Chapter Text
The transfer of power in Midwinter had been bloodless but grumpy for those of us on the side of Mab -- when the queen's off her arse, nobody sleeps -- and Summer was rubbing it in good and hard as spring barreled ahead. Even in Winter the days were longer, brighter.
It was actually kind of a relief when I stepped into a rainstorm.
They didn't happen, much; there had been torrential rains at first as the atmosphere dealt with the sudden change and the lack of carbon being stuffed into it, but now they were far fewer and farther between. It was good, a rain. Washed the gunk out of the air, scrubbed away mortal and supernatural poisons. I'd stepped out of the Ways about half a mile from the Chicagoland Fort; my usual door, right into the Fort courtyard, was in contested territory. You know, when a rock giant started up a conflict with a local Weetigo, I don't think that they EVER stopped to consider that it was going to cause me soggy boots. The nerve of some people, right?
Mouse bounded out of the Nevernever behind me, transforming from a fiery-maned thing the size of an elephant to a shaggy dog only the size of a baby elephant. He dropped his jaw at me and wagged his quickly dampening tail.
"What do you know that I don't, buddy?" I asked, thumping him on the shoulder. Further wagging ensued, and he bounded ahead.
Nothing nasty was out in the rain. Most of the supernatural baddies that could be out in the daytime were weakened by it, and the feral assholes living in the wreckage of the city who had decided to go all Mad Max -- and managed to survive -- were sulking inside, knowing that the Fort waterbearers would be out checking the reservoirs and murdering the hell out of anyone who screwed with them. The downpour might as well have been the Baron pissing on the whole city.
Only not. Because that's disgusting.
It had been more than a year since I'd walked much through Chicago -- what with that aforementioned handy door -- and it had changed. Lots of plant life now, and a lot of it looked deliberate; it wasn't just weeds, it was transplanted trees, bushes, new and green and spreading. The pavement had been broken to get to the dirt. The sad hulks of buildings had been worn down, jagged edges whittled away to stumps, and there were new, simple buildings rising beside them made of the cannibalized material.
It wasn't much. It wasn't everywhere. But it was human, and it made me smile.
The Fort was happy and noisy from blocks away, and I broke into a squishy, ankle-chafing jog. I caught up to Mouse and he squashed along beside me, politely keeping my pace until we got to the Fort itself -- and then he bounded through the open day-gate at top speed and left me in the dust. By which I mean ankle-deep mud.
I squinched my eyes against the rain and trotted after him, waving at the guards posted by the gate and they waved back, spirits apparently high, and I found him under a tent, the soggy, furry center of a pile of soggy, wooly, curious tiny things. He was licking one, tongue covering the whole dark face every time. The ewes of the flock were sitting a few feet away, eying him dubiously, but giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Hell's bells. I'd forgotten. Early spring was lambing season.
Lambing. Calfing. Foaling. Pigleting. Goat kidding. Cria-ing. Puppying. Kittening. Anything that lived in the Fort was having babies, and the Fortizens must have been spending most of their days taking care of them, which had the mood high. The dogs were all out, the big cart-pulling pits and rotts and mastiffs dragging wagons of hay through the mud, the herding shepherds and heelers running circles around their various flocks, the little rat-and-rabbit-hunting yap dogs going crazy chasing raindrops, and occasionally the tails of the semi-feral cats, so the noise was punctuated with the occasional hiss-smack-yipe that that inevitably led to.
The Fort stunk of animal shit and wet dog and wet sheep and wet people and smoky torches and it was the best thing I'd smelled since Midwinter. There was a surge of life-- adulterated, complicated life, not the sticky-sweet cloying touch of Summer that had been worming up my spiritual shirt like a fratboy's hand for the past few months/years (fucking Faerie time. Seriously.)-- and I let it wash over me, as welcome as the rain.
Music was drifting out of the barn: an a cappella version of a Steppenwolf song, scored for many off-key voices. I blame the Bavarian Misspent Youth Chorus for letting him sneak up behind me with a ninja-like stroll; the first I knew of him being there was the hand that jammed comfortably into the back pocket of my khakis and pinched my ass.
"John!"
"Hiya, hot stuff." The Baron grinned at me, a big unabashed grin, before his face settled back into its ground-state Regal And Calm expression. The rain had slicked his hair down around his face and darkened it up, making the gray less noticeable. On the other hand, it had soaked through his white cotton shirt and made his abs and nipples way more noticeable. More than fair. "My good pardon: Sir Hotstuff of Winter," he added, in a flawless deadpan.
"Winter's tidings, Lord WetTeeShirt," I said with a straight face. Mostly straight. Straightish.
"What brings your bony ass to our gates?" he said politely, but with a sparkle in his eye and the shadow of a grin lurking around his mouth that meant that the weather and all the baby life had gotten to him, too, and he wasn't bothering to hide it. Even in the Mad Max anarchy of the present day, it was rare and splendid. Like an exotic butterfly.
Which I was about to ruthlessly hit with a freezing, gale force wind.
"Business," I said, and couldn't restrain a wince.
Something sparked in John's eyes and under the surface I knew that wheels were turning. But he didn't register disappointment, just acceptance. Gave a jerky little chin nod even as he was saying in a mock-huff, "And I thought you came here just to see me."
He dropped his voice slightly as he said it, but it was more because he didn't like to discuss business loudly than because he had a fear of the Fortizens finding out that he was giving it up to the Winter Knight on an on-and off-basis. Most people these days had way too much to do to care who you were boning. Those who still got all righteous about it recognized that there were higher priorities, or at least higher powers and that democracy was a benefit of a different life, and ignored it for the most part.
Really, the only one who still had the luxury of being freaked out by John and me was me; it wasn't as frenetic in Winter and I didn't have to worry about starving if a crop didn't come through. It gave a guy time to think. When he wasn't schtupping random Fae-- my 'woe is me my soul is lost guess I'll be a hedonist now' phase had lasted all of a few months, but the habit of random hookups had remained, comfortable. Which, maybe meant I really should have been Over It because I'd not only had sex with male Sidhe, but hermaphroditic creatures and some that didn't even have recognizable genders, at least as I knew them.
But John was different. John was human. And someone I'd actually had feelings for for a long time. (Admittedly, there'd been plenty of days where the feelings I had for him had been THAT CRIMINAL SON OF A BITCH GAAAAAAH I HOPE A ROGUE TAXI TAKES HIM OUT. But I have it on good authority that he'd wanted to drop me off a pier more than once, so we were even.)
I'm not so much of a sap that I wouldn't relish the chance to get one over on HIM, still, mind you. But what I'd come to ask was going to affect the Fortizens, too, and dicking over a bunch of hard-working people isn't my idea of fun.
He didn't seem worried, though. He waved at me to follow him, talking as he walked through the mud of the courtyard, what had been a perfectly-manicured lawn and garden Before long since cleared away and worn down by necessity and thousands of footsteps. "When, and where? Are you here as Mab's emissary or her herald?"
"Nightfall. Here. She'll be coming."
He nodded briskly and took a hard right turn, heading toward the house. "Are you stay-- of course you're staying. Will there be an additional retinue?"
"Does Grimalkin count as a retinue?"
"A very small one. Possibly a retinette," he said, so matter-of-factly that I just accepted it for a few seconds before I shot him a dirty look.
"So where are we going in such a hurry?"
"I have to inform my people, get preparations started for her arrival."
"She's not going to be here for a couple hours --"
"-- Which, factoring in all the space and grazing shuffling we have to do today for our bumper crop of stew rabbits-- shut up, larger than even expected-- is barely time to get together a decent offering of hospitality and clear out a space for our meeting, to gather what recorded information we HAVE, did I mention that one of the wells has gotten contaminated and we may lose one of our fish ponds --?"
"Whoa. Calm down." I held out a hand. "I'm here. I can pull some heavy lifting."
"You're offering to sling magic around my homestead and you want me to calm down." Rain drizzled down his face, laying stripes over an expression of resigned horror.
