Jim Butcher - Dresden Files Omnibus

by Jim Butcher

  I walked in beside the old man. Inside the doorway was an antechamber where we were politely greeted by a handsome young man of heritage so mixed it was impossible to localize to so much as a given continent but might be generally covered by “Mediterranean.” His hair was bleached white blond, and the man had truly unsettling eyes, somehow blending the colors of metallic gold with old-growth ivy. He wore a grey silk suit that didn’t show the lines of any concealed weapons he might be carrying. I’d observed him once, while I was busy being dead. He was one of Marcone’s troubleshooters, and his name was Childs.

  A German shepherd dog stood calmly beside him, wearing a simple black nylon harness with one of those carrying handles on it.

  “Hey there, Childs,” I said. “How’s tricks?” I extended my hand to the German shepherd, who gave it a polite sniff and then regarded me with considerably more calmness and professionalism than I was feeling.

  “Good evening, ladies, gentlemen,” he said politely. “Have we met, sir?”

  “I met you, Childs,” I said. “What’s with the dog?”

  The man looked decidedly uncomfortable. “My employer’s main concern tonight is that no one brings any explosive compounds inside,” he said calmly.

  “Yeah. That would suck, if everything blew up and the place burned down,” I said. “I speak from experience.” I might have given him a toothy smile as I said it.

  “Hoss,” Ebenezar chided me gently.

  Childs swallowed, probably exactly as hard as was warranted by the situation, but gave us a polite smile. “Please enjoy your evening, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “Hngh,” Ebenezar said, and stumped inside. I let the younger Wardens follow the old man in and brought up the rear.

  “Good work,” I said to the dog as I went by. I hooked a thumb at Childs. “Make sure he gets a cookie later. Him such a gentleman.”

  The dog tilted his head, as dogs do, and his tail thumped once against Childs’s leg. The troubleshooter gave me a somewhat sour smile and turned his attention deliberately back to the front door.

  We proceeded into the main interior hallway. The castle was as I had remembered it: walls of grim stone, uncovered by plaster or paint, all rough-hewn blocks the size of a big man’s torso. Candles burned in sconces every few steps, lighting the way, making the air smell of beeswax and something faintly floral. There was nothing like decoration on the walls, and the defensive power of the enchantments around the place was so strong that I could feel it through the soles of my shoes.

  Ramirez glanced over his shoulder at me and said, “No guards.”

  “Don’t count on it,” I said. “Marcone keeps a platoon of Einherjaren on standby. Remember?”

  “Yeah,” Ramirez said grimly. “Those guys.”

  “What guys?” Wild Bill asked.

  “Viking revenants with centuries of experience in every kind of warfare known to man,” I clarified. “The guys doing the fighting and feasting in Valhalla. They don’t mind dying. They’ve had practice.”

  “Consider them to be the most dangerous mortal warriors on the planet,” Ebenezar growled from the front. “They are. Don’t interact any more than you must. Many are berserkers, and safest left alone.”

  Ramirez lifted an eyebrow, nodded, and fell silent again. And as he did, we turned a corner and music came drifting down the hall from wide-open double doors ahead of us, along with a swelling of brighter lights.

  Ebenezar glanced up at me, and his grizzled brows furrowed. “Hoss. You all right?”

  I checked myself, trying to get my poker face back on. “Last time I went to one of these,” I said, “things went kind of sideways.”

  “Heh,” the old man said. “Me, too. Just you remember what I taught you.”

  “Never start the fight. Always finish it.”

  “Not that.”

  “Make your bed and do your chores?”

  “Not that.”

  “Something, something, never let them see you sweat.”

  A grin flashed over the old man’s seamed face, there and gone. “Close enough.”

  Then he gripped his stumpy staff and strode forward into the gathering.

  I took a deep breath.

  Then I followed him.

  Chapter

  Twenty

  Marcone’s little castle had a large central hall that took up what had to be a goodly portion of its ground floor.

  The room was lit by chunks of glowing crystal mounted in sconces. Brownie work, unless I missed my guess, by the faint tinge of spring green and yellow coloring various pieces of white quartz—itself a potent charm against dark magic when properly attuned. That got my attention, right away. Summer Court work was unmistakable.

