Proven Guilty df-8

by Jim Butcher

  “You might not be able to rely on your guns,” I told her. “Reality doesn’t work the same way in the Nevernever, and it doesn’t always warn you when it’s changing the rules. It’s common to find areas of Faerie where gunpowder is noncombustible.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said.

  “Nope. Get some steel on you. There’s not a thing the faeries can do about that. It’s the biggest edge mortals have on them.”

  “The only edge,” Charity corrected. She passed me a sleeveless mail shirt, probably the only one that would fit me. I dumped my leather duster, armored myself, and then put the duster back on over the mail. Murphy shook her head, then she and Thomas collected mail and weaponry of their own.

  “Couple more things,” I said. “Once we’re inside, don’t eat or drink anything. Don’t accept any gifts, or any offers from a faerie interested in making a deal. You don’t want to wind up owing favors to one of the Sidhe, believe you me.” I frowned, thinking. Then I took a deep breath and said, “One thing more. Each of us must do everything possible to control our fear.”

  Murphy frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

  “We can’t afford to carry in too much fear with us. The fetches feed on it. It makes them stronger. If we go in there without keeping our fear under control, they’ll sense a meal coming. We’re all afraid, but we can’t let it control our thoughts, actions, or decisions. Try to keep your breathing steady and remain as calm as you can.”

  Murphy nodded, frowning faintly.

  “All right, then. Everyone hat up and sing out when you’re good to go.”

  I watched as Murphy got her gear into place. Charity helped her secure the armor. Her mail was a short-sleeved shirt, maybe one of Charity’s spare suits. She’d compensated for the oversize armor by belting it in tight, but the short sleeves fell to her elbows, and the hem reached most of the way to her knees. Murphy looked like a kid dressing up in an adult’s clothes.

  Her expression grew calm and distant as she worked, the way it did when she was focused on shooting, or in the middle of one of her five trillion and three formal katas. I closed my eyes and tentatively pushed my magical senses toward her. I could feel the energy in her, the life, pulsing and steady. There were tremors in it, here and there, but there was no screaming beacon of violent terror that would trumpet our approach to the bad guys.

  Not that I thought there would be. What she lacked in height, she more than made up for in guts. On the other hand, Murphy had never been in the Nevernever, and even though Faerie was as normal a place as you can find there, it could get pretty weird. Despite training, discipline, and determination, novice deepwater divers can never be sure that they will remain free from the onset of the condition called “pressure sickness.” The Nevernever was much the same. You can’t tell how someone is going to react the first time they fall down the rabbit hole.

  Thomas, being Thomas, made the mail into a fashion statement. He wore black clothing, black combat boots, and the arming jacket and mail somehow managed to go with the rest of his wardrobe. He had his saber on his belt on his left side, carried the shotgun in his right hand, and made the whole ensemble look like an upper-class version of The Road Warrior.

  I checked on Thomas with my wizard’s senses, too. His presence had never been fully human, but like the other members of the White Court the vampiric aspects of him were not obvious to casual observation, not even to wizards. There was something feline about his aura, the same quality I would expect in a hungry leopard waiting patiendy for the next meal to approach; enormous power held in perfect balance. There was a darker portion of him, too, the part I’d always associated with the demonic presence that made him a vampire, a black and bitter well of energy, equal parts lust, hunger, and self-loathing. Thomas was no fool-he was certainly afraid. But the fear couldn’t be sensed under that still, black surface.

  Charity, after she finished helping Murphy, stepped back from her and went to her knees in the parking lot. She folded her hands in her lap, bowed her head, and continued praying. Around her I felt a kind of ambient warmth, as though she knelt in her own personal sunbeam, the same kind of energy that had always characterized her husband’s presence. Faith, I suppose. She was afraid, too, but it wasn’t the primitive survival fear the fetches required. Her fear was for her daughter; for her safety, her future, her happiness. And as I watched her, I saw her lips form my name, then Thomas’s, then Murphy’s.

  Charity was more afraid for us than herself.

