Cold Days

Chapter Seven
The odds here were long. Way long. All three deadly faeries stood ready to move, and no matter which of them I took on first, Sarissa’s outlook wasn’t good. The music began, low and quiet, with a slowly, slowly rising presence.
I needed some kind of edge, a game changer.
In fact . . .
A game changer was exactly what I needed.
Faeries are always underhanded and tricksy, true, and I’d overlooked that a few moments before. But there’s something else about faeries that runs absolutely bone deep: They love to play games.
“Why don’t we make this interesting?” I said out loud. “I trust you wouldn’t object to making a bit of a game of our dispute?”
Oh, the room got intense then, as maybe a thousand throats all inhaled at the same time. I could practically feel the air grow closer as all of those beings leaned very slightly toward me, their suddenly sharpened interest filling the cavern. The tempo of the music changed with it as well, now all suspended strings and muted percussion.
I felt a surge of emotion run through me, one that I knew was not my own—it was too pure, too primal, and it made my body do that thrumming thing again: Mab’s approval was fierce.
“But, wizard,” said the Redcap. “We’re already playing a game. One cannot change the rules simply because one is losing.”
“But one can change the stakes,” I replied. “What if you could get more out of it?”
The Redcap narrowed his eyes. “What more could you have to lose than your life?”
I gave him what I hoped was a patronizing smile, and then said, “Wait. Why am I talking to the tool instead of the person holding it?” I turned my back on the Redcap, gulped, and faced Maeve. “I’m offering you a prize, Winter Lady. Are you willing to hear me out?”
Maeve’s eyes sparkled more brightly than the jewels on her . . . midriff. She came to the edge of the platform and stood watching me.
“If he wins,” I said, jerking my head back at the Redcap, “I’ll go with you. Willingly.”
Maeve tilted her head. “And if you win?”
“Sarissa goes free. You leave peacefully.”
Maeve thrust out her lower lip. “Peacefully. That’s hardly ever any fun.” She lifted a hand and idly toyed with her hair. “As I see it, I already have a prize, mortal. I get to see Mother watch the steam rise from at least one fresh corpse, here in her own court.”
“You’re absolutely right, Maeve,” I said. “And you’ve got me in a pickle, and it was cleverly done.” I winked at her. “But what fun is the game you’ve already won? Why settle for so ephemeral a prize, however worthy, when you could take Mab’s Knight from her in front of all of Winter?”
That one sank home. I could feel the sudden surge of ambitious lust that went racing through the Winter Lady, and the seething hatred that went along with a swift glance toward distant Mab on her throne.
Maeve’s mouth curled up in an expression that bore as much resemblance to a smile as a shark does to a dolphin. She snapped her fingers, the sound almost as loud as a small-caliber gunshot, and two Sidhe hurried to her side escorting a dazed-looking athletic young man. Maeve didn’t wait for him. She simply sat. The Sidhe shoved the young man to his hands and knees, and Maeve’s slight weight settled across his broad back.
“I’ll give you this much, Mother,” she said, without looking toward Mab. “You do pick the most interesting mortals to serve you.”
Mab’s smirk said more than any words could have. Otherwise, she neither moved nor spoke.
“My lady . . .” began the Redcap, behind me.
“Hush,” Maeve said absently. “I want to see what happens. What did you have in mind, wizard?”
In answer, I reached up and with a couple of quick tugs undid my tux’s tie. It wasn’t one of those preassembled ties. It was made out of a single band of pure silk, sized perfectly to wrap around my throat, with a couple of wider bits left over for handholds. I held it up, making a bit of drama out of it as I turned in a circle, and said, “Out of respect for our host and her law, there shall be no bloodshed.”
Then I tossed the tie to the icy floor halfway between myself and the Redcap.
I looked up at Maeve and gave my chin an arrogant little lift. “’Sup, Princess. You game?”
