Turn Coat

by Butcher, Jim

  Some people are just born lucky, I guess.

  “Good evening,” I said to him, in Latin, the official tongue of the White Council. “How are you?”

  Lucky stared at me for another moment before he said, “We are in Scotland. It is morning, sir.”

  Right. My half hour walk had taken me six time zones ahead. “I need to speak with Wizard Listens-to-Wind.”

  “He is occupied,” Lucky told me. “He is not to be disturbed.”

  “Wizard McCoy sent me to speak to him,” I countered. “He felt it was important.”

  Lucky narrowed his eyes until they were almost closed. Then he said, “Wait here, please. Do not move.”

  The temple dogs continued staring at me. Okay, I knew they weren’t really staring. They were just rock. But for essentially mindless constructs, they had an intense gaze.

  “That will not be a problem,” I told him.

  He nodded and vanished through the door. I waited for ten uncomfortable minutes before he returned, touched each dog lightly on the head, and nodded to me. “Go in.”

  I took a wary step, watching the constructs, but they didn’t react. I nodded and went on by them, trying not to look like a nervous cat as I passed from the Ostentatiatory into LaFortier’s chambers.

  The first room I came to was a study, or an office, or possibly a curio shop. There was a massive desk carved out of some kind of unstained wood, though use and age had darkened the front edge, the handles of the drawers, and the area immediately in front of the modern office chair. A blotter lay precisely centered on the desk, with a set of four matching pens laid in a neat row. Shelves groaned with books, drums, masks, pelts, old weaponry, and dozens of other tokens that looked as though they came from exotic lands. The wall spaces between the shelves were occupied by shields fronted with two crossed weapons—a Norman kite shield with crossed broadswords, a Zulu buffalo-hide shield with crossed assegais, a Persian round shield with a long spike in its center with crossed scimitars, and many others. I knew museums that would declare Mardi Gras in the galleries if they could get their hands on a collection half that rich and varied.

  A door at the far end of the study led into what was evidently a bedroom. I could see a dresser and the foot of a covered bed approximately the size of a railroad car.

  I could also see red-black droplets of blood on the walls.

  “Come on, Harry Dresden,” called a quiet, weathered voice from the bedroom. “We’re at a stopping point and waiting on you.”

  I walked into the bedroom and found myself standing in a crime scene.

  The stench hit me first. LaFortier had been dead for days, and the second I crossed the threshold into the room, the odor of decay and death flooded my nose and mouth. He lay on the floor near the bed. Blood was sprinkled everywhere. His throat gaped wide-open, and he was covered in a black-brown crust of dried blood. There were defensive wounds on his hands, miniature versions of the slash on his throat. There might have been stab wounds on his torso, under the mess, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I closed my eyes for a second, swallowed down my urge to throw up, and looked around the rest of the room.

  A perfect circle of gold paint had been inscribed on the floor around the body, with white candles burning at five equidistant points. Incense burned at five more points halfway between the candles, and take it from me—the scent of sandalwood doesn’t complement that of a rotting corpse. It just makes it more unpleasant.

  I stood staring down at LaFortier. He had been a bald man, a little over average height, and cadaverously skinny. He didn’t look skinny now. The corpse had begun to bloat. The front of his shirt was stretched tight against its buttons. His back was arched and his hands had locked into claws. His teeth were bared in a grimace.

  “He died hard,” said the weathered voice, and “Injun Joe” Listens-to-Wind stepped out of a doorway that led to a bathroom, drying his hands on a towel. His long hair was grey-white, with a few threads of black in it. His leathery skin was the ruddy bronze of a Native American complexion exposed to plenty of sunshine, and his eyes were dark and glittering beneath white brows. He wore faded blue jeans, moccasin boots, and an old Aerosmith T-shirt. A fringed leather bag hung from a belt that ran slantwise across his body, and a smaller, similar bag hung from a thong around his neck. “Hello, Harry Dresden.”

  I bowed my head to him respectfully. Injun Joe was generally regarded as the most skilled healer on the White Council, and maybe in the world. He had earned doctoral degrees in medicine from twenty universities over the years, and he went back to school every decade or two to help him stay current with modern practice. “Went down fighting,” I agreed, nodding to LaFortier.

  Injun Joe studied the body for a moment, his eyes sad. Then he said, “I’d rather go in my sleep, I think.” He glanced back at me. “What about you?”

  “I want to be stepped on by an elephant while having sex with identical triplet cheerleaders,” I said.

  He gave me a grin that briefly stripped a century or two of care and worry from his face. “I’ve known a lot of kids who wanted to live forever.” The smile faded as he looked back to the dead man. “Maybe someday that will happen. But maybe not. Dying is part of being alive.”

  There wasn’t much I could say to that. I was quiet for a minute. “What are you setting up here?”

  “His death left a mark,” the old wizard replied. “We’re going to reassemble the psychic residue into an image.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Is . . . that even possible?”

  “Normally, no,” Injun Joe said. “But this room is surrounded on all sides by wards. We know what they’re all supposed to look like. That means we can extrapolate where the energy came from by what impact it had on the wards. It’s also why we haven’t moved the body.”

