a distinct note of contempt in the word. “He began his attack seven minutes after the official treaty period for the peace summit went into effect. By the law of the Accords, that makes his offense one that must be judged by the guidelines outlined within. A neutral emissary will be appointed to investigate and serve as arbiter of his fate.”

  I focused my eyes hard on my toes and relaxed a little. If this was a matter to be handled by the Accords, it meant that there was time. An emissary would have to be chosen, consented to by both the svartalves and the White Court, and the following inquiry would take time. Which meant I didn’t have to go out in a blaze of glory, or at least gory, that very moment.

  Evanna walked closer to the cage and lowered herself to sit on her ankles, facing Thomas. “Austri was a dear friend. Were it up to me alone, I would entomb you in stone with just enough air to give you time to feel yourself gasping to death, Thomas Raith. You will die for this. Or there will be a war such as this world has not seen in a millennium.”

  And then she spat on him.

  My hands clenched hard on the solid oak of my staff, and I took half a step forward.

  Instantly, the four guards trained their weapons on me. And considering I didn’t even know what the hell they were or what they were supposed to do, it might have been just a little bit dicey to try to defend myself against them.

  And besides. The Accords were in play. While they were, I was basically a one-man nation, with my actions reflecting upon the White Council as a whole—and upon the Winter Court, to boot. For Pete’s sake. I was two one-man nations: not for purposes of power, only for potential disaster.

  Hell’s bells.

  Evanna never looked away from Thomas and paid so little attention to me that I had to figure that she was confident her people could obliterate me before I could work any mischief. Given who the svartalves were—people even the Norse gods hadn’t cared to make angry—I was inclined to take her seriously.

  “Well, Raith?” she said in a quiet voice. “Have you anything to say?”

  It looked like neither her anger, nor her contempt, nor her question had really registered with him. My brother stayed silent and still, except for involuntary spasms of muscles and shudders of pain.

  “I thought better of you, Thomas,” Evanna said. “If you had a problem with my people, you could have come to us as a friend.” Then she rose and walked away, her back rigid. She didn’t seem to care if I followed her or not, and I felt a little nervous that I might wind up locked inside the detention area if I didn’t leave when I had the opportunity—so I followed her.

  As we were leaving, a voice croaked, “Ha’ay.”

  The sound of it hurt. I steeled myself to look calm and confident, and turned back to face my brother.

  A tear was cutting a slow pale scarlet trail across the dried blood on his cheek. “Junghg. S’Jnngh.”

  He couldn’t say Justine.

  “It’s okay,” I said gently. “I know. I’ll look after her.”

  At my words, something in him broke. He started to contract with racking sobs. The sounds he made were those of an animal dying in a bewildering amount of pain.

  I closed my eyes and breathed, willing away tears before they could fall. Then I turned my back on him and left him in the grip of the people who had hurt him so badly and who had every intention of taking his life.

  What choice did I have?

  My brother, my only brother, had just given the gathering of the oldest and most powerful supernatural beings on the planet a surpassingly excellent reason to kill him. In an hour, he had managed to put himself into a position where he was going to get more attention and more trouble from more excessively dangerous people than I’d ever managed to do in my life.

  Trust me. I do it for my day job. I know what I’m talking about.

  Stars and stones, Thomas, you idiot. What have you done?

  9

  What’s wrong, Dad?” Maggie asked me.

  We were back in the apartment, and when I asked her to, she
had dutifully retrieved her bugout bag from the closet.

  Yeah, I know, it sounds a little paranoid to teach a child to keep a bag full of spare clothes, snacks, basic medical and survival supplies, and water, just in case she needs to suddenly go on the run. But then, most kids didn’t have to contend with the possibility of enemies coming up through the floor and grabbing them, either.

  I’m raising my daughter to survive the kind of thing she might occasionally be adjacent to because of who her father is, and for the time being her best survival strategy was almost always to be ready to run away.