  And apparently, Baron Marcone had convinced them to help him.

  Music played from somewhere nearby, from live musicians, perhaps in an alcove behind some light curtains. I didn’t recognize the composer of the little chamber orchestral piece, but that mostly meant that it wasn’t Vivaldi. One of the Germans was as close as I could get. Whoever was playing, they weren’t human. It held too much exactitude, too much unity in the tones, as if one mind had been playing all the instruments, and the shivering notes of perfect harmony it cast brought forth the ancient enchantment of music that had nothing to do with magic. That was Sidhe work, or I’d eat my tie, and from the sheer murderous precision of it, members of the Unseelie Court were responsible.

  And they were playing for Marcone’s party. Something that crowd did not do just for kicks—if they were doing this for a mortal, it was because they were paying off a favor.

  I thought about the vaults we’d partially wrecked in the basement of Marcone’s bank, where he’d been entrusted with protecting assets from a dozen different supernatural nations at least. Just how many markers had Marcone given out? How many truly scary beings were in the man’s debt?

  I frowned. The robber baron of Chicago was becoming a real concern.

  And the hell of it was, I wasn’t sure the residents of my town weren’t at least partly better off for it. For all the harm he dealt out to the world, Marcone’s people had taken the fight to the Fomor when they’d been hitting the town.

  The swirl of attendees was a little dazzling, and I took a moment to just take it in.

  Broad sheets of silk in a variety of colors decorated the roof and walls, streaming down from overhead to vaguely imitate the interior of an enormous tent, where negotiations would doubtless take place in the field between ancient armies. It took me a moment, but I recognized the various colors and patterns representing many of the nations of the Unseelie Accords, arranged subtly enough to be noticed only subliminally if one didn’t go looking. But of course, here, everyone was looking. I regarded the various colors and patterns on the silk and realized the intention.

  Our host had drawn up something of a seating arrangement.

  Or, perhaps …

  Battle lines.

  A swirl of silver and onyx fabric patterned in strict geometric lines spilled down to backdrop a little area set with masterfully crafted furniture carved of … what looked like naturally ebony hardwood of some kind, chased with silver. Seated in a high-backed chair was King Etri of the Svartalves, appearing in his diminutive natural form, his grey skin and huge dark eyes striking against the backdrop. He was dressed in an impeccable suit of silver silk with black pinstripes and carried a cane of shining silver in his right hand.

  Etri looked resolved—and exhausted. His broad forehead was wrinkled into a frown as he apparently listened to Senior Councilman Cristos, seated in the chair next to him. The wizard was in a conciliatory posture, bent forward slightly, his hands open, speaking quietly to the svartalf leader.

  Etri’s sister Evanna sat next to him, elegant in her own black suit, her fine silver-white hair spilling down over her shoulders like liquid metal. Her forehead was crossed by a band of some kind of metal that seemed to reflect colors that were not actually present in the room. Her dark eyes flicked toward
mine and narrowed in immediate suspicion upon seeing me.

  Five of Etri’s warriors were spread out silently behind the pair, and every one of them turned their dark eyes toward me a beat after Evanna did. Their suspicion was a palpable force.

  “What’re they looking at?” muttered Wild Bill from next to me.

  Yoshimo rested her hand calmly on his forearm. “Easy. They’ve done nothing.”

  “Pipsqueaks,” Bill muttered.

  “We’re surrounded by stone right now,” Ramirez said. “Not the best place to pick a fight with that crew. Especially since Mab would side with them if you did.”

  Wild Bill glowered at Ramirez but subsided. “I don’t like side-eye is all.”

  “Oh, it’s straight-eye,” I noted. I nodded to Evanna, deeply enough to make it a small bow. Her expression became more neutral and she returned my nod precisely. But her eyes didn’t change, even when she directed them elsewhere. “Maybe we should be covering the old folks, kids.”