"Give me to Luccio and she'll point me at a problem," I reassured him.
"I'm sorry, who do you think regaled me with tales of your version of 'following orders'?" But John's mouth twitched. "We'll manage, of course."
He was a ball of tension. Maybe it was because there were no investors to impress; maybe it was because he'd always let me see his emotions a little. Whatever. I could tell that he was in that mood where lesser men would be punching walls.
"Let me help."
"Luccio is at the gateside well."
"Sorry. Let me clarify. Let me give you a blowjob in your office. Before you have an aneurysm."
"Harry --"
"-- And no speeches about duty. You saw that threesome 'stress relieving' in the hayloft as well as I did."
"Shut up, Harry," he said with a smirk that actually hit both corners of his mouth. "Listen. Mab is coming to treat. I'm fairly sure I know what about. However, pardon a poker metaphor, I have a card up my sleeve. Problematically, I do not know if it's an ace, or a half-full Starbucks punch card." One eyebrow lifted. "But it's going to get you in trouble. And I am not going to screw you just before I screw you over. That's excessive."
"John, Starbucks doesn't exist anymore."
"My goodness, you're right. That would make their assorted marketing goods particularly pointless. Perhaps I should use them in a metaphor for useless things."
"Your turn, John."
"Mm?"
"Shut up."
"I do have to be doing things," John said eventually, looking up from a catlike sprawl across his desk.
"I'm not stopping you," I said, my knees cushioned on my balled up tshirt, slouched comfortably forward, resting between his legs.
"You're holding my knees over your shoulders."
"You look so comfy," I said innocently.
"Dresden," he said sharply, and I rolled my eyes and let him have his legs back. He rolled off of his desk and straightened himself with the pop of vertebrae, a long, languid stretch that showed me the slight curve of his stomach and the meaty solidity of his arms. I smiled.
"I love you."
He smiled, but it was lopsided, as if it didn't have the strength to move his whole face. "I love you. And by the end of the day, you're going to be immensely pissed off at me."
"Sure thing, John."
So there was an impromptu feast. And singing, because the Fortizens weren't stupid and knew how to butter up the Sidhe. There was something with goat cheese and vegetables that was almost a calzone, and which was wonderful and pizza-y enough to make Mab smirk. They offered me two. I ate them both, then realized that all of the Fortizens-- John included-- were getting about a fourth of one each. John gave me a look that said 'because you're the visiting warlords, that's why', and I still feel like an asshole.
And there was the meeting. Mab sat down, and smiled, and spoke in her cold clear voice about territory. She'd brought Grimalkin as I'd expected and she tended to, or he'd just come along as cats tend to, but when it was obvious he wasn't necessary to the proceedings he curled up in my lap and started to knead my leg raw.
She asked about the land The Fort had claimed in Wisconsin. They weren't using it, she said. It was a drain on resources to keep predators away, she said. Give it back to the Sidhe, she said. It had been Winter land before humans got all iron-flavored there, she said.
"I don't prefer to sell away our territory outright, but I certainly have no problem with... a lease, pardon the term."
"What would you have?" Mab said, smiling prettily.
"I was wondering if you were still in possession of the Intellect Spirit." And John looked at me. Not Mab.
I'd never told John about Bob.
I'd never told anyone about Bob.
When the Darkness fell I'd hidden him away on Demonreach. I visited when I could, brought him anything I could scavenge from old bookstores, libraries. Demonreach was safe and mortal enough and he wasn't happy about it but neither was I, damn it, and the remnants of the Wardens would have destroyed him and who knew if Mab was still pissed off about whatever he'd done to her. He was still plenty scared of her, and that was enough for me.
Mab turned to me. Smiled. "Child?" she cooed. "My spirit of intellect?"
"It would be useful to us. As long as we might make use of his services, then we could offer the land and musicians to serve at the revels -- in a non-fatal capacity, but --"
"-- a fine arrangement," Mab said. "But I had thought him lost. What do you know, my Knight?"
Trying to disobey Mab was like trying to body check an oncoming tidal wave, and I tried anyway. The weight of my oath to her hit me like a ton of bricks. Grimalkin's claws unsheathed and dug lazily into my lap, so deep that I thought they were going to hit bone.
"I have him," I said through my gritted teeth.
There was a silence. Maybe Mab was deciding what she wanted more, mortal lands or the chance to punt Bob to the moon for old transgressions. Maybe she was just enjoying watching me squirm.
"Then we have a bargain," purred Mab.
John nodded and looked to the side, where someone was bringing a legalish looking sheet of paper. Grimalkin hopped out of my lap and sauntered across the table to sit on it and read it. I could hear him talking; the laying out of terms and clauses. My ears started to ring.
I stood up, the chair skittering out behind me. My leg was bleeding.
"My Lady," I ground out.
"Go, child, if you are so distressed," Mab said maternally, patting me on the ass.
I met John's eyes. If there had been anything in his expression that implied that he was thinking 'I told you so'...
There wasn't. Somehow it was worse. Mouse came trotting up to me as I wound my way out of the McMansion Estate house, whining slightly and licking my hand.
"Gotta go, Mouse," I grunted. "You can stay. Entertain the kids. I have to get out of here before oh Hell's bells fuck OFF, John!"
He must have slipped out of the banquet somehow, taken a shortcut through the house I didn't know about. Mouse looked at us both, gave a giant doggy sigh, and started back towards the smell of food and the sound of people.
"Mister Dresden --"
"-- Luccio's going to destroy him, you know that, right?"
"Anastasia was the one who told us what it was," John said quietly. "After Waldo mentioned it to me."
"Butters." My stomach dropped. "Butters told you." That slimy little Q-tip--
"-- Waldo was as surprised as I was that it was some sort of secret," John said, a bit sharply, defensive of a Fortizen doctor. There wasn't enough of them to risk the big bad Winter Knight getting a bee up his ass. But apparently there were enough Bobs to risk him to Mab's anger. "You never impressed it upon him. We were trying to find some, any way of preserving information and it came up. He's not a psychic, Dresden. That's your field."
"Mab could have taken him, you know that, right? Do you know how much danger you put him in?"
"Wizard Luccio made that clear. I was hoping that the convenience of parting with a resource she hadn't even realized she had would make up for it. I told you it was a gamble."
"He's not a fucking resource, John." My shoulders were shaking. My vision was blurring. "He's my friend. He's my friend, and that stunt you just pulled could have gotten him killed."
His eyes widened with realization, just faintly. He really hadn't known that part, that Bob was more than a magical tape recorder, that he had risked a thinking, reasoning existence on Mab's whim. He'd thought I was going to be angry at him, that I was angry with him because-- what? He'd tattled on me? Gotten me in trouble with my boss? Embarrassed me? "I'm sorry."
"You would have done it anyway," I snarled.
There was a pause. He met my eyes. "Likely."
I almost screamed at him-- almost had a temper-tantrum like a five year old in a grocery store. Instead I ripped the walls of the world open and plowed through, slamming the rift behind me with an audible thunderclap of displaced air.
I stomped forward-- and stopped dead.
The road home was blocked by a fight, fallen stone and glacial ice. The fucking rock giant. I'd forgotten.
I stared at the monsters in my way: one a giant with a face like a fist and a strange granite texture to his skin, hammering away at an icy two-story horror that looked like a mad taxidermist had gotten creative with half-rotten cadavers and a caribou skeleton. The horror was patiently trying to gut the rock giant, vicious claws chip-chipping into the softer (relatively) skin of its stomach.
"HEY," I bellowed. "Keep it out of the road."
The battle paused. Two heads (one head and a caribou skull) turned towards me.
"Not your fight," grunted the giant. "Not your road."
The Weetigo was giving me a much more cognizant look. As cognizant as dead, rolling eyes got, anyway. He knew me, from Court and from living in the same general area of Nevernever as I did. And wasn't all that stupid.
