by Jim Butcher
She regarded me for a moment, her expression troubled. “Austri, then. He died defending a head of state. This is an offense against the svartalves as a nation, not just an individual. Weregild is what leaders use when they both want to avoid conflict. Etri doesn’t.” She shook her head again. “Our brother is beyond my political reach.”
I scowled. “Well, what have you got all these Marines for, then?”
Lara eyed me as if I’d been a child missing the slowest, easiest pitches she could throw at me. “If I tried to have him forcibly taken from svartalf territory, not only would it represent a major military effort to face the dragon in its den; it would mean violating their sovereign territory as defined in the Accords. Mab wouldn’t remain neutral then—she’d be obligated to help them. She might even send her hatchetman after me.” She shook her head. “I might be willing and able to go up against Etri and his people for my idiot brother, if there’s no other way. But I cannot and will not lead my people into a mass suicide by svartalves and Mab and the rest of the Accorded nations.” She looked away, at one of the banners and its kanji, and seemed, for a moment, ashamed. “Even within my own Court, my authority has limits. If I tried such an irrational thing, they’d depose me.”
I exhaled slowly.
She said nothing for a moment.
“Why?” I asked her. “Why did he do it?”
She shook her head. “I had hoped that you would know something I didn’t, wizard. It wasn’t my doing, and he didn’t give me the least indication that it was going to happen—presumably to provide me with enough deniability to avoid a war. Which I suppose indicates that somewhere within the idiocy, he meant well.”
“Fighting is out,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And talking is out.”
“So it would seem.”
“But we’ve got to do something.”
Lara’s expression became entirely opaque. “Obviously. I am open to ideas.”
“We have to create more options,” I said.
She nodded, her expression pensive. “I’ll be working the room at the fete tomorrow night. Perhaps some leverage might be obtainable there.”
“Possible? Perhaps?” I shook my head as I rose. “Our brother is going to die if we don’t do something. If you can’t be bothered to—”
Lara came at me in a black-and-white-and-silver-eyed blur that covered twenty feet in less time than it took me to blink. She caught the front of my duster in her pale hands and whirled me into the mat with enough force to make me see stars. By the time I’d brushed a few of them out of my field of view, Lara was astride me, one hand twisted into my duster, one hand lifted knifelike and rigid, ready to sweep down at my throat.
“Do not,” she hissed, leaning closer toward me, “presume to tell me what my family is worth to me. Or what I am willing to do for them.”
I didn’t have a whole lot to say to that. Both of us panted. I found myself staring at her mouth.
Lara’s eyes brightened, glittered like mirrors. She stared at me for a second, breathing heavily herself with the exertion of moving so swiftly.
I was intensely aware of the sensation of her weight on me. So was my … body. But then my body is always overly enthusiastic.
More to the point, the Winter mantle was going berserk. The mantle didn’t just come with access to nifty Fae power sources and greater physical speed and strength. Winter was the spiritual home of all things primal and primitive. They were hunters, raiders, takers. Don’t search the Winter Court of the Sidhe for a hug. You won’t find one anywhere that doesn’t collapse your ribs into your spine—but if you want savage, animalistic sex, yeah. You’ve come to the right place. I mean, you might get torn to pieces in the process, but in Winter, them’s the breaks.
The mantle thought that Lara was a fantastic idea. That she needed someone to tear those clothes off her and spend several hours with her in heavy physical exertion, and it thought that someone ought to be me. My body was backing up that concept. It backed it up so strongly that I felt the slow, sensual tension slide into my muscles, pressing my body against her a little more firmly wherever we were in contact.
“Oh,” Lara breathed quietly. Her eyes shone like mirrors.
I looked down and away from them, lest things get even more complicated. It was little improvement. It meant I could see one of her legs, positioned out to one side, and it had come clear of the folds of the kimono. Her skin was flawless and pale over absolutely glorious musculature. Even her feet were pretty.
She leaned closer and inhaled through her nose. The proximity made me feel dizzy—among other things.