  I thought about it for a minute. What Injun Joe was describing was possible, I decided, but only barely. It would be something like trying to assemble an image illuminated by a single flash of light by backtracking how the light in the flash had all bounced around the room. The amount of focus, concentration, and the sheer mental process that would be involved in imagining the spell that could reassemble that image were staggering.

  “I thought this was open and shut already,” I said.

  “The evidence is conclusive,” Injun Joe said.

  “Then why are you bothering with this . . . this . . . thing?”

  Injun Joe looked at me steadily and didn’t say anything.

  “The Merlin,” I said. “He doesn’t think Morgan did it.”

  “Whether he did it or not,” Injun Joe said, “Morgan was the Merlin’s right hand. If he is tried and found guilty, the Merlin’s influence, credibility, and power will wane.”

  I shook my head. “Gotta love politics.”

  “Don’t be a child,” Injun Joe said quietly. “The current balance of power was largely established by the Merlin. If he is undone as the leader of the Council, it will cause chaos and instability across the supernatural world.”

  I thought about that for a minute. Then I asked, “You think he’s going to try to fake something?”

  Injun Joe didn’t react for a moment, and then he shook his head slowly and firmly. “I won’t let him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because LaFortier’s death has changed everything.”

  “Why?”

  Injun Joe nodded toward the study. “LaFortier was the member of the Council with the most contacts outside of the Western nations,” he said. “Many, many members of the Council come from Asia, Africa, South America—most of them from small, less powerful nations. They feel that the White Council ignores their needs, their opinions. LaFortier was their ally, the only member of the Senior Council who they felt treated them fairly.”

  I folded my arms. “And the Merlin’s right-hand man killed him.” “Whether Morgan is guilty or not, they think he did it, possibly on the Merlin’s orders,” Injun Joe said. “If he is found innocent and set free, matters co
uld turn ugly. Very ugly.”

  My stomach turned again. “Civil war.”

  Injun Joe sighed and nodded.

  Fantastic.

  “Where do you stand?” I asked him.

  “I would like to say that I stood with the truth,” he said, “but I cannot. The Council could survive the loss of Morgan without falling to pieces, even if it means a period of chaos while things settle out.” He shook his head. “A civil war would certainly destroy us.”

  “So Morgan did it, and that’s all there is to it,” I said quietly.

  “If the White Council falls, who will stand between humanity and those who would prey upon it?” He shook his head, and his long braid gently bumped his back. “I respect Morgan, but I cannot permit that to happen. He is one man balanced against mankind.”

  “So it’s going to be Morgan, when you’re finished,” I said. “No matter who it really is.”

  Injun Joe bowed his head. “I . . . doubt that it will work. Even with the Merlin’s expertise.”

  “What if it does? What if it shows you another killer? You start picking who lives and who dies, and to hell with the truth?”

  Injun Joe turned his dark eyes to me, and his voice became quiet and harder than stone. “Once, I watched the tribe I was expected to guide and protect be destroyed, Harry Dresden. I did so because my principles held that it was wrong for the Council or its members to involve itself in manipulating the politics of mortals. I watched and restrained myself, until it was too late for me to make a difference. When I did that, I chose who would live and who would die. My people died for my principles.” He shook his head. “I will not make that mistake again.”

  I looked away from him, and remained silent.

  “If you would excuse me,” he said, and walked from the room.

  Hell’s bells.

  I had been hoping to enlist Injun Joe’s aid—but I hadn’t counted on the additional political factors. I didn’t think he’d try to stop me if he knew what I was up to, but he certainly wasn’t going to help. The more I dug, the messier this thing kept getting. If Morgan was vindicated, doom. If he wasn’t vindicated, doom.

  Doom, doom, and doom.

  Damn.

  I couldn’t even be angry at Injun Joe. I understood his position. Hell, if it was me on the Senior Council and I was the one making the call, I wasn’t completely confident that I wouldn’t react the same way.

  My headache started coming on again.

  How the hell was I supposed to do the right thing if there wasn’t a right thing?

  Chapter Sixteen

  I stared at LaFortier’s corpse for a moment longer, shook my head, and then pulled one of those disposable cameras you can get from a vending machine out of my duster pocket. I walked around the room snapping pictures of the body, the blood splatters, and the broken bits of furniture. I ran through the entire role of film, making the most complete record of the scene that I could, and then pocketed the camera again and turned to leave LaFortier’s chambers.

  Back in the Ostentatiatory, I heard voices drifting up from below. I nodded pleasantly to Lucky, who gave me an inscrutable look, and walked to the balcony railing.

  Listens-to-Wind and the Merlin were standing by the buffet table, speaking quietly. Peabody hovered in the background, carrying a different set of folders, ledgers, and pens.

  I paused for a moment to Listen. It’s a trick I picked up somewhere along the line—not really magic, per se, as much as it is turning my mental focus completely to my sense of hearing.

  “. . . to find out the truth,” the Merlin was saying as he loaded up a plate with tiny sandwiches and wedges of cheese and fresh green grapes. “Surely you have no objection to that.”

  “I think the truth is already well established,” Listens-to-Wind replied quietly. “We’re just wasting time here. We should be focusing on controlling the fallout.”

