Chapter Forty
Chapter
Forty
Molly leaned on the merlon with her arms folded, atop the battlements of the castle, looking down at the protesters across the street.
There were more of them now, and more organized.
They spent the top twenty minutes of every hour banging drums and chanting.
No more war and strife, we just want a normal life!
was kind of impossible not to empathize with.
Who doesn’t want that, at least for their own flavor of “normal”?
But by the time they’d gotten to Ho, ho, hey, hey, culty weirdos go away!
it was getting a little harder not to take it personally.
They were scaring some of the kids.
Molly was wearing jeans and a bomber jacket over a turtleneck.
She was looking almost inhumanly lean, and her eyes were glacial blue-green and particularly feline today.
She stared out at the protesters, her expression unreadable, and looked like someone who was remembering faces.
“Don’t you think you’d better do something about this? ”
“People got rights,” I said firmly.
“Such as the right not to be harassed in their own homes?” Molly suggested.
“Starts getting cold in another few hours,” I said. “They’ll leave then.”
“For now,” Molly said. “What about later?”
I sighed. “As long as it’s just words, we’re fine here.”
“Makes you wonder who put them up to it,” Molly said.
“Things have been crazy,” I said. “People get worked up. They need an outlet.” I waved a hand.
“Tens of thousands died in the battle. Means a lot of bereaved people. Traumatized people. People whose whole world was yanked out from under them. But they’re cut off from the rest of things here, for a while.
Could be they’re just hurting. Could be there doesn’t have to be a villain at work.
People get weird at times like this. Maybe it’s better to allow for that.
” The chanting stopped, and the protesters broke up into casual conversations.
“There, see?” I said. “Look how happy they look now.”
“Hmph,” Molly said. “They throw a single egg, vegetable, rock, or firework at this place, and the weather is going to get cold very, very quickly.”
And I realized that Molly was being protective. Of me.
I looked aside at her with a lopsided smile.
“Thank you for that,” I said.
Molly puffed a breath up from her extended lower lip, blowing some hair away from her eyes, and gave me a somewhat sheepish look. “You’ve had a tough enough year,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. I took a slow breath. “Did you know what Mab was doing?”
Molly went still. She frowned down at the protesters, her expression clouding.
“You did,” I said.
“I put it together,” she said quietly. “I wanted to tell you. I tried to tell you. But Mab forbade me from communicating with you about it, directly or indirectly. I’m sorry, Harry.”
Mab’s word was literally law in Winter. If she gave a command to one of her Court, that was that.
I shook my head. “Dammit.”
“Harry,” Molly said, in a very small voice. “I’m sorry Mab manipulated you like that. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do anything about it.”
“I know. I get it. You didn’t have a choice.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” she said intently.
“I’ve talked to her quite a bit over the past couple of years.
Enough to know that she’s scary smart. Have you considered the notion that she might be the one around here with the brains and the perspective that no one else has?
She might be trying to look after you. She might even be right. ”
“There’s no ‘right’ here,” I said quietly.
“No? Because I’d rather it was you in control of Lara than the other way around,” Molly said quietly. “And I’m grateful that you won’t be in her thrall.”
I stared at her for a long moment. “You agree with Mab.”
“With her strategy, yes,” Molly said. “It’s practical.
Reasonable. It offers one of the only means for containing Lara Raith’s increasing influence in the mortal world—the protection of which is Winter’s primary task, if you recall.
” She looked aside at me sadly and then down.
“I disagreed with her tactics. I thought she should have communicated with you.”
“And you thought I’d have agreed to wholesale abuse of the Third Law because it was practical?” I asked. “That would be all I need. The White Council coming after my head.”
Molly grimaced. “The law only applies to mortals. Lara isn’t human.”
“Wow,” I said quietly, “is that so not the point.”
She made a dissatisfied noise and waved a hand in acquiescence.
I was quiet for a moment. Then I said, “You know that when Lara understands what has happened, she’s going to be furious about it.”
“Mab thinks she won’t be,” Molly said. “At least, not for long.”
The protesters started chanting again, well ahead of their usual appointed time. I frowned down at them and then leaned out over the merlon to look up and down the street.
Carlos Ramirez, in a long grey coat, was walking down the street toward the castle. He was too far off to make out his face, but he moved as quickly as he could with his cane, his body tense.
“Speak of the Wardens,” Molly said from beside me, “and they shall appear.”
