Peace Talks Read online

  “No harm was done,” spat one of the other Sidhe, a female holding a cello. “It was but a game.”

  “Game over,” I said. I raised my right hand, called upon Winter again, and thundered, “Infriga!”

  In an instant, the air screamed in protest as near-absolute-zero cold rushed out of my hand and enveloped the fallen fiddler in a block of glacier blue ice. Even the other Winter Sidhe recoiled from the savage bite of the cold and wound up with their hair, ears, and fingertips coated in ice. All of them stared at me, frozen, ba-dump-bump, ching.

  None of them moved.

  Except the fiddler. His eyes moved, desperate and agonized.

  I turned to find Molly approaching in full Winter Lady mode, her steps decisive, her posture regal. I inclined my head to her and said, “My lady, what is your will?”

  “This sort of behavior cannot be tolerated,” she said, her voice carrying to the entire room. “Though he is not one of mine, I offer my most sincere regrets to the White Council and to Warden Yoshimo for this incident.” She looked around the room and said, “Baron Marcone has given his permission, as host, for me to deal with this matter. Place this lawbreaker on the buffet table. An ice sculpture is appropriate. Should he survive to thaw, he is banished from Winter lands and holdings upon pain of death.”

  She walked up to the block of ice and crouched down to face the fiddler’s wide eyes. She simply stared for a moment, cold and icy, and then said, in a very calm, very hard tone, “It’s not nice to do that to girls at parties.”

  She rose and made an imperious gesture with one hand. Evidently, she knew how to convey that she meant business. Half a dozen Einherjaren in their red caterers’ coats immediately moved in, picked up the block of ice, and started carrying it toward the buffet table.

  “Excellent,” Molly said. She turned to the room and said, “Please excuse this disruption, honored ladies and gentlemen. I regret its necessity.” She regarded the rest of the musicians, smiled, and said, with a very slight emphasis on the last word, “Please resume your duties.”

  And the music, altered considerably, started up again tout de suite.

  The Sidhe are predators. One does not show predators weakness or hesitation. It’s the easiest way to communicate with them. Molly had learned all about how to get her message across.

  Within a minute, Lara swept up to us and gave Molly a polite bow of her head. Molly returned it.

  “Lady Winter,” Lara said, “I need a breath of air outside. I wonder if you would loan me your Knight as an escort for a few minutes. I shall return him directly.”

  Molly just stared at Lara, without expression. Then she moved her chin in the barest nod.

  “Lovely,” Lara said. She gave me a radiant smile and said, “Shall we?”

  I offered her my arm, and the two of us left as the chatter of conversation resumed. Though I was ostensibly escorting her, Lara directed me with firm pressure on my arm, until we were outside the castle and walking down the sidewalk toward the other houses in the neighborhood.

  I glanced at her and saw her jaw set with determination, and sharp excitement in her eyes. When we were several hundred feet from the castle, she said, “I did it.”

  “Did what?” I asked.

  “I created options,” she said. “It was always possible that Etri was holding Thomas because he wanted a ransom, but that apparently is not the case. He wants blood. I wasn’t able to convince Etri to drop the charges against Thomas. But between Cristos and me, we convinced him that holding him prisoner in his own demesne made it appear as though vengeance was more important to him than justice.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “How does that change anything?”

  “Baron Marcone, as host of this gathering, offered to hold my brother prisoner until the matter had been settled through an Accorded emissary.” Her eyes flashed. “My brother is being transferred to the castle.”

  “Still don’t see how that changes anything,” I said.

  “Negotiations begin in earnest tomorrow night,” she said. “Here. Not in svartalf territory.”

  I took a slow breath. “Oh no. Tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

  “My brother will be here, in a building I know, and everyone will be preoccupied,” she said. “And I won’t be violating svartalf borders. I can work something out with Marcone after. He’s reasonable about business.”

  She stopped and turned to face me, slate grey eyes as hard as stone.

  “I tried to be reasonable. Etri declined to meet me halfway. It’s time to create a better position. So, tomorrow night, while everyone is distracted, I’m taking my brother back. I’m going through anyone who gets in the way.”

  Oh, Hell’s bells. I knew what came next.

  So much for the diplomatic solution.

  Her teeth showed very white as she saw my dawning comprehension. “And I’m calling in my second favor. You, Sir Knight, are going to help me.”

  22

  Is she insane?” Karrin demanded.

  I threw up my hands halfheartedly.

  Her blue eyes stared hard at me for a moment before she said, in a calm, practical voice, “Oh God. You want to do it.”

  “I don’t want to do it,” I said. “But he’s my brother.”

  She lifted her good hand and pressed her fist against her nose. “God, Harry, there are times when I could just choke you.”

  “Yeah,” I said tiredly. “Me, too.”

  Her grandmother’s clock ticked steadily on the mantel over the little steel-lined gas fireplace, which must have been one of the fanciest things in the neighborhood when the house was first built. Karrin had been cleaning that day, which was a bad sign. It was one of her go-to reactions for stress. If she started cleaning the guns, I would know it was really bad.