Which is probably why he slithered out of the rock giant's grip in a swirl of snow and was watching with interest from fifty feet away when a hundred tons of rage-powered FORZARE blew the barriers across the Way apart and knocked the rock giant a mile to the left into a stand of trees.
There was a rattling sound. The Weetigo was clapping, giant bony hands slapping together like some sort of spaghetti Western kitsch windchime.
I didn't flip him off -- I like having ALL of my fingers -- but I ignored him venomously and walked on. A half hour took me past the tiny patch of Nevernever I'd carved out for my Knight's hold away from hold, where I stopped in to gather the last few paperbacks I'd found and not gotten to Bob yet, fishing out an old backpack from under my bed. One of the reasons I'd picked this spot to make my own was that it was close to the badlands that took me to Demonreach; not ten minutes later I was opening another door.
No thunderclap this time. I stepped out into the smell of Lake Michigan and the pelting rain of a full-force squall. It was pitch black, and if I wasn't aware of every stone on the island I probably would have killed myself getting across the rocky path to the lighthouse stairs.
It wasn't much better inside: holes the size of my head in the walls had enough rainwater coming through to have turned the ground floor into a wadding pool. I'd meant to fix the place up, once. Give it some time and effort and what money I could spare. Then the world had ended and it had somehow fallen to the bottom of my to-do list.
I found Bob where I'd left him, sheltered under a roughly constructed lean-to on a table on the ground floor, tucked under the spiraling stairs and spared the worst of the wet and structural damage. "Hey," I said, "up and at 'em, lazybones. Time for bright eyes and a bushy tail."
Bob's eyelights flicked on and the lighthouse was illuminated with a soft orange glow. "Oh," he said, "great. Not only am I drowning, I'm pushed under by your horrible puns. Was that your way of saying you've brought a cat for me to ride in?"
"Not exactly," I said, feeling my face drawing down and unable to spare the effort to stop it. "Wait, are you wet?"
"Opening with dirty talk now, I see. Part of your official duties? Is that something Mab likes? Does it get the old ice queen all heated up?"
No, then. That was a relief. A bit of a drizzle wouldn't be enough to wash away the enchantments on the skull -- but the skull was old and old magic like old anything gets fragile. I wasn't exactly sure how old, I realized, and then realized a second later than John might. Even given his limited resources, compared to the empire he'd built for himself before the Darkness, he'd done his research, which meant he probably knew more about Bob's history than I did.
Hell's bells.
I'd been TRYING. I couldn't keep him at my hold away from hold, not in Mab's territory, I didn't have anywhere but Demonreach in the mortal realm and it wasn't like there were many other places he'd be safe. Nowhere was safe. I'd been doing the best I could--
--and the best I could was apparently pretty shitty. What kind of a friend was I? You know, besides the kind who was about to turn Bob over to a freaking tyrant scumbag. Fucking apocalypse. And to think; there'd been a time when all I'd worried about was making my rent and losing my head.
"Mab knows where you are," I said dully.
"What?" Bob sucked breath through lips he didn't have. "Harry, HOW?"
"John," I said. Stopped. Swallowed back the bitterness that started creeping up out of my gut. "Baron Marcone told her. By way of asking if he could rent you for the price of some suburbs in Wisconsin." Guess Bob had been an ace after all.
Bob's eyelights flickered, his version of a blink, and he was silent for a while. His voice was tinny and small when he spoke again, as if he'd pulled as tight inside his skull as he could and his voice was echoing. "Did she say yes?"
"Hope you like dirty, crowded Forts." I could hear my voice getting tight. I'd failed. Failed and Marcone had jammed me directly in the back. My face pulled up into a scowl. Something gave way up in the lighthouse, and a soft drip turned into a rushing splash; I could feel the crumbling brick and trickling water in the back of my head, a tiny little part of my sense of the entire island. I knew it wouldn't reach us. I still flinched.
"Could be worse," Bob said finally. "Maybe they've got some porn."
"Yeah. Maybe." I organized my thoughts, called back Grimalkin's yowly, grating voice reading out the contract. "Fifteen year terms. Renegotiation after that."
A stream of water poured in from above. I stepped to the side before it splashed down, Demonreach telling me of my own movements like every other shift of rock and plant and animal and raindrop. Bob was a swirling, scared blip of magic and presence amidst the old wood and brick and stone of the lighthouse. I could feel myself standing next to him: the systems of my body, my blood and breath and all the messy, sticky, chemical-rich viscera that made up the reasons I walked and talked and felt like shit, my magic and connection to the island thrumming, the tangle of my fear and anger and betrayal.
"I found you some more books," I added, hoisting up the bag I'd brought with me. "And I'll make sure to set some house rules with the Fort. There's a library. I don't know what's there, but no reason you shouldn't be allowed to read anything interesting. And I'll try to bring you stuff when I find it still. He takes care of his people," I said, driving a metaphorical steamroller over the screaming, aching part of me that wanted to lash out at the man, find something to hurt him back as bad as he'd hurt me. "He always has. And he's a little. Um. Single-minded about the Fort." The understatement was enough to burn my sinuses clean. "They need you; you're going to be okay. I'll make sure of it."
I didn't bring up what might happen in fifteen years. Neither did Bob. If I were honest with myself, I'd admit that I didn't think anything would happen in fifteen years, or thirty, or this century. But I was a walking wound and had been kicked in the gut by someone I loved, so I didn't look at those thoughts too closely. Instead, I got the old plastic storage bin out from under Bob's table and loaded up the few books and magazines not already in it, dropping my backpack on top. "Time for a change in scenery," I said. "Maybe you'll get a room with more of a view."
"Break's over!" Bob chirped. "Back on my head."
Our voices rang all insincere and chipper in the lighthouse. I scooped him into the bin, and we left.
Mouse was waiting for us back at the Fort, a damp, grey fuzzmountain sitting beside the Way as it opened, framed by the big central bonfire and the pinkish-yellow glow of the Fort's night lighting. Night was well settled, was on its way back around the other side, and the rain had slowed to a sprinkling, soaked into the air and as much a smell as something that could be felt.
"Hey buddy," I said and Mouse had time snuff at my hand once before the cavalry arrived.
"Knight Dresden," Luccio said, her old grey cloak gleaming in the light. She fronted a semi-circle of men and woman, all armed and suited in dark, mismatched combat wear, their serious faces a far cry for the cheerful wave I'd been greeted with that morning. Luccio's hair was grey at the temples; there were lines around her eyes, and the dim light brought out both. She looked older than I did. Her body wasn't that old yet, but she was shining through and it made part of me twinge at the memory of all the ways she'd been wronged.
She'd probably have broken my nose if she saw me thinking like that though, so I nodded and said "Captain," and shifted my grip on Bob's bin.
"Come with me, please; everyone, back to your positions." She gestured for me to walk and fell in beside me as all the guards paired off and split away. Mouse drew up on my other side, a wet, warm presence brushing against my leg, and his panting and the squish of all our feet in the mud were the only sounds for a few minutes before Luccio gave her head a familiar, exasperated little shake. "Dio," she said. "We know you keep your secrets, Harry. This is not," she seesawed a hand. "To punish you."
I shrugged, a little curl of something sharp hissing and churning in my stomach, turning into resentment when I exposed it to the night, like letting air out of an overfull tire. "I know. It's just business."
"Yes," she said, and turned her head sharply to stare up at me. I though she was about to say something else, but she sighed and looked ahead. "DuMorne?"
"Yeah." I shuffled my grip on Bob's bin, held it a little more firmly, my fingers squeaking against the wet plastic. "Guess he lied. Who knew he was the kind of guy to do that." I was sulking. I knew it, and I knew it wasn't Luccio's fault, and damned if I was going to let that stop me.
She lifted an eyebrow at me, but didn't dignify me with much else by way of response. Instead, she said: "You told a mortal."