Maeve lifted one hand and idly began tracing a fingertip over her lips, her eyes bright. She looked at Red and nodded.
“Okay, chucklehead,” I said, turning to face him. “How about you let the yeti there hold the girl while you and I dance?” I gave him a broad grin. “Unless you’re afraid of little old cockroach-swatting me.”
Red’s upper lip twitched. If he hadn’t been one of the Sidhe, and at a party, and in front of all of his dearest frenemies, he would have snarled at me.
He beckoned the ogre with one hand, and the thing lumbered over to him. He thrust Sarissa into its huge, hairy, meaty arms. The ogre didn’t get the girl around the neck. It simply wrapped its hand over her skull, like some hairy, spidery helmet, and held on. The smoky glass chopsticks in Sarissa’s hair clattered to the ice, and her eyes got even wider.
“If the wizard uses his magic,” the Redcap said, “break her neck.” He eyed the ogre and said, “Without ripping it off.”
“Yuh,” the ogre said. Its beady eyes glared at me.
The Redcap nodded and turned to face me, his eyes narrowed.
Yowch. Nice move on Red’s part. Though I’m not sure he needed to bother. I’d never been able to tag one of the Sidhe with a really solid hit with my magic. Their defenses against that kind of thing were just too damned good. But I’d been counting on using it indirectly to help out in the fight, and the Redcap had just taken that option away from me.
Sarissa gave the Redcap a glare that might have peeled paint from a wall, and then said, her voice rasping, “Harry, you don’t have to do this for me. You can walk away.”
“You kidding?” I said under my breath. “You think I’m going to go to all the trouble of finding a new PT guy? Hang tough.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
I dismissed the girl from my thoughts, as much as I could, and tried to focus. I was still better off than I’d been a few moments ago. Now, instead of a three-versus-one fight that would probably kill me and certainly kill Sarissa, I had a pure one-on-one. If I lost, Sarissa wouldn’t make it, and I would either be Maeve’s chew toy or dead. (I was hoping for dead.) But if I won, Sarissa and I both got to walk away. It wouldn’t keep something like this from happening again, but we’d live through the night, which was by definition victory.
Of course, now I had to win without using magic in a strangling-cord duel against a faerie who was faster than me, and who had centuries of experience in killing mortals. Oh, and I had to win it without drawing blood, or I’d be guilty of breaking Mab’s law—and I knew how she would react to that. Mab wasn’t evil, exactly, but she was Mab. She’d have me torn apart. The only mercy she would show would be by doing it all at once instead of spread over weeks.
Long story short, nobody there was going to help me. At times it sucks to be the lone hero guy.
I had one advantage: I was used to competing out of my weight class. I didn’t have a whole ton of training in unarmed combat, but I did have considerable experience with being in dicey situations against homicide-oriented people and things that were bigger than me, stronger than me, faster than me, and motivated to end my life: I knew how to fight an uphill battle. The Redcap knew how to kill, but by maneuvering me out of using my magic, he’d tipped some of his hand: He was being cautious about me.
Sure, he was a predator, but in nature predators generally go after the weak, the sick, the aged, and the isolated. Solitary predators almost exclusively hunt by attacking from surprise, where they have every advantage in their favor. Hell, even great white sharks do that, and they’re just about the biggest, oldest predators on the planet. I’ve seen a lot of things that hunted people in my time, and I regard them as a professional hazard, part of the job. I know how they operate. Predators don’t like to pick fair fights. It runs counter to their nature and robs them of many of their advantages.
The Redcap had tried to limit what I could do in a bid to scrape together any advantage he could, as any predator does. That told me that he probably wasn’t used to this kind of open confrontation.
He was nervous.
I was nervous, too—but I was on familiar psychological ground and he wasn’t. Maybe I could use that.
I undid the top button of the shirt and shrugged out of the jacket as if nothing at all were about to happen, taking my time. I tossed it at one of the watching Sidhe. He caught it and folded it neatly over one arm, never looking away, while I calmly undid the cuffs of my shirt and rolled up the sleeves. I stowed the cuff links in a pocket.