  “Things are already tense enough,” she said. “If this disrupts the peace talks, there are going to be consequences.”

  “I know.”

  “My read is that this whole conference is Marcone’s baby.”

  I grunted agreement. “He’s actually doing what Cristos only thinks he is,” I said. “Building alliances.”

  “And if you screw up Marcone’s plan?” Karrin asked bluntly.

  “His reputation takes a hit,” I said.

  “And he will respond to that.”

  “Marcone is acutely aware of the concept of payback,” I agreed.

  Karrin glowered. “I don’t know all of the beings you deal with very well, Harry. But I know Marcone. And he scares me.”

  I stared at her for a moment.

  I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anyone else on the planet Karrin would say those words to.

  She returned my gaze for a moment, and I had to look away. She knew what she’d just shown me. She’d decided to do it.

  “Hey,” I said, and went over to sit next to her on the couch. I put an arm around her. She fit very neatly into the space against my side. She pressed her cheek against my chest for a moment.

  “What happens if you tell Lara no?” she asked.

  “ It … hurts,” I said.

  “You’ve done pain before,” she said. “What will they do to you?”

  “Mab is also all about payback,” I said. “She’d act.” I frowned and said, “Hell. If I get caught helping Lara disrupt the Accords, as her own damned enforcer, she’ll have to act, too. Quickly. And publicly.”

  “Couldn’t the White Council tell her to back off?”

  I thought about that for a second and then said, “Maybe they could. Question is if they would. Pretty sure the answer is no.”

  “Useless,” she muttered.

  “I’m not exactly their poster child,” I said. “It’s likely they’d wrap me up in a bow for Mab to keep from crossing her.”

  “Can’t your grandfather put a stop to that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Last time, he had Martha Liberty’s support. I don’t know if he would, this time around. If that’s the case, t
he Senior Council vote would definitely go against me. So he’d have to leave it to an open vote of the whole Council and … well …”

  “Useless,” Murphy repeated, more firmly. She pushed away from me, hauled herself to her feet, and hobbled out of the room stiffly on her cane.

  When she came back in, she was carrying a blue plastic pistol case. She set it down on the table and sat down. Then she clicked open the case decisively.

  Only instead of removing a pistol, she pulled out a handheld oscillating multitool and tossed me the end of its power cord. “Plug that in.”

  I clambered around until I found the power strip between the couch and the end table, and did. Then I withdrew a bit. Wizards and technology don’t get along so well, but I’d been hitting new highs of self-restraint over the past few months. If I didn’t get close to something as simple as an electric motor, I probably wouldn’t screw it up, as long as I stayed calm. Probably. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Instead of answering, she snapped a saw blade onto the tool, flicked a switch that set it to buzzing, and immediately took the blade to the cast on her shoulder.

  “Karrin,” I blurted, rising.

  “Back off before you short it out,” she snapped. “Go stand over there in the kitchen. Go.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked.

  She gave me a brief annoyed glare. “You’re obviously doing this, no matter how stupid it is. I can’t help you get away with it if I’m too busy being a starfish.”

  I clenched my fist against my nose and said, “There are times when I could choke you, too.”

  “Try it and I’ll break your wrist,” she said grimly.

  I took a step toward her.

  “No, don’t come help me, you lummox. I can do it myself.”

  “Karrin,” I said.

  I might have sounded a little terrified.

  She hesitated.

  “Karrin,” I said, more gently. “Murph. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’re hurt. You need time to heal. Please.”

  She looked away from me, into the middle distance, her lips tight. “This is probably as healed as I’m going to get, for all practical purposes,” she said. Her voice was very thin.

  “I can still use your help,” I said. “Just coordinating communications with our friends—”

  She shook her head several times. “No. No, Harry. I’m not changing how I live my life. This is my choice. And you’ve got no stones to throw when it comes to stupid plans. So either back me up or get out of the way.”

  Frustration flashed through me. Karrin might have been damned near superhuman, but she wasn’t supernatural. She’d fought. She’d been beaten. She’d been hurt. She was in no condition to get involved in another one of my problems, and there was a very real chance that it could get her killed. She didn’t have the protection of her badge anymore, and she no longer had the full use of a body that had spent a lifetime dealing with predators of one kind or another.

  But she did have the enemies to show for it.

  Granted, what made Karrin Murphy dangerous had never been her arms and legs. It had been the mind that directed them. But even there, I had doubts. She’d always had a lot to prove, to herself and to other people—and she had never been okay with showing weakness. Was that affecting her judgment now?

  Or maybe it was something simpler than that.

  Maybe she was just afraid for the man she loved.

  I swallowed.

  For a second, I debated killing the little saw. A simple hex would render it useless. And then I realized the manifest idiocy of that idea. Karrin would not readily forgive me that—and she’d just find another way to get the damned cast off when I wasn’t looking anyhow. She probably had a second saw waiting in a box in the garage marked REPLACEMENTS FOR THINGS HARRY SCREWED UP. She believed in being prepared.

  I couldn’t stop her. It would be the same as telling her that she was weak and needed to stay home. That she wasn’t strong enough to help me. It would break her.

