by Jim Butcher
“It is for this reason that I requested a telephone conference with the Red King,” he continued. He used the English word for telephone, since there wasn’t a proper Latin noun for it. It garnered a reaction from the assembled Council watching the proceedings. Such things were not done. “And after speaking with him for a time, I secured his support for a clearly defined, binding, and mutually acceptable peace. Creating the peace is in everyone’s best interests, and it is for this reason that I am pleased to present to you, wizards of the White Council, the Duchess Arianna Ortega of the Red Court.”
Several wizards not far from Cristos’s position on the stage began clapping enthusiastically, and it spread haltingly throughout the chamber, eventually maturing into polite applause.
Arianna stepped up to the podium, smiling.
She was gorgeous. I don’t mean “cutest girl at the club” gorgeous. I mean that she looked like a literal goddess. The details almost didn’t matter. Tall. Dark hair. Skin like milk, like polished ivory. Eyes as blue as the twilight sky. She wore a gown of red silk, with a neckline that plunged gorgeously. Jewels touched her throat, her ears. Her hair was piled up on her head, occasional loose ringlets falling out. Hers was a beauty so pure that it was nearly painful to behold—Athena heading out on a Friday night.
It took me a good five or six seconds of staring to realize that there was something beneath that beauty that I did not like at all. Her loveliness itself, I realized, was a weapon—such creatures as she had driven men literally insane with desire and obsession. More to the point, I knew that her beauty was only skin-deep. I knew what lurked beneath.
“Thank you, Wizard Cristos,” the duchess said. “It is a very great honor to be received here today in the interests of creating a peace between our two nations, and thereby finally putting an end to the abominable bloodshed between our peoples.”
The Applause Squad started up again as Arianna paused. People picked up on the cue faster this time. Outside of the wizards who stood on the floor beneath the raised stage, the applause was still polite and halfhearted.
I waited until it began to die before I released the door. It closed with a quiet boom precisely in the moment of silence between the end of the applause and the duchess’s next statement.
Nearly a thousand faces turned my way.
Silence fell. I could suddenly hear the little waterfall and the occasional twitter of a bird.
I stared hard at Arianna and said, my voice carrying clearly, “I want the girl, vampire.”
She met my gaze with polite serenity for a moment. Then the hint of a smile touched her face, bringing with it a shadow of mockery. It made my blood boil, and I heard my knuckles pop as they clenched harder at my staff.
“Wizard Dresden!” Cristos said in sharp rebuke. “This is neither the time nor the place for more of your warmongering idiocy.”
I was so impressed with his authority that I raised my voice and said, louder, “Give back the child you took from her family, Arianna Ortega, kidnapper and thief, or face me under the provisions of the Code Duello.”
Murmurs ran through the assembly like a rumble of thunder.
“Wizard Dresden!” Cristos cried, aghast. “This is an ambassador of an Accorded nation, promised safe conduct while she is here on a mission of peace. This is not done!” He looked around the room and pointed a finger at several grey-cloaked wizards standing not too far from me. “Wardens! Escort this man from the chamber!”
I shot a glance at them. They were all old guard, all dangerous, all tough, and they really didn’t like me. Six sets of eyes with all the mercy and pity of a gun’s mouth locked onto me.
I heard Molly gulp.
I looked back at them and said, in English, “You sure you want it to be like this, fellas?”
It must have come out sounding more threatening than I thought it had, because half a dozen White Council hard cases stopped walking. They traded looks with one another.
I turned from them back to the stage, and addressed the vampire. “Well, thief?”
Arianna turned to Cristos and gave him a rather sad and gentle smile. “I’m sorry about this disruption, Wizard Cristos. I’m not sure what this is about, but it’s quite clear that Wizard Dresden feels that he has been badly wronged by my people. Bear in mind that whether justly held or not, his feelings contributed to this war’s beginning.”
“I apologize for this outrageous behavior,” Wizard Cristos said.