  “Yeah,” Ramirez said in his take-charge voice. “Yoshimo, stay with Senior Councilman Cristos. Bill, you’ve got McCoy’s back. Chandler and I’ll take Liberty and Listens-to-Wind.”

  Ah.

  “Where do you want me?”

  “Liaise,” Ramirez said. “Head off trouble before it starts. And get me a scout of the room. You’ve met some of these people before.”

  I pursed my lips for a second and then said, “Who are you protecting here, Carlos?”

  He clapped a hand lightly against my arm. “Hopefully everyone. Eyes open. Let’s go, people.”

  The young Wardens moved out purposefully. I grimaced, snagged a champagne flute off a passing server’s tray, and touched the rim of the glass to my lips for politeness’s sake before continuing my slow perusal of the room.

  Opposite the svartalves’ colors was a streaming silken banner of pure white, intricately embroidered with sinuous shapes in silver thread, cascading down to a number of similarly upholstered sofas, where Lara Raith and her entourage had set up shop. Lara wore a simple white sheath dress cut to show a considerable length of leg and had her blue-black hair pinned up in elegant curls. Scarlet gems at her ears and wrist flickered with bloody red fire in the faerie lights. She sat in the center of one of the sofas as if it were a throne.

  Freydis, dressed in a formfitting white bodysuit and a man’s suit jacket, sat on the floor at Lara’s feet like some kind of exotic pet, her green eyes bright in contrast to her close-cropped red hair. The Valkyrie looked distracted and sleepy and wasn’t either one of those things. Behind Lara stood Riley and four of Lara’s bodyguards, all of them looking lean and mean in matching buzz cuts and suits that didn’t show the weapons they were undoubtedly carrying.

  Lara looked up, met my eyes for a second, and gave me a serious nod. She moved her right hand in a tiny gesture, palm up, hand tilted toward the sofa beside her. I nodded and made my way over to her.

  “Harry,” she said, her tone light and delighted. “What a pleasure to see you. Won’t you sit for a moment?”

  “Very kind,” I said, and settled next to her on the edge of the couch, where I could get up again quickly. I didn’t touch her. “So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?”

  Lara threw back her head and laughed girlishly. It was patently false and impossible not to find appealing. “You’re so funny. You’re always so funny, Harry.”

  I blinked. Lara wasn’t exactly a ditzy party girl, but she was doing a damned good impression.

  She recognized when I got that something was up. Her eyes tracked over to one side and followed Ramirez as he limped slowly along behind Listens-to-Wind and Martha Liberty, leaning on his cane. Their color shifted from medium grey to a more sparkling color with flecks of metallic silver. “Oh, that poor boy. So pretty and wounded and so many hang-ups. Are you quite sure he isn’t meant as a present?”

  I heard a faint, sharp cracking sound, as if someone had snapped a couple of toothpicks. There was a whisper of power released into the air that I could barely detect, and a second later Freydis tucked a small, broken wooden plaque into her suit coat’s pocket and said, firmly, “Clear.”

  Lara’s giggling ceased and her smile vanished. “We’ve got about a minute before the happytalk illusion fades. What have you got?”

  I pushed out my senses enough to feel the neat little combination privacy spell and external illusion now veiling us. “Little. I put a man I trust on Justine.”

  “My people are there.”

  “Can’t be too safe,” I said.

  Lara grimaced. “Cristos is over there assuring Etri that the White Council will fully support him in this matter. Probably offering to dig my brother’s grave for him.”

  “Etri isn’t the sort to subcontract his work,” I said. “And he’s furious.”

  Lara narrowed her eyes at the svartalf king across the large room. “There must be a way he can be reasoned with.”

  “As a rule, yes,” I said. “But he’s got good reason to be angry right now.”

  “He’s got my brother,” Lara snarled.

  “Etri and his people look like a batch of little geeks,” I said. “You of all people shouldn’t make the mistake of falling for appearances. If they were weak, someone would have offed them by now.”

  Lara clenched her jaw. “If I don’t create some options, I’m going to have to leave Thomas to rot.” She inhaled. “Or change my posture.”

  Which was a polite way to say Start Killing People.