I focused through the … well, not pain, but the need was rapidly building in that direction. I pushed my body’s stupid ideas away and spoke in a calm, level voice. “Lara,” I said quietly.
“Yes?” she breathed.
“Is it involuntary,” I asked her, “or are you using the come-hither on me on purpose?”
I tried for a calm, bright, conversational tone. It came out a hell of a lot lower and quieter and huskier than I meant. Because at the moment, the only thing I could really think very much about was how much I wanted to toss her onto a bed and start ripping off clothing. There wasn’t any thought or emotion behind that drive—just the primal, physical need of a body screaming for satisfaction.
I wondered if she was feeling something similar.
Her pale eyes stared steadily at my face, and she looked like she was thinking about something else. It took her a moment to lick her lips and answer. “It’s … some of both. I can use it whenever I wish to. But I can’t always choose when not to use it.”
I swallowed. “Then get off me.” At least I’d gotten the words in the right order. “This is a business trip. I came here to try to find a way to help Thomas. Not to get frisky with an apex sexual predator.”
Lara blinked at me, and her eyes darkened by several shades. Her mouth turned up into a slow, genuine smile. “What did you call me?” she asked.
“You heard me,” I said.
Some of the tension eased out of her. A moment later, she flowed to her feet and withdrew a few steps from me. I had to force myself to leave my hands down, rather than grabbing at her clothes as she drew back. “Well,” she said. “You aren’t wrong.”
I exhaled slowly and clubbed the Winter mantle and its stupid primal drives back into the backseat. I wasn’t sure I was exactly relieved that Lara had withdrawn, but it was probably simpler that she had.
She turned away and said, “The more power one has, the less flexible it is, wizard.” She shook her head. “The White Court is mine. But I cannot lead it to its destruction over actions this reckless. Not even for my idiot brother.” She shook her head. “Unless things change, I will have no choice but to disavow him.”
“Without your support,” I said very quietly, “he has no chance at all.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled. Then she turned to me, her gaze intense, her eyes now a grey so deep that they were nearly blue, and said, “No, Harry. He still has one.”
I swallowed and said, “Oh.”
Me.
15
The Munstermobile wasn’t exactly designed for speed. It didn’t have power steering or power brakes—just power—and it got about two gallons to the mile.
I settled in for the drive back. Riley and the Machinegun Hummer Revue escorted me back to the front gates. I turned out of the estate and onto an unlit country road that would take me back to the highway. We’d reached the witching hour, and the summer night was overcast, pregnant with heat and rain that hadn’t fallen. The windows started steaming over as vampire Graceland receded behind me, and I cranked them down laboriously.
My brother was in trouble and Lara wasn’t going to be any help.
I thought furiously about how to get him out. The White Council wasn’t going to be of any use unless Lara went to them with a formal request—an action that would have to happen openly, and which Etri’s people wou
ld be sure to regard as a tacit admission of guilt regarding Thomas. Mab wouldn’t help Thomas. His only use to her was as a replacement Knight should anything happen to me, and she could have been deceiving me about that. She didn’t do things for the sake of kindness. If I was unable to show her the profit to Winter in saving my brother, she would care no more about him than about the floor she walked on.
My only two sources of diplomatic muscle weren’t going to be any help, and I was pretty sure that I couldn’t get into a fully on-alert svartalf stronghold and drag him out all by myself. That would be a suicide mission, just as Thomas’s had been. If I went in and took along friends for support, would it count as a murder-suicide?
God, I felt sick. And tired. Stupid cornerhounds. Stupid allergy meds.
What was I going to do?
My stomach rumbled. I debated hitting an all-night hamburger franchise when I got to the highway. On the one hand, my body definitely needed the fuel. On the other hand, my stomach felt like it would probably object to adding much of anything to it. I was fumbling in my pockets for a coin to flip when grey shapes loomed up in the road in front of me. I stood on the brakes and left broad swaths of rubber on the road behind me as I fought the big old car to a halt.
