Skin Game

by Jim Butcher

  The pair of them struggled for a second, and then Fidelacchius swept up high, over Karrin’s head. Her expression whitened in horror as she saw the Sword, now gleaming with nothing more than ordinary light.

  Then, guided by Nicodemus’s hands, the ancient Sword came smashing down onto the concrete of the sidewalk, the flat of the blade striking the frozen stone.

  It shattered with a rising shriek of protesting metal, shards flickering in the streetlights. Pieces of the blade went spinning in every direction, sparkling reflected light through the darkness. Karrin stared at it with unbelieving eyes.

  “Ah,” Nicodemus said. The wordless sigh was a slow, deep expression of utter satisfaction.

  Awful silence fell.

  The Sword of Faith was no more.

  Thirty

  Sleet rattled down.

  A dog howled, somewhere a few blocks away, a lost and lonely sound.

  Karrin’s breath exploded from her in a sob, her blue eyes wide and fixed on the shattered pieces of the blade.

  “Judge not, lest ye be judged, Miss Murphy,” Nicodemus purred. And then he slammed his head into hers.

  She reeled back from the blow, and was brought up short by Nicodemus’s grip on her arm.

  “It is not the place of a Knight to decide whether or not to take the life given to another,” Nicodemus continued. Before she could recover, he struck her savagely, the heel of his hand cracking into her jaw with an audible crunching sound. “Not your place to condemn or consign.”

  Karrin seemed to gather herself together. She flicked a quick blow at Nicodemus’s face, forcing him to duck, and then their hands engaged in a complex and swift-moving series of motions that ended with Karrin’s left arm held out straight, while she was forced down to her knees on the freezing sidewalk.

  I’d never seen her lose when it came to grappling for a lock. Never.

  “I’m not sure what would have happened if you’d simply struck, without that condemnation,” Nicodemus continued, “but it would seem that in the moment of truth, your intent was not pure.” He twisted his shoulders in a sudden, sharp motion.

  Karrin screamed, briefly, breathlessly.

  I struggled against the Genoskwa’s crushing grip. I might as well have been a puppy, for all the effect my best efforts had on the thing. I gathered my will and flung a half-formed working of power against him, but again, the energy grounded itself harmlessly into the earth as it struck him.

  I could do nothing.

  Nicodemus twisted Karrin, tilted his head to one side, and then drove his heel against her knee with crushing strength.

  I heard bones and tendons parting at the blow.

  Karrin choked out another sound of pain, and crumpled to the ground, broken.

  “I was afraid, for a time, that you actually would leave the Sword out of it,” Nicodemus said. He bent and recovered the Noose calmly, fastening it around his neck as casually as a businessman putting on his tie. “Survivors of Chichén Itzá—and there were more than a few, in part thanks to your efforts—describe your contribution to that conflict as impressive. You were obviously ready and in the right, that night. But you were never meant for more. Most Knights of the Cross serve for less than three days. Did you know that? They aren’t always killed—they simply fulfill their purpose and go their way.” He leaned down closer to her and said, “You should have had the grace to do the same. What drove you to take up the Sword, when you knew you weren’t worthy to bear it? Was it pride?”

  Karrin shot him a fierce glare through eyes hazed with pain and tears, and then looked over at me.

  He straightened, arching an eyebrow. “Ah, of course,” he said, his tone dry—yet somehow filled with venomous undertones. “Love.” Nicodemus shook his head and picked up his sword with one hand, and the Coin with the other. “Love will be the downfall of God Himself.”

  Karrin snarled weakly, and flung the broken hilt of Fidelacchius at Nicodemus’s head. He snapped his sword up, flicking it contemptuously away from him. The wooden handle landed in the Carpenters’ yard.

  Nicodemus stepped closer to Karrin, dropping the point of his sword again, aiming it at her. As he did, blackness slithered down his body again, onto the ground, his shadow spreading out around him like a stain of oil over pure water.

  Karrin fumbled backward, away from him, but she could barely move with only one arm and one leg functioning. The wet sleet plastered her hair to her head, made her ears stick out, made her look smaller and younger.