"A couple. See, they had this thing where they didn't have swords and superiority complexes that made me trust them more --"
She paused. "It must be a great burden, being the only soul who has ever been wronged by a Warden."
I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that she was a friend, that she was someone I respected, and that I had done worse by her than I could ever repay. Then instead of telling her to fuck off I took a deep breath and said, "He's a person. His name is Bob. Don't treat him like he's some sort of thing."
Luccio is a better person than I am. She didn't call me on it, just nodded and let me change the subject. "I see," she said.
"He's been my best friend since I was sixteen. I need you to make sure he's taken care of." I paused as a thought occurred to me, called back from the memory of first time Luccio and I had spoken of Bob. "And don't freak out about anyone asking him about Kemmler. He can't remember."
"Harry," she said, "it is its function to remember. Its capacity. To say that --"
"He," I snapped. "He. His name is Bob. It's important. And he can't remember. I told him not to."
"If it-- he--" she corrected herself neatly, "-- was asked the right questions, it wouldn't matter. Fortunately, I don't believe there's anyone left alive who knows the right questions."
"Oh, wow, I feel the faith in my abilities. I was a Warden how freaking long and you still think I'm some kind of incontinent puppy who can't practice really basic magical hygiene --"
"Ah, yes, and as a consort of the Sidhe I can see why you consider yourself entirely unbiased," she said shortly. "A master of the subtle arts? Or as much as a male can be?" she added sweetly, parroting back some idiot old wives' tale about 'emotional magic' I should never have dropped in conversation let alone on a date.
I clenched my jaw. "I said some stupid things --"
"And did a few."
"Luccio!" I stopped dead outside the Fort door and I found myself ankle-deep in mud. Damp squashed into my boots as I restrained my glare. "I'm just asking you to treat him nicely. Talk with him every now and then. Let him read. I'm not asking you to sacrifice children to him!"
"He will be treated with gratitude and respect. After due precaution." She gestured me into the door, a loose invitation, not even batting a lash as I squelched in tracking half a swamp with me. What I didn't bring in, Mouse had soaked into his fur. But being better brought up than I ever was -- don't ask me by whom because it certainly wasn't my influence -- he lay down at the entrance way, turning in three shuffly circles, and rested his head on his paws, ears cocked to clearly say to go on without him, he'd wait here.
The Fort, I realized, smelled a lot like home. A bit mildewy. The ground-in smell of dirt, hay, and dogs. Woodsmoke, citronella, clove from the sconces they burned in summer to keep the bugs down. It was a cozy smell.
"We have an alcove set up in the library," Luccio said. "His place. Waldo said that he would prefer... certain literature." She pulled a face.
"Yeah, I brought some."
"We have our own. Occasionally someone reads from them in the Hall, after dinner, when the children are in bed. We could bring him --" she barely fumbled the pronoun, "-- down to listen, if this is agreeable."
"Do they do voices? Are there props?"
I nearly dropped the plastic bin.
"...yes. Male. I see," Luccio said, voice dry enough to suck the humidity right out of the room around us. "Voices, yes. Props, no."
"Do we get to make requests?"
"I am quite certain you will," she murmured. "Who would object?"
"Luccio, I'm not asking --" I interjected, trying to wedge a foot into the conversational door.
"-- you aren't understanding, Harry, what this means. What he means," Luccio cut me off. "I do not ask for special favors. I get them, because I'm a wizard, and the settlement needs me. Waldo would never ask for extra food or reduced duties, but people give him what they can and take his work without being asked because he is a doctor, and the settlement needs him. This spirit will be the means by which everything we can salvage, everything learned from the world before the Darkness, can be preserved. Do you think we could write it all down? Do you think that our biologists and doctors and ecologists and nutritionists and veterinarians have enough hours in the day, in the span of a mortal life, to sit down and RECORD all the things that they know and that the children and their children's children will need to know?"
"You make it sound like you're going to fall into the dark ages without him," I scoffed, following her up some stairs.
"No. But we will lose so much more if we have no way to remember. John is afraid. He knows what this place could become."
"You mean worse than a fascist state? You had heads on pikes outside the gate last winter."
"A well-poisoner and two rapists. We do not have the luxury of feeding a prisoner indefinitely. But they remember, those of the mortal world, that they did, once. So must their children. They must remember that mercy and justice are luxuries to aspire to."
There was something about the way she said the words, with the trace of a sigh and a slightly tired tone, that told me that they weren't her words, exactly. More like words that she'd had to listen to more than once.
"...he can say whatever he wants. It doesn't make him better. It doesn't excuse what he does." I gave a last futile stamp to clear the mud off my boots and hip-checked the doors to the library, backing in with the bin held out in front of me.
"Mister Dresden," said a voice in the gloomy library. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I whirled as gracefully as a guy holding a big blue plastic bin can whirl. John was a silhouette next to one sad little candle that mostly illuminated a clean shelf, empty except for a stack of magazines -- the top one was a Victoria's Secret -- and two battered paperbacks.
I didn't have to look him in the eyes because my own hadn't adjusted yet. It helped. He could be a big dark blur of tyrant scum and I wouldn't have to remember that I liked him. Behind me, Luccio shifted into position, guarding the door; I could feel her eyes resting steadily on my back. She wasn't sure if I was going to attack him. Dollars to doughnuts, her hand was on her pommel.
"Hi, John," I said with a sudden, angry grin that was trying to turn into a rictus. I wondered how much he'd heard.
"I'm a complete bastard, Knight Dresden, whatever speeches I give." Well, that answered that. "But my successor may not have to be. And this is why we remember what a jury trial is -- and 'habeas corpus' and 'reasonable doubt' and other strange incantations that will puzzle our children exceedingly."
I thrust the bin at him without answering. He took it, setting the plastic down very carefully and popping the lid. An orange glow lit up his face, and his eyes widened and then slammed shut. He blinked against the light, eyes watering, and very, very carefully lifted out Bob.
Wow. Bob had turned on the brights. He was deliberately making John uncomfortable. Maybe testing him or just giving him a good screw-you for outing him to Mab; I didn't know or care. I wouldn't blow his cover.
John went with it, not that I'd expected much else. "Welcome, Spirit, named Bob, to our Stronghold. We ask thy aid of thee and thy master."
"Golly, Boss, he talks purty," Bob drawled disgustedly.
Lit up by the glow of Bob's eyes, I could see John's mouth twitch around the corners, his eyes barely flickering in my direction. "A noted family resemblance."
If things had been slightly different this could have been funny and homey, and it wasn't.
"He's yours," I said through a tightening throat. "Fifteen years. I get visitation rights. Treat him good. Or I get Winter's Knight on your asses."
"Harry --" Bob said, sounding a little lost.
"Obey them, Bob. Help them."
"Harry," John said quietly, and if there was anything sad or pleading or basically non-businesslike in HIS voice I didn't care and I was already out the door.
Luccio caught up with me when I hit the stairs. "Harry, the bin --"
"I don't CARE."
"If you leave it, it becomes a gift from Winter --"
"It's a gift from Target," I snapped. Fuck, my backpack was in there too. "I don't-- it's Bob's special box, fine, deal says you take care of it and everything already in it for fifteen years. I don't know. Put stuff in it and I'll get it back later."
There was a snowy ozone tang in the air as I bolted, not surprised to see Mouse gone and the Way already open, surrounded by the dinner singers -- still singing, voices ragged and slipping. I barreled through them.
A fine, white hand extended out of the rip in the world; I took it, and Mab pulled me into the Nevernever.
The beads of sweat froze on me as she cloaked me in her power.
"My Knight," she said sweetly. "What other secrets do you have from me, secrets of my own affairs?"
My oath stabbed in my gut like frozen shards of my own stomach lining. "None," I gasped, incapable of not telling the truth. The shattering, bleeding feeling melted and faded away.
"Dear child," Mab cooed, all affection again. "Such a little thing. Was it such a great secret, my Knight? Did you hide your little companion away so safely?" Her knuckles grazed my chin, leaving a frozen burn. For maybe half a second, I thought she'd let it drop. "But he was mine."