“Not at all,” Arianna assured him. “I, too, have suffered personal loss in this conflict. It’s always difficult to control the emotions arising from such things—particularly for the very young. That’s just one of the problems we’ll need to overcome if we are to break the cycle of violence between your folk and mine. The veterans of wars suffer horrible mental and emotional scars, vampires and wizards alike. I take no offense at Wizard Dresden’s words or actions, and do not hold him responsible for them.” She turned to me and said, her voice compassionate, “I can sincerely say that I understand exactly how much pain you’re in right now, Wizard Dresden.”
I had to force myself not to raise my blasting rod and burn that false empathy off of the duchess’s face. I gripped my gear with both hands, to make sure they weren’t going to try anything without consulting me.
“We can never regain the loved ones this war has taken from us,” she continued. “All we can do is end the fighting—before even more of our loved ones get hurt. I’m here to avert any more needless deaths, Dresden. Surely you can see exactly why I would do such a thing.”
Boy, did I. It wasn’t enough for her simply to kill me. She wanted to defeat me utterly first, to have her cake and eat it, too. If she brought the fighting to a close this way, she would garner massive credibility in the supernatural community—and if she did it while simultaneously sticking it to me, it would only be that much more elegant a victory.
She smiled at me again, with that same tiny shading of mockery so faint that no one who wasn’t looking for it could possibly have seen it. It was just enough to make sure that I could see the malice behind it, to make sure that I damned well knew she was rubbing it in my face in front of the entire White Council. She’d probably practiced it in a mirror.
“I’m giving you a chance,” I said, my voice harsh. “Return the child and it ends. We’re quits. Make me take her from you and I’ll play hardball.”
She put long, elegant fingers to her chest, as if confused. “I don’t know why you’re so upset with me, or what I have to do with this child, sir,” Arianna said. “But I understand your outrage. And I wish that I could help you.”
Someone stepped up close to my side, a little in front of me. She was a young woman, not particularly tall, with curling brown hair and a heart-shaped face that was appealing and likable, if not beautiful. Her eyes were steady and hard.
“Harry,” said Anastasia Luccio, captain of the Wardens, “don’t do this. Please.”
I clenched my jaw and spoke in a heated whisper. “Ana, if you knew what she’d done.”
“You are not going to restart the war and tarnish whatever honor the White Council has left by attacking an ambassador visiting under a pledge of safe conduct,” she said evenly. “You’re strong, Dresden. But you aren’t that strong. If you try it, there are at least thirty wizards here who could take you alone. Working together, they wouldn’t just beat you. They’d swat you down like a bug—and then you’d be imprisoned until they decided what to do with you, three or four months from now.”
My belly and chest felt like they were on fire. I looked past Anastasia to Duchess Arianna again.
She was watching me—hell, probably listening to me, too, vampire hearing being what it was. Her smile was a scalpel drawn slowly over my skin.
Anastasia put her hand on my arm—very gently, not firmly. She was making a request. “Harry, please.”
Behind me, Molly added, “This won’t help Maggie, boss.”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to fight.
On the stage one of the hooded figures of the Senior Council reached up and drew back his hood. My old mentor, Ebenezar McCoy, was a stocky old man with broad hands and scarred knuckles, bald except for a faint fringe of pale white hairs. His blunt, strong features were smooth and unreadable, but he met my gaze and gave me a very small, very precise nod. The message was clear. I could practically hear the old man’s voice growling, Trust me, Hoss. Go with her.
I felt my lip lift up from my teeth in a silent snarl.
Then I turned and stalked from the chamber, my work boots thumping heavily on the floor, my staff clenched in my hand. Anastasia walked with me, her hand still on my arm, making it clear that I was being escorted from the room, even if she’d used a gentler persuasion than Cristos would have preferred.
The Wardens closed the door behind me with a soft, solid boom, cutting me off from the assembled might of the White Council.