I wound up with the nose of the car pointing into the weeds and the headlights casting a harsh cone of white light, partly over the road and partly over the thick trees that hemmed it in.
I killed the engine and stared out the driver’s-side window at the four Wardens who barred my way.
Ramirez stood in the middle of the crew and slightly forward, leaning on his cane, his dark eyes steady. He’d have been the first one to meet bumper if I hadn’t been able to stop the car. Gone were the casual civilian clothes—he was dressed in the White Council’s version of tactical gear, complete with his grey Warden’s cloak.
To his right stood “Wild Bill” Meyers. Wild Bill had filled out a lot as he got into his late twenties, adding on the muscle and solidity of a maturing body. He’d grown his beard out, and it wasn’t all skinny and patchy like it used to be. He kind of reminded me of Grizzly Adams now. His cloak was shorter on him than it had been when we’d started the war with the Red Court—Wild Bill hadn’t been done growing yet. Rather than one of the enchanted swords most of the established Wardens carried, Wild Bill had a bowie knife he’d been working on steadily for years. It rode his belt across from a .45-70 Big Frame Revolver that weighed as much as my leg.
In the shadows cast to the left side of the road by my headlights stood Yoshimo, who refused to let anyone call her by her first name. It had taken Ramirez a couple of years to find out that it was Yukie, and I’m pretty sure she hadn’t forgiven him. She was a girl of Okinawan heritage, about five four, and she carried a katana on her hip and an assault rifle on a strap around one shoulder. She could use either of them like a Hong Kong action-movie star.
The fourth member of Ramirez’s crew stood to his left, looking steadily into my headlights. He was a slim, very dapper young man dressed in a camel-colored bespoke suit and wearing a neatly complementary bowler hat. Chandler had indulged in experimental facial hair as well, and currently sported a thick, fierce Freddie Mercury mustache. It could have looked dopey with his outfit, but Chandler being Chandler, he carried it off with panache. Maybe the strictly ornamental walking cane helped. He was the only one of the four not geared up for a fight—but then Chandler had always made it a point to uphold the forms of civilization harder than were strictly necessary.
The five of us had been through more than a little together, though Chandler had been our handler and point of contact, not usually a field guy.
None of them were smiling.
I could recognize game faces when I saw them.
Harry, I thought to myself. These kids might be here to hurt you.
I sat in the car for a moment while the engine clicked. Then I said, “In the future, you guys should probably look for a crosswalk. Or maybe an adult to hold your hand.”
“We need to talk, Harry,” Ramirez said. “Got a minute?”
I eyed him and then mused, “How’d you pull off the tracking spell?”
“Right wrist,” he said.
I eyed him, then held up my right hand and peered. I had to turn my thumb until it faced almost all the way away from me to spot the dot of black ink on the outside of my wrist.
Ramirez held up his right hand and wiggled his pinky finger, where an identically shaped ink spot marked his skin.
“Wow,” I said in a level tone. “Mistrusting me right from the get-go, huh?”
He shrugged. “I was pretty clear about my intentions,” he said. “If you don’t want others to think you’re shady, man, maybe you shouldn’t be doing shady things at shady times with shady people.” He nodded back the way I’d come, toward the Château. “Come on, Harry. It’s us. Make this simple. Talk to me.”
“Maybe you don’t know about my life’s relationship with simple,” I said. I eyed Ramirez. Then the others. “Hey, guys. What’s up?”
Yoshimo gave me her samurai face. Wild Bill lifted his chin, an almost unconscious gesture of acknowledgment. Chandler rolled his eyes at them and walked forward, extending his hand and speaking in a precise Oxford accent. “Harry, good to see you, man.”
Ramirez and the others tensed as Chandler walked into their lines of fire—a term that among wizards could become especially literal. I took the opportunity to get out of the Munstermobile and regard his extended hand with a skeptically lifted eyebrow.
Chandler’s cobalt blue eyes sparkled, and he held up his hand, showing me his fingers. I inspected them minutely, then traded grips with Chandler in a hearty handshake, eyeing Ramirez over the shorter man’s head as I did.