So much for that.
She must not have been that pissed off at me. I know what she can do when she really, really, really hates somebody. I couldn't sit down for the next week, but I still had all my limbs and senses, and I was sane. I deputized Toot Toot and his guard to go keep an eye on the Fort for me while I was gone and started preparing for a good hard wizarding sulk.
I went back to my hold away from hold, the fallen tower that had belonged to some Sidhe Lord once and was now a handy little tube habitat for Harry The Hamster. Rested. Pouted. Moped. Had an ancient tribal nightmare over for tea. (Not the Skinwalker, God. It was the local Weetigo -- 'Danny the Wonder Wendigo,' I gave him that name, and it currently amused him. Almost as much as it amused him to speculate on the color and size of the bruises on my ass.)
Time slid away. I spent some time Mortal-side, mostly on Demonreach, fixing up the lighthouse. I dropped in on Mac's hamlet and checked in with Georgia and Billy. We got the table back, yay team. Mab reveled as Fall came and the world got colder. Maeve hit on me. The Erlking hit on me. Bonus points if you can guess which one scared me less. Winter came, and something happened in western Wisconsin that I don't want to think too hard about.
In a t-shirt and shorts, I worked on the lighthouse through the winter, and the cold slid around me and through me and helped numb the sore places. Then it got a little less cold, and Summer got the table -- boo, hiss, Summer, rivalry, fuck the ump, get off your knees, ref, you're blowing the game et cetera, et cetera -- and the months went on like the morning hours.
Then one day a spring rainstorm swept over the lake and rained all over the thatching I was trying to do on Demonreach's lighthouse, and through my general swearing at the weather and Mouse's obvious delight in shaking himself dry all over me like I wasn't wet enough already, a small voice in my head told me it was time to go visit Bob.
I didn't take the Way directly into the Fort. I hadn't been there in a year. It seemed tacky to waltz in un-announced. Also possibly fatal, depending on how friendly the guards were feeling. But I took the Ways to a point in the middle of ex-Chicago and felt a sense of déjà-vu as I squelched out into the mortal world.
Mouse was practically prancing.
"They're not going to be as happy to see us as last time, boy," I warned him. My answer was a thwack in the leg with his wagging tail. That was going to bruise. He bounded forward and left me to pick my way through the mud and worn down ruins of my old city, past new structures gaining strength and settling into the landscape, little patches of garden and cultivated land, and I found him rolling in a relatively dry stretch of grass and weeds and young wildflowers about twenty feet from the Fort's gate, already well within the range of the noise and smell and bustle of life.
He sprung (as well as a dog roughly the same size and weight as a Shetland pony can spring) to his feet and panted happily, tongue flopping out the side of his mouth enough to let me know that he was perfectly aware of the mud streaking down his fur and the grass and flowers tangled throughout, and I left him to them. It would be a bitch brushing it all out when we got home, but for now he could keep his spring finery. I guess one of us had to dress up nice.
I brushed the dirt off my cargo shorts and the front of my ninja turtles tshirt, and decided we were a good matched pair. And that I could quit stalling. It wasn't like the guards couldn't see us -- and that Mouse hadn't given them enough warning we were coming. They watched us pass through without challenge or comment, though; but a flurry of murmured voices and a tingle of magic brushing past the back of my skull told me that our arrival had not gone unannounced.
The Fort was a study in controlled chaos, months-old babies romping on chubby puppy legs and stalking through the mud on tiny kitten paws, wobbling on new, knobby legs and hooves, wool and hair and fur dampening slowly and surely in the misty rain, and more people than I had ever seen there before, tangled in some complicated web of spring life and essential duties. The homesickness was like a blow to the head, ringing in my ears and leaving a leftover ache of longing for somewhere I'd never really lived -- maybe those few years with Eb on the farm, but it was the life, overwhelming and smelly and everywhere, that I hadn't felt since... yeah. I'll take obvious answers for $200, Alex.
The traffic was one of the few things that resembled the Fort of last spring; the place had undergone a serious redesign. There was only so much that could be done with the structure and foundation of the building -- large and sprawling and once ostentatious wealthy, but there was an extension being built on the west side, and the grounds were filled with new and stronger structures: stables, housing, storage and task-specific. The outer gatewall had been reinforced again, and stone of various types had been laid out on the ground to define smaller areas and walkways, even if they were as covered with mud as everything and everyone else. The wall extended farther to the one side than it used to; the cannibalization of one of the neighboring properties almost looked complete.
It was jarring. I was used to the Fort being a living, changing thing -- the uncertainty and constant threat of the first few years of Darkness, and the efforts to grow and build after. But I'd seen the stages weeks and months apart; not even the changes after the six months I'd spent locked in the basement of a pair of megalomaniac overachievers a couple years ago had been like this. I counted on my fingers.
...Fourteen months. My how they'd grown.
I tried not to feel like too much of an asshole. I failed.
No one intercepted me on my way to the library, or even made an effort to acknowledge me, save to avoid collision. The closest I came was when I had to pause for a pit bull towing a cart of hay, and when I lost Mouse to the corral of month old goats and the doe bleated at me. I began to suspect a sketch of my face was pinned up in the Hall, Sarcastic and Possibly Irritable. Do Not Approach.
The first sign I had that I wasn't actually invisible was when I came to the front door. A pair of young wizards-- one I recognized as having been a Warden in training, the other I didn't know-- blocked me.
"Knight Dresden," said the one I knew, Warden Paulsen. "Can you wait for a minute? Captain Luccio isn't here yet."
I felt my eyebrows rise but nodded, keeping my face nonthreatening. Stars and stones, it was like being asked to wait by kindergartners. Armed, combat trained kindergartners. Who weren't sure I was allowed in, but were being nice about asking me to wait. Probably with more tact than I would have bothered to use in a similar situation. I made an effort too, though; I shut my mouth and didn't go straight for annoying.
The wizard I didn't know, the younger of the pair, fidgeted and craned his head to look to the side, down the wide corridor I knew was just inside the doorway, but held his footing firm; Luccio's training clear in the loose, ready way he held his arms, the easy access to the long dagger belted at his waist. I wondered how many wizards the Fort had now -- it couldn't be too many. The one I had felt at the gates, these two, Luccio. There had been others, a handful of trained Wardens, survivors of the Red war and combat hardened, the odd handful of others who'd followed Ways and rumors and washed up at the Fort's gates, and the new, untrained teenagers coming into their power scared and uneducated in a dangerous world. Wizards, the knowledge and skills they had, were invaluable since the Darkness; like in all things it seemed, the Fort was better prepared than most.
I heard Luccio's footsteps before she appeared -- familiar and quick and, knowing how silent she could be, probably a courtesy. Whether for me or her guard-wizards I wasn't -- who am I trying to kid? Of course it wasn't for me.
Paulsen and her partner looked over when Luccio appeared, worried little frowns growing between their eyes. Hell's bells, I wasn't that bad, was I? Luccio rested one hand on Paulsen's arm and rose up on her toes to say something quietly; the two junior wizards shuffled to the side eagerly enough to make me feel a little insulted.
"Come in, Harry," Luccio said, and I felt the shimmer of the threshold sliding apart for me. It was a big, rambunctious thing, that barrier, stronger than even the last time I'd been invited through. A house full of people who took care of it, who saw it as their home and their whole lives, some of them....
"Captain?" I asked as we stepped inside, immediately shoved over to make way for a medic team sprinting out towards the barn, jostled to one side as a group of folks carrying buckets barged past to the kitchen. When we had half a second of silence, I tried again. "Ana? Am I not welcome?"
She paused a beat. "You're always welcome here, Harry. But frankly, when you didn't come back, we assumed that you were planning a raid to retrieve Bob."
"What?"
"You didn't come visit him. We were expecting you. One of our theories -- mine -- was that you were planning a rescue."
