Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

Regret passed over Carlos’s face. “You can talk to me.”

“What?”

“Harry,” he said slowly, “you and I are friends, right?”

“We’ve heard the chimes at midnight more than a few times,” I said.

He nodded. “And seen a few bad places.”

“We have.”

“Well. Maybe you should . . . at some point . . . consider treating me like a friend.”

I held myself perfectly still. “What?”

Carlos lowered his voice, but it remained intense nonetheless. “I don’t mind that you think of me as the little brother, Dresden, but don’t think I’m a goddamned idiot. Don’t think I can’t see what’s happening.”

I stared through him and said nothing.

“If you’re in trouble,” he said, “if you need help, you can talk to me, man. You should talk to me.”

“Why is that?” I said.

“Because big and goddamned scary things are happening,” Carlos said, his voice hard. “The knives are coming out, and it’s my job to keep them from going into the White Council’s back. Because you are in close alliances with scary creatures who are doing scary things to you, and you barely seem to acknowledge it. And because you’ve got access to way too much power, and you could do way too much damage, man. I know you, Dresden. I love you. But too much is at stake right now to let things slide.”

“Is that a threat?” I asked him. It came out a lot more gently than it could have.

“If I can see it,” he said, “others can, too. Talk to me. Let me help you, Harry.”

I stopped for a second and thought about it.

Ramirez was a formidable ally. And, good God, it would be nice to have a skilled wizard in my corner. Ramirez was popular among the younger members of the Wardens. If I had his help, I’d have their help as well.

But Ramirez was also popular among the establishment. Granted, I wasn’t entirely bereft of allies there, but increasingly as time had gone on, Carlos had come to represent a new ideal for the new generation of Wardens—more compassionate than those who had come before, quicker to investigate and slower to conclude, but every bit as dedicated to the Laws of Magic and the security of the White Council of Wizardry.

My friend Carlos would be an enormous amount of help—but Warden Ramirez would be honor bound to inform the Senior Council about my relationship to Thomas, if I told him the truth. I wasn’t even sure that he would be unwise to do so, all things considered. But if that happened, I might as well leave my brother in the fridge—the White Council would never, ever leave my relationship to Thomas as a potential handle to be used against them. They would either reverse that pressure preemptively or else . . . remove the handle.

The White Council had never been a source of anything but grief to me.

Carlos Ramirez was my friend.

But Thomas was my brother.

“I don’t know what to tell you, ’Los,” I lied. “I was doing liaison stuff for Mab.”

“Liaison stuff,” Carlos said. “Rumor calls it something else.”

Hell’s bells, Freydis and her stupid illusion. “Stars and stones, it’s like a British sex comedy around here,” I said. “Look, there are shenanigans happening between Mab and Lara. I’m . . . moderating things.”

He gave me an uncertain look.

“I’d tell you more if I could,” I said. “But this is internal Winter stuff. And, honestly, man, we don’t have time for this.”

Ramirez looked away from me and sighed. “Dammit, Harry.”

“Hey, I don’t like it any more than you do,” I said. “But I need to talk to the old man. We have work to do.”

“Yeah,” he said. He took a slow breath and then nodded once, decisively. “Yeah, we do. Come on up.”

We went up the stairs together. Ramirez had a bruise forming on one cheek. There were ligature marks, sharp bruises, forming on his neck where his cloak had hauled him around.

Injuries I’d decided he needed to have.

Right before I’d lied to him.

Dammit.

I felt awful.

Chapter

Six

You look a little green, Hoss,” Ebenezar said.

The old man was holding down one corner of the castle’s roof, along with Martha Liberty and Listens-to-Wind. Martha Liberty was seated in a chalk circle, speaking to about half a dozen poppets—dolls, forms that spirits could animate to communicate with the mortal world—and then reporting in crisp, terse sentences to Warden Yoshimo, who lurked outside the circle with a notepad and pen.

Listens-to-Wind sat on the corner battlement of the castle, his legs hanging over the edge. He’d taken his sandals off and his feet were swinging idly. Every few moments, some kind of animal would come fluttering or sprinting up to him, mostly small birds and squirrels. They would chitter or tweet and the old shaman would tilt his head and listen gravely before nodding and speaking in quiet replies and sending the animal messengers off again. Wild Bill lurked at his shoulder, leaning in and tilting his head with a scowl, as if trying to pick up a new language and having only moderate luck. He also wrote down messages.

Both Wardens would tear off notes and pass them back to Senior Councilman Cristos, who was moving back and forth between them and Childs and Riley, each of whom was operating a ham radio.

“Ran my boat as hard as I could for a couple of hours,” I replied. “My stomach didn’t care for it.”

The old man lowered his voice. “Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you, boy. You’re a goddamned fool.”

Ebenezar didn’t much care for the White Court of vampires. My grandfather had objected to my “helping” my brother. When I’d told him that he had another grandson, he had objected to that, too. He’d objected loudly enough to sink several boats in the harbor, and the only reason one of them hadn’t been the Water Beetle was that I had stopped him, and gotten away with it.

The anger around him was still a crackling cloud of unreleased lightning.

But the old man was no fool. And he’d taught me how to reason when it came to supernatural conflict. He knew the direction of my thoughts, and what priorities would help us survive the night. “How far can you snare her from, do you think?” he asked me.

I made an effort not to put my hand on the knife at my side. “The lakeshore. If we get her there, she’ll be in range.”

Ebenezar grimaced. “And that’s just close enough for you to make the attempt?”