by Butcher, Jim
“He isn’t exerting his power,” Fix replied. “He’s a prisoner, and everyone knows it. He has no freedom, no will. He can’t stand on the side of Winter as its champion. So far as the tension between the Courts goes, the Winter Knight might as well not exist.”
“All right,” I murmured. “Mab’s got a man in the penalty box. She wants to take the offensive before Summer pushes a power play, and she’s looking for ways to even the odds. If Summer goes running off to take on the Reds, it will give her a chance to strike.” I shook my head. “I don’t pretend to know Mab very well, but she isn’t suicidal. If the imbalance is so dangerous, why is she keeping the Winter Knight alive to begin with? And she must see what the consequences of another Winter-Summer war would be.” I looked back and forth between them. “Right?”
“Unfortunately,” Lily said quietly, “our intelligence about the internal politics of Winter is very limited—and Mab is not the sort to reveal her mind to another. I do not know if she realizes the potential danger. Her actions of late have been…” She closed her eyes for a moment and then said, with some obvious effort, “Erratic.”
I propped up my chin on the heel of my hand, thinking. “Mab’s a lot of things,” I said thoughtfully. “But she sure as hell isn’t erratic. She’s like some damned big glacier. Not a thing you can do to stop her, but at least you know just how she’s going to move. What’s the bard say? Constant as the northern star.”
Fix frowned, as if struggling with an internal decision for a minute, then let out an exasperated sigh and said, “I think many who know the Sidhe would agree with you.”
Which was neither a confirmation nor a denial—technically, at any rate. But then, Sidhe magic and bindings tended to lean heavily toward the technical details.
I sat back slowly again, thoughts flickering over dozens of ideas and bits of information, putting them together into a larger picture. And it wasn’t a pretty one. The last time one of the Faerie Queens had come a little bit unbalanced, the situation had become a potential global catastrophe on the same order of magnitude as a middling large meteor impact or a limited nuclear exchange. And that had been the youngest Queen of the gentler and more reasonable Summer, Lily’s predecessor. Aurora. The late Aurora, I suppose.
If Mab had blown a gasket, matters wouldn’t be just as bad.
They would be worse.
A lot worse.
“I’ve got to know more about this one,” I told them quietly.
“I know,” Lily said. She lifted her hand to a temple and closed her eyes in a faint frown of pain. “But…’’ She shook her head and fell silent again as Titania’s binding sealed her tongue.
I glanced at Fix, who managed to whisper, “Sorry, Harry,” before he too closed his eyes and looked vaguely ill.
“I need answers,” I murmured, thinking aloud. “But you can’t give them to me. And there can’t be all that many people who know what’s going on.”
Silence and faint expressions of pain. After a few seconds, Fix said, “I think we’ve done all we can here.”
I racked my brains for a few seconds more and then said, “No, you haven’t.”
Lily opened her eyes and looked at me, arching a perfect, silver-white brow.
“I need someone with the right information and who isn’t under a compulsion not to help me. And I can only think of one person who fits the bill.”
Lily’s eyes widened a second after I got done speaking.
“Can you do it?” I asked her. “Right now?”
She chewed her lower lip for a second, then nodded.
“Call her,” I said.
Fix looked back and forth between us. “I don’t understand. What are you doing?”
“Something stupid, probably,” I said. “But this is too big. I need more information.”
Lily closed her eyes and folded her hands on her lap, her expression relaxing into one of deep concentration. I could feel the subtle stir of energy around her.
My stomach rumbled. I asked Mac to whip me up a steak sandwich and settled down to wait.
It didn’t take long. My sandwich wasn’t halfway done when Mouse let out a sudden, rumbling growl of warning, and the temperature in the bar dropped about ten degrees. The whirling ceiling fans let out mechanical moans of protest and spun faster. Then the door opened and let in sunlight made wan by a patch of dreary grey clouds. The light cast a slender black silhouette.
Fix’s eyes narrowed. His hands slid casually out of sight beneath the table, and he said, “Oh. Her.”
