The Law (The Dresden Files #17.4)(26)

Inverno’s eyes flickered. “Hardly,” he said. “My assistant is… often passionate in her choices. However, I should point out that the attack was not directed at you, but at the man who tried to have you murdered.”

“Yeah, what surgical precision,” I said in a dry tone. “It was reckless disregard.” I turned to Marcone. “Inverno is one of yours. This falls at your feet too.”

Marcone tilted his head and said, “In your judgment.”

From the darkest shadows of the warehouse, a woman’s voice, colder than a scalpel dipped in liquid oxygen, said, “And in mine.”

The Queen of Air and Darkness appeared from the blackness, a woman well over six feet tall with ghostly pale skin, a long black dress, long black hair, and eyes made from spheres of obsidian. She paced to my side with deliberate steps, a being of frozen poise and inhuman beauty. She was the mentor and ruler of every wicked being in Faerie, and still bore herself with a kind of brittle fragility—a remnant of her confrontation with the Titan.

Gard drew in a steadying breath and took a step closer to Marcone. The Baron of Chicago betrayed no such apprehension. He regarded Mab with a calm, rather deep nod and said, “Queen Mab.”

“Baron,” Mab replied. Her black eyes went to Tripp Gregory and she shook her head. “Controlling the excesses of your vassals is one of the duties of a freeholding lord.”

“I am not sure this matter involves the Winter Court in regard to its relations with my realm,” Marcone said. “Dresden was pursuing a personal matter, not the business of your Court—he is assisting a mortal who requested his aid. It may be that this is a matter best overlooked.”

Mab considered Marcone’s words carefully and then turned her eyes to me. “I care nothing for mortals, their children, or their teachers,” she said. It was like standing in front of an open freezer door, to feel her words roll over me. “Explain, my Knight, if you can: why does this involve Me?”

I didn’t show any of the nervousness I was feeling. I think. “They both damaged the company car in the course of their attack.”

Mab stared at me for a long moment.

“The automobile I had prepared for your use,” she clarified.

“Yes.”

“It is damaged now?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got Mike on it.”

“Visibly? That others may see?”

“It’s repairable,” I said. “But yes.”

Mab pressed her lips together and frowned at me as if I was quite an idiot. But she turned to Marcone and said, “I too bear a measure of responsibility for the actions of my vassals.” She glared at me once more. “Regardless of how moronic their choices might be.” Her gaze turned to Inverno and Lapland. “And this breach of protocol on your part, Inverno, complicates matters. Such incidents are likely to give the mortals cause to raise their hands against us all.” She shook her head and said, “I am tempted to lock my vassals in ice for, let us say, a pair of decades. And leave them conscious the while.”

“I should have to take a similar action with Mister Gregory to balance you,” Marcone said calmly. “And it would deprive me of the services of an excellent attorney.”

“Yes,” Mab said, clearly annoyed. “It would inconvenience me as well. Yet the Winter Knight--and by extension the Winter Court--has a genuine grievance.”

“Then how shall the matter be resolved?” Marcone asked calmly.

“I have a suggestion,” I said.

Mab’s black eyes focused on me, and I felt an icy quiver run through my guts. “Explain.”

“This entire matter is about an imbalance of forces,” I said, speaking mostly to Mab. “None of us wants more fighting or attention. What is required to resolve it is a rebalancing.”

Mab’s head tilted.

“Interesting,” Marcone said. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’m willing to let the matter of the bomb drop,” I said. I glanced at Talvi. “The incident with the otso, too.”

Marcone nodded once. “In exchange for what?”

“Have Gregory drop the case,” I said.

Marcone studied me steadily. Then he glanced at Tripp Gregory and asked, “Would you be willing to consider it?”

Gregory flicked a hard, ugly look at Marcone and said, “I stayed quiet for you.”

Marcone frowned, sighed, and shook his head. “Yes. You did. I’m afraid I cannot fail to support my vassal, Dresden. We have had this conversation.”

I hadn’t figured I’d get out of it that easy, but it had been worth a shot. “Then how about this?” I said. “Your guy fights fair in court. No expenditure of mob money on experts, no bullshit legal power moves, no putting pressure on the judge or anyone else involved. It gets argued purely on the merits—and we let the mortal courts sort this out. Quietly. Smoothly. None of us put our thumbs on the scale. That’s balance enough for me.”

“Flipping a coin would make more sense,” Marcone mused.

“I like thinking that something like justice can still be found in the wild here and there,” I said. “Leave me the illusion.”

Mab’s cold, black gaze went from me to Marcone. “Your organization struck at my Knight on the open street.” Her eyes landed on Lapland. “And a servant of one under my protection has dishonored her master, and in so doing an ally of Winter. How does this action balance what has happened?”