  I kicked at the Genoskwa through the red haze over my vision. With Winter upon me, I can kick cinder blocks to gravel without thinking twice. It was useless. He was all mass and muscle and rock-hard hide.

  “Face it, Miss Murphy,” Nicodemus said, keeping pace with her. His shadow swarmed all over the ground around her, surrounding her. “Your heart”—the tip of his sword dipped toward it by way of illustration— “simply wasn’t in the right place.”

  He paused there, long enough to give her time to see the sword thrust coming.

  She faced him, her eyes fierce and frightened, her face pale with pain.

  And the front door of the Carpenters’ house opened.

  Nicodemus’s dark eyes flickered up at once, and stayed focused on the front porch.

  Michael stood in the doorway to the house for a brief moment, leaning on his cane, surveying the scene. Then he limped down the steps and out onto the walk leading from the front porch to the mailbox. He moved carefully and steadily in the sleet, right up to the gate in the white picket fence.

  He stopped there, maybe three feet from Nicodemus, regarding him steadily.

  Sleet struck and melted into rain on his flannel shirt.

  “Let them go,” Michael said quietly.

  Nicodemus’s mouth turned up at one corner. His dark eyes shone with a dangerous light. “You have no power here, Carpenter. Not any longer.”

  “I know,” Michael said. “But you’re going to let them go.”

  “And why should I do that?”

  “Because if you do,” Michael said, “I’ll walk out this gate.”

  Even where I was, I could almost see the blaze of hatred that flared out of Nicodemus’s eyes. His shadow went insane, flickering from side to side, surging up the white picket fence like an incoming tide chewing at a stone cliff.

  “Freely?” Nicodemus demanded. “Of your own choice and will?”

  A critical point. If Michael willingly divested himself of angelic protection, there would be nothing his bodyguards could do. Angels have terrible power—but not over free will. Michael would be helpless.

  Just like Shiro had been helpless.

  “Michael,” I grated. I was under some pressure. I sprayed a lot more spittle than I thought I would. “Don’t do it.”

  Michael gave me a small smile and said chidingly, “Harry.”

  “There’s no point,” Karrin gasped, her voice thin and breathless, “in you dying too. He’ll just come after us again, later.”

  “You’d both do the same for me,” Michael said, and looked up at Nicodemus with that same quiet smile.

  And then the sleet just . . . stopped.

  I don’t mean it stopped sleeting. I mean that the sleet stopped moving. The half-frozen droplets hung in the air, suspended like millions of tiny jewels. The slight wind vanished. The howling dog’s voice cut off as abruptly as if someone had flipped a switch.

  At the same time, a man appeared, outside the little gate. He was tall and lean with youth, broad-shouldered like a professional swimmer. His features were porcelain-fine. His hair was glossy black and curling, his skin a rich, dark caramel color, and his eyes glittered silver-green. There was no fanfare about his appearance. One moment nothing was there, and the next moment he was.

  His presence was as absolute as it was abrupt, as if the light of the street
somehow picked him out more clearly, more sharply, than anyone else there. Even if the abrupt cessation of movement in the physical world hadn’t been enough to tip me off, I could feel the power in him, radiating from him like light from a star.

  He’d appeared to me in many different forms, but there was no possibility of mistaking his presence, his identity.

  Mister Sunshine. The archangel Uriel.

  His gaze was focused exclusively on Michael, and his expression was anguished.

  “You need not do this,” he said, his voice low, urgent. “You have given enough and more than enough already.”

  “Uriel,” Michael said, nodding his head deeply. “I know.”

  The angel held up his hand. “If you do this, I can take no action to protect you,” he said. “And this creature will be free to inflict upon you such pain as even you could not imagine.”

  A sudden, sunny smile lit Michael’s face. “My friend . . .”

  Uriel blinked, and rocked slightly, as if the words had struck him with physical force.

  “. . . thank you,” Michael continued. “But I’m not the Carpenter who set the standard.”