  The Merlin was a tall man, regal of bearing, with a long white beard and long white hair to go with it—every inch the wizard’s wizard. He wore a blue robe and a silver circlet about his brow, and his staff was an elegant length of pure white wood, completely free of any marking. He paused in loading his plate and regarded Injun Joe with a level gaze. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  Injun Joe Listens-to-Wind sighed and held up his hands palms forward in a conciliatory gesture. “We’re ready to begin.”

  “Let me get some food in me and I’ll be right in.”

  “Ahem,” Peabody said diffidently. “Actually, Wizard Listens-to-Wind, if you could sign a few papers for me while the Merlin eats, it would be greatly appreciated. There are two files on your desk that need your approval and I have three . . .” He paused and began to juggle the load in his arms until he could peer into a folder. “No four, four others here with me.”

  Injun Joe sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Come on.” The two of them walked toward the stairs leading up to the balcony, turned the opposite way I had when they reached the top, and entered a chamber on the far side of the room.

  I waited until they were gone to descend the staircase to the ground level.

  The Merlin had seated himself in the nearest group of chairs and was eating his sandwiches. He froze for a second as he saw me, and then smoothly resumed his meal. Funny. I didn’t like the Merlin much more than I would a case of flaming gonorrhea, but I had never seen him in this context before. I’d always seen him at the head of a convened Council, and as this remote and unapproachable figure of unyielding authority and power.

  I’d never even considered the notion that he might eat sandwiches.

  I was about to go on past him, but instead swerved and came to a stop standing over him.

  He continued eating, apparently unconcerned, until he’d finished the sandwich. “Come to gloat, have you, Dresden?” he asked.

  “No,” I said quietly. “I’m here to help you.”

  He dropped the bit of cheese he’d been about to bite into. It fell to the floor, unnoticed, as his eyes narrowed, regarding me suspiciously. “Excuse me?”

  I bared my teeth in a cold little smile. “I know. It’s like having a cheese grater shoved against my gums, just saying it.”

  He stared at me for a silent minute before taking in a slow breath, settling back into the chair, and regarding me with steady blue eyes. “Why should I believe you would do any such thing?”

  “Because your balls are in a vise and I’m the only one who can pull them out,” I said.

  He arched an elegant silver eyebrow.

  “Okay,” I said. “That came out a little more homoerotic than I intended.”

  “Indeed,” said the Merlin.

  “But Morgan can’t stay hidden forever and you know it. They’ll find him. His trial will last about two seconds. Then he falls down and breaks his crown and your political career comes tumbling after.”

  The Merlin seemed to consider that for a moment. Then he shrugged a shoulder. “I think it’s far more likely that you will work very, very hard to make sure he dies.”

  “I like to think I work smarter, not harder,” I said. “If I want him dead, all I need to do is stand around and applaud. It isn’t as though I can make his case any worse.”

  “Oh,” said the Merlin. “I’m not so certain. You have vast talents in that particular venue.”

  “He’s already being hunted. Half the Council is howling for his blood. From what I hear, all the evidence is against him—and anything I find out about him is going to be tainted against him by our antagonistic past.” I shrugged. “At this point, I can’t do any more damage. So what have you got to lose?”

  A small smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Let’s assume, for a moment, that I agree. What do you want from me?”

  “A copy of his file,” I said. “Everything you’ve found out about LaFortier’s death, and how Morgan pulled it off. All of it.”

  “And what do you intend to do with it?” the Merlin asked.

  “I thought I’d use the inf
ormation to find out who killed LaFortier,” I said.

  “Just like that.”

  I paused to think for a minute. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  The Merlin took another bite of cheese and chewed it deliberately. “If my own investigations yield fruit,” he said, “I won’t need your help.”

  “The hell you won’t,” I said. “Everyone knows your interests are going to lie in protecting Morgan. Anything you turn up to clear him is going to be viewed with suspicion.”

  “Whereas your antagonism with Morgan is well-known,” the Merlin mused. “Anything you find in his favor will be viewed as the next best thing to divine testimony.” He tilted his head and stared at me. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “Maybe I don’t think he did it.”

  His eyebrows lifted in amusement that never quite became a smile. “And the fact that the man who died was one of those whose hand was set against you when you were yourself held in suspicion has nothing to do with it.”

  “Right,” I said, rolling my eyes. “There you go. There’s my self-centered, petty, vengeful motivation for wanting to help Morgan out. Because it serves that dead bastard LaFortier right.”

  The Merlin considered me for another long moment, and then shook his head. “There is a condition.”

  “A condition,” I said. “Before you will agree to let me help you get your ass out of the fire.”

  He gave me a bleak smile. “My ass is reasonably comfortable where it is. This is hardly my first crisis, Warden.”

  “And yet you haven’t told me to buzz off.”

  He lifted a finger, a gesture reminiscent of a fencer’s salute. “Touché. I acknowledge that it is, technically, possible for you to prove useful.”

  “Gosh, I’m glad I decided to be gracious and offer my aid. In fact, I’m feeling so gracious, I’m even willing to listen to your condition.”