Chapter
Eight
“Hey,” said one of the young Wardens outside the ostentatiatory. “Hey, Harry. What’s up, man?”
I owed Carlos Ramirez more than a quick shake of my head, but I couldn’t give it to him. I didn’t want to talk at all, because I wasn’t sure I could keep it from turning into furious shouting. I heard Molly turn quickly to him and say, “Not now. There’s a problem, we’re working on it, and I promise to call you if there’s something you can do to help.”
“But—” he said, taking a few steps after us.
“Warden,” Luccio said firmly. “Remain at your post.”
He must have obeyed. We kept on walking and he didn’t follow us.
Luccio marched me down a tunnel I had never seen before, took a few turns into the darker hallways lit only by light she called to hang in the air around us, and then opened a door into a warm, firelit room. It looked like a den. There was a large fireplace crackling, several candles lit, and a lot of comfortable furniture scattered around in solitary nooks and in groups, so that one could have as much or as little conversational company as one wished. There was also a bar. A very large, very well-stocked bar.
“Oh,” Molly said, as she came in behind me. “Cozy.”
Anastasia let go of my arm and marched straight to the bar. She got down a bottle of black glass and poured amber fluid into three shot glasses. She brought them to a nearby table, gestured for us to sit, and then put all three glasses in the middle of the table, leaving it to us to choose which we would drink—two centuries of Warden-level paranoia tends to sink into your bones.
I sat down at the table. I took a glass and downed it. The liquor left a scouring heat in my chest as it went down, and I wanted it.
Anastasia took hers and made it vanish without twitching an eye-lash. Molly looked at her glass, took a polite sip, and said, to the other woman’s amused glance, “Somebody should be the designated … not driver, but sober person.”
“Harry,” Anastasia said, turning to me. “What you did today was dangerous.”
“I could take the bitch,” I growled.
“There’s no way for us to know how old Arianna is,” she contradicted, “because humanity hasn’t had a written language for that long. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I pushed my empty glass away with my fingers and said, “I could take the prehistoric bitch.” I looked around the room for a moment and said, “What is this place?”
Anastasia leaned back in her chair and spread her hands, palms up. “Welcome to the Worry Room.”
“Worry Room, huh.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “Didn’t you see the bar?”
Molly giggled, and suppressed it. “Sorry.”
Anastasia’s voice turned faintly ironic. “It’s a place where we crusty old Wardens can go when we’re sick of the softhearted wizards who are so lily-livered that they want us to permit wayward children with enough talent to go warlock to live instead of executing them. Like your apprentice, here. I guarantee you some drinks were poured in this room and bitter words said about how we would regret it after her trial.”
I grunted. “Were you pouring, drinking, or talking?”
She shrugged. “If not for her, then for plenty of others. I was here when Morgan drank himself into a stupor after your trial, Harry.”
“No wonder it feels so cozy.”
She smiled tightly. “It’s likely the most private and secure room in the complex.”
“Paranoia Central is only likely free of spies? You guys are getting sloppy.”
“Dammit, Harry.” Luccio shook her head. “You’ve done the Warden job for a while. Or most of it. You still think that the Wardens never have a reason for acting as … decisively as they sometimes do?”
I sighed. Life is never simple. I had railed against the Wardens for years for killing children, young men and women who had gone warlock, lost control of their magical talents and their minds by indulging in black magic. Then I had seen the results of a few warlocks on a spree. They were ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly. “You’ve got good reason,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it. Doesn’t make it right.”
“Not everyone is so far over the edge they can’t come back,” Molly added softly. “Sometimes people just … just get lost. They just need someone to show them how to come back.”
“Yes. And in the time it takes to make that distinction, a lot of innocent people have died, Miss Carpenter,” Anastasia said, her tone frank and gentle. “The human population has expanded with unthinkable speed in the past two centuries. More and more wizard-level talents are being born. Every time one of them goes warlock, we have less and less time to confront the problem—and nowhere near enough help.”
