Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

I faltered at that, and Lara sent a thrust at me that hit me square in the belt buckle and shoved me off my feet and onto my ass.

I sat on the floor for a moment, eyeing Lara, who grounded her staff and bowed exactly as I had and regarded me calmly.

She knew about Thomas and me. I mean, I’d been aware of that, but she’d put together enough to work out who Ebenezar was, too. The White Court had a reputation for being insidious subversives. Connections to them, regardless of their source, were regarded with what most of the supernatural world considered healthy suspicion. If Ebenezar’s connection (and mine) to the White Court became public knowledge, the ramifications for our current situation were … sticky.

And Ebenezar didn’t just have issues with vampires: He had volumes and ongoing subscriptions. It had the potential for a real humdinger of a mess.

“I’ve known from the beginning,” she said impatiently, as if she’d been reading my thoughts. “I was here when my father was so obsessed with your mother. He made me play nanny to Thomas. I often heard them talk, because apparently no one in my family understands what a deadly weapon the ability to listen can be, and she left Thomas in my care once when she visited McCoy. And after she died, I helped Father hang her portrait in his psychotic little egomaniac’s gallery.”

I nodded. “But you never brought it up. Never used it for leverage.”

“No,” she said. “Because I’m also the one who changed Thomas’s diapers, after his mother escaped our father. Dressed him. Fed him his meals. Taught him to read.” She shook her head, her eyes focused on one of the banners. “I’m more ruthless than most, Dresden. But even for me, there are limits. Most of those limits involve family.”

“That’s why you didn’t use it against him,” I said. “How come you didn’t use it against me?”

“You never gave me a good reason to fight quite that dirty,” she replied. “And I couldn’t have used it against you without exposing my brother to trouble as well.”

“Then you know why I want to help him,” I said.

“We both do.”

“Then get him out,” I said. “You can do that, right? Work something out with Etri and his people?”

Her features shifted subtly, changed. Somehow they became paler, more like marble, less like something that belonged to a living human person. “Impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” I said.

She held up one slim white hand. “As the situation stands, yes, it is. I’ve been shown the preliminary evidence. Thomas entered their embassy under false pretenses, less than ten minutes after the beginning of the armistice for the peace talks, and attempted to murder their king. On camera. If I do anything but deny and disavow his actions, Etri will have little choice but to assume that I sent Thomas to kill him.”

“Etri’s people look all stuffy, but they have Viking sensibilities,” I said quietly.

“Yes,” Lara replied. “If they believe I’ve tried to harm Etri, they will begin a war I am not at all certain I care to fight.” She let out a laugh that had something of a hysterical edge on it. “Thomas couldn’t have screwed this up any harder if he’d had a year to plan it.”

“There’s got to be something you can do,” I said. “What about a weregild?”

Lara grimaced. “The svartalf who died—”

“Austri,” I said. “His name was Austri.”

She regarded me for a moment, her expression troubled. “Austri, then. He died defending a head of state. This is an offense against the svartalves as a nation, not just an individual. Weregild is what leaders use when they both want to avoid conflict. Etri doesn’t.” She shook her head again. “Our brother is beyond my political reach.”

I scowled. “Well, what have you got all these Marines for, then?”

Lara eyed me as if I’d been a child missing the slowest, easiest pitches she could throw at me. “If I tried to have him forcibly taken from svartalf territory, not only would it represent a major military effort to face the dragon in its den; it would mean violating their sovereign territory as defined in the Accords. Mab wouldn’t remain neutral then—she’d be obligated to help them. She might even send her hatchetman after me.” She shook her head. “I might be willing and able to go up against Etri and his people for my idiot brother, if there’s no other way. But I cannot and will not lead my people into a mass suicide by svartalves and Mab and the rest of the Accorded nations.” She looked away, at one of the banners and its kanji, and seemed, for a moment, ashamed. “Even within my own Court, my authority has limits. If I tried such an irrational thing, they’d depose me.”

I exhaled slowly.

She said nothing for a moment.

“Why?” I asked her. “Why did he do it?”

She shook her head. “I had hoped that you would know something I didn’t, wizard. It wasn’t my doing, and he didn’t give me the least indication that it was going to happen—presumably to provide me with enough deniability to avoid a war. Which I suppose indicates that somewhere within the idiocy, he meant well.”

“Fighting is out,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And talking is out.”

“So it would seem.”

“But we’ve got to do something.”

Lara’s expression became entirely opaque. “Obviously. I am open to ideas.”

“We have to create more options,” I said.

She nodded, her expression pensive. “I’ll be working the room at the fete tomorrow night. Perhaps some leverage might be obtainable there.”

“Possible? Perhaps?” I shook my head as I rose. “Our brother is going to die if we don’t do something. If you can’t be bothered to—”

Lara came at me in a black-and-white-and-silver-eyed blur that covered twenty feet in less time than it took me to blink. She caught the front of my duster in her pale hands and whirled me into the mat with enough force to make me see stars. By the time I’d brushed a few of them out of my field of view, Lara was astride me, one hand twisted into my duster, one hand lifted knifelike and rigid, ready to sweep down at my throat.

“Do not,” she hissed, leaning closer toward me, “presume to tell me what my family is worth to me. Or what I am willing to do for them.”

I didn’t have a whole lot to say to that. Both of us panted. I found myself staring at her mouth.

Lara’s eyes brightened, glittered like mirrors. She stared at me for a second, breathing heavily herself with the exertion of moving so swiftly.

I was intensely aware of the sensation of her weight on me. So was my … body. But then my body is always overly enthusiastic.

More to the point, the Winter mantle was going berserk. The mantle didn’t just come with access to nifty Fae power sources and greater physical speed and strength. Winter was the spiritual home of all things primal and primitive. They were hunters, raiders, takers. Don’t search the Winter Court of the Sidhe for a hug. You won’t find one anywhere that doesn’t collapse your ribs into your spine—but if you want savage, animalistic sex, yeah. You’ve come to the right place. I mean, you might get torn to pieces in the process, but in Winter, them’s the breaks.