...Ouch. One stone, two birds: the western burned ohsnap and the red-faced badfriend. "I needed some time," I mumbled, suddenly embarrassed and defensive and angry about how my sense of time had shifted, how a year could just skip past without me feeling it. I'd almost stopped keeping track of the time I spent in Faerie and how it stacked up against the mortal world.
Luccio thumped me on the shoulder. "He'll be glad to see you," she said, simply. "Come on upstairs."
We went up to the library -- way better lit now, they must have gotten the population of the skeps up after all, because the smell of beeswax was warm and inviting, tangling with the damp rainy smell. Luccio signaled me for quiet, and we crept in on an animated monologue.
There was a very tired looking woman, with stained fingers and short, frizzy hair sitting in a chair next to Bob's shelf, talking with her eyes squeezed shut like she was digging each sentence out of her memory with a pick axe. The strain was showing. "-- the new batches of hybrid moss, you have the botanists' records on those right? Right. They dropped the nitrate levels in the drinking water by twenty percent. They're no good for dissolved particulate so we're using scavenged silk for microbial filtration. Eight layers, no less. We've been able to synthesize a mild bleach analog that we may be able to treat runoff water with --" and then the woman hunched over the lab table went into a pretty complicated sequence of heating and cooling and mixing that lost me within minute one. "-- tea tree oil would be about as good but we don't have enough plants."
Listening silently, eyelights aglow, was Bob. She paused for a breath. "Ask Debra Messer about a protein skimmer," he chimed in. "She's working on reducing sludge in the catfish pits. You could make a really big one it if you can get the power -- which, by the way, one of the windmill guys has a birthday coming up and I know you bake."
"Right," the woman said, nodding enthusiastically -- well, at least less zombietastically. "That's all I have today for water clarity. Next week?"
"Same skull time, same skull station. You're right after the animal husbandry guys."
I was standing there looking like a moron, I guess. When I'd helped out at the Fort it had mostly been lift-this, herd-this, groom-this. Seeing all the rough stonework and handmade shelters, it was kind of easy to think you were in some weird medieval village. I guess I hadn't realized how much college-level stuff was going on behind the scenes-- well, except for John and the mathy guys' giant calculus of feeding everyone. No wonder John had been so desperate to have Bob around. He ate way less than a scribe, and it's not like they'd had a Number Two Pencil tree sprout up recently. Didn't mean I forgave John -- just that I did understood, a little.
The water lady stood up and shuffled out -- hopefully towards a bed -- and Bob turned.
"BOSS! You're BACK!"
I waved weakly at him. "Hiya, Bob. ...sorry it took so long."
"What are you talking about, Boss? It was only fourteen months. Six days. Nine hours. Twenty-five minutes --"
"Yeah, yeah, point taken. Luccio, can we," I pointed a hand rapidly back-and-forth between Bob and me, "uh-? Talk?" I made a little 'butt out' motion with my head.
She sighed. "We'll be outside the doors."
I looked over my shoulder at the door and another Warden I recognized -- Warden Petrov, a rare, older Warden who'd been trained before the Red War -- gave me a two-fingered salute. Typical. I squinched my face up into an overly big smile and tried to ignore the memory of Luccio's voice a year ago. Wronged by the Wardens or not, they obviously still didn't trust me not to make a break with Bob the minute we were alone.
"I'll make sure to knock over a table and give you a warning before I make my getaway," I told her, and she stared at me until I held my hands up, shoulders hunching. "No great escapes. On my best behavior. Scout's honor."
Bob helpfully started whistling the theme song. Petrov muffled a laugh, and Luccio rolled her eyes and shut the door.
"Bob. Counter productive much?"
"A spirit can't whistle, when the urge takes him?" Bob asked innocently. "Besides, they have to know you wouldn't get the Fort in trouble with Mab like that."
"Like John isn't due for some trouble-with-Mab," I grumbled.
"Oh, don't worry about that, I already took care of it. I settled his hash," Bob gloated. "That'll learn him."
I love Bob like a really annoying cousin, don't get me wrong, but sometimes he worries me. Just because he was under oath to me-- and by extension, to the Fortizens-- didn't mean he didn't have a nasty creative streak sometimes. "Bob? What did you DO?"
The skull grinned at me. Then again, it had to. "Did you know that he didn't know what happened to Lloyd Slate?"
I hadn't given it any thought one way or another, because I try really, really hard not to give too much thought to what had happened to the last guy who had my job. Not many people outside of the Nevernever knew that nasty little story. Heck, Bob wouldn't have known if I hadn't told him.
"Hadn't really wondered one way or another."
"Well, he does now. In detail. He'll think twice before he tries to get you in trouble again. You should have seen the shade of grey he went."
...Ah. Yes. John wouldn't have known that if Mab got ticked off enough at me that I could wind up Harry the living pincushion.
"I didn't have all the details, but Toot-toot filled me in," Bob said cheerfully. "Thanks for sending him, by the way, he has the best Winter gossip. Speaking of which, Harry, pal, you've been holding out on me! I knew you were going all Winter's Doorknob for a while, but the Erlking? Really? How is he in the sack?"
"Bob --"
"-- Come on, give the juicy details and I'll forgive you for not visiting."
"It was... political. Mostly. A dominance thing. It wasn't. I mean." I felt my face flaming.
"That good, huh?"
"How have they been treating you?" I blurted.
"Nice change of direction there, Houdini. The mirror almost entirely hides the elephant in the room, and by 'elephant' I refer to the Erlking's giant --"
"SO you have some new books, huh?"
"-- banquet hall. I don't think I've ever seen you turn that color before," Bob said smugly. "They're not new books, really. I mean, I've read most of them before. But it's nice getting the collection back. There's this really hot veterinarian who comes in to read to me some nights -- I like some heaving bosoms with my heaving bosoms, no offense to you, Harry, but you really do have a chest like a two-by-four. And they did Dance upon the Air out loud in the Hall during the winter holidays, and Luccio didn't even get too touchy at the parts where Norah Roberts was just making stuff up about magic, and the ladies practically threw panties on the dais when I was reading the dialogue for the swoony police officer."
I blinked a few times and sat down in the chair the water lady had left, brain screeching along in a failure of imagination. I tried to reconcile Bob's burgeoning theatre career with my memories of his reading habits. "Doesn't it throw the audience out of the mood when you start demanding the characters take their clothes off?"
"Boss! I'm a consummate professional!" Bob squawked. "Come by tonight and see. They found the second book during a suburban scavenging crawl, so I'm reprising my role as Zack Todd and adding a Jeff Goldbloom-y Geeko Suave to my repertoire. But you may want to lock down your panties, just in case you get carried away."
"Har har," I said, putting on my best deadpan and deciding that Toot probably hadn't known to nix the gossip to Bob about Maeve's preferred consort calls and, um, forceful generosity when it came to sharing her wardrobe, but maybe I could just walk around that giant open manho-- awkward subject. "I'll keep that in mind."
"So you're coming then?"
"Yeah." I'd already been a horrible air-spirit-parent. I might as well not miss Bob's big game. Or something.
"Oh. Well, if you get done with that early enough, you should drop by my performance. Oooh, you're going that purple color again."
I left Bob after about an hour; Petrov, just inside the library door, coughed delicately into his fist while a short woman beside him shuffled awkwardly from one foot to the other. "Land use! 12:30! Sorry, Boss. I should take this," Bob said, breaking off mid-story I'd been struggling to follow anyway -- translingual puns are a little tricky when your Latin's as bad as mine is. Stupid correspondence course.
Petrov and Luccio flanked me as I came out, gently steering me towards the door. My escort out, it was obvious.
"Bob wants me to stay for the reading in the Hall," I said, less defiant Knight than petulant five year old, unfortunately. "He invited me."
Both of the wizards knew that Bob really didn't have the heft to invite me anywhere. And both of them let it slide.
