Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(25)

When you’re an incubus, life is weird like that.

“He visited me, specifically,” Evanna said, “as well as some of the other women of the Court, from time to time. My people have always been enamored of beauty, above all.” She took a step closer to the cage and said, to Thomas, “And this wondrous creature did not make love so much as he made art. Blindingly beautiful, passionate art.” Her voice turned harder. “Blinding, indeed. Such a waste.”

I looked down, closed my eyes, and pictured the cells, then the war room, then the swiftest un-burnt route out of the svartalf embassy. I tried to add in everything I knew about where the security forces were, because depending on the answer to my next question, I might be about to take them all on.

That’s the thing about living behind all that security: If it can keep threats out, it can just as easily keep you in.

“What will happen to him?” I asked.

“Justice,” Evanna replied, a distinct note of contempt in the word. “He began his attack seven minutes after the official treaty period for the peace summit went into effect. By the law of the Accords, that makes his offense one that must be judged by the guidelines outlined within. A neutral emissary will be appointed to investigate and serve as arbiter of his fate.”

I focused my eyes hard on my toes and relaxed a little. If this was a matter to be handled by the Accords, it meant that there was time. An emissary would have to be chosen, consented to by both the svartalves and the White Court, and the following inquiry would take time. Which meant I didn’t have to go out in a blaze of glory, or at least gory, that very moment.

Evanna walked closer to the cage and lowered herself to sit on her ankles, facing Thomas. “Austri was a dear friend. Were it up to me alone, I would entomb you in stone with just enough air to give you time to feel yourself gasping to death, Thomas Raith. You will die for this. Or there will be a war such as this world has not seen in a millennium.”

And then she spat on him.

My hands clenched hard on the solid oak of my staff, and I took half a step forward.

Instantly, the four guards trained their weapons on me. And considering I didn’t even know what the hell they were or what they were supposed to do, it might have been just a little bit dicey to try to defend myself against them.

And besides. The Accords were in play. While they were, I was basically a one-man nation, with my actions reflecting upon the White Council as a whole—and upon the Winter Court, to boot. For Pete’s sake. I was two one-man nations: not for purposes of power, only for potential disaster.

Hell’s bells.

Evanna never looked away from Thomas and paid so little attention to me that I had to figure that she was confident her people could obliterate me before I could work any mischief. Given who the svartalves were—people even the Norse gods hadn’t cared to make angry—I was inclined to take her seriously.

“Well, Raith?” she said in a quiet voice. “Have you anything to say?”

It looked like neither her anger, nor her contempt, nor her question had really registered with him. My brother stayed silent and still, except for involuntary spasms of muscles and shudders of pain.

“I thought better of you, Thomas,” Evanna said. “If you had a problem with my people, you could have come to us as a friend.” Then she rose and walked away, her back rigid. She didn’t seem to care if I followed her or not, and I felt a little nervous that I might wind up locked inside the detention area if I didn’t leave when I had the opportunity—so I followed her.

As we were leaving, a voice croaked, “Ha’ay.”

The sound of it hurt. I steeled myself to look calm and confident, and turned back to face my brother.

A tear was cutting a slow pale scarlet trail across the dried blood on his cheek. “Junghg. S’Jnngh.”

He couldn’t say Justine.

“It’s okay,” I said gently. “I know. I’ll look after her.”

At my words, something in him broke. He started to contract with racking sobs. The sounds he made were those of an animal dying in a bewildering amount of pain.

I closed my eyes and breathed, willing away tears before they could fall. Then I turned my back on him and left him in the grip of the people who had hurt him so badly and who had every intention of taking his life.

What choice did I have?

My brother, my only brother, had just given the gathering of the oldest and most powerful supernatural beings on the planet a surpassingly excellent reason to kill him. In an hour, he had managed to put himself into a position where he was going to get more attention and more trouble from more excessively dangerous people than I’d ever managed to do in my life.

Trust me. I do it for my day job. I know what I’m talking about.

Stars and stones, Thomas, you idiot. What have you done?





9


What’s wrong, Dad?” Maggie asked me.

We were back in the apartment, and when I asked her to, she had dutifully retrieved her bugout bag from the closet.

Yeah, I know, it sounds a little paranoid to teach a child to keep a bag full of spare clothes, snacks, basic medical and survival supplies, and water, just in case she needs to suddenly go on the run. But then, most kids didn’t have to contend with the possibility of enemies coming up through the floor and grabbing them, either.

I’m raising my daughter to survive the kind of thing she might occasionally be adjacent to because of who her father is, and for the time being her best survival strategy was almost always to be ready to run away.