Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

Normally, Mac’s does a brisk trade, but today there was a sign on the door that read: CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY. A second sign hung inside the door, a wooden one, into which the words ACCORDED NEUTRAL TERRITORY had been neatly burned. It meant that the establishment was officially neutral ground under the guidelines of the Unseelie Accords, what amounted to the Geneva Convention of the supernatural world. Mab had written the Accords, and their signatories defied them at peril of the antipathy of the supernatural establishment and, worse, her personal displeasure.

One corner of the sign was scorched and cracked, which had happened in a battle with Outsiders, who weren’t very civic-minded.

Mac, bald, lean, and silent, stood behind the bar in his usual crisp white shirt and spotless apron. When Mab entered, he put down the rag he was using to polish the wooden bar, and bowed at the waist, somehow giving the gesture an accent of courtesy rather than obeisance.

“Barkeep,” Mab replied, and inclined her head considerably more deeply than she had to Nicodemus a few minutes before. “May your patrons be prosperous and honest.”

Mac, as a rule, rarely uttered multi-syllables. Today, he said, “May your scales always return to balance.”

Her mouth quirked at the corner and she said, “Flatterer.”

He smiled and nodded to me. “Harry.”

“Mac. I haven’t had good food in months. Though, uh, I’m a little short on funds. I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a sandwich and a beer today.”

He nodded.

“Thanks.”

Mab turned to the table nearest the door and gave me a look. It took me a beat to realize what she wanted, and to pull out a chair for her. She sniffed and sat down, folded her hands in her lap, and stared at nothing in particular, dismissing the rest of us from her world as thoroughly as if she had entered a locked room.

My contact was waiting for me at a table in the back corner, and I walked over to join him. He was a big man by every definition of the word, tall and strong and solid, with a barrel for a chest and a smaller keg of a belly to go with it. His hair and beard were white and silver, though the rosy smoothness of his cheeks belied any indication of old age, and his eyes were blue and bright. He wore a chain-mail shirt and hunting leathers, and a long, hooded red coat trimmed in white fur hung from the back of the chair beside him. A simple, worn-looking broadsword hung at his side, and a large, lumpy leather sack sat on the floor beside him, as natural there as a mail carrier with his bag.

“Sir Knight,” he said.

“You’re here as Kringle, seriously?” I asked him.

Kringle winked at me. “The Winter Knight called for me in his official capacity as an agent of the Winter Court. Mab has the right to summon Kringle. If she’d called for Vadderung, I’d have told her to get in line.”

Donar Vadderung was the name of the CEO of Monoc Securities, a corporate security interest that provided information and highly skilled specialists to those with a great deal of money. Vadderung had access to more information than anyone I knew, except maybe the Senior Council of the White Council of Wizardry—only he was a hell of a lot smarter about using it. He was also, I was reasonably certain, Odin. The Odin. Or if he wasn’t, he could do an awfully good impersonation. Oh, and also, he was Santa Claus.

Vadderung is a complicated guy.

“But you and Kringle are the same person,” I said.

“Legally speaking, Kringle and Vadderung are two entirely different people who simply happen to reside in the same body,” he replied.

“That’s just a fiction,” I said, “a little game of protocol.”

“Little games of protocol are how one shows respect, especially to those with whom one does not get along famously well. It can be tedious, but generally is less trouble than a duel would be.”

Mac set a couple of his homebrewed beers down on the bar. I rounded them up and returned to the table, putting both bottles out in the middle. Kringle chose one, nodded to the chair across from him, and I sat.

“To start with, I’m going to assume you know everything I do,” I said.

His eyes wrinkled at the corners as he took a drink. “That seems wise.”

I nodded and sipped my own. Wow. Mac’s beer is an excellent argument that there is a God, and that furthermore, He wants us to be happy. I savored it for a couple of seconds and then wrenched my mind back to business. “I want to float some thoughts at you and see if you think they’re sound.”

“By all means.”

“First,” I said, “Nicodemus is after something powerful. I don’t know what it is, but I do know that if I can get him to tell us what he’s after, it’s going to be a lie. He’d never let anyone know his true goal if he could help it.”

“I concur,” Kringle said.

I nodded. “He’ll assemble a crew. Some of them will be his people, and some of them will be outside specialists, but I’m pretty sure at least one of them is going to be a plant—they’ll look all independent but they’ll have one of those Coins on them and one of the Fallen whispering in their ears.”

“I would consider that a high probability,” Kringle said.

“Third,” I said, “he’s going to betray me at some point along the line. He’s proactive, and obsessed with control, so he’ll be the one who wants to stick the knife in first. He knows the limits Mab has placed on me, so he’ll want to do it after I’ve gotten him to wherever he wants to go, but before we finish the job, to guarantee him the first blow.”

“Also sound reasoning,” Kringle said.

“Dammit,” I said. “I had hoped I was wrong about something. If I’m to follow Mab’s rules, my options are limited.”

Kringle’s eyes went to the slender figure at the table by the door. “May I offer you a word of advice, based purely upon my knowledge of the Queen’s nature?”

“Sure.”

“Mab moves in mysterious ways,” he said, looking back at me with a grin. “Nasty, unexpected, devious, patient, and mysterious ways. I don’t think she’d throw away a piece as valuable as you on a lost cause. Look for an opening, a weakness. It will be there.”

“Have you seen this guy in action?” I asked. “Nicodemus Archleone is . . . He’s better than me. Smart, dangerous, ruthless, and experienced. All by himself, he’d be bad enough. I’ve never even seen him go to his bench. All the other Denarians whip out their Fallen buddies left and right, but Nicodemus, as far as I can tell, mostly uses his to chauffeur him around. I’ve got no idea what Anduriel can do, because Nick has never had to fall back on him.”

“Perhaps that’s because Nicodemus understands just as well as you do where true power comes from,” Kringle said.

I arched an eyebrow at that. “Knowledge,” I said. I thought about it, putting pieces together. “Wait. You’re telling me that he doesn’t use Anduriel in fights because Anduriel isn’t a fighter.”

“Any of the Fallen are absolutely deadly in battle,” Kringle said severely, “even hampered as they are. But the Master of Shadows doesn’t prefer to operate that way, no.”

Nicodemus’s control over the gang of superpowered lunatics was starting to make more sense now. “Master of Shadows. That’s an old, old phrase for a spy master.”

“Exactly,” Kringle said. “Nicodemus knows very nearly as much as I do. Anduriel has the potential to hear anything uttered within reach of any living being’s shadow, and sometimes to look out from it and see.”

My eyes widened and I looked down at my own shadow on the table.

“No,” Kringle said. “That’s why Mab remains here, to secure this conversation against Anduriel. But you must exercise extreme discretion for the duration of this scenario. There are places Anduriel cannot reach—your friend Carpenter’s home, for example, or your island, now that you have awakened it. And the Fallen must know to pay attention to a given shadow, or else it’s all j

ust a haze of background noise—but you can safely assume that Anduriel will be listening very carefully to your shadow during this entire operation. Anything you say, Nicodemus will know. Even writing something down could be compromised.”

“Hell’s bells,” I said. If that was the case, communicating with my friends would just get them set up for a trap. Man, no wonder Nicodemus was always a few steps ahead of everyone else. “I’m . . . going to have to play the cards really damned close to my chest, then.”

“If I were you, I’d hold them about three inches behind my sternum, just to be sure,” Kringle said.

I swigged beer and drummed my fingers on the table. “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Good to know. But it’s not enough. I need another advantage.”