I stretched and yawned, which might have been taking the pantomime over the top, but what the hell? In for a penny. I smiled at Maeve, inclined my head very slightly to Mab, and turned to face the Redcap.
“Ready,” I said.
“Ready,” the Redcap echoed.
The music abruptly stopped, and in the silence Mab’s voice came from everywhere. “Begin.”
I rushed forward faster than I ever could have done before I’d become Mab’s Knight. It was damned close. The Redcap was quicker off the mark, but I had longer arms. He snatched the nearest end of the silk an instant before I grabbed my end. As my fingers closed, he snapped it back out of my grip, and then dropped his weight straight down, his back leg coming forward into a crescent-shaped sweep about six inches off the icy floor.
I turned my forward stumble into a forward roll. I went over the kick, tucked in tight, and came up to my feet smoothly—but the motion had carried me past him, and I knew that with his speed and grace, he’d already be leaping toward my back.
I spun to him, one hand at the level of my throat to intercept him if he was already close enough to get the tie around it, and lunged back toward him with my right arm raised to the horizontal, hoping to catch him across the neck in a clothesline.
I’d misjudged. He was moving so fast that all I got was motion blur, and he hadn’t swept the silk tie at my neck—he’d aimed for my upraised left hand. The silk snaked around my wrist, and I caught it in my hand just in time for him to slip to one side, dragging my arm in close to his body. He used my forward momentum and my trapped arm to rob me of my balance and spin me in a circle, hauling at my arm with all his strength.
His strength was considerable, and his technique was sound. He suddenly reversed, using my own motion against me, and dislocated my arm from its shoulder socket with a loud pop and a flash of red-hot pain.
“Harry!” Sarissa screamed, grabbing uselessly at the ogre’s wrist. It was as thick as her own leg, and the ogre didn’t even seem to notice her struggling.
The Redcap kept hold of my arm, my wrist pulled up against his sternum and still trapped in the tie. He smiled broadly and walked backward in a small circle, the pain and the leverage forcing me to scramble along the floor in front of him. A gale of lovely, cold laughter went up from the Sidhe like a chorus of frozen chimes.
The Redcap took a miniature, mocking bow to the crowd and spoke to me. “I was worried for a moment, mortal. You’re faster than you look.”
He kicked me in the dislocated shoulder. He wasn’t trying to kick my arm off. He was just doing it for the hell of it. It hurt a lot.
“You should see the look on your face, mortal,” the Redcap said. “This is fun.”
“You know what, Red?” I gasped. “We’re all having fun.”
I took my weight onto my knees and back, and slammed the heel of my right hand into the side of the jackass’s knee.
I don’t know how much stronger Mab’s gift had made me, because I’d never been much of a weight lifter until I’d started therapy. I didn’t know too much about how much weight lifters could, for example, bench-press. So I didn’t have a very good idea how I stacked up against plain old me. Or plain old anybody. Plus the weights for the bench press were marked in metric units, and I kind of fell asleep the day we learned to convert them to pounds.
But I’m pretty sure four hundred kilos isn’t bad.
The Redcap’s knee popped like a balloon from the force of the strike, and bent in toward his other knee. He howled in startled agony and tried to throw himself away, but just as I hadn’t been able to move for a few critical seconds after he’d injured me, his body wasn’t responding properly either, and he fell next to me.
The left side of my body felt like it was on fire, but me and pain are old buddies. His grip on the tie had loosened, and I couldn’t move my left arm enough to get it loose. So before he could recover, I punched him in the neck with my good hand. He gagged and thrashed, and I was able to unwrap the silk from my useless arm. I tried to pull the tie away from him, but he’d already shaken off the hits I’d given him and held on. I jerked on it as hard as I could, but I had only the one arm and was fresh out of leverage. I could feel the tie sliding through my fingers.