  I regarded Lara obliquely for a moment. Maybe she wasn’t running on the kind of cold political calculation she’d led me to believe she had embraced. Maybe things weren’t quite as clear where her baby brother was concerned as she had led me to believe.

  I was pretty sure I hadn’t been doing the peace process any favors lately, so I pondered as hard as I could. “When you have a problem, you have a problem,” I said thoughtfully. I nodded at Cristos. “When you have two problems, sometimes one of them is a solution in disguise.”

  Lara eyed me and narrowed her eyes.

  “Cristos thinks he’s a statesman, brokering peace and justice, that kind of thing,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Ask him for his help.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Makes him look good if he can get both parties to concede something,” I said. “He’s out to gain face and reputation. Etri wants justice and he’s upset enough not to be thinking clearly. If you can’t negotiate something out of that, you aren’t the person I think you are.”

  Lara gave me a direct, intense, silent look for a long moment. I could feel the soulgaze forming and averted my eyes before things got any more intimate.

  “I want you to introduce me,” she said.

  “I’m happy to advise you,” I said. “I’m not sure that it would be helpful to you for me t—”

  Her voice hardened. “I am owed favors. You are obliged to repay them.”

  And, deep down inside of me, something twisted with acute discomfort, as if Lara’s words had just reached into my guts and started kicking them, then waterboarded my conscience for good measure. Welling up from the Winter mantle was the sure and certain knowledge that Lara was owed, and that it was an injustice too deep to tolerate that she should not be repaid. No matter how inconvenient or personally humiliating it might be.

  Wow.

  So that’s what it felt like from the faerie side of things.

  No wonder so many of them didn’t like me much.

  “Fine,” I growled. My voice came out tense, under pressure. I rose and offered her my arm, invisibly shattering the little illusion spell around us. “Come on.”

  “Everyone else stay here,” Lara said firmly. She held up a finger to forestall both Freydis’s and Riley’s sudden words of protest. “No. I’m going alone.” She rose and laid her hand lightly on my forearm and nodded to me. I started leading her across the room.

  “I regret doing that to you,” she said quietly after a few steps.
“He’s family.”

  “I didn’t much like it, either,” I said. I still felt faintly queasy, though the discomfort had rapidly begun fading the moment I’d acquiesced. “I get it. Don’t make a habit of it.”

  She gave my arm a gentle squeeze of her fingers through the spidersilk suit and glanced up at me with a rather sad smile that showed no regret whatsoever. Her pale grey eyes were resolved. “Only if I must.”

  We went across the room to Etri’s seating area, and I walked directly up to the svartalf king.

  Cristos, who had been in the middle of saying something very sincerely, looked up at me and frowned. “Warden Dresden.”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I said, even more sincerely, “but I saw an opportunity for us to help out our neighbors.”

  Cristos arched an eyebrow and began to speak, but Etri held up a hand and the man fell silent. Yoshimo, standing six feet back and to one side of Cristos, gave me an inquiring glance.

  “Etri,” I said. “Please allow me to introduce Lara Raith, daughter of Lord Raith and his chancellor in the White Court.”

  “I know who she is,” Etri said, his gaze level and not quite hostile. He nodded to Lara, who returned the gesture precisely. “I fear we have little to say to one another, Lady Lara.”

  “That depends on what is said, sir,” Lara replied. “And when two potential foes meet, the presence of a trusted mutual ally can do much to allay suspicion and fear.” She turned to bow her head to Cristos. “Sir, your reputation for skill in such matters is well-known. I am certain you are aware of the tensions between our realms at this delicate time. Perhaps the wider reconciliation we are all hoping for can begin here, between King Etri’s people and my father’s Court.”

  “Ridiculous,” Evanna said, her voice brittle.

  Etri gave his sister a weary look and held up his hand again. “Lady Lara, I see little hope for resolution of any kind in this matter but what is prescribed in the Accords.”

  Cristos’s eyebrows beetled, and he folded his hands thoughtfully. “And yet, if you see little hope, then a little must be there. Perhaps a little hope is a good place to begin. Surely, Etri, there is no harm in speaking while we are all under the protection of guest-right.”