We went down to the front door to meet him.
“Harry,” Carlos began when I opened the smaller door. Then he saw Molly and froze as if he’d been smacked with a wet fish. “Oh. Um. Lady Molly. Hello.”
Molly gave him an awkward smile. “Warden Ramirez. A pleasure to see you.”
Ramirez’s face twitched, and he turned it into a smile almost instantly. “I trust you’ve been settling into your new, ah, duties?”
“There’s so much travel.” Molly sighed. “And you? You’re moving well.”
Ramirez looked down at himself and shifted a bit uncomfortably, as if he’d had to resist taking a step back from Molly. “I’m…really bad at playing nice about this.” He sighed. “Another year of really uncomfortable PT and I should be back to full speed.”
“I didn’t know it would happen,” Molly said quickly. “I’d never have…I’m sorry.”
I frowned and looked back and forth between them. Protesters chanted hey, hey, ho, ho.
“My first mission for Winter,” Molly clarified. Her cheeks had turned pink. “Carlos was there for something else. We, um. There was a misunderstanding, and he got hurt.”
Carlos showed his teeth without precisely smiling. “My own fault. I’ll be more cautious in the future.”
“Oh,” Molly said in a much smaller voice.
He gave her a rueful smile. “My gut says it’s for the best. When have you and the Wardens ever gotten along?”
“Hah,” she said, without energy. “I suppose that’s true.”
He nodded. “Harry, I’m here because the Wardens received an anonymous tip about black magic being employed in the city. Ilyana and a team are on the way to Bock Ordered Books right now.”
“Dammit,” I said. “There’s no need for that. It’s handled.”
Ramirez spread his hands. “It’s not my call. Ilyana’s been given your old job. I’m back to just handling the western US. Technically, I’m not even supposed to be in the loop for her operations. But I thought you should know.”
“You out of here?” I asked him.
He grimaced. “I can’t leave if I was never here. And I wasn’t.” He nodded to me, glanced at Molly, then down, turning it into a small bow toward her. Then he turned and continued walking down the street.
“Bear!” I called after a moment.
The Valkyrie appeared out of the castle. “Yeah?”
“Make sure Fitz knows to stay low. We’re going out. Pack for an argument with Wardens. We leave in five minutes.”
“Interesting,” Molly said. “I think I’ll come along.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. I glanced in the direction Ramirez had gone.
Molly sniffed delicately, but her glacial eyes glittered. “After all. Everyone knows how I get along with Wardens.”
—
We rolled out in the Munstermobile in minutes and took the flame-painted old hearse to get as close as we could to Bock’s place through the maze of partially functioning streets, piled up with mounds of dirty snow, where they had been cleared at all.
We had to walk the last few blocks in, and we got to Bock’s front door right about the time a group of grey-cloaked Wardens rolled in from the opposite direction.
Ilyana’s slim, blond form walked with a confident stride in the lead, dressed in close-fit black tactical clothing and a Warden’s grey cloak.
She made the fifth member of a standard squad who walked behind her, two by two, boots striking the ground in time.
I remembered that sound, from back when I was sixteen. Tromp, tromp, tromp. They’d marched me places for my trial after they’d arrested me when I’d killed my old mentor in self-defense. It stirred up old, old fears.
And anger.
I felt it harder and sharper than I ever had before, as if my skin had been peeled off and there was no protection from the memories and the emotions they brought.
In my head, the five Wardens turned into bowling pins, and I had to fight to keep from summoning up a sphere of pure kinetic energy and hurling it at them.
I took the same slow, deep breath that I did when meditating, and willed the feelings back. That was the whole point of practicing self-calming with meditation. It worked. The haze of powerful emotion receded, at least enough to let me think clearly.
For me, anyway.
“With me,” I said quietly.
“Dresden,” Bear asked quietly. “You going to be able to bring any of your game to a real fight?”
By which she meant magic.
And I didn’t know the answer to the question.
“Maybe it won’t come to that,” I said.
Then I started walking toward the Wardens.
Molly fell in just behind me on my right. Bear on my left. And we tromped, too.
Ilyana saw me coming and her ice-blue eyes narrowed. We all came to a halt about ten feet from each other.
“Stand aside, Dresden,” Ilyana said firmly. “This is no concern of yours.”
“Agree to disagree,” I said. “It’s been taken care of.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Not today, you won’t.”