So I let go without warning and snapped my hand at a different target as he fell back.
He dropped into a backward roll and came up six feet away. He perched on one hand and a knee, still gripping the tie.
I casually settled his red ball cap onto my head, touched a forefinger to its brim, winked at him, and said, “You have hat hair.”
Again there was a chorus of marrow-curdling laughter from the Sidhe. It wasn’t any more pleasant to have them laughing with me than it had been to have them laughing at me.
The Redcap’s face flushed a furious red, and I could see the blood vessels in his eyes bursting.
Hell’s bells, the twit hadn’t been particularly perturbed when I’d crippled his leg. But touch his hat and embarrass him in front of his peers and the dude flipped out. Nobody has their priorities straight anymore.
I made it to my feet before he simply leapt at me. He hit me before I could get my balance and we both went down. His eyes burning, he ignored the tie and latched onto my throat with both hands.
He was strong. I think I might have been stronger than he was, but I had only the one arm. I slammed it at his forearms—if he kept his grip on me, those nails would almost certainly draw blood. He hissed and jerked his hands away at the last second, and I slammed my knee against his injured leg. I bucked him off me while he screamed. I went after him.
We rolled a couple of times, and I cannot tell you how much it hurt both of us to do it. He had the use of both arms. I was able to use both legs to stabilize myself—but he was a hell of a lot squirmier than me, and in a blur of confusing motion he somehow managed to slither around to my back and get an arm across my throat. I got a few fingers underneath it, and started trying to pry him away. It wasn’t a winning move. I managed to lessen the pressure, but I couldn’t pull him off me, and my head started to pound.
Another group inhalation went up from the Sidhe, and I could feel them leaning closer, their interest almost frenzied, hundreds and hundreds of gemlike eyes sparkling like stars as the light started dimming. Sarissa stared at me with wide eyes, her expression horrified.
But . . . she’d lost one of her shoes.
I watched as she reached out with her toes and managed to pluck one of her fallen glassy chopsticks up off the floor. The freaking yeti holding her didn’t notice. It was staring far too intently at the fight.
Sarissa passed the chopstick up to her hands, gripped it with both of them, and snapped it in the middle.
Shattered pieces of black glass fell away from a slender steel rod. Without looking, she simply lifted her hand and pressed the rod against the underside of the yeti’s wrist.
Faeries, be they Sidhe or any other kind, cannot abide the touch of iron. To them, it’s worse than molten plutonium. It burns them like fire, scars them, poisons them. There’s a lot of folklore about cold iron, and it’s a widely held belief that it refers only to cold-forged iron, but that’s a bunch of hooey. When the old stories refer to cold iron, they’re being poetic, like when they say “hot lead.” If you want to hurt one of the fae, you just need iron, including any alloy containing it, to hurt them.
And man, does it ever hurt them.
The ogre’s wrist burst into a sudden coruscation of yellow-white flame, as bright as that of an arc welder. The ogre howled and jerked its arm away from Sarissa’s head as if he’d been a child experimenting with a penny and an electrical outlet.
Sarissa spun on her heel and slashed the little steel rod across the ogre’s thigh.
It howled in primal fury and flinched back, sweeping one long arm at her in pure reflex.
Sarissa caught only a tiny fraction of the blow, but it was enough to send her staggering. She fell only a couple of feet away from me and looked up, her eyes dazed.
Her lower lip had been split wide-open.
A large ruby droplet fell from her lip and hung in the air, shining and perfect, and stayed there for half of forever. Then it finally splashed down onto the icy floor.
There was a shrieking hiss as the blood hit the supernatural ice, a sound somewhere between a hot skillet and a high-pressure industrial accident. The ice beneath the drop of blood shattered, as if the droplet had been unimaginably heavy, and a web of dark cracks shot out for fifty feet in every direction.