The young woman who entered the bar could have been Lily’s sister. She had the same exotic beauty, the same canted, feline eyes, the same pale, flawless skin. But this one’s hair was worn in long, ragged strands of varying lengths, like a Raggedy Ann doll, each one dyed a slightly different color from frozen seas—pale blues and greens, as though each had borrowed its color from a different glacier. Her eyes were a cold, brilliant shade of green, almost entirely darkened by pupils dilated as though with drugs or arousal. A slender silver hoop gleamed at one side of her nose, and a collar of black leather studded with silver snowflakes encircled the graceful line of her slender throat. She wore sandals and cut-off blue jean shorts—very cut-off, and very tight. A tight, white T-shirt strained across her chest, and read, in pale blue letters stretched into intriguing curves, “YOUR BOYFRIEND WANTS ME.”
She prowled across the room to us, all hips and lips and fascinating eyes, looking far too young to move with such wanton sensuality. I knew better. She could have been a century old. She chose to look the way she did because of what she was: the Winter Lady, youngest Queen of the Unseelie Court, Mab’s understudy in wickedness and power. When she walked by the flowers that had bloomed in Lily’s presence, they froze over, withered, and died. She gave them no more notice than Lily had.
“Harry Dresden,” she said, her voice low, lulling, and sweet.
And I said, “Hello, Maeve.”
Chapter Twenty
Maeve stared at me for a long minute and licked her lips. “Look at you,” she all but purred. “All pent up like that. You haven’t had a woman in ages, have you?”
I hadn’t. I really, really hadn’t. But that wasn’t the kind of thinking that a professional investigator allowed to clog up the gears in his brain. I could have said something back, but I decided that if I ignored the taunt, maybe she’d get bored and leave me alone. So instead of taking up the verbal épée, I rose and drew out a chair for her, politely. “Sit with us, Maeve?”
Her head tilted almost all the way to her shoulder. She stared at me with those intense green eyes. “Just boiling over. Maybe you and I should have a private talk. Just the two of us.”
My libido seconded the suggestion, and heartily.
My libido and I generally don’t see eye to eye. Dammit.
“I’d rather just sit and have a nice chat,” I said to her.
“Liar,” Maeve said, smiling.
I sighed. “All right. There are a lot of things I’d love to do. But the only thing that’s going to happen is a nice chat. So you might as well sit down and let me get you a drink.”
Her head tilted the other way. Her hips shifted in a kind of counterpoint that drew the eye. “How long has it been for you, wizard? How long since you sated yourself.”
The answer was depressing. “Last time I saw Susan, I guess.”
Maeve made a disgusted sound. “No, not love, wizard. Need. Flesh.”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” I said.
She waved that off with an expression of contempt. “I want an answer.”
“Looks to me like there’s all kinds of things you want that you aren’t going to get,” I told her. I glanced at Fix and Lily, throwing a mute appeal into it.
Fix gave me an apologetic shrug and Lily sighed. “You might as well indulge her, Harry. She’s as stubborn as any of us, the only one who might give you the answers you need, and she knows it.”
I looked back at Maeve, who gav
e me that same eerie, intensely sensual smile. “Tell me, mortal. When was the last time flesh, new and strange to your hand, lay quivering beneath you, hmm?” She leaned down until her eyes were inches from mine. I could smell winter mint and something lush and corrupt, like rotted flowers, on her breath. “When was the last time you could taste and feel some little lovely’s cries?”
I regarded her without any expression and said, in a gentle voice, “Technically? When I killed Aurora.”
Maeve’s expression flickered with an instant of uncertainty.
“You remember Aurora,” I told her quietly. “The last Summer Lady. Your peer. Your equal. When she died, she’d been cut several dozen times with cold iron. She was bleeding out. But she was still trying to stick a knife in Lily. So I tackled her and held her down. She kept struggling until she lost too much blood. And then she died in the grass on the hill of the Stone Table.”
Dead silence filled the whole place.