  “I can’t explain it right now,” I said. I slid past her into her room and snagged the bowling bag that held Bonea’s wooden skull, then secured the rest of my own limited gear, along with a bugout bag of my own. “We’re going to drive Hobbit home, and you can stay with the Carpenters for a few days. How does that sound?”

  Maggie looked at me with very serious young eyes for a moment. “Are you in trouble?”

  “I don’t get in trouble,” I said, and winked at her. “I get bad guys in trouble.”

  “It’ll be fine, munchkin,” Hope said, and slid a sisterly arm around my daughter’s shoulders. “I totally know this drill. You can sleep in my room. I’ve got a laptop. We can Netflix some fun stuff until as late as we want.”

  Maggie leaned against Hope a little, but her eyes never left me. “Dad, why are the svartalves mad at us?”

  “They aren’t mad, but something gave them a scare,” I said. “They’re going to be edgy for a while. Hope, could you get some tuna out of the fridge and put it at the back of Mister’s carrier so he’ll jump in? I don’t want to leave him here alone.”

  “Sure, Harry,” Hope said, and set about it.

  “They’re edgy? And that’s why you’re sending me back?” Maggie asked.

  I’d been all ready to march out, efficiently and quickly, because I had a hundred things to do and sleep had just become a non-possibility for the foreseeable future—and while I’d prepared to do so, I’d forgotten that my daughter was still, in some ways, very small. So I paused. I put everything else out of my head, and I turned to drop to a knee in front of her and give her a hug. She hugged me back tightly, her thin little arms around my neck. Mouse ceased his pacing and came over to settle down at Maggie’s back and lean a shoulder against her.

  “Oh, punkin,” I said. “I’m not sending you away. I just need someone to look out for you until I get back.”

  “Because there’s monsters?”

  “It’s looking that way,” I said.

  “And you fight the monsters?” she asked.

  “When they need fighting,” I said. Though sometimes that was a much harder thing to determine than I had always assumed it would be.

  Her hug grew a little tighter and more desperate. “What if you don’t come back?”

  This was the part where, in the movies, a quasi-hero dad is supposed to promise his little girl that he will be just fine and not to worry about him. In the movies, they have a lot to do, and they have to get the plot moving or the audience will get bored and start texting.

  I hadn’t been a dad very long. But Maggie deserved better than a quick sound bite and a four-second hug while I looked tormented for the camera.

  So I leaned back from her and kept my hands on her shoulders. They felt very thin and fragile, though I objectively knew that she was as sturdy as any child. Her eyes were very big and very brown and her expression was very uncertain.

  “First, you should know that your dad is one tough son of a bitch,” I said quietly.

  Her eyes widened. “Dad!”

  “I have to tell the truth,” I said. “And I will fight to come home to you safe and sound. Always. I’m strong, and I’m sort of smart, and I have a lot of tough, smart allies to help me. But second, you should know that I’ve made arrangements to take care of you. If something happens to me, Michael and Charity have already agreed that they will watch over you. We signed the official papers and everything. And you’ll have Mouse with you, always. You will always be loved. Always.”

  “Woof,” said Mouse, quietly but firmly.

  “And even if I die,” I said gently, “there will be a part of me here. Even if you can’t see me or hear me, I’ll be near you. Death can’t take you out of my sight, punkin. I’ll just be watching over you from the next room.”

  I wasn’t kidding. I’d collaborated with an ectomancer and everything. If someone managed to take me out, my daughter would still have one extremely ferocious shade watching over her sleep, protecting her from spiritual predation, and guarding her dreams—and a consulting archangel to monitor that shade’s mental and emotional function.

  Not only that, but she would have teachers waiting for her, should she ever develop talents that ran toward the weird side of the street. People I knew and trusted who were not psychotic Winter fae. I’d made my wishes known to Mab, who regarded devotion to her duties as a liege lord as a force considerably more constant than gravity. She had agreed to make the arrangements on my behalf, should I die as a loyal henchman—and on promises such as that, I trusted Mab more than almost anyone else I had ever met.

  Every dad who loves his little girl would take out that kind of insurance policy if he could.