  Right there, I promised myself that I would get her back home with her daughter, back to her family and her husband, safe and sound and whole. I would not, by God, hesitate for a heartbeat to do whatever was necessary to make my friend’s family whole again.

  I checked myself out, taking inventory. Leather duster, ill-fitting mail shirt, staff, and blasting rod, check. Shield bracelet and amulet, check. My abused left hand ached a little, and what I could feel of it felt stiff-but I could move my fingers. My head hurt. My limbs felt a little bit shaky with fatigue. I had to hope that adrenaline would kick in and make that problem go away when it counted.

  “Everyone good to go?” I asked.

  Murphy nodded. Thomas drawled, “Yep.”

  Charity rose and said, “Ready.”

  “Let me sweep the outside of the building first,” I said. “This is their doorway home. It’s possible that they’ve got the place booby-trapped, or that they’ve set up wards. Once I clear it, we’ll go in.”

  I trudged off to walk a slow circle around Pell’s theater. I let my fingertips drag along the side of the building, closed my eyes most of the way, and extended my wizard’s senses into the structure. It wasn’t a quick process, but I tried not to dawdle, either. As I walked, I sensed a kind of trapped, suffocated energy bouncing around inside the building-leakage from the Nevernever probably, from when the fetches took Molly across. But several times I also felt tiny, malevolent surges of energy, too random and mobile to be spells or wards. Their presence was disturbingly similar to that of the fetch I’d destroyed in the hotel.

  I came back to where I’d begun about ten minutes later.

  “Anything?” Thomas asked.

  “No wards. No mystic land mines,” I told him. “But I think there’s something in there.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like fetches,” I said. “Smaller than the big ones we’re after, and probably set to guard the doorway between here and the Nevernever.”

  “They’ll try to ambush us when we go in,” Murphy said.

  “Probably,” I said. “But if we know about it, we can turn it against them. When they come, hit them fast and hard, even if it seems like overkill. We can’t afford any injuries.”

  Murphy nodded.

  “What are we waiting for?” Thomas asked.

  “More help,” I replied.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not strong enough to open a stable passage to deep Faerie,” I said. “Even if I wasn’t tired, and I managed to get it open, I doubt it would stay that way for more than a few seconds.”

  “Which would be bad?” Murphy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What would happen?” Charity asked quietly.

  “We’d die,” I said. “We’d be trapped in deep Faerie, near the strongholds of all kinds of trouble, with no way to escape but to try to find our way to the portions of Faerie that are near Earth. The locals would eat us and spit out the bones before we got anywhere close to escape.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes and said, “This isn’t exactly helping me keep my mind off my fear, man.”

  “Shut up,” I told him. “Or I’ll move to my second initiative and start telling you knock-knock jokes.”

  “Harry,” Murphy said, “if you knew you couldn’t open the door long enough to let us get the girl, how did you plan to manage it?”

  “I know someone who can help. Only she’s totally unable to help me.”

  Murphy scowled at me, then said, “You�
��re enjoying this. You just love to dance around questions and spring surprises when you know something the rest of us don’t.”

  “It’s like heroin for wizards,” I confirmed.

  An engine throbbed nearby, and tires made a susurrus on asphalt. A motorcycle prowled around the theater to its rear parking lot, bearing two helmeted riders. The rearmost rider swung down from the bike, a shapely woman in leather pants and a denim jacket. She reached up, took off her green helmet, and shook out her snow-white hair. It fell at once into a silken sheet without the aid of a brush or a comb. The Summer Lady, Lily, paused to give me a slight bow, and she smiled at me, her green eyes particularly luminous.

  The bike’s driver proved to be Fix. The Summer Knight wore close-fitting black pants and a billowing shirt of green silk. He bore a rapier with a sturdy guard on his hip, and the leather that wrapped its handle had worn smooth and shiny. Fix put both helmets on a rack on the motorcycle, nodded at us, and said, “Good morning.”

  I made introductions, though I went into few details beyond names and titles. When that was done, I told Lily, “Thank you for coming.”