  Nicodemus tapped Uriel on the shoulder. “Excuse me.”

  The angel turned to him, slowly. His face was resolute, his eyes flat.

  “You are standing in the way of mortal business, angel,” Nicodemus said. “Stand aside.”

  Uriel’s eyes flickered, and frozen lightning exploded through the clouds overhead, thunder making the standstill sleet-drops quiver.

  “You make threats?” Nicodemus asked, contempt dripping from his voice like blood from a wound. “Perhaps you should cut your losses. You are without power in this matter, angel, and we both know it. You can do nothing to me.”

  And then Nicodemus lifted his left hand and, deliberately, calmly, tensed his forefinger beneath his thumb and flicked it out to tap the end of the angel’s nose.

  Uriel’s eyes widened, and terrible light gathered around his head and shoulders. Looking at it hurt, burned the eyes, seared my mind with sudden memories of every shameful act I’d ever chosen to do, scorched me with the obvious truth of how easy it might have been to make a different choice. The light of Uriel’s halo banished shadows and averted everyone’s gaze.

  Everyone’s but Nicodemus’s.

  “Go on, angel,” Nicodemus taunted, his shadow swelling and curling in slow, restless motion. “Smite me. Visit your wrath upon me. Judge me.”

  Uriel stared at him. Then the angel’s gaze went to the shards of Fidelacchius. He closed his eyes for a moment, and turned his face away from the Denarian. The light of his halo flickered and died away. A tear slid down his cheek.

  And he stepped aside and began walking away.

  “Dude!” I said in protest. It was getting hard to see through all the red. “What the hell kind of angelic protector are you? Do something.”

  Uriel did not look back.

  “Now, then,” Nicodemus said to Michael. His sword had never ceased pointing at Karrin’s heart. “If I release this pair, you will step through that gate?”

  Michael nodded once. “I will. You have my word.”

  Nicodemus’s eyes glittered. He looked up at the Genoskwa and nodded, and suddenly I was on the ground, untouched, with the giant thing looming over me. The shaggy, hulking creature stared at Uriel with hateful eyes, but then that feral gaze flickered up to the house, and around the yard, skipping from point to point, and looking at something that I couldn’t see. The blood rushed back and forth through my head, pounding hard, and though Winter held the pain at bay, my vision pulsed darker and lighter with every heartbeat.

  “Go on, Dresden,” Nicodemus said. “Take her inside.”

  It took me a couple of tries to get to my feet, but I did it, stuffed my revolver back into my duster’s pocket, and shambled over to Karrin.

  She was in bad shape, obviously in severe pain. When I picked her up, she would have screamed if she’d had the breath. Michael opened the gate for me, and I carried her through it, into the yard, then put her down as carefully as I could on the grass.

  Uriel, meanwhile, had gone to Butters’s side. He crouched down and shook him. Butters started awake and sat up, rubbing at his head.

  Uriel spoke to him in a low, intent voice, nodding toward the house. Butters swallowed, his eyes the size of teacups, and nodded. Then he got up and half ran around the house, into the backyard.

  Uriel gave me an intent look.

  Time, said a voice in my head. Get me a little time.

  “I’ve kept my word,” Nicodemus said to Michael. “Now it’s your tur—”

  “The hell you have,” I spat. “You just ordered your goon to kill me. You’ve broken your contract with Mab.”

  Nicodemus shifted his gaze to me and looked amused. “That?” he said. “Goodness, Dresden, can you not recognize a ploy when you see one?”

  “What ploy?” I demanded.

  “I needed to put a little pressure on Miss Murphy,” he said. “But you were never in any actual danger. Do you honestly think it would take the Genoskwa more than a few seconds to crack even a skull so thick as yours?” He smiled widely, clearly enjoying himself. “Why, it was no more an attempt to kill you than was your participation in the chase of the little doctor a betrayal of Mab’s word that you would aid me.”

  Dammit. Nothing like a little pro forma quid pro quo action. By Mab’s reckoning, I was pretty sure, Nicodemus and I had played this one out evenly. My actions in protecting Butters could be explained as bad luck and sincere incompetence. Nicodemus’s attempt to kill me could be explained as a ploy to destroy the Sword.