  I can.

  Maggie nodded to me several times and then said, very seriously, “You’re a little scary sometimes. You should know that. Regular dads don’t say things like this.”

  I tried to smile at her, but my eyes got all blurry.

  She hugged me tight again and said, “I’d rather have you. Making me pancakes.”

  “Me, too,” I said, and kissed her hair.

  “Don’t let them get you,” she said. “Make things right and kick their … their butts.”

  “When you’re eighteen,” I said, “you can say asses.”

  She let out a titter and nodded against my neck.

  “Make things right?” I asked. “Where did you learn that one?”

  “From Mr. Carpenter,” she said. “He says making things right is the first and last thing you should do every day. And that it’s what you always try to do.”

  “Well,” I said, “he’s an expert on that stuff.”

  “He says you are,” Maggie said. “That you’re a good man. One of the best he knows.”

  I didn’t say anything back. I couldn’t. My throat was all tight. Mouse’s tail whumped like a fluffy baseball bat against my ankle.

  “Harry,” Hope called out. “Mister’s in his carrier.”

  I coughed and harrumphed and rose. “All right, guys,” I said. “Get your stuff and stay close. We’ll get you guys settled.”

  “Then what?” my daughter asked.

  I took her hand and winked at her. “Then your dad goes to work.”

  10

  I dropped the girls off at Michael and Charity’s place. I’d spoken to Michael for less than three seconds before he volunteered to watch over Maggie until I was done. And, given that the retired Knight of the Cross’s home was an impregnable fortress against supernatural forces, she would be safer there than anywhere else in town.

  Michael’s angelic security agency’s only flaw was that it could do nothing to protect him and his family against mortals—which is why Molly had secretly purchased a house that had been for sale across the street, three doors down, and ordered a contingent of Winter Court fae into position. Any conventional forces attacking the Carpenter place would find themselves facing a war band of angry Sidhe with body armor, assault rifles, superhuman agility—and overwhelming backup already on the way.

  Molly and I have similar attitudes about protecting family.

  Speaking of which.

  Carlos and the Council would be hearing what happened before very long, and I had no doubt that they would want to meet about the ramifications of an apparent assassination attempt by the White Court on Etri on the eve of a peace conference. Once that happened, I would doubtless be given chores—so the time to sta
rt looking out for my brother was now.

  I went to see Justine.

  I’d visited my brother at his home often enough that the doorman recognized me, and he buzzed me in with a nod. Thomas and Justine lived in one of the ritzier buildings in the Gold Coast, and it looked it.

  I went up to Thomas’s place and knocked, and Justine let me in with a warm smile and a hug. She smelled like strawberries. “Hi, Harry.”

  “Justine,” I said. She was a woman of medium height and gorgeous on a level you rarely see off the cover of a magazine. Long hair that had gone silver-white about four decades early, huge dark eyes, pale skin, all arranged as prettily as you please. She was wearing thin cotton men’s pajamas that hung about her comfortably and her hair was loosely braided, with strands escaping everywhere.

  She wasn’t showing as yet, except for … Well, they talk about a glow that pregnant women get. They don’t literally glow, but the strength of a pregnant woman’s aura often seems reinforced by the presence of the unborn child, burning more brightly and visibly to those who can see. I wasn’t making any effort to perceive the energies in question, and I’m not a particularly sensitive sort, but even I could see the flickering, ghostly colors dancing elusively about her head and shoulders.

  Justine had been abed when the doorman had called up to let her know I was coming, but even blurred and disoriented from sleep, it took her only seconds to realize something was wrong. She’d survived a long time in a world of monsters by being quite a bit brighter than she let on and by becoming very, very observant. She took one look at my face and stiffened. She didn’t speak at once—instead, I could see her take a moment to actively compose herself, keeping her expression neutral, and when she did speak, it was in measured tones that would not reveal her emotions. “What’s happened?”

  Justine was a sweet and gentle person. I hated to say anything that I knew would hurt her. But there was no way this wasn’t going to hurt.