“Prevention,” I said. “Find them early and they don’t go warlock.”
“Resources.” She sighed. We’d had this talk before. “If the entire Council did nothing but Warden duty, full-time, it still wouldn’t be enough.”
“Education,” I said. “Use the Paranet. Get the smaller talents to help identify the gifted.”
She smiled at me and said, “I’m still building support for it. It’s a good idea, Harry. It might even work. The problem is making some of the others in the Council understand it. They see it only as a security risk, especially after Peabody. But it’s a good idea. Its time will come—eventually.”
I grunted. I was quiet for a moment, and then I said, “Familiar argument, huh? Give me some routine. Calm me down. Is that it?”
“Anxiety, anger, and agitation cloud the mind. That’s why the Worry Room is here.” She smiled faintly. “I’m well aware of what it looks like when a wizard has been pushed to the brink.” She poured the two of us another shot and said, “So why don’t you tell me how the prehistoric bitch did it to you.”
I took the glass without drinking. “She took a little girl.”
“Vampires take a lot of children,” Anastasia said. “What makes this one so special?”
I said nothing. Silence reigned. I looked up and met her eyes.
Anastasia and I had seen each other for a while. She knew me better than most. She studied my face for maybe half a second, and then took a deep breath. “Harry,” she said, “don’t say anything about this to anyone you don’t trust with your life.”
I gave her a small, bitter smile and nodded. Knowledge was power. Anyone who knew Maggie was my daughter might use her for leverage against me. Anastasia wouldn’t, not for any reason—but others on the White Council would. Oh, they’d probably use softer gloves than Arianna had: I could just see being offered money to help support Maggie, give her access to nice schools, a privileged upbringing, and everything a father could want for his child—so that the offer could be withdrawn if I didn’t play ball. After all, these were the good guys.
But it could get worse. I literally shuddered to think what Nicodemus might do with the knowledge—or, joyous thought, Mab. (Yes, that Mab. Take it from me: The stories don’t do her justice.) I’d met some other real gems out there as well, and none of them had reasons to like
me. On the other hand, I thought with a shiver, Arianna was the devil I didn’t know.
Regardless, it wouldn’t be helpful to let knowledge of Maggie become general. I had never planned on making an open case of her blood relation to me before the Council. It wouldn’t win sympathy—only interest. The fewer people who knew I was Maggie’s father, the safer she would be.
And yes.
I am aware of the irony.
I kept looking at Anastasia and asked, “Can I count on you?”
She put her hands flat on the table and looked down at them for a slow five count, considering her words before she answered. “I am not what I was in a fight, Harry.”
I ground my teeth. “So you’ll sit here where it’s safe.”
For the first time since I’d arrived in Edinburgh, Anastasia Luccio’s dark eyes flashed with real anger, and I suddenly remembered that this woman had been the captain of the Wardens for decades. The air between us grew literally physically hotter. “Think carefully,” she said in a very quiet voice, “before you call me a coward.”
Since the stern, iron-haired captain had been magically relocated to the body of a college grad student, her powers had diminished significantly—but her savvy and experience hadn’t. I wouldn’t care to fight Luccio, regardless of our relative strengths. And, hell, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen her fight more than once since then.
The anger inside me wanted to spill out onto her. But she deserved better than that from me. I stuffed it back down and lifted the fingers of one hand in a gesture of mute apology. Anastasia Luccio might be many things, but she was no coward—and she was born and raised in a day and age where such an accusation might literally require a duel to be refuted.
No, thank you.
She nodded, mollified, and some of the tension went out of her. “I was going to say that I would be of most use to you here—gathering intelligence, asking questions, and digging up resources for you to use. Of course you should fight—but you can’t do that until you find the girl, and some of our own people will have an interest in making sure you don’t disrupt the peace process. If I am working from here, I can circumvent them.”