Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter
Twenty-Six
December went by in a hectic, happy blur.
There was one more room on the other side of Bear’s that had been being used for random storage. We cleaned it out and set it up for Maggie, and I got to spend the next few weeks spending time with my little girl.
Maggie was fascinated with Fitz and his wizard lessons, and she and Mouse would come and watch whenever he and I were working together, which was early morning, morning, and afternoon every day.
She found weight lifting and combat lessons mildly interesting, meditation and mental discipline mostly boring, and his practical evocation lessons terribly exciting.
But then, something often blew up or got set on fire, so it wasn’t like I could say any different.
“You should use ‘pew pew pew’ for your magic words for those little fireballs,” Maggie told Fitz one day after he had done a credible job of mangling the target dummy with slow, careful concentration.
“Hah,” he said.
“Hmph,” I said.
“Why not?” Maggie asked. “You said the words weren’t important as long as they didn’t have”—she scrunched up her nose—“intrisic, instinctive meaning.”
“Intrinsic,” I corrected her, sounding out the word carefully. “It means something is pretty much baked into the cake along with something else so they can’t be separated.”
“That,” she said. “ ‘Pew pew pew’ should work.”
“It should,” Fitz mused, wiping sweat from his brow. He peered at me. “Right?”
“You have your reputation to think of,” I told him. “I mean, you can’t just go around saying ‘pew pew pew’ or ‘bang’ or ‘zing.’ ”
Fitz began to chuckle. “Why not?”
“You’re a wizard, man,” I told him. “In tune with the primordial forces of the universe. Wielding the leftover energy from Creation itself. Have a little gravitas.”
Maggie pointed dual finger guns at the still-smoldering target dummy and said, “Pew pew pew!”
Fitz, tired but merry enough, laughed harder. “Pew pew pew. I mean, yeah, it would work.”
“Don’t do it,” I said. “Look, I have my own issues using badly done Latin, and I got a little bit lucky that my bad Latin is so far off of proper speech. Council meetings are still done in Latin, and I have to speak it sometimes. If I could go back, I’d pick Tuareg or something.”
“Why don’t you just do it now?” Fitz asked, scrunching up his nose.
“Doesn’t work like that,” I said. “The neural pathways we’re building to run energy through are incredibly specific.
If I started switching my words around now, I’d set myself back years and years.
Have to learn everything from the ground floor, like you’re doing.
I mean, I’d probably do it a little faster than you, but not much.
This is foundation-level stuff we’re dealing with. ”
“But I could,” Fitz mused. “I’m still building up. I could pick ‘pew pew pew’ or ‘kazinga’ if I wanted to.”
I sighed. “You could. And I wouldn’t stop you. But a little piece of my soul would die of shame every time someone heard you.”
Mouse chuffed happily and came over to lean against my legs while Fitz laughed at me.
Maggie picked up a tennis ball she had been bouncing for Mouse, tossed it, and bounced it off the target dummy’s scorched head. “Kazinga!”
Mouse charged the ball and pounced on it.
—
Christmas Eve was something special.
We showed up at the Carpenters’ place around sundown. I was visited by several different kinds of spirits. Santa came by. Maggie got some great presents. So did I.
Ebenezar appeared at the front door on Christmas morning.
Michael welcomed him in. Almost the entire Carpenter clan had made it in, including Daniel’s wife, a tiny brunette named Camille who had a baby girl in her arms and another one toddling precariously about, mostly in an attempt to seize Mouse by the tail.
Maggie absolutely adored the fact that she was no longer the smallest child in the household and promptly appointed herself the toddler girl’s protector, which inevitably brought Michael’s youngest son along for the ride: Little Harry and Maggie were still thick as thieves.
They made an odd pairing. Little Harry wasn’t quite two years older than Maggie, but at their age, those months were consequential.
Maggie was bottom percentile for both height and weight for girls her age.
Little Harry had begun to grow, and he was taking after his father and older brothers.
His voice honked between boyish tenor and adult baritone at random, especially when he was laughing, which was frequently.
He towered over Maggie, though she showed no awareness whatsoever of the difference in their physical sizes.
Murphy would have been proud.
Our two families opened presents together, though most of the gifts were basic products that were still hard to come by in the beleaguered city.
Food was consumed. There was a lot of laughter, and a round of traditional Christmas songs.
