Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(70)
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.”
The svartalf rubbed a few fingers wearily at his forehead, clearly irritated, and glanced up at me. “Harry Dresden,” he said. “You have been a guest and friend to my people. You were friends with Austri. Can this person be trusted?”
I eyed Lara and then turned back to Etri. “If she gives you her word, she’ll keep it.”
Which … wasn’t exactly a lie. Lara was good to her word. So was Mab. So was Etri. And I didn’t particularly trust any of them, beyond that.
But then, when you get right down to it, what else is there? And what more can you really ask for?
Etri studied me for a moment and then nodded, and I got the impression that he had intuited my exact meaning. His mouth set in a line that said he clearly didn’t enjoy the prospect, but that he was also clearly resolved to treating his peers with courtesy. “Very well. Lady Lara, if you would please join us. May I send for a drink?”
Lara smiled warmly at me and settled down in a chair one of Etri’s people carried over for her, to leave her, Etri, and Cristos seated at the points of a triangle. “Thank you, Warden Dresden, for the introduction.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Please,” Cristos said, his voice mellow, his gaze annoyed, “do not let us keep you from your duties any longer, Warden.”
“Yep,” I said to Cristos, in a voice that was louder and more nasal than it had to be. “Okay. Bye-bye.”
I shot Yoshimo with my forefinger and strode away. There was a buffet over in one corner of the hall. My nose caught a whiff of something delicious and reported to my stomach, which instantly started growling. I realized I had been too distracted to have a meal today, which really seemed like something I should grow out of at some point.
Well. There was no sense in going hungry if I didn’t have to, and I suspected that the more time I spent with my mouth full of food, the less time I would have to screw up at this stupid party. I went for the food.
The room was getting even fuller. Under a sickly green banner of cloth sat the LaChaise clan’s representatives, centered on a ruddy-faced, burly man with big old muttonchops who looked like he enjoyed a lot of meat and potatoes. Carter LaChaise, leader of a large family of ghouls who ran a lot of supernatural business in Cajun country. They’d been seated at a table and were dining ravenously on steak tartare, I hoped, and looked weirdly like the painting of the Last Supper.
I considered setting them all on fire for a while, until I started getting looks from the table. It was only then that I noticed how widely I was smiling and moved along.
A black banner with black gemstones draped down into a semi-alcove shape, surrounding a single enormous chair in shadow. A very tall, very large man, apparently in his fifties, sat lazily in the chair, silently regarding the gathering. He held a pipe negligently in one hand, apparently unlit, but smoke trailed sinuously down from his nostrils with each breath, and his eyes reflected the light of the room like a cat’s. Ferrovax, the dragon, disguised in human form. The last time we’d met had been at an event like this, and he’d tossed me around like a chew toy. I avoided his eyes, and his lips curled into a smirk as he tracked me going by. Some of my antics a few months back had disturbed some of his treasures, held in Marcone’s vault. I had a feeling he was the type to take that personally.
I shivered at that. There was plenty of fallout from that job that was still due to come raining down, I was pretty sure.
There was a dizzying array of other delegations. The Summer Court of the Fae held the far corners of the room, in the complementary cardinal direction from the svartalves and the White Court, opposite the Winter Court on the other side. Both were centered around a single thronelike chair, but no principals were seated yet—only five of the Sidhe, in armor respective of their queens’ colors, deep blues and greens and purples for winter, with more springlike greens and golds for summer.
Other beings were all over the place. I recognized a naga from a mess I’d gotten into on a rough weekend a few years back, at the moment disguised as a woman with smoky skin in a lovely white evening gown, chatting with Ivy the Archive, who was startlingly older than the last time I’d seen her, and dressed to match in a black evening gown without jewelry or other accoutrements.
Should Ivy even have hips yet? I did some math, making an effort not to count on my fingers, and realized that, yes, it really had been that long since I’d seen her. Now she looked like a girl going to prom, only way more self-assured—and she was evidently there alone, absent the bodyguard I’d come to associate with her as surely as I did coffee with doughnuts. Where was Kincaid? I tried to make eye contact with Ivy as I went by, but either she was too involved in the conversation to notice or she ignored me.
I felt awkward. I was never much good at parties.
I went by a sky blue banner swirling with cloudy whites and flashing lines of gold, opposite Ferrovax’s cozy alcove, and exchanged a nod with Vadderung, CEO of Monoc Securities, seated in a comfortable stuffed chair that looked like it would be good for reading. Vadderung looked like a tall, muscular man in his early sixties who could probably bench-press a motorcycle. He wore a charcoal suit, his long wolf-grey hair and trimmed beard made rakish by a black eye patch on a leather thong. Like Ferrovax, he sat alone, without guards, with a rather large glass of wine in one hand and a smoldering pipe in the other.