“It sort of surprised me,” I said, never putting any particular emotion on the words. “How fast it happened. It surprised her, too. She was confused when she died.”
Maeve only stared at me.
“I never wanted to kill her. But she didn’t leave me any choice.” I let the silence fill the room for a moment and stared at Maeve’s eyes.
The Winter Lady swallowed and eased her weight a tiny bit away from me.
Then I gestured with one hand at the chair I still held out for her and said, “Let’s be polite to one another, Maeve. Please.”
She took a slow breath, soulless, inhuman eyes on mine, and then said, “I know now why Mab wants you.” She straightened and gave me an odd little bow, which might have looked more courtly had she been wearing a gown. Then she sat and said, “Does the barkeep still have those sweet-lemon chips of ice?”
“Of course,” I said. “Mac. Another lemonade for the Lady, please?”
Mac provided it in his usual silence. As he did, the few people who were in the place cleared out. Most of the magical community of Chicago knew the Ladies by reputation, if not on sight, and they wanted nothing to do with any kind of incident between Winter and Summer. They were safer if they were never noticed.
Hell, if I could have snuck out, I would have led the way. When I’d defeated Aurora, there had been a healthy chunk of luck involved. I caught her with a sucker punch. If she’d been focused on taking me out instead of finishing her scheme, I doubt I would have survived the evening. Sure, I might have stared Maeve down, but ultimately I was bluffing—trying to fool the oncoming shark into thinking I might be something that could eat it. If the shark decided to start taking bites anyhow, things would get unpleasant for me.
But this time, at least, the shark didn’t know that.
Maeve waited for her lemonade, wrapped her lips idly around the straw, and sipped. Then she settled back into her seat, chewing. Crunching sounds came from her mouth. The lemonade had frozen solid when it passed her lips.
Which made me feel pretty damned smart for avoiding the whole sexual temptation issue.
Maeve looked at Lily steadily as she chewed, and then said, to me, “You know, my last Knight often dragged this one before the Court for performances. All kinds of performances. Some of them hurt. And some of them didn’t. Though she still cried out prettily enough.” She smiled, her tone polite and conversational. “Do you remember the night he made you dance for me in the red shoes, Lily?”
Lily’s green eyes settled on Maeve, calm and placid as a forest pool.
Maeve’s smile sharpened. “Do you remember what I did to you after?”
Lily smiled, a tired little expression, and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Maeve. I know how much pleasure you take in gloating, but you can’t hurt me with that now. That Lily is no more.”
Maeve narrowed her eyes, and then her gaze shifted to Fix. “And this one. I’ve seen this little man weeping like a child. Begging for mercy.”
Fix sipped at his lemonade and said, “For the love of God, Maeve. Would you give the Evil Kinkstress act a rest? It gets tired pretty fast.”
The Winter Lady let out an exasperated breath, put down her drink, and folded her arms sullenly across her chest. “Very well,” Maeve said, her tone petulant. “What is it you wish to know, wizard?”
“I’d like to know why Mab hasn’t been striking back at the Red Court after they trespassed on Sidhe territory during the battle last year.”
Maeve arched a brow at me. “That is knowledge, and therefore power. What are you prepared to trade for it?”
“Forgetfulness,” I said.
Maeve tilted her head. “I can think of nothing in particular I would like to forget.”
“I can think of something you want me to forget, Maeve.”
“Can you?”
I smiled, with teeth. “I’d be willing to forget what you did at Billy and Georgia’s wedding.”
“Pardon?” Maeve said. “I don’t seem to recall being present.”
She knew the score. She knew that I knew it, too. Her legality pissed me off. “Of course,” I replied. “You weren’t there. But your handmaiden was. Jenny Greenteeth.”
Maeve’s lips parted in sudden surprise.
“I saw through her glamour. Didn’t you know who shut her down?” I asked her, lifting my own eyebrows in faux innocence. “That was petty cruelty, Maeve, even for you. Trying to ruin their marriage.”