  She shook her head. “I am yet in your debt. It was the least I could do. Though I feel I must warn you that I may not be able to give you the help that you require.”

  Meaning Titania’s compulsion to prevent Lily from helping me was still in force. But I’d thought of a way to get around that.

  “I know you can’t help me,” I said. “But I wish to tell you that the onus of your debt to me has been passed to another in good faith. I must redress a wrong I have done to the girl named Molly Carpenter. To do so, I offer her mother your debt to me as payment.”

  Fix barked out a satisfied laugh. “Hah!”

  Lily’s mouth spread into a delighted smile. “Well done, wizard,” she murmured. Then she turned to Charity and asked, “Do you accept the wizard’s offer of payment, Lady?”

  Charity looked a little lost, and she glanced at me. I nodded my head at her.

  “Y-yes,” she said. “Yes.”

  “So mote it be,” Lily said, bowing her head to Charity. “Then I owe you a debt, Lady. What may I do to repay it?”

  Charity glanced at me again. I nodded and said, “Just tell her.”

  Charity turned back to the Summer Lady. “Help us retrieve my daughter, Molly,” she said. “She is a prisoner of the fetches of the Winter Court.”

  “I will be more than happy to do all in my power to aid you,” Lily said.

  Charity closed her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “It will not be as much help as you might desire,” Lily told her, her voice serious. “I dare not directly strike at the servants of Winter acting in lawful obligation to their Queen, except in self-defense. Were I to attack, the consequences could be grave, and retaliation immediate.”

  “Then what can you do?” Charity asked.

  Lily opened her mouth to answer, but then said, “The wizard seems to have something in mind.”

  “Yep,” I said. “I was just coming to that.”

  Lily smiled at me and bowed her head, gesturing for me to continue.

  “This is where they took the girl across,” I told Lily. “Must be why they attacked Pell first-to make sure the building was shut down and locked up, so that they would have an immediate passage back, if they needed it. I’m also fairly sure they left some guardians behind.”

  Lily frowned at me and walked over to the building. She touched it with her fingers, and her eyes closed. It took her less than a tenth of the time it had me, and she never moved from the spot. “Indeed,” she said. “Three lesser fetches at least. They cannot sense us yet, but they will know when anyone enters, and attack.”

  “I’m counting on it,” I said. “I’m going to go in first and let them see me.”

  Fix lifted his eyebrows. “At which point they tear you to bits? This is a craftier plan than I had anticipated.”

  I flashed him a grin. “Wouldn’t want you to feel left out, Fix. I want Lily to hold a veil over everyone else. Once the fetches show up to rip off my face, Lily drops the veil, and the rest of you drop them.”

  “Yeah, that’s a much better plan,” Fix drawled, his fingertips tracing over the hilt of his sword. “And I can cut up vassals of Winter, so long as it is no inconvenience to you, of course, m’lady.”

  Lily shook her head. “Not at all, sir Knight. And I will be glad to veil you and your allies, Lady Charity.”

  Charity paused and said, “Wait a minute. Do I understand this situation correctly? You are not allowed to assist Harry, but because Harry has… what? Passed his debt to me?”

  “Banks buy and sell mortgages all the time,” I said.

  Charity arched a brow. “And because he’s given me your debt to him, you’re doing whatever you can to help?”

  Fix and Lily exchanged a helpless glance.

  “They’re also under a compulsion that prevents them from directly discussing it with anyone,” I filled in. “But you’ve got the basics right, Charily.”

  Charity shook her head. “Aren’t they going to be in trouble for this? Won’t… who commands her?”

  “Titania,” I said.

  Charity blinked at me, and I could tell she’d heard the name before. “The… the Faerie Queen?”

  “One of them,” I said. “Yeah.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t… enough people are already in danger.”

  “Don’t worry about us, ma’am,” Fix assured her, and winked. “Titania has already laid down the law. We’ve obeyed it. Not our fault if what she decreed was not what she wanted.”