Maggie soaked it all up. My grandfather gave her a red stocking cap he’d knitted himself, and I felt the simple thermal enchantment on it that would keep her comfortably warm in all but the most bitter gales, at least for the first couple of winters.
She promptly put it on and then put the red-and-blue scarf I’d crocheted for her with it, and she and young Harry went out to test her new bike on the clean-shoveled driveway in front of Michael’s house.
Michael, Ebenezar, and I wound up on the porch, sipping hot cider and watching the children play.
“That’s the downside of all this modern infrastructure,” Ebenezar was saying. “Maintaining it under normal wear and tear is work enough. Rebuilding after something like last summer…” He shook his head. “So many people in so little space.”
“It could be a lot worse,” Michael said firmly.
“The major roads in have been reopened now, and something like a street system is actually functioning. Supplies are getting easier to get hold of. More and more of the water supply is coming back online. My company is working three different sites right now, and we’re accelerating.
By next summer, we’ll be something like the old city again. ”
“How long until I get those changes I asked for?” I asked.
“Spring,” Michael said. “That’s the best I can do.”
“That should work,” I said. “My last check cleared, yeah?”
“It did,” he said. “We’re good.”
Ebenezar lowered his mug. His eyes drifted down the street toward the house where Molly kept an Unseelie action team ready to go in case her family was attacked by purely mundane means. “How are you paying your bills in that place, Hoss?”
“Ill-gotten gains,” I said without hesitation. “I should have enough to last until next fall at least.”
He looked at me from beneath shaggy grey brows. “Then what?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted.
“What kind of investments are you secured in?” he asked.
Which is what he would ask, of course. Wizards live a long time. Not every wizard understands every kind of arcane theory, but they are, every last one of them, versed in the magic of compound interest.
“Ill-gotten gains,” I said. “I never had much chance to start a portfolio.”
“Mmmph,” Ebenezar said, frowning.
Michael glanced at my face and said, “Wizard McCoy, I have to confess, I was mostly stuck at home during the battle. Do you mind if I ask you some questions about it?”
“I’d be honored, Sir Michael,” Ebenezar said.
Michael engaged the old man on a review of the battle. The two of them settled down over a small table marked with a chessboard, taking out a number of small objects from pockets or nearby and using them to represent various positions and threats. Michael asked cogent and knowledgeable questions.
I drifted down the porch a way.
I didn’t want to hear about the battle.
Molly appeared at my side a few minutes later, smiled warmly at the two men speaking intently over the chessboard, and said, “Hey, Harry.”
“Molls. What’s Christmas like for the Winter Lady?”
Her eyes sparkled. She was in her human glamour this morning.
She looked age-appropriate and weight-appropriate—presumably the way she would have looked if she hadn’t gotten dragged into the affairs of wizards and faerie queens.
Blond hair, blue eyes, cheeks that were rounded and pink with the winter morning cold. She looked like a kindergarten teacher.
“Oh, I’ll visit vassals and bring gifts and word from Mab tonight,” she said. “Plus, I sent the troops home to visit their families. Seems like the least I could do.”
Part of the Winter Lady’s duties was stealing away the children of her vassals to serve in Winter’s forces. They’d been building ever since she’d gotten on the job.
“Seems right,” I said. “But how are you?”
She looked at me searchingly for a moment, then frowned at the children. Maggie drove her new bike in a wobbly line that ended at a small snowbank and sent her rolling to the snow amid much giggling.
“In a lot of ways, it’s like being the big sister to a whole lot of jawas,” she said.
“It…surprised me, how comfortable it felt. Taking charge of that many fae.” She shook her head.
“The Leanansidhe was getting me ready for this role for a reason.” The little chill in the pit of my stomach was echoed in the faint frown around her eyes.
“I’m good at this work, Harry. I solve rivalries.
Resolve disputes. Help fix problems. I’m everyone’s big sister. And they look up to me.”
“They give you any trouble?” I asked. The Winter Court could hardly interact with me without making at least a perfunctory effort to eat or kill me. I constantly had to remind them why that was unwise.
“Not after Unalaska,” she muttered.
“What?”
She shook her head. “It isn’t important. They found out early that I’m not to be trifled with. I haven’t had to do much more than drop Mab’s name occasionally.”