"We could find a guest room for you," Petrov offered, in his rolling Russian accent. "Until the evening." Luccio nodded, once, confirming the plan.
I didn't like it. Not the least because any 'guest' room would be one that at least two Fortizens were kicked out of until I was done using it. I don't like pulling rank, especially not around people who had been... well, if not family at least a group who had treated me like an old friend or a benevolent uncle who showed up sometimes with presents. I'd been welcome here, and liked here, and I'd always pulled my weight; when the Fort was just established, and nobody knew if it was going to survive the next year, I'd worked with the building crews lifting stones and digging wells until my hands were raw and bloody just like the next guy. I couldn't be here all the time, but...
"Can I just give you guys a hand instead?"
Luccio was frowning a little. "The new barn. The rain's been slowing the building. They could use extra hands, and extra magic."
I nodded, stomach shifting. It wasn't quite déjà-vu, what I was feeling, because I knew exactly what this situation reminded me of. It had been about a year ago, and maybe THAT time I'd been patching up the fence around the sheep pasture instead, maybe THAT time I'd been visiting the Fortizens instead of Bob, but it was all running in one of those too-convenient-to-be-coincidental parallels. And last time it had gone stunningly wrong.
I was brooding over that as I squelched out to the site of the new barn, so I missed my name being called five or six times before it registered. I've never done well with honorifics anyway. It finally triggered my brain, though:
"Knight Dresden." I turned, and saw a mud covered man, the same color as the rest of the muddy men and women working and splashing in the muck. He had hay stuck to his shirt and in his hair, and his money-green eyes were serious.
"Baron Marcone," I said, a little awkward, not sure what tone to take. Last time he hadn't greeted me by title, and he'd jammed a hand in my pocket.
This time? A little head-dip of a bow. "I wanted to apologize."
"Did that a year ago," I muttered. He went on, ignoring me.
"I made a decision without sufficient information. ...it was the wrong one. I'm sorry." He gave me an actual bow, from the waist, and then turned to head back to the stables.
"Look," I said to his back. "I know what Bob told you --"
"Was he lying?" John asked politely, only half turning.
"No. But that's not the POINT." I waved a hand. "It wasn't about me --"
John pivoted on one foot, facing me squarely. "It was about your friend, who was infinitely more than a supernatural library?" He lifted an eyebrow. "Harry. He's been living here for a year. We've noticed."
"You said you'd have done it anyway," I pointed out.
"I was willing for you, and him, to pay the forfeit if the negotiations fell through." He gave a brusque shake of his head. "It wasn't a decision I had the right to make; I've had time to understand that. I will protect him from any repercussions that come from this. I swear by my honor."
"Him, but not me, huh? I'm hurt," I said.
His eyes crinkled and he gave me a one-sided smile. "Harry, since when do you let me protect you? Ever?"
"You used to stick your nose in my business all the time."
"Yes, well. You... belonged to Chicago, then." His smile hadn't faded; it softened and smoothed out into symmetry.
"And Chicago belonged to you?" I pulled a face.
"Not quite the direction that I saw our relationship, but it will do."
And I belonged to Winter, now. It went unsaid. It still hurt. The stark confirmation that John wouldn't-- couldn't step in without my say so to fix things or buffer problems for me anymore, it was hard. Especially since I barely liked to admit how much I'd depended on him to lord over Chicago, the lesser of a grab-bag of evils, and occasionally nudge the dice my way. But I wasn't able to jump to his grudging rescue anymore, either. Not without Mab's say so and a big heaping helping of politics.
"I'm helping with the barn." Harry, stater of the obvious.
"Thank you." He bowed. Again. Must be his new ab work out.
I headed toward the barn and he went back to whatever he was doing.
The sun was sinking, a small, bright ball dimmed by the grimy grey of the sky and the scattered remains of the rain clouds, sitting just atop the line of the gate and throwing long, long shadows across the ground. I looked ten feet tall, and the baby goat in my arms had legs the size of a pony's. It bleated at me and stretched its neck up to chew on my chin. Mouse was no help at all, his tail wagging, creating a distinct wind current, and panting happily. He'd had a good day, judging by the smell of him.
I got the goat back by blowing a raspberry on top of its head, and it flicked one of its long ears up in my face, butting lovingly at my jaw.
"You know, usually it's the twelve year old girls we have to pry away from the baby animals," Butters said wryly.
"I keep my pigtails close to my heart," I sniffed, and the goat kid got me with a hoof in the cheek as it pulled itself up to gnaw on my hair. The only rebuttal was, of course, to hold the hoof still and gently, noisily chew my way up the attached leg.
"He's got to go into the barn for the night, Harry. Come on."
I surrendered the goat -- to Mouse's whuff of disappointment and my own muffled yelp as some of my hair went with it. I sent a quick, murmured spell after it to flash-freeze my hair and then disintegrate it, and the goat kid seemed none the wiser as it trotted across the little pen to its mother. A young, gangly boxer, maybe a year old, traded sniffs with Mouse and inspected my legs carefully, and seemed to determine we were no threat, and returned to its spot to lay down in front of the pen, back on duty.
I eyed Butters as we walked away from the barn -- could feel him doing the same to me. His hair was a lot greyer than it had been the last time I'd seen him. If anything, it made him look more like a Q-tip. Other than that, he looked about the same. Short. Wiry. His familiar quick, animated little movements coupled with the same lean face and deep eyes as the rest of the Fortizens.
"No goats in Winter?" he asked mildly.
Mouse answered for me; a sad, forlorn sigh. I tipped my head at him. "What the pooch said."
The sun was almost gone, disappearing past the gate, and I squinted at it as I mimicked the flash-freeze spell I'd done earlier, targeting the various types of dirt and grime I could feel on me, shaking it loose as it disintegrated away.
"Neat trick," Butters said, eyebrow arching at the miniature shower that fell around me, disappearing into the mud. "...It's nice to see you back, Harry. Bob's missed you. So have the rest of us." If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he was telling me 'no hard feelings.'
...I remembered some of the things I'd thought about Butters a year ago, and winced. Maybe he was.
"I'm sorry," he continued. "I really didn't realize. I know he's your friend. I didn't mean to get him in trouble, or you. I'm sorry." There was that same careful tone that John had used. The one that implied that he was ready if maybe things weren't entirely right between us. "...I'd have been pretty scared and angry too."
I swallowed, and picked something other than the last bit to focus on. "Has Bob been giving you trouble?" I remembered John's quick defense of Butters last year. Somehow I doubted the tyrant king I'd come to know and, well. Love. Would let his people be treated the same way he'd let Bob treat him, going by Bob's stories.
"What? No; he's been great. I've heard a bit more than I ever needed to about bodily functions -- and that's coming from an old coroner. But you've been gone for over a year, Harry. I know time's different in Faerie, but that's a long time."
"I needed some time." Presenting: Harry, the Broken Record.
Butters nodded. "Yeah. I bet. Are you going to be okay?"
No one had asked me that. I hadn't really expected anyone to. I'd been the one who'd stormed off and given the silent treatment for over a year. And I'd made Bob pay for my anger by leaving him alone. Alone in a fort full of people who needed his services and talked to him daily and treated him with value, yes, but I'd pulled my friendship from him when he'd needed it, and I'd pulled it from everyone else -- and most of them hadn't deserved my anger at all.
Didn't mean I didn't still hurt. That I hadn't had a right to be angry. Didn't mean I hadn't been caught by John's betrayal of my trust as much as by that trust itself.
...Didn't mean I got to act like a jerk in a world where most people didn't have that luxury anymore.
"Yeah," I said. "You?"
He nodded, a bit of a hop to his step that reminded me he'd stitched up my wounds, he'd seen me at my worst, he'd helped me fight zombies and worse things and kept my friends safe when all I could do to thank him was try not to get him killed. "Yeah, Harry. You bet." His hand rested on my arm for a moment, just long enough to feel warm against me in the growing chill and twilight. "I'll see you later, okay? The reading's going to start soon. Bob's pretty excited you're coming; you don't want to miss it."