  “Translation,” I said. “We got around her fair and square. She won’t like it, but she’ll accept it.”

  “Oh yeah,” Thomas muttered under his breath. “This isn’t coming back to bite anyone in the ass later.”

  “Ixnay,” I growled at him, then turned and walked toward the theater’s rear entrance. I took up my staff in a firm grip and put its tip against the chains holding the door shut. I took a moment to slow my breathing and focus my thoughts. This wasn’t a gross-power exercise. I wouldn’t have to put nearly as much oomph into shattering the chain if I kept it small, precise, focused. Blasting a door down was a relatively simple exercise for me. What I wanted here was to use a minimum of power to snap a single link in the chain.

  I brought my thoughts to a pinpoint focus and muttered, “Forzare.”

  Power lashed through the length of the staff, and there was a hiss and a sharp crack nearly as loud as a gunshot. The chain jumped. I lowered my staff, to find one single link split into two pieces, each broken end glowing with heat. I nudged the heated links to the ground with the tip of my staff, faintly surprised and pleased with how little relative effort it had taken.

  I reached out and tried the doorknob.

  Locked.

  “Hey, Murph,” I said. “Look at that zeppelin.”

  I heard her sigh and turn around. I popped a couple of stiff metal tools out of my duster’s pocket and started finagling the lock with them. My left hand wasn’t much help, but it was at least able to hold the tool steady while my right did most of the work.

  “Hey,” Thomas said. “When did you get those?”

  “Butters says it’s good for my hand to do physical therapy involving the use of manual dexterity.”

  Thomas snorted. “So you started learning to pick locks? I thought you were playing guitar.”

  “This is simpler,” I said. “And it doesn’t make dogs start howling.”

  “I might have killed you if I’d heard ‘House of the Rising Sun’ one more time,” Thomas agreed. “Where’d you get the picks?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Murphy and said, “Little bird.”

  “One of these days, Dresden,” Murphy said, still stubbornly faced away.

  I got the tumblers lined up and twisted with slow, steady pressure. The dead bolt slid to, and I pulled the door slightly ajar. I rose, put the tools away, and took up my staff aga
in, ready for instant trouble. Nothing happened for a moment. I Listened at the door for half a minute, but heard not a sound.

  “All right,” I said. “Here we go. Everyone ready to-”

  I glanced over my shoulder and found the parking lot entirely empty except for me.

  “Wow,” I said. “Good veil, Lily.” Then I turned back around just as if my nerves weren’t jangling like guitar strings and said, “Ding, ding. Round one.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  I kicked the door open, staff held ready to fight, and shouted, “And I’m all outta bubble gum!”

  The pale grey light of the overcast sunrise coming in over the lake showed me a service corridor, the kind with walls that have marks and writing all over them, floors with the paint chipped off all down the middle of the walkway, and lots of stuff stacked up here and there. At the far end of the hallway was a door, propped open with a rubber wedge. A worn sign on the door read EMPLOYEES ONLY. A curtained doorway about halfway down the hall opened onto what must have been the concessions counter in the little theater’s lobby.

  Silence reigned. Not a single light shone within.

  “Guess you had to see that one,” I said to the empty building. “John Carpenter. Rowdy Roddy Piper. Longest fight scene ever. You know?”

  Silence.

  “Missed that one, huh?” I asked the darkness.

  I stood there, hoping the bad guys would make this one easy. If they charged me, I could duck aside and then let my concealed allies take them apart. Instead, as bad guys so often do, they failed to oblige me.

  I started to feel a little silly just standing there. If I went ahead, the narrow passage would negate the participation of those now lurking in veiled ambush behind me. But had I really been alone, the hallway would have been as reasonable a fighting position as I could hope to gain-no way for the fetches to encircle me, no way to use their advantage of numbers. Had I really been alone, I would have needed to jump on an opportunity like that. There are stupid faeries, but fetches aren’t among them. If I didn’t behave like a lone wolf come to party, it would tip off the presence of my entourage.