The music stopped. The Redcap froze. So did everyone else.
Mab rose out of her chair, and somehow in that instant of action she crossed the distance from her high seat, as though the simple act of standing up were what propelled her to the space nearby. As she came, the pallid finery of her dress darkened to raven black, as if the air had contained a fine mist of ink. Her hair darkened as well to the same color, and her eyes turned entirely black, sclera and all, as did her nails. The skin seemed to cling harder to her bones, making her beautiful features gaunt and terrible.
The Redcap flinched away from me and dragged himself back with his arms, getting clear. Give credit where it’s due: He might have been a sadistic, bloodthirsty monster, but he wasn’t a stupid one.
The furious, burned ogre wasn’t bright enough to realize what was happening. Still smoldering, still enraged, it came stomping toward Sarissa.
“Knight,” Mab said, the word a whipcrack.
Maeve came to the edge of the platform and clutched her hands into fists, her mouth twisted into a snarl.
I didn’t get up off the ground. There wasn’t time. Instead, I focused my will upon the advancing ogre and funneled my anger and my pain into the spell, along with the frozen core of power within me. I unleashed the energy as I thundered, “Ventas servitas!”
The ogre was only a couple of yards from Sarissa when the gale of arctic wind I’d called up slammed into the thing and lifted its massive bulk completely off the ground. It tossed the ogre a good ten feet away. It landed in a tumble, dug its claws into the ice, and fought its way back to its feet.
I rose from the ground, acutely conscious of Mab’s black presence just over my left shoulder, of the watching eyes of the Winter Court.
I’d told Sarissa this was my first day in prison, and the yard was full of things that could and would kill me if they got the chance. It was time for an object lesson.
I reached down into the cold inside of me. It was painful to touch that power, like throwing yourself into icy water, like emerging from warm covers into the shuddering cold of an unheated apartment on a winter morning. I didn’t like it, but I knew how to get it.
All I had to do was think about everyone I’d let down. Everyone I’d left behind back in Chicago. My brother, Thomas. My apprentice, Molly. My friends. My daughter. Karrin. I thought about them and it felt like something in my chest was starting to tear in half.
The Winter inside me was torment and agony—but at least when I was immersed in it, I couldn’t feel.
I lifted my right arm, the side that projects energy, focused my will, and shouted, “Infriga!”
There was a flash of light, an arctic howl, a scream of air suddenly condensed into liquid, and an explosion of frost and fog centered upon the ogre. The air became a solid fog bank, a rolling mist, and for several seconds there was silence. I waited for the mist to disperse, and after several long seconds it began to clear away, swept along by the remnants of the gale I had called first.
When it cleared, the entire Winter Court could see the ogre, standing crouched just as it had been when I threw the spell at it.
I waited for a moment more, letting everyone see the ogre standing absolutely still in defiance of Mab’s law.
Then I drew forth my will again, extended my hand, and snarled, “Forzare!” A lance of invisible power lashed out at the ogre—and when it struck, the frozen monster shattered into thousands of icy chunks, the largest of which was about the size of my fist.
The bits of the former ogre exploded over several hundred square yards of the dance floor, and grisly frozen shrapnel pelted the watching Sidhe and sent them reeling back with shouts of alarm. The Sidhe gathered themselves again, and every one of those bright eyes locked onto me, their expressions alien, unreadable.
From one of the back corners, I heard a deep, heartily amused chuckle rolling through the air. Kringle, I thought.
I turned to Mab and almost spoke—but then I remembered her other law and closed my mouth.
Mab’s mouth twitched in an approving microsmile, and she nodded her head at me.
“If you consent, I would speak to them.”
She stared at me with those black carrion-bird eyes and nodded.
First, I helped Sarissa to her feet, passing her a clean white handkerchief, which she immediately pressed to her mouth. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. Then I took a deep breath and turned to address the room, turning in a slow circle as I spoke to be sure I included everyone. My voice echoed throughout the whole chamber as clearly as if I’d been using a PA system.