“Your wolf children did me a petty wrong,” Maeve replied. “They killed a favorite hireling of the Winter Court.”
“They owed their loyalty to Dresden when they killed the Tigress,” Lily murmured. “Even as did the Little Folk he used against Aurora. They acted with his consent and upon his will, Maeve. You know our laws.”
Maeve gave Lily a dirty look that was almost human.
“For what happened that night, they were mine.” I put my hands flat on the table and leaned a little toward Maeve, speaking with as much quiet intensity as I could. “I protect what is mine. You should know that by now. I have lawful reason for a quarrel with you.”
Maeve’s attention moved back to me, and her expression became remote and alien. “What is it you propose?”
“I’m willing to let things go as they are, all accounts settled, in exchange for an honest answer to my question.” I settled back in my chair and asked, “Why hasn’t Winter moved against the Red Court?”
Maeve regarded me with an odd little twinkle in her eye, then nodded and said, “Mab has not allowed it.”
Fix and Lily traded a quick look of surprise.
“Sooth,” Maeve said, nodding, evidently enjoying their reaction. “The Queen has readied her forces to strike at Summer, and has furthermore given specific orders preventing her captains from conducting operations against the Red Court.”
“That’s madness,” Lily said quietly.
Maeve folded her hands on the table, frowning at something far away, and said, “It may well be. Dark things stir in Winter’s heart. Things even I have never before seen. Dangerous things. I believe they are a portent.”
I tilted my head a little, focused on her. “How so?”
“What Aurora attempted was insane. Even among the Sidhe,” Maeve replied. “Her actions could have thrown enormous forces out of balance, to the ruin of all.”
“Her heart was in the right place,” Fix said, his tone mildly defensive.
“Maybe,” I told him, as gently as I could. “But good intent doesn’t amount to much when the consequences are epically screwed up.”
Maeve shook her head. “Hearts. Good. Evil. Mortals are always concerned with such nonsense.” She abruptly rose, her mind clearly elsewhere.
Something in her expression or manner gave me a sudden sense that she was worried. Deeply, truly worried. Little Miss Overlord was frightened.
“These mortal notions,” Maeve said. “Good, evil, love. All those other things your kind natter on about. Are they perhaps contagious?”
I rose with her, politely. “Some
would say so,” I told her.
She grimaced. “In the time since her death, I have often thought to myself that Aurora was stricken with some mortal madness. I believe the Queen of Air and Darkness has been taken by a similar contagion.” She suddenly shuddered and said, voice curt, “I have answered you with truth, and more than needed be said. Does that satisfy the accounting, mortal?”
“Aye,” I told her, nodding. “Good enough for me.”
“Then I take my leave.” She turned, took half a step, and there was a sudden gust of frozen air that knocked her mostly full glass of lemonade onto the floor. It froze in a lumpy puddle. Somewhere between tabletop and floor, Maeve vanished.
The three of us sat there quietly for a moment.
“She was lying,” Fix said.
“She can’t lie,” Lily and I said at exactly the same moment. Lily yielded the issue to me with a gesture of her hand, and I told Fix, “She can’t speak an outright lie, Fix. None of the Sidhe can. You know that.”
He frowned and made a frustrated, helpless little gesture with his hand. “But…Mab? Insane?”
“It does fit with our concerns,” Lily told him quietly.
Fix looked a little green around the edges. “I loved her like a sister, but Aurora’s madness was bad enough. If Mab sets out to send the world on a downward spiral…I mean, I can’t even imagine the kind of things she could do.”
“I can,” I said quietly. “I would suggest that you relay word of this to Titania, Lady. And take that as official concern from the Council. Please also convey the message that the Council is naturally interested in preserving the balance in Faerie. It would be of value to all of us to cooperate in order to learn more.”
Lily nodded once at me. “Indeed. I will do so.” She shivered and closed her eyes for a second, her expression distressed. “Harry, I’m very sorry, but the bindings on me…I stretch the bounds of my proper place.”