When the curtains fell, they trapped the heat and light from the big fire at the head of the Hall, and I blinked as my eyes readjusted, squinting as I watched the tiny cast of readers hunching over a worn paperback. A latecomer stumbled in, seeing her way by the light of Bob, tucked under her arms. He wisely didn't comment on his proximity to her breasts.
It was jarring, a little, trying to match the shadowy, dirty, too-real forms up front with a pre-pocalyptic little town with romance novel sensibilities -- but I fell into the story. The girl who'd been carrying Bob was the narrator, and her incongruously resonant voice reached right back to me. Bob filled in all the bit parts, on top of the romantic lead -- I was going to hold his pitch-perfect version of a grumpy maternal older woman against him for all time -- and the rest of the cast did one or two voices. I quickly got into the swing of the characters. Ripley Todd especially, because she reminded me a little of Murphy--an aggressively coppy cop who happened to be female-- right up to the point where she started getting doe-eyed for a supernatural researcher. That one, not so much Murph. They got through two chapters and encored another half-chapter before one of the guys made a hacking motion across his throat and lolled his tongue out theatrically. I realized blearily that they'd been reading for almost an hour. I'd been lulled into this comfortable place where there was still running water and people had cars. It was cozy there.
I slumped back into my half-doze, willing the sound of people getting up and shuffling out not to wake me all the way. I had almost drifted off completely -- and then there was yelp and a thud and someone's elbow ramming into my leg. Something wooden-sounding and solid rolled away into the corner.
"Fuck," hissed the guy who'd tripped over Mouse. "Sorry, buddy. Sorry, dog." The general formula for tripping-over-someone pleasantries I'd been hearing around me all night, good natured and built up around the necessity of moving in the dark.
Adrenaline from being woken up suddenly, and the pain in my thigh, gave me some mental clarity.
"John."
"...Knight Dresden." There was a long silence-- then a grunt as Mouse stood up, leaning heavily against my leg. "Mouse, Massicio. Hello." There was the quiet shuffle of an ear-rub, and Mouse accepted it as his due before he padded out to find somewhere that he wouldn't get his tail stepped on quite so much.
"My apologies," John said after a beat. I hadn't heard him move away; I was surprised he was still there.
"Yeah, you've been doing a lot of that," I said. "It's okay. What'd you drop?"
"My spindle," he said, voice stiff, tone just this shy of formally polite -- maybe if he could get enough words out.
I grunted and sat up straight on my little hay bale, scratchy against my bared lower legs now that I was more awake and in the present world, willing a tiny eddy of magic into the pentacle amulet around my neck. I hadn't realized how dark it had gotten, the big fire that hadn't been enough to see by this far back anyway reduced to smoldering ashes, until there was light again. John blinked, head jerking up, and squinted at me; I held my amulet up, spreading the pale blue glow, and grunted again when I caught site of the spindle a few feet away, resting against the wall. I wasn't surprised John had spent the performance doing busy work; it needed to be done, and if there was a business manifesto for John Marcone, that was it.
"You don't --" John said, but I was already there and squatting down, and back up and wrapping the escaped yarn around the spoke.
Luccio walked by, her path illuminated by a silvery werelight hovering in front of her face and Bob tucked under her arm. She tipped her head to us, murmured "Baron; Knight Dresden," and Bob whistled, calling out:
"Hey, Boss! What did you think?"
I gave him a thumbs up, spindle in my other hand, and he spun in Luccio's grip as she kept walking, more in-tune to the human subtleties of stiff backs and shuffling feet, and threw the orange glow of his eyelights towards me. "Come see me tomorrow! I'll sign your chest!" and Luccio turned the corner at the entranceway, leaving John and I in the blue glow of my pentacle.
John bowed his head -- at least it wasn't a full bow this time -- and took the spindle from me when I held it out and plopped back down on the hay bale. It was comfy enough, and there were still a few people clustered together and trickling out of the Hall, one by one or in small groups, the Fort winding down in its nighttime routine. "It's okay," I said again.
Something seemed to settle in him, a firming of resolve, and he nodded once, sharply, his back gaining strength where it had been stiff and uncomfortable. "Thank you for your assistance, Knight Dresden," he said, that formal tone in full bloom. "I hope you enjoyed the reading tonight; I believe that you somehow managed to coax extra gusto from Bob. Your visitation rights, of course, stand, and I hope you have found your stay to your satisfaction. If you are in need of an escort, one will be provided --"
I sighed, reached up to loop one arm around his waist, and tugged him down into my lap. "Kicking me out already?" I asked, whisper soft, and let my pentacle flicker out, dropping us back into darkness. A sense of comfortable confinement and privacy returned -- there were people around us, I could hear them shuffling, but nobody was looking at us because we were the only source of light, nobody could see us.
"Harry-"
"I said it was okay. Unless you have a problem I don't know about --?"
"Harry, it can't be this easy," he said quietly, right into my ear, the mood wrong enough that the whisper of his breath was uncomfortable rather than exciting. "You can't simply forgive me -- just because I said the right things, made the right gestures."
"You're sorry, right?" I whispered back.
"Sorry doesn't mean that there won't be mistakes made in the future." A pause. "That I won't make mistakes," he said, not even giving himself the benefit of the weaselly passive voice my high school lit teachers had always warned me about. "The next time could be worse."
"Could be. Or maybe I'll be more careful."
He snorted into my ear.
"Hey, hey, it's not that impossible," I said, irked.
"You're too trusting."
I smiled ruefully. "You're right. I am. That's one of the reasons I didn't see this coming -- that I trusted you to be you. And by 'you' I mean that guy in Chicago. I really didn't even consider that you could screw up, let alone that royally."
"-- you saw me make my share of mistakes --"
"And they only hurt you or the people who'd been signed on to protect you. And hey, you put me in danger all the freaking time, but you always knew what you were doing. You've manipulated me and used me and tried to make deals with me but you always did everything deliberately, and you always, always made sure nobody else paid the price when you boned it up. It sucks, doesn't it?"
I felt his nod, tight and jerky. Hell's bells, the man had a complex a mile wide about putting people in harm's way. I didn't need to keep twisting the knife; he could probably run for years off of the guilt already.
"Boy. Welcome to my world." I sighed. "So you aren't infallible. I have to get used to that. And plan around it." He gave a strangled laugh at the word 'plan' and I sighed again, long-suffering and hard done by. "I hate being the grownup."
"You say, holding me in your lap," John said, voice still tense, the humor half-forced. "This is a predilection of yours I don't know if I'm entirely comfortable with."
I let my arms tighten a little around him. "You know I still love you, right?"
"Yes. But I didn't think you were coming back."
"So, what, the hyper-formality was to make it not so hard for me to leave?"
"It's always all about you, isn't it?" Which I believed was Johnese (coastal bicker dialect) for 'It was to make it not so hard for me to watch you leave.'
"Obviously." I shifted slightly. "Speaking of which, my legs are going to sleep. You been hitting ye olde dough-nuts while I was gone? Eating heartbroken pints of Benjamin and Jareth?"
"Perhaps if you'd considered the consequences before you chose my seating arrangements for me --"
"Wait," I taunted him. "I thought I was a frivolous, innocent thing who couldn't consider consequences and wrap my pretty little head around 'planning' --"
"I missed you." And his arms were around me, rib-bendingly tight. Any extra weight was obviously all muscle. He clung for a minute, and then added: "You elongated preschooler," almost as an afterthought.
"This from the guy who just accused me of having some weird age-play kink." I leaned my cheek against the top of his head. "I missed you, too. I did. ...doesn't mean you're out of the doghouse. But I missed you."
He rested his head in the crook of my neck; I kept my face in his hair, laying my cheek against the softer silver of his temple (I swear you can feel the difference), then slapped his ass. "All right, I can't feel my legs. Get up and take me to bed already."