Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

I blinked and then narrowed my eyes. “ You … what?”

Mab blinked her eyes and appeared to, just barely, avoid rolling them in exasperation. “Two favors. She may ask them of you during the approaching summit. You will provide whatever she asks, with as much energy and sincerity and forethought … as you are capable of employing. You will not fail me in this.”

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I’m already kind of busy. You know that. I’m guarding the Senior Council and liaisoning between the Council and Faerie already.”

“My time and attention are infinitely more important than yours,” Mab said. “You now have more work. Cease your whining, desist from your dalliances, and do your duty.”

“Two favors,” I said.

“No more, no less,” Mab said.

“ Just … anything she asks, you expect me to do.”

“I expect her to show respect for my Court and my resources,” Mab said. “I expect her to ask nothing of you that she would be unwilling to ask from me. Within those constraints—yes.”

I sputtered and said, “Suppose she asks me to steal something?”

“I expect you to acquire it.”

“Suppose she asks me to burn down a building?”

“I expect a mountain of fine ash.”

“Suppose she asks me to kill someone?”

“I expect their corpse to be properly disposed of,” Mab said. She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes slightly. “For you to do anything less would be for you to cast shame and dishonor upon my name, upon my throne, and upon all of Winter.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I invite you to contemplate the consequences of that.”

I didn’t meet her eyes. I’d seen the kind of thing Mab would do to someone who merely displeased her, much less made her look bad. My predecessor begged me to kill him. He’d been a monster when he’d had my job—but Mab had crushed him into a broken, whimpering mass of cells before she’d allowed him to die.

And if I gave her reason, she would do the same to me.

No.

She’d do worse. A lot worse.

I glanced at Lara, who was watching me with a much less inhuman but no less unreadable version of Mab’s feline expression. As the effective queen of the White Court, Lara was a card-carrying monster. She was intelligent, driven, and dangerous as hell. Rumor was that she owned politicians coast to coast in the United States now, and that her ambition was driving her to reach even further. Lara was perfectly capable of asking me to do something beyond the pale of any functioning conscience.

But Lara was damned smart, too. She had to know that I had limits—that my compact with Mab hadn’t changed that. If she told me to do something unconscionable, I was going to tell her where she could shove it.

Which would get me killed. Overkilled. Überkilled.

I looked back at Mab. Her face was blank granite, immovable.

Lara was a ruling peer under the Unseelie Accords, the Geneva Conventions of the supernatural world. If I said no, if I defied Mab in front of her, I was pretty sure I would get the Prometheus treatment at the very least. But if I said yes, I could find myself in even more trouble. If I knew one thing about paying off favors that were part of a Faerie bargain, it was that they were never, ever simple.

I had nothing but lousy choices. So what else was new?

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”

“Excellent,” Mab said. “Ms. Raith?”

Lara nodded, her large, luminous eyes never leaving my face. “Acceptable.”

“Then our business is concluded, for now,” Mab said.

There was a sudden surge of icy cold wind, so out of place in the summer evening that the windows of the car glazed over with misty condensation and I was forced to blink my eyes and shield them with one hand.

When I could see again, Mab and Lara were gone, and I was alone in the Munstermobile.

“Drama queen,” I muttered, and started rolling down the windows. A few minutes later, the glass was clear and I was on the road, muttering imprecations about the ruthless nature of Faerie Queens as I drove back to the apartment.

I heard the sirens a couple of blocks out. I nudged the accelerator as I came down the street toward the svartalf embassy, suddenly anxious.

I became a lot more anxious when I saw the haze of smoke in the air—and when I saw the fire department’s emergency vehicles deploying onto the grounds, anxiety blossomed into pure panic.

Flames leapt forty feet into the air above the compound as the building burned.

The embassy was on fire—and my daughter was inside.

7

I parked the Munstermobile a block away and ran in. I didn’t really feel like being stopped by a well-meaning first responder, so I ran in under a veil. I also didn’t feel like being away any longer than necessary, so I ran in at something like Olympic speed. It probably would have been more subtle if I hadn’t vaulted the hood of the last police car in the way. The cop standing next to the driver’s-side door goggled and fumbled his radio, which I guess is understandable when something resembling a low-budget Predator goes by.

There’s no point in having a soul-threatening source of power to draw on if you aren’t going to draw on it when your daughter is in danger.

That’s exactly the reasoning that got you into this mess in the first place, Dresden, isn’t it?

Shut up, me.

The svartalves must have disabled the wards all over the exterior grounds, or else CFD wouldn’t have been able to get near the place. It must have pained Austri to no end to lower the defenses for a gang of humans. I went by the little security shack outside the place and saw no one in it.

The front door of the building was open, and smoke was billowing from it, hazing out everything more than thirty or forty feet away. Two teams of firefighters with hoses had already deployed up to the door and were flooding the place with water, evidently preparing to work their way inside. I didn’t feel like getting hosed down or set on fire, so I skirted the front door, circling the building. There was an emergency exit on the side of the building, and a secondary entrance in the rear where deliveries came in.

The earth abruptly became liquid under my feet and forced me to slow my pace or pitch forward into it. The svartalves manipulated earth the way mortals do plastic, only with magic, obviously, and I dropped my veil at once, lifting my hands. “Whoa, whoa, it’s me! Harry Dresden!”

A svartalf’s head came up out of the ground without any kind of accompanying illusion, enormous dark eyes blinking twice and staring at me. “Ah,” the svartalf said, rising higher out of the ground, and I recognized the voice. It was Etri’s sister, Evanna, his second-in-command. Her hair was pale and so silken-fine that it hung rather lankly around her head. More of her rose out of the ground, clothed in a simple shift the same color as her hair. “Wizard, I was told to watch for you. I need you to come with me.”

“My daughter,” I said. “I have to get to her.”

“Precisely,” Evanna said, her voice crisp. She held out her hand to me.

I gritted my teeth and said, “We’re going to earthwalk?”

“If you please,” she said.

“I hate this,” I said. “No offense.” Then I took a deep breath and took her hand.