  His eyes narrowed. “And I fully expect you to continue to fulfill your half of the bargain, Dresden, regardless of what happens over the next few hours.”

  I ground my teeth and said, “You attacked Murphy.”

  “I warned you that I could not guarantee her safety,” he said in a reasonable tone. “And in any case, she initiated the attack, if you recall. And she’s not dead just yet.” He showed me white teeth. “I’d say that I’m being more than reasonable. And so would your liege.”

  Again, he was right—by Mab’s reckoning, he was indeed a reasonable man.

  Uriel, meanwhile, had paced over to stand at Michael’s right hand. I took up station on my friend’s left.

  “The bargain was made,” Nicodemus purred, to Uriel, “his word freely given. You cannot stop him from fulfilling it.”

  “Correct,” Uriel said, “but I can help him do so.”

  Nicodemus’s smile slipped.

  Calmly, Uriel turned to Michael. He put a hand on Michael’s shoulder and gently took his cane away.

  Michael blinked at Uriel, his arms going out for balance, his body tightening as if he expected to pitch over without the cane’s support. And then he abruptly relaxed. He put some of his weight on his bad leg, and then a little more. And then he let out a little laugh and hopped on it a few times.

  Just then, Butters came running back around from behind the house. There was a twig with a soggy brown oak leaf still attached to it in his hair, his knees were scuffed and marked with sap, and he was carrying a slender package wrapped in canvas and duct tape, almost as long as he was tall. Butters was tearing at the package as he ran over and then offered it to Michael.

  Michael’s eyes widened and went to Nicodemus as he stretched out his right hand, without looking, without needing to look, and withdrew from the canvas package a Sword, a shining length of straight steel with a cruciform hilt. As Michael’s fingers closed on it, Amoracchius exploded into white light, and for the second time in an evening, the quiet, ominous power of one of the Swords filled the air.

  Nicodemus’s eyes widened. “You cheat!” he snarled.

  “I said I would come out to you,” Michael said.

  Then he lifted a w
ork-booted foot and kicked the white picket gate off its hinges. It struck Nicodemus across the torso, driving him back into the street, and Michael Carpenter, Knight of the Cross, strode out of the open gate onto the icy sidewalk while the archangel looked on, silver-green eyes blazing in answer to the light of the Sword in Michael’s hands.

  “I’m out,” Michael said. “In nomine Dei, Nicodemus, I have come to face you.”

  In the street, Nicodemus bared his teeth.

  I was terrified for Michael.

  And my heart soared.

  “Hah-hah,” I said, like the bully on The Simpsons, pointing at him. Then I walked out of the gate to stand beside my friend. I pointed my finger at my quarterstaff, fallen on the ground where the Genoskwa had held me, exerted my will, and called, “Ventas servitas.”

  A burst of wind rose and flung the staff into the air. I caught it, and called power into it, summoning green-white light and silvery soulfire into the channels of power that ran through its runes.

  Uriel smiled tightly, his eyes hard, and the sleet began to fall once more. It burst into little drops of steam when it hit the runes on my staff.

  “Two of you,” I said to Nicodemus. “Two of us. What do you think, Nick?”

  Michael faced him squarely, both hands on the hilt of Amoracchius. The Sword’s light filled the air—and Nicodemus’s shadow quailed before it.

  Nicodemus finally stood back. He lowered his blade and said, “Dresden. I expect you back at our headquarters by four a.m.” He turned to go.

  “Not so fast, smart guy,” I said.

  Nicodemus paused.

  “If I have to play by these stupid rules, so do you. I still get someone to watch my back during this job.”

  “Miss Murphy is more than welcome to do so.”

  “You put her out of commission,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that. You’d already beaten her.”

  “Then choose another,” Nicodemus snapped.

  I put a hand on Michael’s shoulder and said, “I already have. And you’re going to put up with it, or I’ll consider it a release of obligation—and so will Mab.”