“All right, you primitive screwheads. Listen up. I’m Harry Dresden. I’m the new Winter Knight. I’m instituting a rule: When you’re within sight of me, mortals are off-limits.” I paused for a moment to let that sink in. Then I continued. “I can’t give you orders. I can’t control what you do in your own domains. I’m not going to be able to change you. I’m not even going to try. But if I see you abusing a mortal, you’ll join Chunky here. Zero warnings. Zero excuses. Subzero tolerance.” I paused again and then asked, “Any questions?”
One of the Sidhe smirked and stepped forward, his leather pants creaking. He opened his mouth, his expression condescending. “Mortal, do you actually think that you can—”
“Infriga!” I snarled, unleashing Winter again, and without waiting for the cloud to clear, hurled the second strike, shouting, “Forzare!”
This time I aimed much of the force up. Grisly bits of frozen Sidhe noble came pattering and clattering down to the ice of the dance floor.
When the mist cleared, the Sidhe looked . . . stunned. Even Maeve.
“I’m glad you asked me that,” I said to the space where the Sidhe lord had been standing. “I hope my answer clarified any misunderstandings.” I looked left and right, seeking out eyes, but didn’t find any willing to meet mine. “Are there any other questions?”
There was a vast and empty silence, broken only by Kringle’s continued rumbles of amusement.
“Daughter,” Mab said calmly. “Your lackey shamed me as the host of this gathering. I hold you accountable. You will return to Arctis Minora at once, there to await my pleasure.”
Maeve stared at Mab, her eyes cold. Then she spun in a glitter of gems and began striding away. Several dozen of the Sidhe, including the Redcap and the rawhead, followed her.
Mab turned to Sarissa and said in a much calmer voice, “Honestly. Iron?”
“I apologize, my Queen,” Sarissa said. “I’ll dispose of it safely.”
“See that you do,” Mab said. “Now. I would have a dance. Sir Knight?”
I blinked, but didn’t hesitate for more than an instant or three. “Um. My arm seems to be an obstacle.”
Mab smiled and laid a hand upon my shoulder. My arm popped back into its socket with a silver shock of sensation, and the pain dwindled to almost nothing. I rolled my shoulder, testing it. If it wasn’t exactly comfortable, it seemed to work well enough.
I turned to Mab, bowed, and stepped closer to her as the music rose again. It was a waltz. While the stunned Sidhe looked on, I waltzed with Mab to a full orchestral version of Shinedown’s “45,” and the smaller bits of our enemies crunched beneath our feet. Oddly enough, no one joined us.
Dancing with Mab was like dancing with a shadow. She moved so gracefully, so lightly that had my eyes been closed, I might not have been able to tell that she was there at all. I felt lumbering and clumsy beside her, but managed not to trip over my own feet.
“That was well-done, wizard,” Mab murmured. “No one has lifted a hand to them that way since the days of Tam Lin.”
“I wanted them to understand the nature of our relationship.”
“It would seem you succeeded,” she said. “The next time they come at you, they will not do it so openly.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“I expect nothing less,” Mab said. “In the future, try to avoid being at such a stark disadvantage. Sarissa may not be there to rescue you a second time.”
I grunted. Then I frowned and said, “You wanted this to happen tonight. It wasn’t just about me staring down your nobles. You’re setting something into motion.”
Her lips quirked slightly at one corner in approval. “I chose well. You are ready, my Knight. It is time for me to give you my first command.”
I swallowed and tried not to look nervous. “Oh?”
The song came to a close with Mab standing very close to me, lifting her head slightly to whisper into my ear. The Sidhe applauded politely and without enthusiasm, but the sound was enough to muffle what she whispered into my ear.
“Wizard,” she said, her breathy voice trembling. Every syllable bubbled with venom, with hate. “Kill my daughter. Kill Maeve.”