“How’s the PhD work coming?” I asked him.
“Viciously political,” he said, smiling. “History is such a thorny thing on the Continent.”
“Most people can’t just go talk to folks who were alive for it, I imagine,” I said.
“Precisely. Maddening,” Chandler said. “I’m sorry we’re doing this, Harry. But you’ve got to admit, old boy, you’ve had a damned peculiar day. Or so it would appear from the outside.”
I responded with a genial frown and duplicated his accent badly. “Oh really? How so, if you do not mind me asking?”
Chandler’s smile didn’t falter. But it took on an aspect of granite, somehow. “No one’s that disingenuous, Dresden. The Winter Lady gets you quarters inside the svartalf embassy. Not long after, a known personal agent of Lara Raith and a frequent ally of your own gets inside, somehow, and attempts to assassinate Etri. Hours later, you visit the assassin’s significant other, then have a meeting with Ms. Raith.”
“Um,” I said. “Sure, I mean, when you put it like that, I see how that might look a little suspicious… ”
“We’ve a long tradition of twisty thinking in my homeland,” Chandler said. “Perhaps it has made me cynical and uncharitable, but it occurs to me that there are a disturbing number of connections in these events. It makes one wonder if you’ve been entirely honest with us.”
I held up my wrist so that the spot of black ink Ramirez had put there was showing. “You’re going to lecture me about being open and honest? And, seriously, ink, after the last time around with an actual traitor in the Council? What were you thinking?”
Chandler arched an eyebrow. He glanced over his shoulder at Ramirez and said, “Fair points.” He took a step closer and lowered his voice. “But all the same, Dresden. It’s damned peculiar. Perhaps it’s time you ‘leveled’ with us, I believe is the vernacular.”
I studied Chandler’s face for a moment and then looked at the other Wardens. “How’d you decide who would be the good cop?” I asked him quietly. “Rock, paper, scissors?”
“Don’t be daft,” Chandler replied, “As an academic, I find myself dealing with temperamental potential lunatics on a regular basis. I was the obvious choice. And we drew straws.”
“Lunatic
, eh?” I asked.
“There have been certain questions about how much of your will remains your own, yes,” Chandler said frankly.
“I’m my own man, more or less,” I told him.
“Yes, well, you would think that, wouldn’t you?” Chandler said with a wry smile. “You see our predicament. Matters are unfolding here that we don’t quite understand. We have an interest in learning as much as possible.”
The way he said we was something new. He wasn’t using the word as an inclusive one, like, we are all friends. He was using it as an exclusive term. We, all of us, not you.
He was referring to me as someone outside of the White Council. His bright blue eyes were direct, almost pleading as he said it, willing me to get the message. I saw recognition flicker in them as he saw me process what he was actually saying: Be advised, Harry. The White Council now considers you a threat.
Didn’t bode too well for that vote.
“Got it,” I said, looking away from his eyes hurriedly. I gave Chandler the faintest ghost of a nod of thanks, and he twitched his eyebrows in acknowledgment. “Look, you guys are worried about nothing. You told me you want me as a liaison with Winter. Fine. I’m liaising. Mab told me to keep an eye on Lara,” I said, and was technically more or less not lying, “and I came out to talk to her.”
Ramirez nodded. “What’d you find out?”
“She says she’s got no idea why he did it,” I said. “Right now it looks like she means to disavow him in front of the Accorded nations.”
“And you believe her?” Ramirez asked.
“No reason not to,” I said.
Yoshimo hissed, “Vampires are not to be trusted.”
The intensity of the words was, uh, kind of threatening, really.
“I’m not trusting a vampire,” I said to her. “I’m trusting my reason. Lara Raith has been all about supporting the Accords. These peace talks are going to be a major test of them. She wouldn’t do anything to rock the boat this hard right before they’re due to begin.”
“Unless she has deeper plans, and this is only part of them,” Ramirez said. He glanced at Yoshimo and nodded.