  And besides.

  You can’t go around making people’s choices for them. Not if you love them.

  So I stepped back over the line between the hardwood floor of the living room and the tiles of the kitchen.

  “Thank you,” Karrin said calmly.

  “Murph,” I said.

  She paused with the saw resting against her cast and looked at me. “What’s happening now … you’ve got no standing at all in it. No protection from the Accords. No badge.”

  She watched my face, her expression serious.

  “This is the jungle,” I said. “And none of the players in this are going to have a problem burying inconveniences if it means holding the Accords together.”

  “You mean me,” she said.

  “I mean you,” I said.

  “You could have hexed the saw already,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I couldn’t have.”

  “Well. You’re not all dumb,” she said, smiling faintly.

  “Remains to be seen,” I said. “I know you well enough to know there’s no point trying to stop you. But I … I gotta know that you’re walking into this with your eyes open, Murph.”

  She looked down for a long moment. Then she looked back up at me and said, “I have to do this.”

  I stared at her bandaged, broken body for a long moment.

  Then I clenched my jaw and nodded once.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll help.”

  Murphy’s eyes softened for a moment.

  Then she took the oscillating saw to the cast and started slicing away at it.

  It didn’t take her long to get the cuts made, though she hissed in discomfort a couple of times as she went.

  “Don’t cut yourself,” I said. “If you bleed out it will take a week to clean up.”

  “They’re burns,” she said, annoyed. “The saw won’t cut flesh, but it heats up the cast. I’m just too impatient.”

  “No kidding,” I said lightly.

  “Okay,” she said. “Come help me pull it off.”

  I did.

  Look, when you’ve been in as much cast as Karrin had for as long as she had, the results are kind of gross. There was a buildup of dead skin, flakes of it white and hard like scales where her skin had been. There’s no dressing that up.

  “Engh,” Karrin said, wrinkling her nose as her arm came free. “It’s the smell that bugs me.”

  “Junior high gym lockers were that bad,” I said.

  “Ew, boys,” she said. She lifted her wounded arm a little, moving it slowly, wincing.

  “Leg next,” I said.

  That one was worse. She hissed as the cast came free, and put a hand against her back. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “My hips forgot how to be at this angle.” She looked up at me, her face still pained. “I’ve got braces. We should put them o—”

  She broke off when I simply picked her up, as carefully as I could. She got her good arm around my neck and helped as much as she was able.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  “Taking you to a hot bath,” I said. “Don’t try to move. Just … let me do it. Okay?”

  Her blue eyes went very soft for a moment, and she looked down.

  “For a minute,” she said.

  I took her to the bathroom, moved aside the assistance equipment that was there, and set her down gently on the commode. It took me only a moment to get the bath going and then to help her out of her clothes and lower her carefully into the water.

  We didn’t speak. I moved slowly, sluicing warm water over dried-out skin where necessary, and let her soak in the warm water for a while. There was some gentle soap on hand, and after a time, I used that, with just my hands, being as careful as I could to get the area clean without stripping up layers of skin down to the raw new stuff at the bottom in the process.

  Karrin watched me at first. After a while, she closed her eyes and just sort of sank back into the
tub, her limbs loose. Her hair spread out a little in the water. She looked drawn, gaunt, in the face and neck—and peaceful.

  “I love you,” I said.

  She opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times. Then she lifted one ear out of the water and said, “What did you say?”

  I smiled at her. Then I went back to running my hands gently down her arm, encouraging some of the dead stuff to come off. It would take a few days for her to get back to normal.

  “Oh,” she said, studying my face.

  Then she sat up in the water, twisted a little toward me, and slid both of her arms around my neck. She pulled my mouth down to hers with a strength that no longer surprised me.

  But the sudden, sweet, almost desperate softness of the kiss that followed nearly knocked me into the tub.

  And in the middle of it, she breathed, “I love you, too.”

  23

  We were about halfway to Château Raith when Murphy asked, “You seeing this?”

  “The Crown Vic behind us?” I asked. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, them,” Murphy said impatiently. “And also the other two cars.”

  I frowned. I was driving the Munstermobile, which Murphy hated riding in because the custom-sized seat wasn’t adjustable, and her feet couldn’t reach my pedals. By almost a foot. The old car wasn’t exactly built with the driver’s lines of sight in mind, but I scanned the early-morning traffic, frowning.

  It took me a good minute of looking to spot what Murphy had already alerted me to—a dark blue Crown Vic was following about three cars back. Probably Rudolph and Bradley, in one of Internal Affairs’ vehicles. Behind them, maybe three more cars back, was a battered old Jeep that looked like it would have been happier and more comfortable in the Rocky Mountains somewhere. And then there was a third car, a silver minivan, following along a ways behind the Jeep.

  “You’re a little popular,” Murphy said.

  “Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “Is it a whole surveillance team?”

  “They’d be the worst one in the world,” Murphy said. “If they had three of them working together, there’s no reason for all of them to keep us in sight the entire time.”

  “Huh,” I said, and watched the cars for a few minutes more. “They aren’t working together. Three different parties tailing us?”